Ashley Chiasson, M.Ed

Instructional Designer & Consultant

Small Business

Instructional Design and E-Learning Resources

I get a lot of questions about the products and resources I use the most, so I thought it might be easiest to develop a resource site that I can add and subtract from as it evolves. Full disclosure: there are several affiliate links throughout, but these are all products and/or resources that I’ve used, trust, and love. You’ll see this page featured in my navigation, so if you leave the site and come back, it will be very easy to find 🙂

Tools

Articulate Storyline and Studio – I am a huge lover and supporter of both suites of software; however, I have to admit that I prefer to develop within Articulate Storyline, often using Studio-developed assets to supplement aspects of my Storyline courses. The Articulate E-Learning Heroes community is one of the most active community I’ve been apart of, and I really appreciate how supportive everyone seems to be. Both suites of software are worth the investment, and if you or your organization are on the fence about purchasing licenses, I encourage you to try out the 30 day free trials.

Adobe Captivate – I won’t be the first to admit that this is not my favourite tool to develop in; I tend to find Adobe’s interfaces more difficult to navigate, but I will say that once you’ve mastered one of their program interfaces, you likely won’t have a hard time with others. I like using Captivate to develop software simulations and the most often used feature (which is silly given the robust-ness of the program) for me is the text to speech audio recording…I said it was a silly feature to use the most, didn’t I? Working with a military audience, I gained loads of experience using Adobe Captivate, and once you get the swing of it, it really can do prove to be a great authoring investment, especially given the reasonable licensing cost.

TechSmith Camtasia and SnagIt– I use Camtasia almost on a daily basis, and I love it! I will admit that rendering video is not one of my favourite tasks, but it definitely is a reasonably priced and robust program given the features it provides. You really can create some amazing videos using Camtasia, and I use it almost exclusively to record screencasts (because this allows me to avoid javascript update prompts and errors – which I would often run into as a Mac user, when using screencastomatic and screenr.com – sorry guys!). SnagIt was a life-altering piece of software that I first grew to love about five years ago. SnagIt allowed me to easily take screen captures and mark them up, or better yet (!) have my subject matter expert do – this made some incredibly complicated and headache-inducing projects (e.g. tracing electrical flow throughout aircraft components) INCREDIBLY easier. I know I will never get that year of my life back, but SnagIt helped keep me sane. Both of these products are amazing, and if you bundle them together, you get a discount. If you don’t want to bundle, they’re both great on their own – so great, that I have licenses for both my Mac and PC. So nice, I bought it twice!

Parallels – I haven’t been using Parallels long, but I’ve been bowing down to it since DAY ONE! Prior to Parallels, I was using Mac Boot Camp, booting to my Windows OS separately to work on all of my Windows-specific projects. Doing things this way without an optimization software like the Mitrefinch solution created a bumpy workflow process – I would have to either dual boot multiple times a day (incredibly frustrating when a client called and wanted to do an unexpected screen share and you had a ton of Mac windows open with work in progress) or I would have to hoard all of my OS-specific tasks to group together, which became quite unwieldy. Parallels honestly changed my life. Now, I can operate ‘in coherence’, and selecting a Windows-specific item will automatically open in Windows. I can have both OS’ open at the same time, and I’ve experienced no lag.

PancakeApp – PancakeApp is my project management software of choice; it has an aesthetically pleasing interface and is surprisingly easy to use. I will admit that it was head-bashing-on-my-keyboard frustrating to setup, but the support team is very quick to respond to any concerns, and the fifth install was the charm for me. This program allows me to easily manage my projects, clients, hours, and invoices – taking the fuss out of small business management and administrative poo poo out of my daily life.

Storage

Articulate TempShare – Articulate TempShare takes the fuss out of getting your Articulate projects online; just upload and pass along the link – the only catch is that the links will expire, so it’s definitely not a long-term solution (but still good for most uses).

Dropbox – Dropbox is fantastic! I use dropbox to share project files between myself and clients, to deliver projects, and even as a tertiary backup for my hard drive. The subscriptions (for the amount of space you get) are silly cheap, and you likely won’t fill it all up for a long while.

Google Drive – Google Drive is RIDICULOUSLY cheap for space, and is widely used. I do find my clients are gravitating more toward dropbox nowadays, but it’s still a fantastic resource and storage solution.

Education/Lifelong Learning

Lynda.com (Get 7 days of free, unlimited access to lynda.com) – Lynda.com is a fantastic resource for learning, and is SUPER affordable (given the enormous course selection); for instructional designers or developers, I would specifically recommend:

  • Up and Running with Articulate Storyline (by David Rivers)
  • Articulate Storyline Advanced Techniques (by Daniel Brigham)
  • Camtasia Studio 8 Essential Techniques (by Chris Mattia)
  • Screencast Fundamentals (by David Rivers)
  • Instructional Design Essentials: Storyboarding (by Daniel Brigham)
  • Up and Running with Captivate 7 (by David Rivers)
  • Captivate Advanced Techniques (by Anastasia McCune)

Discover Udemy’s featured courses!” target=”_blank”>Udemy.com – I was a user of Udemy before I began working with the interface. As a developer, Udemy is an extremely easy user interface and has a large-enough following that you can easily make passive (or active, depending on your goals) income publishing courses through the site. As a user, I find the interface very manageable – the information is presented in bite-sized chunks, and Udemy’s quality regulations ensures that all users are getting the best possible experience. Courses range in price, but there are many fantastic options; for instructional designers or developers, I would recommend:

  • Adobe Captivate 6 and 7 Training for Beginners (by VHOT Training Inc.)
  • Create Interactive Courses with Articulate Storyline (by Jeff Batt)
  • Learn to Create eLearning Courses using Articulate Storyline (by Prashant Kumar Gupta)
  • The ABCs of Instructional Design (by Debra Scott)
  • The Ultimate Mind Map Course for Education (by Sean Mitton)

Resources for use in E-Learning

Creative Market – I LOVE using Creative Market – there are tons of modern visuals available for purchase (e.g. illustrations, stock photos, hero images, fonts, etc.), and every week they offer a handful of free downloads (which ends up building into quite the repository if you hang around for awhile). But I think my favorite aspect of this site is that designers and developers are getting paid for what they’re producing…which sure, maybe you can get it for free somewhere, but everyone deserves a payday, how else are we to become top Chicago interior designers!

istockphoto.com – I remember searching Getty Images at the beginning of my web-design hobby as a teenager; now on the cusp of thirty, I can appreciate this membership approach to royalty-free images. Memberships range from 250-750 downloads per month, and are reasonably priced, especially if being used often for larger organizations.

E-Learning Heroes Download Section – The download section has been developed largely from submissions by E-Learning Heroes community participants. There are LOADS of resources for all Articulate products, in addition to course assets and administrative templates (e.g. storyboard templates). This is an invaluable resource and is constantly growing!

E-Learning Heroes Community – As previously mentioned, the Articulate E-Learning Heroes community is one of the most active communities I have been fortunate enough to be a part of, and you can find almost ANYTHING (related to instructional design and/or Articulate products) on this forum. And if you can’t, someone can definitely answer your questions!

ColourLovers – This isn’t necessarily an e-learning resource; anyone needing to select colours can really benefit from this site. I specifically like looking at palettes, because sometimes I’m not creative when coming up with colour palettes and there are a lot of folks out there who are – why exhaust yourself?! I’ve used these colour palettes in e-learning courses, on websites, and when painting the interior of my home.

E-Learning Books

Design for how People Learn – Julie Dirksen

The Accidental Instructional Designer: Learning Design for the Digital Age – Cammy Bean

Learning Articulate Storyline – Stephanie Harnett

E-Learning Uncovered: Articulate Storyline – Diane Elkins and Desiree Pinder

Small Business

Designer Scripts – Email Templates for Sticky Client Situations – My good friend Erin created this swipe file of email scripts for dealing with various sticky client situations; while you may not be a designer (perhaps you’re a business coach or a software developer), but if you run any sort of freelance operation or small business, these email templates are adaptable for almost any industry. And at $17 dollars, it is a steal. Just think of all of the cringe-worthy client situations you’ve been in…and how frustrated you were because you just couldn’t think of a way to deal with the situation. One of my favourite situations outlined has to do with a client requesting more revisions than originally agreed upon (come on, instructional designers, I know you feel me on the revision apocalypse). In any event, this is an ESSENTIAL investment in your business and will save you a ton of headache in the end!

Stress Less & Impress (by Leah Kalamakis) – Sometimes the hardest part of doing freelance work and/or running a small business is ironing out your processes. In Stress Less & Impress, Leah takes you through the steps (and provides helpful worksheets and a Facebook community) of streamlining your process, and while it may not be industry-specific, streamlining your basic processes will allow you to spend less time with administrative schtuff, and more time focusing on your clients and providing solutions to their problems.

Helpful Websites

The Freelance to Freedom Project – This is a website developed by Leah Kalamakis, wherein she provides helpful freelance information – from the trenches. She has an incredibly Facebook community that I participate in weekly, and of which I’ve been able to sub-contract out overflow work, when necessary. Leah is incredibly honest and supportive, and her blog posts address common freelance questions or concerns.

Be Free, Lance – Much like Leah’s site, Breanna provides a witty blog category, periodically updated with helpful freelance information. Her posts are informative and engaging, and I’m looking forward to her upcoming course (of the same name).

Random

How to Undo the Damage of Sitting – or what many may refer to as Desk-er-cize. Seriously – these exercises can help. A LOT. Stop complaining about your back pain now and do these exercises!

3 Tips for Countering Feelings of Overwhelm

As someone who suffers from Generalized Anxiety Disorder, it’s really important for me to make an effort at balancing my life, work, and mental health. As a new small business owner, this can often times be a difficult task. That’s why I’m deciding to take this week to make a conscious effort to better manage myself in an effort to counter feelings of overwhelm.

Make Yourself Accountable

For me, this meant using my fancy project management software (shoutout PancakeApp) to set up all of my current projects and their individual tasks. This was somewhat counterproductive in that it initially made me feel more overwhelmed – oh my goodness, look at all of the tasks I need to complete (by Monday, by Wednesday, by the end of next week)…ugh. But when I stepped back, I felt refreshed, organized, and I now have an interactive to do list that will make me accountable for each of my tasks.

Find Peace

Within my work life, this means finding a quiet place where I can be productive; I haven’t perfected this yet (we have a beagle), but I’ve come pretty darn close, and I really enjoy the routine I have working from my home office, work office, or certain cafes. Finding peace usually involves some relaxing music (I’m a frequently listener of Songza’s Mellow Indie Playlist) or a podcast (e.g. Totally Laime or Alison Rosen is Your New Bestfriend) that allows me to listen passively. A calm environment can lead to an increase in productivity, which stands to decrease your feelings of overwhelm considerably!

Within my daily life, this means dog walks or exercising or reading a few chapters of a book before resting your head on your pillow and catching some sleep.

Be Active – CONSISTENTLY

I used to be so good at this, almost to the point of obsession. Obsession isn’t a great thing, but I’ll be the first to admit that I do miss my five day per week gym routine. I’ve been haphazard in ramping up my activity levels over the past few months and it’s really catching up to me. I’m not as in shape as I once was, my anxiety is a lot less predictable and extreme, I’m easily tired, and I just don’t feel on top of my game.

Being active is a great way to counter feelings of overwhelm because activity gets your endorphins chugging along and then all of the happier feelings buzz through your body, making your daunting to do list seem a lot more manageable.

3 Easy Ways to Increase Your Productivity!

First off – I have to admit that as I type this, I’m pushing out a couple of responsibilities…or procrastinating…or not being productive. I’m justifying it by keeping an eye on the lasagna I have in the oven (supper made – productive, no?!) and throwing the frisbee for our dog.

The topic of productivity came up today, so I felt like I should probably chime in and offer my two cents; hopefully someone finds these tips useful!

1. Find productive background noise.

Typically, I will listen to podcasts while I work. However, I have a fairly strict rotation of podcasts I listen to (because change is hard!) and when those run out, I find myself consulting some background noise that allows me to be productive while I work. Here are some examples:

Consult Songza Concierge and choose something that doesn’t overwhelm you! For me, I tend to veer towards the Mellow Indie playlists because I know I’ll get carried away singing along to anything from the 90s (not productive). Alternatively, they have several stations that just play background noise.

Coffitivity claims to increase your creativity, keeping you at your best, by providing some background coffee shop noises. A lot of people find this helps boost their productivity; however, after five years of managing a busy Starbucks, this type of background noise stresses me out as I’m constantly waiting for the ‘rush’.

Stereomood was one of my favourite things to stream in my last cube farm job. 1 – we didn’t have a lot of options for things we were able to stream and this one was obscure enough that it hadn’t been blocked, and 2 – it lets you base your selections based on mood  (Songza concierge does this too – but Stereomood came preceded Songza for me).

2. Let technology help you with your productivity.

There are tons of applications out there to help you with your productivity, and a few things I’ve heard good things about include:

Todoist is a to do list and task manager application; it allows you to enter in tasks (and group them under projects), and you can check things off the list as you complete each task (and we all know how fulfilling that can be)!

Inbox Pause – I don’t use this yet because I haven’t reached that level of popularity (either that or my clients have been very considerate), but I have friends and colleagues who use this and swear by it. Inbox Pause lets you set an ‘away message’ of sorts, letting folks know that you’ll respond when you’re available. Your email inbox is then paused and you are no longer distracted by all of the emails coming in (until of course you’re ready for such distraction).

Unroll.me has been the answer to all of my prayers! I cannot even explain to you how life altering this very simple procedure is. It’s free and it lets you select which subscriptions (I know they’re piling up in your inbox) you want to free yourself from (unsubscribe from) and which ones you want to receive in a daily ‘roll up’. This has been AH-MAY-ZING for me! Everyday I get my little digest and scroll through – if there’s been any action in the communities I’m apart of, I’ll take the opportunity to respond at this time instead of distracting myself throughout the day.

3. Group like items.

I’m not the most organized person on the planet, but one thing I find enhances my productivity is to group like items. Initially, I’ll group items based on delivery deadlines. Once that’s done, I’ll try and do all of my Microsoft Word together, all of my Microsoft PowerPoint work together, and all of my Articulate work together (and so on and so on). This has really helped me boost productivity because I’m not jumping around as often as I once was.

I’ve mentioned several times before, but using Parallels for Mac has also helped me out in the productivity department because it’s allowed me to ‘group like items’ in terms of my Operating Systems, and allows me to not jump back and forth between Windows and Mac OS to use some of the programs I use which are only native to one OS or the other.

3 Tips for Better Project Management

Project Management and Instructional Design

There is some truth to saying that all Instructional Design requires some amount of project management; however, some roles require more project management than others. In a previous life, I was fortunate enough to have project managers who would deal with all the more frustrating client communications and assert their dominance, but now I’m foraging my own path as an Independent Contractor and I’m finding that I wear the Project Manager hat a bit more often than I’d like to – but it’s necessary.

Today I’m going to be discussing tips for managing your Instructional Design projects and the corresponding client. Hold on to your hats! You’re going to quickly notice a theme.

Tip # 1 – Communicate!

This may seem like an obvious thing to do, but the reality is that a lot of people don’t communicate effectively or enough. When beginning a new project, it is essential to discuss all project requirements with your client and THEN draft a Statement of Work or contract. This document will outline everything from project requirements to deadlines to payment to what will happen if the client initiates project delays, etc. You must detail EVERYTHING in this document. An important aspect often overlooked within a contract is a section on communication and how the client is to communicate with you, when they can expect a response, etc. Your client needs to know that they’re not the only client you have. You’ll be respectful of their time and they should be respectful of yours.

So the project has begun and you’re confused about something. Instead of spending days troubleshooting and trying to find a solution, ask your client – they may provide a simple solution, ask your colleagues – they may be able to help, and ask the internet – it’s one of our greatest resources.

Tip # 2 – Be Clear with Your Expectations

This goes hand-in-hand with Tip #1. In all of your communications, be very clear. Do not be wishy washy. Make decisions, and stand by these decisions. Including these expectations within your Statement of Work or Contract is a smart idea as doing so allows you to refer back to this signed document anytime the client starts moving toward scope creep or going back on their original agreement. Contracts can be always be amended, but they need to be mutually agreed upon.

Tip # 3 – Assert Yourself!

Now this one can be tricky for a lot of people. I have a hard time asserting myself and tend to prefer to go above and beyond to please my clients. However, going above and beyond is fine – so long as it’s in your contract. If it’s not in your contract and it’s going to add time on to your process, you need to let your client know and assert yourself by explaining that you can do X, but it will be an additional charge. It also helps if you explain this in your contract by indicating that any work above and beyond the work outlined in the contract will be billed at your hourly/daily/weekly rate of X. If scope creep begins to occur, you can refer your client back to their contract and they won’t be surprised – here they can decide whether the work is in fact required, or whether they can do without the additional work.

Bonus Tip: Learn from Your Mistakes

This is an important one! If you don’t learn from your past mistakes, you will likely keep making them. This will likely create more aggravation than good, so don’t be too proud to admit to your own mistakes.

For more tips, check out my mentor’s site: Lea-p.com