Ashley Chiasson, M.Ed

10 Things I Learned in My 1st Year of Self-Employment

March 5, 2015

It’s hard to believe that it’s been a year since I threw myself overboard from the corporate ship, and I thought it might be fun to share some things that I’ve learned in my first full year of self-employment. Now. Don’t get it twisted. I do still have a full-time gig, but it’s in an industry I love, so while I’ve reduced the amount of work I do with my business, I’m still very active in the small business world.

1. Invest in things that will make your work-life easier.

There are still investments I will make in my little business, but I cannot emphasize this point enough. You have a career that you are passionate about, so invest in the things you need to do that job well! For example, I’m an Instructional Designer who develops e-learning products. Things that make my life easier that I’ve invested in over the past year include: a computer that can handle the type of work that I’m doing, a nice desk, an all-in-one printer, some external hard drives, dropbox business accounts, software licenses, and a billing software (which admittedly I don’t leverage to its full potential, but it keeps my finances organized), professionals who know how to do things better than I do instead of trying to do X myself (e.g. my portfolio plugin and an accountant for tax time).

2. Keep organized records.

Administrative blah blah is still the bane of my existence, but being somewhat organized makes my life a whole lot easier when it comes time to do say…taxes. Or locate an invoice. Or locate a software product key. I’m in the middle of preparing to file my taxes, and let me tell you…it is OVERWHELMING. However, keeping organized records is making this task a litttttttle easier for me and using the best online tax software also helps!

3. BACK UP YOUR WORK…ALL THE TIME.

This might seem self-explanatory, but I know I’m guilty of not backing things up everyday. However, after several lessons learned that I paid dearly for in headaches and extra labour, I back my work up REGULARLY. This comes especially in handy if you’re guilty of over-trusting your technology. Yesterday my Macbook decided it wanted to get lame. To the point of having to reinstall the operating system. It sucked and cost me the better part of a day to resolve, but in the end, I had all of my stuff backed up, and it was business as usual once the reinstall was up and running.

4. Reward yourself with professional development opportunities.

Professional development is always important. It allows you to network with fellow industry professionals and learn new things. In this new fangled information society, it’s important to always keep learning.

In 2014 I participated in two speaking engagements (Articulate E-Learning Heroes Community Roadshows: Toronto and Denver), and I learned so much! It was also a learning experience for me to get up and speak about something I know in front of people interested to listen. I also began my Online Learning Consortium Teaching Certificate under the recommendation of the Director of my department at the University. I’m almost finished now, and it’s been a fantastic learning experience.

This year, I’ll be speaking at Learning Solutions Conference 2015 (later this month) and I’m hoping to speak or attend Dev Learn in the fall. I’ll also try to hit up at least one more Articulate E-Learning Heroes Roadshow.

5. Take opportunities when they’re presented to you.

I understand that you might not be able to take all of the opportunities presented to you, but you can weigh the cost-benefit and determine which ones you can engage in. For me, this was authoring two books for Packt Publishing, Articulate Storyline Essentials (released in a week or so – EEEE!) and Mastering Articulate Storyline (released later this year) – the former will hold your hand and get you up and running with Articulate Storyline, while the latter will have activities and will teach you how to push Articulate Storyline to the limits.

I had never before considered writing a book, because who am I to be an authority on ANYTHING?! But, when in Rome. YOLO!

6. You are your best sales person.

You know what you’re capable of doing and you know (or have a rough idea) of who you want to do work for, so get out there and SELL YOURSELF! I’m not saying you’ll making half a million dollars in your first year of business, because that’s just nutty. What I’m saying is that there will always be some modicum of hustling that you have to do, and sometimes you’ll need to hustle more than other times, but eventually you’ll get to a point where you’re comfortable with the level of hustling you do.

7. Come correct!

Piggybacking on #6, in order to be an effective sales person, you need to come correct. What I mean by this is: overhaul your resume, get a proper email address (e.g. not xohotgirl81), update your linkedin profile, update your portfolio, and BE PROFESSIONAL! When applying for new opportunities, you want to put your best foot forward.

8. Network like you mean it.

Find out where your clients or peers are hanging out, and go hang out with them! For me, this started with the Articulate E-Learning Heroes Community. I found so many great clients through the forums, gained a lot of insight, grew myself as a professional, and made a TON of friends.

I slowly began incorporating social media, so now I engage with my new friends on Twitter and Linkedin.

9. Don’t be selfish.

Once you find your clients (and potential clients) or peers, don’t just engage with them on social media for your own benefit, promote them! Whenever one of my pals tweets about a new blog post or promotes an interesting article or something they’ve developed, I try to share these items as much as I can. This will help your pals out when they’re looking for opportunities, or it might help a client find the perfect person for the job.

10. Treat Yo’ Self!

You might not need fine leather goods or velvet slippies like Tom Haverford and Donna Meagle, but you do need to take time and enjoy life. Many of us are guilty of being workaholics, but there’s this thing called burn out, and if you’re not careful, you will find out exactly what it is. Going on vacations, find a hobby, get out of your chair and go outside!

Terminology Tuesday: Helicoptering

March 4, 2015

This week’s term is brought to you in the form of a rant, and maybe I’m ill-informed. Maybe I’ll spark a heated debate. Who knows? I was having a conversation this week that reminded me of something increasingly prevalent in the education system today: helicoptering.

What’s helicoptering?

I’m not referring to someone flying a helicopter; I’m referring to the fact that parents are becoming increasingly involved in their children’s education…but negatively. Instead of simply being a supportive presence, available to answer homework queries and/or help with assignments, parents are injecting themselves into the school system and pointing out the flaws that are affecting their children. Not all parents do this, but a lot of them do.

When I was in grade school, my parents were very hands-on with my education outside of school (and so they should have been). However, in school, it was my responsibility to navigate the complexities of receiving an education…on my own. Sure, my parents and other parents would intervene if they saw that I was struggling with something, perhaps inquiring about what methods were in place for extra help, etc. However, what I see happening in our grade school system now (and maybe it’s just a regional thing), is that parents are becoming obstructions to their children’s education…unintentionally I’m sure, but becoming over-protective and hyper vigilant.

Now. As I said before, there’s a certain level of vigilance that is expected from parents. We all want our children to be treated fairly and to be provided with the appropriate resources needed to succeed. It’s when this vigilance oversteps normal that things become problematic.

How so?

Here’s one example I can think of. A former co-worker of mine was a teacher at an elementary school, and the school had recently implemented a no homework policy – I’m not entirely sure of the reasoning behind this; although, it was probably rooted some helicopter parenting traits (e.g. not wanting to negatively affect a child’s self-esteem, etc.). Anyhow, my friend had sent her class home with a task of noting three historical events. It could have been something as simple as “I had toast for breakfast this morning.”, and she was reprimanded later that week because a parent had complained that their child had been sent home with ‘homework’.

Another example: Within the last few years, our schoolboard has changed assignment requirements so that all graded work can be handed in on the last day of the semester. This is unrealistic. In the real world, there are real deadlines. You can’t just take 3-4 months to finish working on something. Additionally, it creates more of a burden on the teachers, who are already working overcapacity.

THIS is when helicoptering gets out of hand.

If we’re not teaching our children that there are rules and assignments and deadlines, etc., then how are we bettering our children for the role they’ll inevitably encounter when entering university, college, or the workforce? The places our children will go in the future tend to all be governed by rules, regulations, impending deadlines, or at least timeliness. What may have originally been parents wanting the best for their children will end up backfiring years down the road.

E-Learning Challenge #72 – Build and Share Your Own E-Learning Image Library

March 2, 2015

This week’s challenge was an easy one for me. Mostly because it didn’t require any of my currently exhausted development brains – thanks, David!

The Concept

Create a small collection of e-learning images to share with your fellow e-learning developers and course designers.

The Method

For this challenge, I sifted through the photos on my iPhone (that were incidentally taken with my iPhone), and uploaded any I thought might be particularly beneficial to e-learning developers to Google Drive. I then renamed all of the files appropriately, and shared the link.

The Result

I ended up with a pretty cute, and small gallery of images that may or may not be usable in e-learning courses – there’s nothing really compliance-y in there, but I’m sure you can find a nice nature landscape. Shockingly, there are no cats or dogs in this album.

Please feel free to download images and use them at your leisure. I would love you to leave a comment and let me know if you ended up using any of the images (and if so, what did you use them for), but it’s not a requirement. Have at ‘er!

Click here to access and/or download all images from this gallery.

Things I Learned from Leslie Knope

February 28, 2015

Parks and Recreation is one of my favourite shows, and in honour of the series finale this past week, I thought I would relay some of the things Leslie Knope has taught me in her seven season run on Parks and Recreation.

1. Never take “No.” for an answer.

2. Meeting your heroes can be overwhelming.3. When you work in small business, sometimes you need a little extra help!4. Breakfast foods are the best.5. No one needs a child-sized soda. Ever.

Terminology Tuesday: Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)

February 24, 2015

I know – this isn’t really an Instructional Design term, but it’s a term that likely affects many folks between the months of October – April…at least if you’re lucky enough to live on the east coast of North America. In these parts, we were lucky to see a flake of snow between October and December. However, once mid-January hit, we were saddled with an onslaught of snow and ice and cold. And sunshine is a very rare sighting…almost like a unicorn sighting.

What is Seasonal Affective Disorder?

Seasonal Affective Disorder, or SAD, is a seasonal mood pattern that occurs most often in individuals with major depressive disorder. However, it also occurs in a variety of other individuals. For example, I suffer from Generalized Anxiety Disorder, and I am affected by SAD, so if SAD impacts you, it doesn’t necessarily mean you suffer from depression.

SAD often illicit feelings of helplessness, hopelessness, pessimism, and sluggishness. You may find that all you want to do is lay in bed and sleep until July. You may find that you prefer to binge eat all of the carbs. You may find that you retreat to all of your introverted tendencies…even if you’re traditionally an extrovert. However SAD affects you, it’s important to realize that it is a disorder and it is brought on by certain times of the year, and once you recognize that it’s not ‘just you’, you can take steps to create a more positive life environment. This is extremely important if you live on the east coast and frequently throw your Christmas tree to the curb in December only to find it still on your lawn when the snow melts in April.

The winter months can be desperate times, but there are some measures you can take to reduce the impact of SAD on you and your loved ones.

Suggestions for combatting SAD

Light therapy. There are SAD lamps, and I’ve heard very good things about them! Alternatively, you can get some fake sun in a tanning bed…which I know is not the best recommendation from a health perspective, but desperate times call for desperate measures.
Vitamin D supplements – When sunshine is an infrequent visitor, we all start becoming deficient in vitamin D. My general practitioner has even suggested taking vitamin D supplements year round, because in our climate, we don’t receive nearly enough of it.
Exercise! As hard as it is to motivate yourself to do anything when SAD is weighing you down, you need to just get off your butt and exercise! You’ll get your endorphins flowing, and eventually you’ll begin to feel more energized and less sluggish.

Terminology Tuesday: Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs)

February 17, 2015

This week’s edition of Terminology Tuesday was inspired by a term I hadn’t heard of much in recent months (or maybe I was selectively reading…who knows). I figured I’d dive back into the world of MOOCs and get to the terminal bottom of them just for you!

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs)

MOOCs are just what their un-acronymed name indicate: Massive Open Online Courses – course materials for some of the world’s leading post-secondary institution are available online, for free! Bananas! These courses provide individuals all over the world (well…online, that’s the hitch) with access to course materials (e.g. lectures, readings, assignments, forums), emphasizing open access of content and encouraging the lifelong learning movement.

I remember being so excited when MIT Open CourseWare came out; the idea of learning information that I would only otherwise have been privy to as an MIT student was mind-boggling. Then came the onslaught of other open course content, such as edX, Coursera, and Udacity.

As MOOCs evolved, the free stays free, but the rich can still get rich…I say that jokingly; I don’t know if anyone is getting rich off MOOCs…someone likely is, but I’ll never know. Many MOOCs still offer their courses for free in the open access world, but some also offer upgraded certifications for a fee. The fees typically aren’t that crazy, so it really is a great opportunity to take if it’s presented to you.

For the self-motivated learner, MOOCs can be wonderful, but for the over-zealous learner, MOOCs can be particularly time-consuming and overwhelming on your inbox if you haven’t prepared yourself adequately for the number of courses you’ve eagerly enrolled in – be cautious, my friend!

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