Ashley Chiasson, M.Ed

Instructional Designer & Consultant

Instructional Design

Video Demo: How I Set Up Puppy Plinko

For those of you wondering how I set up the Puppy Plinko interaction for Artie’s Christmas Surprise, I decided to do a video demo (below).

First, I added a visited state to all of the pups, then added a trigger to each oval that would change the state of the appropriate pup to visited when the animation for the oval’s motion path was completed.

Then, I added a True/False variable for each oval, and added a trigger to each pup to adjust the variable of the oval to True when the motion path animation for the oval completed.

Finally, I added a trigger to Jump to next slide once all pup states were visited AND all ovals are True.

Confused? Yeah – I know. I’m sure some of you guys would have done things differently, but if you want to hear my sometimes confused ramblings about how I set up Puppy Plinko (or if you need more information), check out the video below:

Video Demo – Artie from Ashley Chiasson on Vimeo.

Demo: Artie’s Christmas Surprise

Last week I spent some time working on a silly little Storyline project: Artie’s Christmas Surprise, and today I’m ready to share a little bit about it.

The Concept

I downloaded this rad set of Dog Infographic objects from Creative Market awhile back, and figured I had to use them for something, so I came up with a little story about Artie a dog who just became a single-parent and is strapped to come up with gift ideas for his 8 pups as the holidays fast approach. The pups get to play a little game of puppy plinko to determine their gifts, and then I link out to several of my favourite charities to donate to over the holiday season. There’s poop involved – I told you it was silly.

The Method

Inspired by the infographic set and some other icons (that I can’t quite remember where I downloaded them from…), I came up with the story. I sourced some audio and modified Artie a bit to suit my purposes.

  • On the intro slide, we meet Artie. He has a little oof and a wagging tail (created using motion paths).
  • On the second slide, we learn about Artie’s current situation, which makes use of some animations and audio.
  • On the third slide, we learn about Artie’s monthly income and expenses, using several of the infographic icons, a ton of animations, and A LOT of kibble (amen to grouping objects)!
  • On the fourth slide, we see that Artie has decked himself out in holiday cheer and come up with a great idea – puppy plinko!
  • On the fifth slide, the pups are all set up for puppy plinko – I mocked up the plinko board based on the ever popular game show game, and controlled all of the plinko chips (albeit their addresses were forced and not dynamic) using motion paths. I also added states to all of the pups and created some variables so that the slide would advance only after all pups had been visited and only after all of the motion path animations had been completed and changed to a value of True.
  • On the sixth slide, we see how Artie did with all of his gifts.
  • On the seventh slide, we link out to some charities, using buttons and hyperlinks.

I also created custom navigation buttons because I’m not the biggest fan of the default ones.

The Result

I think the result was pretty darn cute and it made me laugh (and simultaneously feel delirious), so hopefully it can garner a chuckle out of you!

Screen Shot 2014-12-01 at 7.22.04 PM

Click here to view the full demo.

Terminology Tuesday: Mind Maps

This week I’m going to talk about a term that a lot of folks find useful. I don’t really classify myself in that category of folk, but occasionally I can see the use in a mind map. I think this is because I often work alone and end up brainstorming with myself, so there’s really not a lot of point for me to visualize that for myself.

What is a mind map?

A mind map is essential a brainstorming session. Mind maps allow you to visually organize your ideas and are typically centred around one theme or concept. Remember when you used to brain storm in grade school? You would write down one central concept in the middle of your page and then draw lines coming from that central concept with related terms or concepts? It’s kind of like a visual word association. To illustrate the concept of a mind map, I drafted one for you:

Screen Shot 2014-12-01 at 6.52.10 PM

Here, I have the central concept of cats (because 1 – I’m a crazy cat lady, and 2 – as I type this, I am being sandwiched between two) and from there I have sub-categories such as: sounds, physical attributes, hobbies, likes, and dislikes. From each of these sub-categories, I have listed related items that come to mind when I think of cats in relation to that category.

You can probably see how a mind map could be helpful, especially if you’re attempting to come up with a coherent e-learning module; in one of the workshops I participated in over the past year, we did a mind map to come up with some elements for a course. This type of mind map included a central topic, and from there we identified colour schemes, fonts, sounds, feelings the course might evoke, etc.

Outside of e-learning, mind maps can be useful for any project, especially if you’re working in a group. They allow for collaboration and can be effective when it comes to decision making and identifying what does and does not work with the central concept.

Intrigued? Here are some resources:

E-Learning Challenge #61: Top Tips for E-Learning Freelancers

This week’s challenge was an easy one, which is probably why Im able to participate – hooray! Thank you, David!

The Concept

This week, the challenge was to design a poster, infographic, or list to share top tips with e-learning freelancers. As an e-learning freelancer, this challenge seemed right up my alley.

The Method

Well. First, I got a little ahead of myself and mistook it for Instructional Design tips and created a poster related to one of my very favourite quotes from a less than favourite military reviewer (and I say that jokingly…kind of) – “Bullets are too verbose.”; the take away from that comment was to be more concise…which is tricky when you need to include sections of military publications verbatim into your courseware. GAH. That being said, I like to pride myself in being fairly concise within my e-learning projects.

Once I admired my handy work, I realized my mistake and began racking my brain for freelance tips. I thought this would be a lot easier than it was because 1) I’ve been an e-learning freelancer for several years now, 2) I’ve learned a lot about small business in this past year, and 3) I’m writing a book that’s almost related directly to just that. However, my brain was apparently converted into mashed potatoes last night and it took me several hours to come up with something worth recommending to other e-learning freelancers.

The Result

First, I’ll share my Instructional Design tip:

Verbose

Next up, my top tip for e-learning freelancers:

Scope_Creep

Scope creep is a very real thing, so you should definitely heed my advice. I would also recommend having an air-tight contract. It’s always nice to go above and beyond for your clients, but you don’t want to give away the farm!

Terminology Tuesday: Critical Consciousness

In light of recent events, I figured it might be appropriate to discuss some terminology I was introduced to during my graduate program – critical consciousness.

Critical Consciousness

Paulo Freire was heavily involved in discussions and research related to social relations, and indicated that dominant social relations or statuses were more often than not directly correlated with a culture of silence, wherein individuals at a lower social relation or status feel oppressed by the the inability to speak up or be heard. This realization is classified as “critical consciousness” – the individual realizes that the dominant social relations are creating this culture of silence. Now, I don’t necessarily think this is true in today’s society – folks seem to be a lot more outspoken than they once were, but there is still oppression occurring everywhere. Most of us likely encounter at least one small inkling of it every single day.

Critical consciousness is an educational concept that involves having a critical understanding of the world around us, including the social justices and injustices (or the contradictions therein), and being able to take action based on your understanding to construct or move toward positive social change and reducing oppression.

Resources

I encourage you to research more about critical consciousness; it’s certainly a higher-level of thinking than we do most days, and I implore you to become empowered to do something within your community to move toward positive social change.

Terminology Tuesday: Social Learning

This week I’ve been thinking a lot about my participation in social learning activities – which is minimal at best. I want to participate more, but have yet to find the time! In any event, social learning is happening all the time, and it can be an easy way to learn from your peers.

What is social learning?

Traditionally, social learning emphasizes the fact that learning can be social, occurring through observation of behaviours. When I think about social learning, I think more about mobile or micro learning – why? Because social media has created a new venue for social learning. Just think of all of the Twitter chats that are occurring all over the place, or Reddit!

Drawing on the traditional definition, the modern definition might be defined as learning through social interactions where individuals can learn through their interactions in a collaborative and social environment. As in the traditional sense, individuals can learn desirable vs. undesirable behaviours based on reactions, and there is constant reciprocation.

Benefits and implications of social learning

To me, the benefits are obvious – we develop a means of engaging with individuals, socially, and through our interactions determine the ways in which we should (or should not) be engaging with individuals. However, social learning can be a double-edged sword. Just think of critical periods of development – teenagers make a great case study. In situations where individuals want to ‘fit in’ or feel popular, they may assume undesirable behaviours, mimicked after other individuals who are performing these behaviours (within the shared social sphere). Another example is the bystander effect – individuals don’t stop to help someone who appears to be in need of help, because they see others continually passing by, and assume that someone else will come to help.

So, social learning can certainly be a good thing, especially where micro learning is concerned, but it can also be a bad thing – as most things are capable of.

Resources