Ashley Chiasson, M.Ed

Holiday Gift Guide for Freelancers and E-Learning Developers

December 22, 2014

I know we’re only three shopping days away from the holiday season (maybe even two in some parts), but let’s face it…everyone loves getting a package in the mail, so if it’s late…who cares?! Here are some of my very favourite items for e-learning developers and to make freelancing a lot easier:

Wacom Bamboo Splash Pen Tablet – I have one of these at the office, and I’m vowing to use it A LOT more in 2015.

I plan to use the Wacom tablet with The Doodle Revolution: Unlock the Power to Think Differently, which I’ve been slowly working through since the summer.

Another great book that you’ve heard me raving about in my posts for the last few months is How We Learn: The Truth About When, Where, and Why it Happens. I LOVE this book. Any and all learning professional should have it an read it and use it as a mantra!

All good freelancers/consultants/independent contractors need a good Project Management Program. I’ve been using, and loving PancakeApp. I’ve also had the opportunity to use RedBooth this year and would recommend gifting either of these to a freelancer in your life (PancakeApp is a one time fee and RedBooth is subscription-based). Most often, creative professionals think more about their creative endeavours and less about their business acumen…which ultimately turns into chaos come tax time…make their lives easier!

To make e-learning reviews streamlined and standardized (which all e-learning professionals would truly appreciate), a subscription to Review My eLearning is a great option! I recommend the Medium subscription, which should do the trick for most folk.

Storyline 2 – This might be a bit of a splurge for the holiday season, but it’s definitely well worth the cost; especially if your favourite e-learning developer has been lamenting the impending end of their 30-day free trial. As an independent consultant, this purchase pays for itself in about a week.

A second computer monitor – this is ALWAYS welcomed for folks that tend to toggle between multiple programs/documents, as are: external hard drives, flash drives, and noise-cancelling headphones!

For Mac OS users – Parallels, Dongles, or AirPort Time Capsule (LIFE SAVER).

Comfy pajamas or loungewear – ESSENTIAL for any work-from-home type. I recently picked up this exact PJ set, and I will be picking up more – so comfortable!

Terminology Tuesday: Scope Creep

December 9, 2014

Last week I posted my best advice for e-learning freelancers in the form of a poster:

After posting this, I had a question: What is scope creep? Great question! There I go again with my industry jargon, making the assumption that everyone knows what I’m talking about…and you know what assumptions do. After having this question posed, it seemed like a great opportunity to explain the phrase on this week’s edition of Terminology Tuesday. It’s a two part-er!

Scope Creep

It could be scope’s creepy friend (and sometimes it is), but it’s really broken down into two components. First, we have Scope. Scope refers to the scope of the project and is typically outlined in a contract or statement of work (p.s. if you don’t have it in writing…get it in writing!). Scope dictates the project requirements, and what will be included. In e-learning, it’s smart to be very specific when outlining scope (e.g. Module 1 contains 1 scenario, 2 interactive screens, and 3 static screens) because the more specific you are, the less you will be affected by creep. Secondly, we have creep. Creep occurs when clients attempt to get more than they signed on for and this is where you need to stand firm. When a client asks for ‘just one more scenario’ in Module 5, you should come back to their request with a compromise. For example, ‘well. we can add one more scenario in Module 5 if we remove one scenario from Module 2.”

Giving your client an inch of leeway by agreeing to add elements outside of the agreed upon project scope can quickly become a mile. I’ve worked on projects that were originally scoped at a 6 month development time, but due to some not so super project management, the client ended up receiving their courseware after 1 year of development, the project made absolutely no profit (it actually cost the company to finish it), all because the project manager kept agreeing to ‘just one more’ revision, scenario, etc.

So, in a very simple explanation: scope creep is when your client creeps their project requirements past the originally agreed upon scope.

Resources

Video Demo: How I Set Up Puppy Plinko

December 5, 2014

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

December 3, 2014

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!

Click here to view the full demo.

Terminology Tuesday: Mind Maps

December 2, 2014

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:

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

December 1, 2014

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:

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

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!

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