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ashley chiasson, m. ed

Ashley Chiasson, M.Ed

Instructional Designer & Consultant

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Instructional Design

Learning Solutions 2019 Recap Keynote 1

March 26, 2019

Keynote: Baratunde Thurston 

This morning, while I kept myself busy working from the only functioning wifi I could find, Baratunde Thurston walked by. He looks super down to earth and I’m excited to catch his session this morning! Thurston is a futurist comedian, writer, and activist, and today he’s talking about how digital storytelling doesn’t need to be boring.

Baratunde discusses his regular use of ‘irrelevant and imadertia’ in casual conversation…a phrase that was non-existent…thanks, mom! But he also discusses the professional moves his mom made in order to leave her children in a good place when she passed. She was always ready for ‘the gram’, in reference to a photo of his mother as an activist. In discussing the learning materials he experienced as a child, he references This is Apartheid…just some light reading. Clearly his mother was a very influential woman in his life and his learning journey.

23 and Me told him he was less Neanderthal than his sister, and this is an incredibly power argument he now holds against his sister, but she was quick to point out that he was way whiter than him…the author of How to Be Black…which I don’t believe is referenced in the book…because How to Be 81.6% Black was definitely a less catchy title.

  • Within the book, he wanted some scientific validity, so he had 3 black women, 3 black men, and 1 white Canadian male as a control.

He explains how it was odd for him to create an analog product. He explains the process of trying to insert some digital into the analog, optimizing for social and online distribution. He chose an interactive process for writing the book, which recorded his writing and editing process. This software allowed for interactive chat, which he muted (to avoid spelling corrections and overall distractions), but when he was finished writing the book, he reviewed all of the chat logs and found it interesting to read through other people’s stories and reflect…including some folks confused about their own race and heritage, such as one gentleman concerned about his relationship. She was Chinese…he was 1/2 Jamaican and 1/2 Regular Black, so their kids would likely be Dominican…or something. Of course!

All stories usually begin before you think it begins, so Baratunde says we should all rewind. Our stories usually are part of a previous story.

The topic of toasters came up, and he compares this to the epitome of wealth…we purchase a single-purpose appliance, designed to make bread hard. In purchasing a toaster, he went to the Amazon, and purchasing journey yielded a 1* review with a great story of Scott, a man who just wanted a toaster to make GOOD TOAST. Scott was so upset that he wrote this review…where he asks very philosophical questions, like “why 3 times?”. This is a guy who has had so many toasters, he could be a Toast Scientist.

What a story! Whenever you’re feeling down, just go to Amazon and read some reviews. Here are a couple of my favourites:

  • The Mountain Adult Unisex T-Shirt – Three Wolf Moon Classic

After the Amazon review story, he discusses the process of creating critical stories, and provides the examples of working on The Daily Show. Critical stories that needed to be produced daily. He discusses the 2016 presidential debates and the process for attempting to live tweet and produce these debates. It’s a process. A very well-orchestrated process…that yielded hilarious (and accurate) results:

The big thing that Thurston wants us to take away from this session is: In the future, we’re all Dominican…or something!

Leave a Comment Filed Under: Instructional Design Tagged: Conferences

E-Learning Challenge #224 – How are Designers Using Progress Bars in E-Learning?

March 16, 2019

Wow. If this isn’t a unicorn sighting, I don’t know what is! I’m finally participating in another e-learning heroes challenge!

The Concept

This week’s challenge was to share an example of how designers are using progress bars in e-learning. I have to admit that I chose a lazy approach, but it’s still a nice looking and effective approach.

The Method

In considering this challenge, time really was of the essence. Like I said, it’s been awhile since I’ve participated in a challenge, I don’t really have time to do so anymore without cloning myself, but I wanted to bang something out! The first thing I did was modify the player – I turned all of the buttons off, and customized the default Classic player to put it all on black (got an Alkaline Trio reference in there – it’s a successful Saturday!).

Then, I removed the next/prev functionality from each slide and instead added an Icon from the content library and applied a trigger for Next functionality.

In the master, I added a rounded rectangle with four states: 25, 50, 75, 100. Each state had the rounded rectangle filled with approximate colouring (25/50/75/100). Then, I popped in 5 slides, added some nice images of Unsplash for visual appeal. I added a numeric variable for Progress, and then added a trigger to change the state of Progress to 25/50/75/100 when the timeline started, depending on the slide we were on.

The Result

To view the full interaction, Click Here.

Leave a Comment Filed Under: Instructional Design Tagged: E-Learning Challenge

Save $150.00 on Essentials of Instructional Design!

March 14, 2019

As many of you already know, my passion is Instructional Design, but it’s an enigma of a field for many. I decided long ago that I wanted to spread the gospel of Instructional Design and E-Learning with as many people as possible, and now I finally have the ability to do so!

Enter: Essentials of Instructional Design. This course is a self-paced,10-module course with over 60 lessons! It aims to take you behind the scenes of Instructional Design to provide a comprehensive overview of the processes and principles of this rapidly growing field!

If you’ve ever been interested in Instructional Design or are new to the field, I encourage you to check this course out.

Note: I have taught this course as an elective for a Masters of Education program, and a condensed version of this course was featured as a pre-conference certificate program at DevLearn 2018.

Until March 26, 2019, I will be offering it at a $150 dollar discount. The discounted rate is $345, so if you’re interested, get on this deal!

Heck Yes, I’m Interested! (Click Here)

Leave a Comment Filed Under: Instructional Design

Two Coming Soon Articulate 360 Features That I’m Pumped About

December 19, 2018

This week Articulate announced some new things coming to Articulate 360, and there are two things in particular that I am very excited about:

“Create more types of interactions in Rise: Create compelling scenarios in Rise with the new scenario block. And easily create gorgeous bar, line, and pie charts that help learners make sense of information with the new chart block.”

Rise is such an easy and fantastic web-based authoring tool, and I love that Articulate keeps expanding upon its current pre-fabbed offerings. Adding in options for charts and graphs is going to be a game changer for a lot of data-driven courses.

But the feature that I’m most excited for is:

  • “Author more quickly in Storyline 360 with media library: Save time by managing all of your Storyline 360 project assets in one place. You can add, remove, replace, reuse, and export images, videos, audio tracks, and characters.”

The media library is going to be a game changer for ANY e-learning developer. Half the battle of course development is asset management…heck, I even gave a less than exciting (though passionate) session at an Articulate Community Roadshow entirely on asset management and data back up several years back. Sounds exciting right? Someone has to deliver those sessions! ANYHOW, the media library is going to help e-learning developers streamline their development approach by proactively providing developers with a library to contain all of their course assets…AMEN! Developers will no longer need to (most often) reactively create their file structures, and it will help everyone be more organized, well-oiled machines.

What new features are you excited about?!

1 Comment Filed Under: Instructional Design

Top Blog Posts of 2018

December 13, 2018

First off, I cannot believe that it is mid-December already. I know everyone says this, but wowee! 2018 blew by!

I’m always asked for better categorization of my posts, and I really want to do that (honestly, I’ve wanted to overhaul my site for YEARS now), but I haven’t yet perfected cloning technology, found someone that I trust to overhaul the site for me, or discovered a way of increasing the amount of time in a day…I know. Excuses.

In lieu of overhauling the site, I’ve opted to curate a list of my most popular blog posts of 2018, and I’ll attempt to categorize them as much as possible. Enjoy!

Screencasts:

  • ALL of the Articulate Storyline Screencast Tutorials were super popular this year. You can access them all here – I think they’re nearing 100 in total, and I’ll definitely keep posting them because people seem to enjoy them!

E-Learning/Instructional Design/Freelance Advice:

  • E-Learning Advice: Where to Find Work
  • Where to Find Freelance Instructional Design Gigs
  • Update: Where to Find Freelance Instructional Design Gigs
  • E-Learning Advice: How to Get Started
  • Top 3 Instructional Design Interview Tips
  • Instructional Design – A Mythical Unicorn?

Portfolio:

  • #FREE Mini-Course: Build Your E-Learning Portfolio
  • E-Learning Challenge #138 – Share Your Tips for Creating Effective E-Learning Portfolios
  • Screencast: Building My Portfolio with WordPress and Media Grid
  • How to Build Your E-Learning Portfolio: Part 1
  • How to Build Your E-Learning Portfolio: Part 2
  • How to Build Your E-Learning Portfolio: Part 3
  • How to Build Your E-Learning Portfolio: Part 4

Conferences:

  • DevLearn 2018: Introduction to Instructional Design Recap
  • DevLearn 2018: Session Recap and Resources – BYOD: Articulate Storyline 360: Let’s Get Variable!
  • DevLearn 2018 DemoFest Recap: Winning Project: Best Academic Solution
  • ATD ICE 2018: Keynote Recap: Barack Obama
  • ATD ICE 2018 – Keynote Recap: Connie Podesta
  • DevLearn 2018 | Day 1 Keynote: Julie Snyder

Random:

  • Free Download: Course Development Plan Template
  • E-Learning Challenge #48: Storyboard Templates for E-Learning
  • Time-Lapse Demo: Very Basic Storyboard Template
    • This one is SO OLD and it never ceases to amaze me how popular it is.
  • Holiday Gift Guide for Instructional Designers and E-Learning Developers
  • Book Recommendations for Instructional Designers and E-Learning Developers

Leave a Comment Filed Under: Freelance, Instructional Design, Screencast

I’m Speaking at the eLearning Guild Spotlight 2018: 2-Day Spotlight on eLearning Foundations

December 10, 2018

Have you heard about the 2018 eLearning Guild Spotlight? It’s a 2-day online spotlight on eLearning Foundations, and it’s happening this Wednesday and Thursday (December 12th and 13th, 2018). If you’re new to eLearning or looking to keep your finger on the pulse of changes in the industry, you should definitely register.

I’ll be delivering a 1-hour session on Thursday, December 13th from 10am – 11am PST, Instructional Design Tips for eLearning. Here’s the blurb:

Oftentimes, eLearning programs don’t fully consider instructional design principles and best practices. Without considering these principles, though, how can you ensure that the eLearning is effectively addressing the issue for which it was developed?

In this session, you will learn about several key instructional design tips to consider when developing your eLearning. These tips stand to help you create a more targeted, consistent, and accessible eLearning program.

  • Why it is so important to know your audience
  • Methods for ensuring consistency
  • Strategies for designing more universally
  • Ways of building in feedback opportunities

This event has a powerhouse list of speakers: Tim Slade, Dawn J. Mahoney, Rance Greene, Kevin Thorn, Bianca Baumann, Bianca Woods, and Jean Marrapodi….so many industry professionals with so much knowledge to share. It’s going to be a great event, so I certainly encourage you to check it out!

Leave a Comment Filed Under: Instructional Design Tagged: Conferences

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Meet Ashley

Ashley ChiassonI’m a Instructional Designer with over 15 years of professional experience, and have developed e-learning solutions for clients within the Defence, Post-Secondary Education, Health, and Sales sectors. For more about me, click here!

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