Ashley Chiasson, M.Ed

Where to Find Freelance Instructional Design Gigs

July 23, 2014

Before making the leap to full-time independent contractor-ship I freelanced for about three years. The work I did ranged as I built up my confidence with the freelance game, and in addition to some sites to check out, I’ll provide you with some tips and tricks I learned from my time as a freelancer. I’ll make my way down the list chronologically (based on which sites I used first).

Freelancer.com

Freelancer.com was my jumping off point for finding freelance work. It’s a site that operates on bidding – the freelancer will bid on jobs and the client will choose a contract winner. It’s tough to build your reputation on freelance sites as there are loads of freelancers out there who will more or less work for peanuts. Peanuts can’t pay your rent, so this can be discouraging. I spent a lot of time on this site doing things that weren’t necessarily my finest freelance moments, and I will caution you to strongly consider how much time it will take to complete a project before bidding – 1) because you’ll end up working for peanuts if you don’t, and 2) it will save you a lot of tears down the road. One of my first bids was for transcription of audio files; I actually really enjoyed the content (I was transcribing interviews for a lady’s Master thesis), but I grossly underbid the amount of time I would have to spend doing the transcription. I completed the job, but definitely didn’t make any profit. My favourite jobs on this website were Proofreading gigs; I’m good at proofreading and I enjoy it, so it worked out well. I also made the most amount of profit from these jobs.

One downside is that the initial payment period has a delay (unless it’s changed in recent years) of about 3 weeks after initial withdrawal and another is that they take a cut of your profits (depending on which membership you have – if I remember correctly, the free membership takes a 10% cut). A third downside is that there are very few e-learning or Instructional Design gigs posted on this site.

Odesk.com

I really enjoyed working with Odesk; I know a lot of folks harp on it (likely in the design world) because it’s another bid site where you can easily end up working for peanuts. However, I have found a lot of my best long-term clients through Odesk. There are a TON of Instructional Design and e-learning jobs posted (daily for the most part), and I found it really easy to build a solid reputation using the site. Of course there are some flops with clients, but overall, the quality of my clients were pretty good and they were willing to pay a reasonable rate for my services. I will say that I was unable to get to my current hourly rate with clients through Odesk, but I was able to get pretty darn close.

Withdrawals can be made using PayPal, and they were usually processed immediately (or close to immediately)…factor in PayPal processing times and you’d be paid within 2-3 business days, which is certainly reasonable.

Elance.com

Elance is yet another bid site, and this one I have found little success with. I can’t even write too much about it, but I will say that they have a very high job post percentage relevant to Instructional Designers or those working within the e-learning industry. The main reason I can’t speak too much to this one is because I found it incredibly difficult to get established on this site. I think I had two clients total, neither of which were repeat clients (because they could get similar services for cheaper through the site). If I had jumped on the Elance bandwagon when they first emerged on the market, I may have found it a lot easier to establish myself…let me know if you’ve had any success!

Research and Cold Emailing

I spent MANY hours researching companies I would love to work with and then cold emailing folks working within these companies. I originally started doing this when I was trying to break out into the post-secondary education sector within my province. I would cold-email the relevant department heads of local universities pitching myself as a solution to their problem. This turned up several very interesting meetings, some great networking opportunities, and really allowed me to extend myself outside of my comfort zone.

My role within one of the local universities is attributed to this technique, and I have recently been offered a full-time permanent role within the university which I honestly don’t believe would have happened had I gone the traditional route of waiting for a position to come up and then applying – even my best friend couldn’t revise a cover letter successful enough to score me such a gig as our province is wrought with educators and most of them have many more moons of professional experience than me…and in this particular university, there is only one Instructional Developer role…so think of the competition…barf!

While the success rate of my cold emailing is very small, I’ve experienced multiple 8-12 month after the fact follow ups that have resulted in working relationships. I would definitely recommend researching and cold emailing potential clients; some of them may not even know they need you until you explain what you do and how you can make it work for them!

Craigslist.org

When I tell folks that I found some of my best long-term clients on Craigslist, they are beside themselves with disbelief. I actually found one of my repeat clients through there (working with colleges within the health sector) and I was also able to gain significant experience within the K-12 and Higher Education sectors with another client I had found through Craigslist.

Instructional Design jobs are hit or miss for posting, and it really takes a lot of dedication (to the hustle) to find relevant roles through the site. Why? Because you either have to try googling a specific-enough search phrase and hope for the best or you need to visit individual city sites searching for your desired role. The other downside to Craigslist is that there aren’t a lot of remote positions – this can be a good thing if your city has a lot of Instructional Design opportunities, but that’s seldom the way. It’s odd that there’s still a resistance to remote work when our society is moving further away from being tethered to cubicles.

E-Learning Heroes Community Forums

I’ve found quite a few short-term Instructional Design gigs through the ELH community forums, but I will say that many have not lead to long-term working relationships. With that being said, I have had quite a few organizations (or individuals) reach out to me through the forums based on what they’ve seen of my participation within the community. Basically, the more active you are within the community (specifically when it comes to demonstrating your technical competencies), the greater the opportunity you make in being contacted by prospective clients.

Another good thing about the ELH community is that every Friday, Mike Taylor posts a compilation of e-learning jobs he’s found within the forum and online. It’s nice to have them compiled within one neatly organized post.

LinkedIn.com

I’ve found several repeat clients by applying for posts on LinkedIn, one of which has been one of my most profitable endeavours. However, it was for a large corporate client and once the higher powers within their organization realized that they weren’t as organized as they originally thought (which created a lot of work for their in-house resources, of which they had few), they cancelled the contract for all involved, realizing that until they got their butt in gear and got organized, they would be losing profits. Smart – yes. The good thing about this contract is that I know I’ll be kept in mind when they do decide to kick off the project again, but until then, it’s on hold.

The thing about LinkedIn is that if you really want to be successful at finding work through the site, you need to optimize your profile and actively participate in communities, blogging, or maintaining up-to-date samples.

My Website!

Honestly – Do not sleep on building (or having someone else build) your website and portfolio. The people who want to hire you are visual creatures. They want to see what you can do! It helps them make up their mind. Over the past month and a half I’ve been working with a fantastic client who came to find me through my website. They liked my samples and had even read some of my blog posts (because they complimented me on a sample I hadn’t showcased in my portfolio), and it’s turned into a long-term working relationship!

I understand there’s a lot to promoting yourself through your website, but if you make an honest effort, it will truly pay off. My blog is maintained primarily for an audience of my peers and not my clients. I do this because it generates interest and provides help, some of which I wish I had when I was just starting out. This inadvertently drives traffic to my site, of which a small percentage may be prospective clients. I include my portfolio and work with me sections not as an afterthought, but certainly not as a focus, and I’ve found the indirect promotion of my services has landed me some more genuine clients than I may have found hustling my services unabashedly.

Did any of this help?

I really hope this post helps some of you Instructional Designers lusting after a life of being location independent. That’s the second reason I wanted to take my freelancing full-time (the first reason was that I was sick of ‘working for the man’ and dealing with the politics of being a cog in an organization), and I’ve been able to achieve that in a very short period of time.

If anyone has found any other places to source freelance Instructional Design or e-learning jobs, please let me know in the comments!

Terminology Tuesday: Collaborative Learning

July 22, 2014

This week is one of the first wherein Terminology Tuesday hasn’t been prompted by a specific event or discussion the previous week. Instead, I considered some of the challenges new faculty member struggle with when attempting to convert their traditional face-to-face courses to distance or blended learning.

A primary challenge is how to ditch the concept of chalk-and-talk and allow students ample opportunity to interact with one another and construct knowledge together, in close facilitation with the faculty member. Because not everyone is well-versed in learning technologies, this can seem like a daunting task. Some faculty members struggle with understanding that their students don’t need to be in the same physical location to participate in group work or to collaborate with one another (and/or the faculty member), but once they see their distance course in action, they have context with which to change their tune. You can teach an old (or young) dog new tricks!

Collaborative Learning

Collaborative learning is an instructional approach that requires students to work closely with one another, often participating in group work. The educator is responsible for providing the information to the students, but the students must work collaboratively to apply the learned information when completing activities, assignments, or projects. The educator will monitor the students to ensure that the learned information is being applied correctly, but they typically act as an observer within a collaborative learning environment and less of an enforcer.

When you think about it, collaborative learning feeds on the concept of constructivism in that multiple individuals are pooling their experiences and ‘resources’ (e.g. prior learning) to learn the subject matter together.

If you really want to get specific, collaborative learning is deep-seated in Lev Vygotsky’s concept of ‘zone of proximal development’, which indicates that individuals will learn information from one another (in Vygotsky’s case, he was specifically talking about children modelling their behaviours after adults) simply by learning like information near one another.

With the emergence of Web 2.0 (more on that in another week), education is bursting at the seams with technologies that enhance collaborative approaches (e.g. wikis, blogs, social media, etc.), and this doesn’t apply to just the education sector.

Technology examples, please!

Off the top of my head, I can think of several technologies that are used to enhance learning: Blackboard Collaborate (used for real-time VOIP classes), Twitter, Adobe Connect.

As for examples that don’t specifically pertain to the education sector (but which can also be used), I’m drawn to technologies such as: Google Hangouts, Google Drive, Dropbox, and any Webinar application.

Resources

Still confused? Aching for more information? Perhaps you want to write your thesis on Collaborative Learning. Here you go:

– What is Collaborative Learning and Why is it Important?

– Collaborative Learning

– Group Work and Collaborative Learning (Ryerson University)

– 20 Collaborative Learning Tips and Strategies for Teachers

– Zone of Proximal Development

– Zone of Proximal Development and Scaffolding in the Classroom

On Being Selective

July 20, 2014

It’s only been a few mere months since I took my business full-time, and one of the best things that has come of it has been that I’m able to be selective, capture my dream clients, and increase my overall work life happiness.

When I put together my presentation on How to Build Your Portfolio, I really had to consider some of the most important positives that having a portfolio has garnered for me. The top one was that it allows me to be selective. Now, being selective doesn’t mean that I don’t jump at new opportunities; it just means that I consider the new opportunities before jumping in feet first. This saves me a lot of time and heartache when I realize that I’ve jumped into a contract well below my going rate.

With that being said, there are some contracts I would gladly work on for less than what I’m worth because I’m passionate about the organization or the project or both. This doesn’t happen often, but with a stream of steady clients (that my portfolio helped funnel in), I’m able to be choosier about my work.

This week I was offered a full-time contract with a local university. I had been working on contract part-time since February, and I had always wanted to move into the Higher Education sector. Where I’m from, it is incredibly difficult to score such a gig by applying the old fashioned way, and I was shocked that a cold email a year earlier had resulted in the procurement of my part-time contract. In any event, I’ll be taking on full-time hours starting in the fall, and this is really where being selective comes into play.

I’ll still be running my business, albeit I’ll end up lightening my workload in the coming year, being more selective, and choosing to work on contracts that I’m truly passionate about. The security that the full-time contract brings will allow me some flexibility with regard to my business workload, and I’ll be able to focus on both aspects of my work life that I’m happy to focus on. It’s been a long road to reach both goals: working within Higher Education and starting my own business, and I want to give both roles 100%. At the same token, I want to ensure that the contracts I accept within my business are ones that align well with my beliefs and serve to enhance my current portfolio.

It’s going to be an interesting journey, and I’m excited to take you all along for the ride!

Why I Use Scenes in Articulate Storyline

July 17, 2014

Alrighty – A few weeks back, I hopped on a new project that I’ve really been enjoying. The only downside was that I married into an Articulate Storyline file that was organized in such a way that it quickly became unruly.

Unruly? How?

This one particular aspect of the project involved creating a sort of library to house seminar videos. Each month, a 4-5 hour seminar would be recorded and I would use Camtasia to break the videos up into more manageable chunks. Each seminar ended up having 18-24 videos…for a duration of 6 months.

The original file quickly became unruly because I think there wasn’t as much understanding of how quickly 130+ videos/screens could get out of hand. What transpired was one scene within the Storyline file; this one scene contained all 130+ videos, which made it incredibly difficult to hunt down individual screens when making to the file later on.

I know it doesn’t look too unruly from this screenshot, but note the horizontal scrolling. Oof.

We ended up resolving to leave this file as is, after all revisions had been made, but I explained that I would be a bit more purposeful and organized in my development of the next 6 month period.

But, Ashley…How did you tame the unruliness?!

I used scenes! Scenes are basically boxes which contain slides; you can link to scenes just as you would like to slides, but it creates a more organized look and makes managing your Storyline file a biiiiit more manageable. Now, different strokes for different folks – some people might use scenes for different reasons, but for this project – the scenes were set up for ease of use from a development perspective.

The starting scene houses the Main Menu. From here, each ‘button’ trigger links to a new scene (which is a Menu for the relevant seminar). All seminar videos are housed within these new scenes. The outcome is this:

Phew! SO MUCH easier to look at, eh?! If you don’t give me a resounding ‘yes’, I might cry. In this project, we have 2 seminars (1 of which has yet to be populated). At the end of the 6 month period, there will be 7 scenes: 1 that houses the main menu, and 6 that house each of the seminar videos. I can easily locate the relevant seminar that requires revisions, and life is a lot easier.

I realize that talking about scenes may seem incredibly basic, but when you’re a first-time user of Storyline, tasked to find a way of organizing 130+ videos, you will likely end up with an story view as illustrated in the first screenshot, only to realize you’re causing a lot more heartache than necessary. Trust me. If you need to organize a vast amount of slides, USE YOUR SCENES!

Hopefully this was relatable and/or helpful to someone! If you have any other questions about using Scenes in Articulate Storyline, definitely reach out to me, and I’ll help out as best I can.

Terminology Tuesday: Flat Design

July 15, 2014

Now, I wouldn’t necessarily classify this as an e-learning term…it’s really more of a User Interface (UI) term, but because the e-learning industry works within a plethora of UIs, I thought it fitting. Also – I met a fantastic lady, Tracy Parish, who developed a presentation on Flat Design, and I really appreciated some of the visuals used within her presentation. Long story short, I’m defining flat design for you folks – hooray!

Flat Design, you say?

Contrary to what you might be thinking, flat design doesn’t equate to boring or stale design (think flat soda – not the tastiest). Instead, flat design is an aesthetic approach which highlights two dimensional, minimalist design, using sharp edges, bright colours, and flattened (2D) icons or imagery. Moving with the minimalist approach, flat design does not include text, instead letting the icons or imagery used speak for itself, creating a sleek and clean design. The flat design approach to UI is really a shining example of the Keep It Simple, Stupid (KISS) principle! Why overcomplicate things?

I really dislike the functionality of Windows 8, so if you want to google their interface, do so at your leisure – I won’t be linking it here. However, their main navigation interface can be considered flat design, and it’s likely one of the more recognizable examples of flat design in practice.

Some other examples can be found on the Articulate Community’s Download section, for example: Flat Desktop Exploration Interaction by Tom Kuhlmann or Flat Design Portfolio by Paul Alders.

As for my original inspiration for this post, here is a sample from Tracy’s presentation on flat design.

Tracy Parish, Used with Permission

Resources

If you’re interested in checking out some tutorials or additional information about flat design, here are a few resources:

– Design a Flat Website Mockup in Photoshop

– Flat UI Tutorials

– How to Nail the Coveted Flat Design Look (9 Actionable Tips)

– Flat Dropdown Menu Tutorial

– Principles of Flat Design

E-Learning Challenge #42: Smartphone Video Training

July 13, 2014

This week’s e-learning challenge is all about smartphone video training. In a world where smartphones are ever-present, it seems like a really cost-effective solution to record your own training videos to meet basic training needs. Heck. I still consult YouTube for basic procedural information – have you ever had to auger your toilet? It took 29 years for me to get there, and when I did, I swiftly consulted a video tutorial.

The Concept

This challenge encouraged participants to use their smartphones to record, edit, and publish a training video. Personally, I find video training basic for procedural demonstrations, so I chose to show you the Dos and Don’ts of something I feel most folks can relate to – inserting a duvet into a duvet cover. For YEARS I hated this chore; the Internet wasn’t around when I first started dealing with duvet covers, and I always thought I had to physically insert myself into the cover to complete the task. The end result is cranky and sweaty and no fun – maybe this was my mother’s way of paying me back for the teenage years I made her deal with? Hmmm…

In any event, there is a right and wrong way of putting a duvet inside of a duvet cover, and I show you both ways!

The Method

I set my iPhone up to record video, and had my husband record the two videos, balancing the iPhone on the baby gate to our room (anyone with a herding dog and cats will understand), for stability, while I demonstrated both approaches.

Once recorded, I sought out my iMovie app…only to realize I had removed it from my computer in favour of Camtasia. Here I had to do a little bit of challenge cheating, using Camtasia instead of my smartphone app to edit and publish the video. Now, had I not removed iMovie, I would have edited in that – but hey. It’s the thought that counts!

I added in some annotations, steps, removed the original audio, and added some background music (in retrospect, there’s a song called Duvet I used to really enjoy…maybe that would have been more appropriate? Ah well!). Once completed, I published and uploaded to Vimeo.

The Result

Duvet Dos and Donts from Ashley Chiasson on Vimeo.

Grab the free Course Development Plan