Ashley Chiasson, M.Ed

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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