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ashley chiasson, m. ed

Ashley Chiasson, M.Ed

Instructional Designer & Consultant

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Terminology Tuesday: Assessment Items

August 12, 2014

Some of my first freelance roles were writing assessment items for various training materials. Namely, I wrote new driver training tests for each and every single state. This was a very profitable endeavour, and assessment item writing comes pretty easy to me, but you multiple each state by 100 (or more) and tell me how sore your fingers are after typing out all of those assessment items…that being said, I do still hold a place in my heart for assessment item writing.

What is this ‘assessment item’ you speak of?

Well. An assessment item is any item, able to be measured, which tests what (or whether) your learner has learned the material you have presented to them. Basically, each question in a quiz/test/exam/knowledge check, etc.

Most of us distinctly remember hand-writing detailed responses to long answer essay questions in high school…or filling out bubble sheet upon bubble sheet upon bubble sheet in our undergraduate degrees (at least if you majored in Psychology). Multiple choice, true/false, drag and drop, essays, long answer, short answer, fill-in-the-blanks – these are all types of assessment items (but certainly not the whole gamut).

Assessment items have different bits.

Assessment items consist of several variables: The stem (question) and the answer (either provided or needing to be written out) – in the case of multiple choice questions, there are also distractors .

In writing the new driver tests, I considered an assessment item to be the Stem, the Answer, and three Distractors. The stem would be the question (e.g. You arrive at a flashing red light. What does this mean?), the answer (e.g. you must come to a complete stop before proceeding when it is safe to do so), and three distractors (e.g. you must come to a complete stop and wait for the light to turn green before proceeding, you may proceed – slowly, you may only make a left hand turn).

There is much to consider when writing assessment items.

In the case of the new driver tests, the only real consideration was to be cognizant of the target audience (14-22 year olds) and write in a language for which they would understand, and to develop assessment items based on the individual state driver’s handbook.

However, I also have experience developing assessment items for college-level text books. For these items, I had to consider the content (the relevant chapter of the textbook) and write meaningful assessment items to test the learner, but I also had to consider the learning objectives for that chapter (to ensure I was assessing the learner in order to meet the learning objectives) and I had to consider Bloom levels. I previously wrote about Bloom’s Taxonomy here, and in relation to assessment item writing, there was typically a requirement to test to higher-levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy. No good college-level assessment is comprised entirely of recall (in my honest opinion).

But…how do I know I’m writing high-quality assessment items? Don’t panic – Here are some resources:

20+ Tips for Writing Great Quiz Questions and Response Options

Improving your Quizzes with Immediate Feedback

Constructing a Bloom’s Taxonomy Assessment

Assessment and Bloom’s Taxonomy

Best Practices: 30 Tips for Creating Quiz Questions

The Anatomy of Great e-Learning Quiz Questions

Leave a Comment Filed Under: Instructional Design Tagged: Terminology Tuesday

E-Learning Challenge #46: Show Us Your E-Learning Portfolio

August 11, 2014

This week’s e-learning challenge is a fun one that’s near and dear to my heart! Why? Well – Since building what small portfolio I have, my job prospects have increased exponentially (and therefore so has my profitability) and I’ve been able to become more selective with the projects and clients with whom I engage. Portfolios are also dear to me because my very first professional presentation (at the E-learning Heroes Community Roadshow: Toronto) was on how to build your portfolio.

Portfolios are essential to any e-learning developer and you really shouldn’t sleep on building one out. Even if it’s sparse and not the most well put together portfolio, it’s a jumping off point, and you’ll be able to grow your portfolio and evolve its presentation as time goes on. Truth be told – My website and portfolio page will be undergoing an overhaul in the coming months, and I’m excited to share the new design just as soon as it’s complete!

The Concept

This week, we’re being challenged to share our portfolios, create a header image for the E-Learning Heroes Challenge recap post, create social media images for Twitter/Facebook/Pinterest, and then share our portfolios through various social media postings – WHAT A DOOZIE! So many components!

The Method

First things first, I grabbed the link to my portfolio page. Next, I opened a new document in Photoshop and created a header image for my section of the recap post. Then, I sought after the social media image dimensions from this site and began creating appropriately size social media images. Finally, I went ahead and started sharing these posts all over the social media sphere (Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest)

The Result

Click here (or in the navigation bar above) to access my live portfolio.

Challenge Header Image:

Ashley_Chiasson_Portfolio

Twitter Post Image:

Ashley_Chiasson_Portfolio_Twitter

Facebook Post Image:

Ashley_Chiasson_FB

Pinterest Thumbnail Image:

Pinterest_236

Pinterest Post Image:

Ashley_Chiasson_Pinterest_Post

1 Comment Filed Under: Instructional Design Tagged: E-Learning Challenge

Terminology Tuesday: Target Audience

August 5, 2014

This week’s term was prompted by a thread I read recently about acronyms. Don’t see the connection? I’ll explain it to you in a few – don’t worry!

Target Audience

Your target audience is anyone who will be participating in the e-learning program you are developing. This is a very small detail, usually discussed in a client’s Statement of Work or a Design Document (or sometimes not at all), but it makes a huge impact on the development of your training materials.

For example, the training materials you develop for a group of 18-21 year old students will likely be different than those developed for a group of 50-60 year old women. For the 18-21 year olds, you might use a more colloquial manner of text or you might use a more interactive, game-based interface. For the 50-60 year old women, you would likely recognize their prior learning experiences and explain the content in a more professional manner.

It is essential to understand and consider your target audience in order to create effective learning experiences!

I’m a huge supporter of conducting an instructional analysis, and while not all clients will see the benefits of paying for anything indicative of an ‘analysis’ phase (many clients may feel as though they’ve conducted this portion), it’s still important as an Instructional Designer to ensure you’re conducting a brief instructional analysis – even if it’s just in your head. If the target audience hasn’t been defined by the client, ASK!

Alright. So how does this connect with acronyms?

Regardless of your target audience  you need to avoid use of industry jargon whenever possible. You need to take yourself outside of your industry body and put yourself in the shoes of your target audience. Do they know what TNA means? Because to you, it’s a Training Needs Analysis, but to them it could be an offensive term used to describe several body parts or a popular retail store.

When using acronyms, ensure you are spelling out the first instance of each acronym; this will ensure that your target audience does not become lost in a sea of acronyms, leaving the training more confused than anything. Another suggestion, in acronym or jargon heavy training materials, would be to include a glossary of acronyms or terms; this will provide your target audience with a resource to consult if ever they find themselves confused.

Leave a Comment Filed Under: Instructional Design Tagged: Terminology Tuesday

E-Learning Challenge #45: Recording Audio in Online Training

August 4, 2014

Phew! This week’s challenge was an easier one. I figured I could definitely squeeze this challenge in between the swamp of work I’ve been wading through.

The Concept

This week’s challenge was more of an informative type of challenge, and it was all about how you setup your recording space to record audio for online training. For me, this was an easier challenge because I don’t have a whole lot of setup that goes into my audio recording…because I don’t tend to do a lot of audio recording – this is typically a task I sub out to other e-learning professionals because 1 – I find recording audio tedious, 2 – I’m not an audio learner so I find it extra tedious, 3 – I don’t have nearly enough time to prep things as I’d like to have, and 4 – I’m Canadian (and many of my clients aren’t), so the revision cycle tends to be a bit more frustrating with me trying to take on a different dialect for just a couple of words (which is SO HARD if those words are in the middle of sentences…you know…like people use).

The Method

For this challenge, I took a photo (with my iPhone) of my setup, and then I took a screen capture of my software setup. Presto! Tada!

The Result

There were three questions for this challenge:

1. Tell us about your recording setup.

I will say that the setup I have at home versus setups I’ve used in the past is quite different. I’ve married into some software (shout out Camtasia) that I love using, but haven’t taken the leap into purchasing a professional microphone or anything. At the university, there is a real fancy microphone – I don’t even know what brand it is, but it requires a line-in input and it’s HEAVY! Needless to say, a post-secondary institution can definitely afford these luxuries…but I’ll digress! Basically, my set up is the opposite of what you’d find at a university.

When recording audio, I use my Macbook Pro’s internal microphone. I open Camtasia up to create a ‘new recording’. When you do this, a little window pops up (see below), and I turn the screen off and the camera off, but leave the microphone on. Unless I’m doing a screencast, in which case I leave the screen on and the microphone on.

Camtasia_Record

I record in my office, and once I finish recording, I often have to edit out background noise and/or my beagle’s barking, in Camtasia. Once I finish my recordings, I export the audio files to MP3 (or MP4 in the case of screencasts) format.

2. Show us your audio setup.

Audio_Setup

3. Share your three favourite audio recording tips.

Here are my tips:

1 – If you’re recording audio often, invest in a professional microphone. I would recommend Blue Microphone’s Yeti Pro or Audio-Technica AT2020 – I’ve heard good things about both of these and have used the Yeti Pro.

2 – Create an audio script – Sure; you might think you can wing it and for a lot of things you can…just not professional anything. Especially not training courses. Especially not if the training course is procedural and the steps are exact. Trust me, it will save you a lot of heartache (and revisions) in the long run.

3 – Be consistent. Try to use a consistent voice, tone, and background whenever you record. It may also be good to record all audio in one fell swoop, if possible. I’ve found in my experience that if I record audio for the same project in different sessions, my tone tends to vary more. When I say background, I mean record in the same space for all recordings. This is important for anyone using their laptop.

4 – Bonus tip: Don’t feel obligated, by a client’s needs, to record the audio yourself. If audio is a component and you really aren’t the best person for the job, sub-contract the audio portion out to someone who knows what’s up. The result will be a lot more professional, and you’ll be able to focus your attention on more important aspects of your role.

3 Comments Filed Under: Instructional Design Tagged: E-Learning Challenge

Terminology Tuesday: Adaptive Learning

July 28, 2014

I first came across the concept of adaptive learning when working at my last corporate gig. Someone had a pie-in-the-sky type of idea for moving into adjacent markets, and adaptive learning would give us a HUGE competitive edge. I say pie-in-the-sky because, at the time, the organization could certainly not fund something so new to us. This past weekend, I came across the term again – this time in the context of its increasing popularity. If it’s becoming more popular, I figured we should probably talk about and get to know the term a little bit more.

What is Adaptive Learning?

Adaptive learning is an educational approach which uses technology to create individualized learning experiences. Computer programs, which work diligently to collect data, adapt the material presented based on the user’s learning needs (which are dictated by their responses and interactions with the computer program).

Sounds creepy? Yeah, a little. I sort of liken adaptive learning to the way in which advertisements on websites are adapted based on your browsing history. While it might be creepy, it’s also really cool!

Why is Adaptive Learning Cool?

Adaptive learning is pretty neat, in my opinion, because it allows students to step outside of the traditional face-to-face classroom environments, where teachers are often times over-saturated with the amount of students per class, leading to very generalized teaching (in most cases). Teachers have it tough! And it can be incredibly difficult for them to veer from traditional teaching methods to make learning an individualized experience for each and every student.

Many teacher friends of mine who have taught in the K-12 school system are incredibly frustrated; because of the ‘no child left behind’ concept, kids are being pushed through, regardless of which grade level they’re functioning at. This results in lower-level learners struggling further with the curriculum. Another problem is that it’s getting to the point where teachers are becoming responsible for developing Individualized Education Plans for more than half of their students per class – Doing this is understandable in that the education system wants to cater (as much as possible) to student’s needs, but it also takes a lot of time on the individual teacher’s side of things, which may lead to increased rate of teacher burn-out. Frustrating, no?!

Adaptive learning may be a solution to such a problem, saving teacher resources and frustration!

The only questionable aspect of adaptive learning that I have found is that implementation may be incredibly costly, so institutions really need to recognize the need and the ultimate cost savings on human resources (and ultimately increase in return on investment), before it will ever gain mainstream traction.

Examples, please!

There’s really only one key example that I want to share – Knewton is a technological platform designed to personalize “digital courses so every student is engaged and no one slips through the cracks.” Using analytics, learning gaps are predicted and the presentation of educational materials are adapted to satisfy these learning gaps. HOW COOL IS THAT?!

A more rudimentary example could be a choose your own adventure book; while not necessarily ‘learned’, the outcome is dependent  on (or predicted by) the reader’s choices. Who didn’t enjoy a good choose your own adventure book? Come on!

Leave a Comment Filed Under: Instructional Design Tagged: Terminology Tuesday

3 Tips for Countering Feelings of Overwhelm

July 26, 2014

As someone who suffers from Generalized Anxiety Disorder, it’s really important for me to make an effort at balancing my life, work, and mental health. As a new small business owner, this can often times be a difficult task. That’s why I’m deciding to take this week to make a conscious effort to better manage myself in an effort to counter feelings of overwhelm.

Make Yourself Accountable

For me, this meant using my fancy project management software (shoutout PancakeApp) to set up all of my current projects and their individual tasks. This was somewhat counterproductive in that it initially made me feel more overwhelmed – oh my goodness, look at all of the tasks I need to complete (by Monday, by Wednesday, by the end of next week)…ugh. But when I stepped back, I felt refreshed, organized, and I now have an interactive to do list that will make me accountable for each of my tasks.

Find Peace

Within my work life, this means finding a quiet place where I can be productive; I haven’t perfected this yet (we have a beagle), but I’ve come pretty darn close, and I really enjoy the routine I have working from my home office, work office, or certain cafes. Finding peace usually involves some relaxing music (I’m a frequently listener of Songza’s Mellow Indie Playlist) or a podcast (e.g. Totally Laime or Alison Rosen is Your New Bestfriend) that allows me to listen passively. A calm environment can lead to an increase in productivity, which stands to decrease your feelings of overwhelm considerably!

Within my daily life, this means dog walks or exercising or reading a few chapters of a book before resting your head on your pillow and catching some sleep.

Be Active – CONSISTENTLY

I used to be so good at this, almost to the point of obsession. Obsession isn’t a great thing, but I’ll be the first to admit that I do miss my five day per week gym routine. I’ve been haphazard in ramping up my activity levels over the past few months and it’s really catching up to me. I’m not as in shape as I once was, my anxiety is a lot less predictable and extreme, I’m easily tired, and I just don’t feel on top of my game.

Being active is a great way to counter feelings of overwhelm because activity gets your endorphins chugging along and then all of the happier feelings buzz through your body, making your daunting to do list seem a lot more manageable.

Leave a Comment Filed Under: Personal, Small Business Tagged: Freelance Advice

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Meet Ashley

Ashley ChiassonI’m a Instructional Designer with over 15 years of professional experience, and have developed e-learning solutions for clients within the Defence, Post-Secondary Education, Health, and Sales sectors. For more about me, click here!

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