Ashley Chiasson, M.Ed

Instructional Designer & Consultant

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Moodle: Easily Reduce Main Page Scrolling

Last week I spent some time over at the E-Learning Guild’s Learning Exchange sharing tool tips. One of them was near and dear to my heart, as a student, and now as an Instructional Designer working in higher education and using Moodle as a Learning Management System (LMS).

The way our institution’s process works is that faculty members are responsible for adding all content to their Moodle course sites. As you can imagine, approaches to this are all over the map in terms of how faculty members choose to go about this task.

Often times, faculty will use the Moodle default settings, and when I receive their course to review, I see long lists of content and main page scrolling abound! I sob a little on the inside, but then I quickly rectify the problem. Here’s how I easily reduce main page scrolling on a Moodle course site:

  1. Turn Editing On.
  2. From the Administration block, select Edit Settings.
  3. Scroll to, and select Course Format.
  4. From the dropdown menu, select Show one section per page.
  5. Select Save changes.

If I’ve lost you, here’s a video demo:

Terminology Tuesday: Development Part 2

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Last week I spent some time talking about the Development phase of Instructional Design, but I got bogged down with itemizing the various elements that you might develop, so I didn’t get to talk too much about my favourite part of development. In e-learning, this would be the authoring element of development!

This week, I thought I would chat a bit about some of the authoring tools that are used for e-learning development, and what I think about them.

Within very first development gig, I spent a ton of time working in an internal Learning Content Management System (LCMS), and I have to say that for all the little bugs, I truly believe our company could have brought it to market and it could have been a big deal. After having worked in several other LCMS’, I feel pretty comfortable saying that it was one of the most user-friendly tools I have ever used. Unfortunately, I don’t believe it’s being used any longer and therefore is definitely not out in the market…an e-learning industry’s loss -sigh-.

This position also afforded me the opportunity to work within OutStart and Ilias…which were alright, but not for me. Ilias was Linux-based, and I just didn’t have enough familiarity with it to really form much of an opinion aside from noting the inconvenience of working in an almost entirely Windows-based office. OutStart was alright, but it was buggy, expensive (for what it is), and had one major character flaw (at least in the version we had access to): any of the developers could accidentally delete an entire program…you know a series of courses that a team of 20 had worked tirelessly on for months. Whoops! It did have a lot of helpful features for course development, but I often found myself looking for workarounds to get things functioning properly.

I was introduced to Adobe Captivate, used it for way too long, hated it instantly, and still have a deep-rooted dislike for it. That’s all I’ll say on the matter.

Articulate Studio proved extremely helpful for developing media assets without needing a media team (in terms of interactive graphs and charts – which is what we used it for primarily). It was an extremely under-utilized authoring tool in that corporate environment; however, I’ve since used Studio in my independent development, and I’m still amazed by some of its capabilities – I have one project in mind that had a unique way of using the Player tabs, and I always go back to that one as an aesthetically exceptional use of Presenter, if I do say so myself.

Articulate Storyline has my heart. It’s truly my favourite tool to author in, and the reason you’ll only ever see Storyline samples in my portfolio. Why bother including samples from OutStart or Captivate if I know I don’t want to work within those tools? It’s my favourite authoring tool because it makes my life so much easier! The functionality and features in Storyline allow me to streamline my workflow and development process, which is half the battle. With such a supportive community, I know my inquiries will be responded to expediently, and I won’t have to wait weeks for a response from a support team of 1.

TechSmith Camtasia is my favourite video editing tool. I use it in my independent work, I use it at the university, I encourage all of my faculty members to use it, and it really provides a wide range of video development and editing capabilities with a very small learning curve.

Moodle is the Learning Management System (LMS) the university uses, and while it’s not flawless, it does exactly what we need it to do, which is great for an open-source LMS, and for a university known as ‘the’ distance university in our region.

I’d love to hear about the authoring tools you’re using and your experiences with them, so let me know in the comments below!

Tools and Apps I’m Using – November 2015

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Tools and apps come and go, and there seems to be so much wasted time investigating tools that don’t necessarily work for your unique purposes. I get a lot of questions about the tools and apps that I use, and while many of them are included in the Resources section, I thought it might be helpful to update you on the ones that I’m using most often.

Articulate Storyline 2 – I don’t think I have to drone on too much about my love affair with Articulate Storyline, so I won’t. What I will say is that if you have yet to dip your toes in the Articulate pool, please just jump in…with all of your clothes on…because it’s pretty darn awesome!

Parallels – If it wasn’t for Storyline, I would never have discovered Parallels. I would just have been suffering through using Boot Camp to run my Windows-based programs. I know some folks out there love Boot Camp, but I’ve tried it, and I’m not one of those people. Parallels makes it very easy to run Mac and Windows-based programs, simultaneously. And for anyone wondering – No. I do not experience lag when working in Storyline.

SnagIt and Camtasia – Techsmith has my heart when it comes to SnagIt and Camtasia, which I use for all of my screen capturing and video development needs!

Dropbox Pro – Dropbox has saved my butt on more than one occasion and should be considered essential for any business person, especially those working in virtual teams. It proves critical in backing up all of your necessary projects so you can have them in more than one place (dropbox, your computer, an external hard drive – if you’re not backing up in three locations, do that now).

Actively Learn – In higher education, I’ve been recommending faculty members use Actively Learn because it’s very easy to create a more active learning experience than traditional lectures.

Nearpod – Coming in at a close second for enhancing the learning experience is Nearpod. You can create presentations and incorporate assessment throughout the presentation. Each student uses an access code (on their own device) to access the presentation as the instructor is giving it, and assessment is completed in real-time. You can share the stats (e.g. graphs) of responses, but only the instructor will see the student name associated with the response.

Canva – In the past, I had dabbled in Canva, but it really proved its worth to me when I was developing graphics for a sample course. It’s a site that easily allows you to create professional looking graphics without having to install and navigate the complexities of a graphics program (e.g. Adobe Photoshop). I’ve been recommending this to faculty members as an easy way to create quick and professional looking module introduction graphics.

Soundcloud – It’s not often that I have to regal people with my voice (and thank goodness!), but when I do, I upload and share my audio using Soundcloud. It’s free and easy to use!

Vimeo – All of the videos I create in Camtasia are uploaded and shared using Vimeo. It’s easy to use, you can easily share, and you can add metadata if you want to enhance search-ability. For personal use, I use the free account, and at the university, we use the Pro account. The free account makes you wait in a queue for the video to upload and process, but it never seems like much of a wait (especially when you upload super early in the morning).

Fetch – Fetch is the best FTP client for Mac that I’ve found. I know that’s a subjective statement, but I really enjoy using it. It’s user-friendly, and while you wait for your files to upload, your cursor turns into a running dog – how fun is that?!

Hopefully you’ve found at least one tool in this list that you can make use of, and if not, I’ll be drafting these posts regularly, so stay tuned!

Update: Where to Find Freelance Instructional Design Gigs

About a year and a half ago, I wrote about where to find freelance instructional design gigs, and my experience with each of the mediums discussed. The lovely Christy Tucker (-swoon- I’m fan-girling over here ya’ll) recently gave this post a shout-out in a presentation as being a helpful resource, which reminded me that I really should update my list. So, now I’m here to provide an update with additional resources, because I have since found clients (or had them find me) through some other channels.

Bid Sites

For starters, in the last post, I discussed Odesk.com and Elance.com, these sites have since merged and exist under the umbrella company Upwork.com. I no longer haunt these sites looking for new contracts. Why? Because I don’t like the concept of bidding on projects. Sure – it might be for some, and I definitely dabbled in my fare share of bid sites when I was starting out, but I would compare them to Tinder (that ‘dating’ app) in terms of how icky it the concept behind the site makes me feel. Using these sites, I felt like I wasn’t being valued for my experience and expertise, but instead my ability to compete with other bidders…and let’s face it–I’ve never been a competitive person.

Action Steps: Take it or leave it; they’re a great place to go if you’re just starting out, but can leave you a little icky feeling as you progress through your freelance career.

E-Learning Heroes Community and Job Board

I’m still active within the E-Learning Heroes community (and will be until it ceases to exist), and always encourage instructional designers and/or e-learning develops participate in the community; especially when it comes to building your portfolio. The ELH community is a great place to showcase your work, share your knowledge, and help others…so in turn, it is also a fantastic place for potential clients to headhunt you! You just never know who’s lurking among the forum posts. Be generous with your participation and sharing, and someone will surely notice.

One of my best long-term contractors found me through the ELH community and sub-contracted work to me over a year ago, and we have been working together, for a client I feel good about doing work for, ever since!

Recently-ish, the good folks at Articulate added a Job Board, and you need to go there and bookmark that page right now, because there are new jobs posted every week (and sometimes everyday) that you should really check out!

Action Steps: Participate in the ELH community (especially the weekly challenges), and lurk that job board!

Referrals

Referrals are now where I find most of my clients, which is awesome! It means that people in the e-learning community think I’m doing good work and feel comfortable referring me to work with their colleagues, or referring their clients to me to do overflow work when they’re too busy to do it themselves. For this method, sharing really is caring. So whenever I experience overflow, I am quick to forward my clients to many qualified instructional designers.

Referrals are truly a form of flattery, and for that reason, it’s how I prefer to find new clients these days.

Action Steps: Share your knowledge, participate in like-minded communities, refer others, and karma will return the favour!

Social Media

The results of participating in social media is similar to that of referrals because it often leads to referrals! I’ve found a lot of clients through FaceBook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, and have even been recruited by several clients on LinkedIn. Social media is definitely where your new-age clients are hanging out. There are great Twitter chats out there (Guild Chat, Chat2Lrn), and a fantastic sub-reddit related to all things instructional design.

Action Steps: Participate in social media spheres, but participate in a meaningful way. Don’t spam your Twitterfeed with archived posts from your website. Be a giver! Promote others and they’ll likely promote you!

My Website

I wrote about finding clients through my website in the first iteration of this post, and it’s still producing a steady stream of work and/or business inquiries. Most inquiries reference my contributions in the E-Learning Heroes community (as explanation for how they found me), but many reference my portfolio and certain work in the portfolio that appealed to them. Why am I talking about this again? Because if you want your clients to come to you, you need to get a website and/or portfolio, and show them what you can do! Oh! And don’t forget — make sure you communicate effectively to ensure potential clients know how to contact you and can do so easily. I use a WordPress plugin for my contact form. It makes life easy.

Action Steps: Build a website (or have someone build one for you), include a portfolio of some sort, and include contact information.

Again, I hope this post was informative, and if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask! I’ll do my best to provide you with an appropriate response.

Terminology Tuesday: Development Part 1

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Edit: Well – that was poor scheduling on my part; Thursday is not Tuesday – whoops! My bad!

It’s time to talk Development – my very favourite phase of Instructional Design! Why is it my favourite? Because I get to create things! I suppose that could be said for the Analysis and Design phases (Job Task Analysis and Design Documents…), but development is my favourite phase because I get to play in authoring tools that I love to create magical (ok…maybe that’s a strong term) e-learning for my clients.

In this phase, you get to put all of the information you defined in the Analysis and Design phases into practice! Another reason this is my favourite phase is because there’s been a lot of build-up at this point – you’ve poured over the details of the e-learning project, but you haven’t physically seen anything just yet (outside of a ton of Microsoft Word documents).

This might be a bad analogy, but it’s like hearing you’re going to have a wax figure of yourself made, and finally having it unveiled…alright, it’s probably a really bad analogy – I don’t actually know how that feels, but it seems like a very hyped up lead in to an exciting result!

However, development isn’t always working within your favourite authoring tools. It could (and often does) involve:

  • Scripting
  • Storyboarding
  • Drafting audio narration scripts
  • Creating prototypes
  • Developing assessment items
  • Creating lesson plans
  • Developing style guides
  • Creating media assets

If your project calls for rapid prototyping (aka forgoing most of the previously mentioned documents), you’ll jump into your authoring tool with both feet and immerse yourself in the wonderful world of e-learning authoring.

In summary, the development phase of instructional design involves the development, and the processes involved in such development, of e-learning course content – Regardless of medium (e.g. Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, or e-learning authoring tools such as Adobe Captivate or Articulate Storyline).

The Learning Exchange’s 30 in 30 – Storyline Demo #FREEBIE

Everyone! Hurry up and head over the the E-Learning Guild’s Learning Exchange throughout the month of November. I’ll be posted up there every now and again sharing some tips for their 30 in 30, and so will a bunch of other fantastic contributors!

Today, I’m hanging out on Day 2 of the 30 in 30, teaching you all about how to create an elegant learning objectives slide in Articulate Storyline. Definitely go check it out! Over at the Learning Exchange I provide a step by step walkthrough (in text), with a video demo.

You can download the Source file here, and you can watch the video demo below: