Ashley Chiasson, M.Ed

A couple of weeks ago I participated in the E-Learning Heroes Community Roadshow: Denver, and got to play around with Articulate Storyline 2 for a bit before it went live last week. It is now one of my favourite things! Now some folks are giving the product flack because they believed some of the enhanced features or feature add ons should have been included as a free path for Storyline 1…but hey! GET OVER IT! Storyline 2 is well worth the price, and for all it contains (in relation to course building), it’s truly a steal. Ya’ll stayed tuned for some video tutorials, but here are some of my favourite things so far:

Auto-Recovery – Now, some of the naysayers were balking a bit at this ‘new feature’, believing that in 2014 all programs should contain auto-recovery, but they don’t. And assuming your work will be auto-recovered just makes an ass out of both you and me. Last spring I was devastated when I lost a weeks worth of work, but I persevered and replicated my efforts in 8 hours (and it was all the better for the revisit I think). There’s nothing worse than a hard drive failure, a power surge, or the blue screen of death when you’re a week (or more) into your work efforts and realize in a moment of devastation that you have not saved for the last 6 hours. Storyline 2 saves the day with its new auto-recovery feature, and you will no longer have to worry about losing your work or finding work-arounds to avoid losing your work. With that being said, you should also use some common sense and back up your work frequently (as Taco in The League would say – “To the cloud!”).

Dockable Panels – I cannot tell you just how excited I was to see dockable panels in this version – SO EXCITED! Now I can move all of my panels to one monitor while I maximize my other monitor (or two) for development. AMAZING! Love love love this feature! My productivity will soar!

Slider Interactions – OH MY HEAVENS!  Life has just gotten a lot easier for everyone wanting to use a slider-style interaction. I remember watching a colleague (shout out Michael Hinze!) demonstrate how he built a slider interaction. There were many, many, many states involved (think 100 or so). Now we can all create similar interactions with WAY LESS effort. It’s party time!

Motion Paths – Similarly, I watched Chris Perez create some amazing custom characters and accompanying animations at the Denver roadshow. Now that motion path animations are a thing, making some these animations will be so much easier! I think back to the specific example of the bowling ball moving down the alley which Chris had provided – motion paths will make this easy peasy!

Animation Painter – This is going to save SO MUCH TIME. Seriously. Now you won’t have to painstakingly re-program each and every animation. If that’s not a sell for your organization to upgrade…I don’t know what is (how about the previously mentioned feature favourites?)!

Now you’re probably thinking that the folks at Articulate paid me to say these nice things…NOPE! They didn’t! They just produce products that I genuinely love and use on a daily basis. With new product releases, there are always things that people will moan and groan about, but honestly – for the capabilities and cost, this product is one of the best in the e-learning industry. After using many other authoring tools in the past, I don’t see myself straying from Storyline for many moons.

Today I’ll be presenting at the E-Learning Heroes Community Roadshow in Denver. There is a huge lineup of fantastic presenters, and I’m eager to meet them all and hear what they have to say! I’m sure it’s going to be just as fun as it was in Toronto, so I hope to see a lot of participants engaging themselves in the full breadth of the learning experience today and tomorrow.

I plan to share some key information about building your e-learning portfolios, but most importantly, I’ll be sharing some work done by several other E-Learning Heroes. Creating a portfolio doesn’t need to be a daunting task, and I’ll be giving some helpful tips that will hopefully encourage you to work on your own!

Basically, I want to discuss portfolio building, why an e-learning portfolio is so important, why creating a portfolio can be a challenge, and why it really doesn’t need to be! You can check out the slides below!

Download this RESOURCE SHEET and check out all of the challenges and templates discussed during this presentation.

Download the FREE PORTFOLIO TEMPLATE that I shared during this presentation.

As folks operating within the field of education (or training and development, however you prefer to look at it), it’s critical that we continue foraging our own learning journeys. Admittedly, I’ve been a bit slack with this. Why? I freelanced my butt off, quit my corporate gig, started my own business, and scored a fantastic gig within the post-secondary education sector – just to name a few. However, I’m letting things slow down for me a little bit, and I’m hoping to be able to participate more frequently in the coming months.

With that being said, I’ve been keeping my eye on a few great collaborative learning opportunities, primarily existing within the social media sphere. These are great, because they don’t involve a whole lot of time and you get to learn from a group of colleagues with similar interests! Here are some learning opportunities that have been on my radar:

E-Learning Heroes Weekly Challenges  – I participate in these when time allows, and I am presently challenging myself to complete all of the current challenges and keep pace with new ones.

Learn Camp – A self-directed learning experience designed to allow participants to explore new learning concepts and technologies. I’ve seen a lot of Twitter activity under the #LearnCamp hash tag, and catching up will be my goal during some upcoming downtime!

Lrnchat – Lrnchat is an active chat-based community of involvement over on Twitter (hash tag #lrnchat). Participants meet on Twitter each Thursday and participate in online discussion of questions that have been asked. People get really into this one, and I would definitely recommend participating if your Thursday evenings aren’t currently tied up!

OLC Online Teaching Certificate – This program is presently in my line of sight as an opportunity for professional development within my on-site role. It’s a great opportunity to expand upon my Instructional Design experience, while allowing me to contribute more effectively to the design and development of online courses with university faculty members.

Online Learning Consortium Annual Conference 2014 – This year I’ll be sitting in on streamed sessions for the annual conference, and there are SO MANY available! I’m pretty excited. Especially since I wanted to hit up DevLearn this year and wasn’t selected as a presenter (this time around). Both events occur around the same time (late October), so I’m happy to be able to participate in one.

E-Learning Heroes Roadshows – After becoming more active in the E-Learning Heroes Community and being asked to present at the Toronto event back in July, I was hooked! If you have an opportunity to attend one of these events, you’re definitely in for a treat!

I’ve also been looking into a PhD program, but that’s neither here nor there (until I get accepted – which might be this year, next year, the year after – who knows). It’s a long-term goal I have, so I might as well get a jump on it, even if I’m still in the infancy stage.