Ashley Chiasson, M.Ed

Instructional Designer & Consultant

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Screencast: Create a Visual Progress Meter in Articulate Storyline 360 Using Built-In Variables

I’ve been meaning to record this screencast for awhile…since the May 6th release of this feature to be precise. But there was life and work and surgery…so #nevertolate? In any event, I was SO EXCITED (!!!) when Articulate finally came out with slide number functionality for Storyline 360. Our prayers had been heard. And immediately I thought about how it could positively impact my day-to-day life immediately…with visual progress meters. BAM.

Now, the slide number functionality generates a bunch of built-in variables, and this screencast seeks to show you one way of using those built-in variables to create a visual progress meter. I will share other ways later on…or 4 months later, who knows? If you’re interested in the completed Storyline file – feel free to download it here.

Check out the screencast below!

A Reflection on Freelancing and Some Advice

I will begin this post by saying: I no longer freelance full-time. For the past year, I have worked full-time with Traliant as their Senior eLearning Developer, and I love what I do. That being said, I do still freelance…just in a different way and for different reasons. 

Awhile ago, I wrote a post about my Freelance to Freedom, and because it’s been five years and a lot has changed, I thought that was as good a time as any to reflect on my freelance journey, my goals, and how I’ve transitioned my freelancing since then.

When I initially wrote that post, I had dabbled in freelancing, working various contracts, and considering making strategic moves, such as requesting reduced hours at my full-time job, securing contracts, and moving toward full-time freelance. Since then, my focus has shifted. I’ve learned:

  • First and foremost: SO MUCH
  • What level of freelance I’m comfortable with and uncomfortable with
  • What type of work I enjoy doing
  • What my overall goals are in relation to freelancing

Let’s break it down!

Levels of Freelancing Comfort

What initially began as me being unable to say no (to contracts) and winding up working both permanent full-time and full-time freelance gigs has allowed me to explore how I want to freelance. For me, I prefer to have a permanent full-time role, while being able to continue my side hustle with small projects.

  • It’s important to note that I have always been transparent with my full-time employers about my intentions and have sought approval before beginning employment. No one should be blindsided.
  • My proposition has always been ‘so long as the freelance role doesn’t impact my ability to get my regular work completed and is non-compete (working in similar subject matter lanes can feel icky, and you should go with your gut)’.

So for me, what was once ‘take every gig you can and just make time for it’ has turned into a much more strategic endeavour. This is because when I fast forward 5 years (and I’m sure 10/15/20 from now as well), I see that I have put a lot more value into my time and into my work-life balance.

I love freelance work because it keeps things fresh and ever-changing, but I also enjoy stability.

Another level of comfort I’ve found: working remotely. I do enjoy interacting with people on a daily basis, but for me that doesn’t mean it needs to occur within a traditional office space. I appreciate knowing that I can comfortably do my work from my home office, a cafe, a hospital, another country…wherever I want so long as there’s an internet connection. I love being location independent!

What Type of Work I Enjoy Doing

When I first started freelancing, I learned very quickly that I enjoyed working in an Instructional Design or Storyline Developer capacity. I am very good at both of those roles and I learned early on that I wanted to work smarter and not harder, so I chose freelance work that aligned with my skillset.

If you threw me into the full-time freelance pool again, I would still feel this way, and would still align the projects I worked on with my skillset. It makes sense. I fully recommend to anyone: promote the work that you would want to do again, because it’s what you will enjoy doing…and if you spend 40+ hours a week working, you should heed this one bit of advice, if only for your sanity. I’m a big supporter of investing in things that you will spend most of your time doing (work and sleep) – make those elements of your life as comfortable as you can.

What My Overall Goals Are in Relation to Freelancing

Initially my freelancing goal was ‘pay off my student debt’, then it was ‘make all of the money’, and now it is to foster relationships and invest in my professional development. How does that look for me now when it comes to freelancing?

As I mentioned before, I value my time and my work-life balance, so my freelancing is now focused less on more traditionally viewed ‘work’, such as Instructional Design or eLearning Development, and more on my own professional development and the professional development of others.

What I’ve really been passionate about for the last five or so years has been: Speaking. I love delivering sessions at conferences and providing training to others in the form of workshops and online courses (usually on topics of Instructional Design, eLearning, eLearning Development, etc.). I am very fortunate to have a career that allows me to do this, and the reason I see this as my preferred form of freelancing is because: 1 – it allows me to connect with colleagues and share what I’ve learned over the last 15 years of my professional life, and 2 – I have always been terrified of public speaking.

It’s a weird Catch-22 of ‘I like sharing’, but ‘I hate speaking’, and speaking at conferences and other events has allowed me to improve on a skillset of which I struggle. This is invaluable to me. So while I no longer freelance in the traditional sense of the word, this is my freelancing.

Last Words of Advice

Work outside of your comfort zone if you’d like, but make sure that it’s sustainable for you, your goals, and your desired work-life balance. If you want to do freelance full-time, there are strategic ways of executing this goal, so don’t work yourself to death – no one needs that kind of pressure. If you’d like to hear more about my freelancing insights, I’ll be delivering sessions on this topic at both ATD TechKnowledge 2020 and Learning Solutions 2020 (as well as some sessions and workshops in between).

Where Have I Been & Where Am I Speaking: Fall 2019

Where the Heck Have You Been?!

I know, right?! I didn’t blog at all in August. So some of you might be thinking, “where has Ashley been?” At least I hope you’ve been thinking that, because I’ve really missed connecting as frequently, and I’m about to get back to it!

In July 2018, I tore my medial meniscus and damaged a bunch of cartilage in my knee playing softball. If you remember my jaw saga, you might be thinking “choose a different sport, please”, but no. No. I. Will. Not! ANYHOW. I had been waiting since then to have knee surgery, and on July 31st 2019 the wait was over!

I participated in a really neat research study that had two options: Option 1 – I get the surgery they’ve been doing successfully for years, which would only require one surgery, or Option 2 – I get a fancy 2-surgery deal that would first extract cartilage, mail it to a lab, grow new cartilage, and then 3 weeks later I would have a second surgery to implant the newly grown cartilage – cool, right?! I wouldn’t know which I had been selected for until I woke up from the anesthesia of surgery 1.

I really wanted the cool surgery so I could tell everyone I was bionic or part cattle (because the grown cartilage matrix was made with bovine matter), but my maiden name is Murphy and I abide by Murphy’s Law (anything that can go wrong, will go wrong), so I was randomly selected for the old surgery, which is referred to as ‘microfracture‘ plus a meniscus repair. Now that I’ve had this surgery, I am extremely glad to be nearly 6 weeks post-op, and not having to restart the post-op countdown with the second surgery, but it’s not nearly as neat sounding.

Long story short: I’ve been caged up on crutches and in a bulky range of motion brace for the past 4.5 weeks, and I have 1.5 more to go before I get the fancy custom brace and get cleared to resume normal life tasks like driving. I’ve had 2-4 appointments every single week, and it’s been incredibly exhausting. But, I’ll spend another 12-18 months in the new brace, and then my knee should be almost good as new. Which means: more softball and more travel.

So, that’s where I’ve been, and like I said earlier, I’m very excited about getting back into the swing of things with the blog…and with speaking opportunities!

Where Am I Speaking?

 

If you’re in the market for some Miami travel this November, I’ll be delivering two sessions for ATD Core4 Miami:

Session 1: Instructional Design for E-Learning

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.

Key Takeaways:

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

Session 2: Top 10 Tips: Articulate Storyline

So you’re developing some pretty awesome e-learning in Articulate Storyline, but you’d like to streamline your development…this is where all of those software secrets can come in handy! If you’ve ever felt like you could use a clone, this session aims to make you twice as productive doing what you do.

In this session, you will learn 10 top tips for working in Articulate Storyline, and how these tips can help you become more productive in your Articulate Storyline development.

Key Takeaways:

  • Methods for streamlining your development process
  • Strategies for making the tool work for you
  • How to speed up your development, without sacrificing quality
  • Articulate Storyline tricks of the trade

And, then I’ll be delivering a 2-day workshop in Washington, DC, so if you have any recommendations for things to do and/or people to see, definitely let me know!

This is one of the first years in a long time that I won’t be participating at DevLearn because I won’t be cleared to fly until early November, so I’m having some serious FOMO…but 2020 will be a good one!

Freelance Advice: Pricing Yourself Appropriately

One of the freelance questions I get asked most frequently is: How do I price my services? 

When going freelance or taking on contract projects, pricing yourself appropriately is critical. Your. Time. Is. Valuable. I’ve been on both sides: freelancing myself and hiring freelancers, so I feel like I can offer some advice in this arena. You can even take some of this advice and apply it to the “a prospective employer asked me ‘what is your salary expectation?’ – how do I respond?”

But first, a story…

When I first began freelancing it held a very simple goal: pay off my student debt faster. Kthx. And I did. And I learned a lot from my very first freelance gig. I went on a bid site (freelancer.com), bid on any job I thought I was even remotely qualified for, and won several contracts. One such contract was transcribing 40 hours of interviews for someone’s PhD research. I did this job for ONE. HUNDRED. DOLLARS. WHAT?! Yeah. I had no idea what to price transcription services at. This was obviously a steal. This is a period of my life that was absolute agony for me. I’m not a quitter. I did the job. I hated the job. I learned that my time was valuable. #lifelessons. I now know that, and that will never transcribe anything ever again. Never.

Cool story. That was dumb. Now get on with the advice please.

Alright, so there are several things you want to consider when pricing your services:

  • What do you want to earn?
    • Be realistic; I initially based this annual value as what I was making at my first ID role
  • Consider the things you have to pay out, such as taxes, HST (if you’re Canadian), and health care
    • The biggest mistake I see people make is pricing their services too low and only finding out when they owe a bunch of $$$ to the CRA or IRS. It can be an expensive lesson to learn.
  • Do you want project based pricing? Hourly pricing? Salary?
    • Salary is self-explanatory, but you still need to factor in the things you’ll pay out to. Hourly pricing can be good if you’re unsure of how much time you spend doing each type of task you’ll be doing. Project-based pricing is typically higher, but if you do project-based pricing you may get into an underpaid pickle if it takes you longer to complete a project than what you had quoted.

For me, as I previously explained, I initially priced my services based on the hourly breakdown of my first ID salary. I then added to that. So, let’s do a simple example:

  • Starting rate: $20/hr
  • I set aside 35% of each project for taxes, and 15% for HST, so I would add those two things (50%) and then add that to my rate – so now I’m at $30/hr.
  • Then, I add 20% to that to put aside for healthcare – now we’re at $36/hr

Now, this takes a bit of research, but I recommend you start with your provincial/state/federal tax sites to identify how much you need to pay in to taxes based on certain tax brackets. It might suck to contribute more to your tax account than necessary, but at the end of the day, it’s always nice to not have to pay out all of your tax savings vs. owing more.

The other major things to consider is: What experience do you have? How long have you been doing certain types of jobs/roles? Where do you live? These factors all play a part in pricing yourself appropriately.

Pricing yourself can be incredibly intimidating, but I’ve learned that valuing myself accordingly and confidently negotiating my pricing has more often resulted in prospective employers not batting a lash versus balking at my pricing. And if you’re being fair with your prices and still encountering prospective employers balking at your pricing…are those the employers you want to work for? For me, it’s not. There will always be more contracts. I promise you.

Resources:

  1. The eLearning Guild has an incredibly helpful calculator: 2018 Salary Calculator, and you can use this as a starting point to base your annual value according to various elements (e.g., state in which you live, education, years of experience, etc.). Another thing the eLearning Guild does is an annual salary and compensation guide – aimed at recruiters, but also helpful to peruse if you’re looking into working for yourself.
  2. Estimating Costs and Time in Instructional Design by Donald Clark provides a great overview.
  3. The Chapman Alliance – How Long Does it Take to Create Learning is a resource I recommend OFTEN.