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ashley chiasson, m. ed

Ashley Chiasson, M.Ed

Instructional Designer & Consultant

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8 Instructional Design Tips

March 11, 2014

When developing courses, I tend to take the Keep It Simple, Stupid (KISS) approach. There’s no point overcomplicating things that some may already find complicated.

Tip #1 – Put yourself in your learner’s shoes. While you might be the Subject Matter Expert (SME), try to present information in a meaningful way, avoiding industry jargon at all costs. When a course isn’t successful, often times the issue is in the structure and presentation of the course, not the ability of the learners.

Tip #2 – Engage the learners my providing concrete examples that may allow learners to activate their prior knowledge as a foundation for new learning opportunities.

Tip #3 – CHUNK CONTENT. The last thing a learner needs is to spend hours scrolling, and scrolling, and scrolling through content.

Tip #5 – Be concise. I don’t think I can emphasize this point enough – maybe I could make a marquee banner? Learners likely spend a lot of their time scrolling through PDFs and reading textbooks or other course materials. Value your learner’s time by concisely structuring your content. Doing this will also allow you to easily chunk your content.

Tip #6 – Provide assessment opportunities coupled with meaningful feedback. Learners want to know they’re on the right track. If you allow them to apply their knowledge through assessment opportunities, you open up a door to provide them with meaningful feedback, which will likely contribute to higher academic achievement and learner satisfaction.

Tip # 7 – Add appropriate media. This is tricky because everyone has a different idea about what might be considered ‘appropriate media’. What I mean by this is engaging the learner with multimedia, when appropriate. For example, you’re teaching an individual about car doors and how they can open and close. For this example, a side-by-side static graphic of the car door open and then the car door closed would be sufficient. Creating an animation to illustrate this may enhance engagement, but is not necessary to meet the learning objective.

Tip #8 – Be smart about your use of audio. I’d like to think that most folks can use their heads here and make good judgement calls, but I’ve worked on projects where the client requested, and truly believed it was necessary, to have 1.5 minutes of audio narration for an animation lasting 45 seconds (cut to a classroom of sobbing learners). Use audio when it makes sense. You might explain a procedure in detail in the onscreen text, but in the audio you should paraphrase the procedural steps to line up with what’s happening in the onscreen media.

Leave a Comment Filed Under: Instructional Design

My Freelance to Freedom

March 7, 2014

As a member of Leah Kalamakis’ Freelance to Freedom Project Community,  I was prompted to consider the reasons why I freelance, and make some suggestions as to how you too can kick start your freelance career and potentially freelance to freedom.

My Experience:

Originally, I began freelancing strictly to have an extra revenue stream and, specifically, to pay off my undergraduate debt. My freelancing wasn’t very pointed and I used popular freelancing sites to find odd jobs (proofreading, editing, transcribing…groan).  While I was able to secure several fantastic clients, I often considered myself as selling out in that the content sometimes wasn’t my finest moment, ethically, and I knew that the work I was doing was a means to an end. Once I was able to pay off the remainder of my student debt, I very quickly took a year hiatus. After working full-time at my regular job, full-time freelancing, and going to school as a full-time graduate student, I was BURNT OUT. I needed to take some time to refocus myself and realize that I didn’t need this added income to sustain my lifestyle.

During this freelance hiatus, we were able to save a large amount of money in a very small amount of time and purchase our first home. Achieving this goal really made me realize that we were in a great financial state. However, once I finished my graduate degree this past May, I quickly began to grow bored and stagnate within my role. I love my job, but it’s been a labour of love and has been very one-sided. Long after considering this, I realized that I needed to be the change – If I wanted to take control of my career, I really needed to get in the drivers seat and let go of my anxieties in order to be successful.

So, what did I do?

I made the decision to think strategically about my potential business. I did this by reading a lot of books (Do Cool Sh*t,Creative, Inc., My So-Called Freelance Life, The Anti 9 to 5 Guide, Daring Greatly, and The Power of Habit – *I am in no way affiliated with any of these books, but they’re all awesome reads, so I highly recommend them!*) I made other freelance friends and observed what they were doing, I bid on projects that I was actually interested in working on, and I gained some stellar clients in industries I only dreamt of being a part of.

After awhile, I began taking more calculated risks by applying for part-time positions, asking my full-time employer about flex scheduling and the potential of moving from full-time to contract (meaning a loss of hours, consistency, and health/dental benefits). I didn’t let my previous anxieties get the best of me – a year ago, I would have cowered at the thought of asking my boss to reduce my scheduling hours, thinking they would fire me. Instead, I was met with a fairly positive outcome, and currently split my time between two roles that I love.

Most recently, I enlisted the help of Kory to get my website up and running. I had been sitting on doing this for far too long and it was just something that desperately needed to get done, and I registered (last minute) for Marie Forleo’s B-School. I’ll write about my impressions and experiences of B-School later, but I’m excited for it to begin!

Where am I going from here?

My long-term goal is to begin securing contracts and shift my freelancing/independent contractor-ship to a full-time commitment. This may be a goal that is closer than it seems right now, but I’m patient. Until then, I’m going to continue doing what I’ve been doing, and remain strategic in my approach for engaging in and soliciting new work. It’s my hope that B-School will help tremendously with ironing out all of the administrative issues with my business that I’ve been avoiding, allowing me to have a narrow, but sustainable, business focus.

What advice do I have for you?

My advice is simple – just go for it! But you should be organized and calculated about going for it. Most businesses begin before they were ready, and my business is no different. My only real words of wisdom is to do a lot of research and make some financial plans, such as saving up a reserve fund in the event that everything goes south and you need to float yourself financially for a little while (instead of ignoring the fact that finances are a part of daily life).

Did anyone find this helpful? If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask! I’m always learning and improving, but I’m happy to help out where I can!

2 Comments Filed Under: Freelance Tagged: Freelance Advice

E-Learning Challenge #24: Instructional Design Tips that Really Pop

March 5, 2014

Every week over at e-learning heroes, there’s a new challenge to probe participation, innovation, and creativity. This week, the challenge was to design a poster around your favourite education or instructional design quote. Previously I had been a wallflower to these weekly challenges, enjoying all of the submissions, but this week I decided to make my first submission!

Quote_Final_Small

This particular quote is one of my favourites because there have been many times in recent years where I’ve pondered the value of my education and whether it would ever make a difference. Time (and patience) has proven that there are folks out there who appreciate my education and that appreciation has helped me to stop and appreciate the time it took to achieve some of my goals, and motivates me to keep learning.

Leave a Comment Filed Under: Instructional Design Tagged: E-Learning Challenge

Pricing Your Projects: What Works for You?

March 2, 2014

After having read two very interesting articles (linked to by Sarah), I was prompted to consider how I price my projects, and why it is critical to track my time in an effort to better understand the pros and cons between hourly and fixed price contracts.

With Instructional Design projects, determining a fixed priced contract can be quite daunting when the project variables are not so cut and dry. For example, you may need to account for the extra time it takes to figure out functions you don’t typically work with, extra time for functions that just aren’t working the way they typically do (just because applications like to keep us on our toes and all seem to have their ‘isms’), or extra time for increased communication – it’s always great to have communicative clients, but sometimes this can be a hindrance on your work, and needs to be accounted for.

Being unable to accurately account for all variables on a fixed priced contract is chancy as it may result in losing out on income. For example, I once agreed to a transcription job (one of the better ones as far as interests go), grossly underestimating how much time it would take me to transcribe each hour of audio…this led to my summer from hell. Albeit, the client was incredibly understanding, but I promptly swore off transcription jobs when I was finished.

With that being said, I tend to lean more towards hourly contracts within my Instructional Design work. It just seems safer. However, after reading Dara’s Reflections on a Year of Pricing Projects, I’m a lot more interested in collecting the data to better price projects on a fixed price basis, explaining that you should track your time like your life depends on it. Under her recommendation, I’ll be using the TimeKeeper application to track my time for the next few months, and will post my observations.

In the other article, Must Do: Package your Expertise, Kate explains how packaging your expertise will help distinguish yourself within the market, free up time, deliver more value to your clients, and stand out from your competitors. This article only reaffirms Dara’s article, in that moving toward a fixed price model may help streamline your process (by saving you time) and increase your overall value to clients and profitability.

What does this mean for me? This means that I’ll be working hard to iron out a better packaged solution for my service offerings. I can’t hide behind the excuse of “Pricing Instructional Design projects can be tricky!” forever, so while not all of my projects will be fixed price, depending on the needs of my clients, it’s a model I strive to move closer toward. I value my clients, and I want them to get the most bang for their buck, while still being compensated fairly in such a competitive market.

What pricing model works best for you?

Leave a Comment Filed Under: Freelance, Instructional Design

The Evolution of Learning

February 24, 2014

I was reading some publications by David Kelly this weekend, and I stumbled upon Which Technologies are Changing the Way People Learn? In particular, there was one passage from this article that really made me reflect on the way learning has evolved through the years:

The era of “push” is ending. People no longer have to wait to be spoon-fed the information they need to do their jobs. We live in an era of self-service, where people expect to be able to do things in their own way, without needing assistance. This is the future of organizational learning.

With the emergence and growth of the Internet, information on (nearly) any topic imaginable is easily accessible. Furthermore, organizations are busy, and what could be more helpful than e-learning resources to facilitate the completion of a task and/or learning experiences?!

Organizations, particularly those which tend to have higher turn over rates, may benefit immensely from the implementation of such resources, as they will serve to decrease the amount of time and resources spent on training, and may also serve to enhance employee satisfaction and retention. Even if not used as formal training resources, e-learning modules can enhance operational efficiency by allowing staff to easily locate necessary information, without having to spend time searching the Internet or asking colleagues for assistance. For example, e-learning modules developed and sold with packaged software, can often allow employees to troubleshoot issues encountered with the software instead of spending time talking to a help desk professional. Such resources may provide organizations with a streamlined operational approach, leaving the potential for increased efficiency, productivity, and profitability.

Kelly (2013) confirms this concept by explaining how learning has become embedded into work, and if employers are leveraging available technologies to provide their employees with a repository of resources to solve common problems or to address training needs, these employers are ensuring that their employees can effectively do their jobs with minimal interruption to work.

Learning will only continue to evolve – What are your thoughts on the future of learning?

1 Comment Filed Under: Instructional Design

Learning Solutions 2014 Geek Out

February 17, 2014

First and foremost, I am so grateful to Kory for getting my site up and running, I’m looking forward to adapting it as I move forward in my business ventures. You can also follow my blog on Bloglovin.

Alright – Learning Solutions 2014 Conference and Expo!

Sadly, I will not be attending this year because I have several contracts on the go; however, I plan to attend in 2015. What I’m most sad about missing is the sunny weather and the unending list of concurrent sessions I would have loved to attend. My top picks include:

  • Variables and Advanced Actions in Adobe Captivate by Yewande Daniele-Ayoade – This would have been a great Bring Your Own Laptop (BYOL) to enhance my current Adobe Captivate knowledge base.
  • Professional Portfolio Primer: Build, Brand, and Empower Your Career by John DiMarco – It’s always great to encourage professional development and expand your career, so this would have been a nice primer as portfolios can be incredibly powerful.
  • How to Convince your Manager or Stakeholders to Adopt Virtual Classroom Tools and Training by Karen Hyder – This will be a great session for anyone struggling with convincing anyone else of the impending need and demand of e-learning. Sometimes it can be a tricky sell, but the benefits are huge!
  • Quick and Dirty Needs Assessment 101 by Brad Minor – I once conducted some very detailed research on needs assessments, and feel my research made me a bit jaded, so I feel like some quick and dirty tips would do well to restore my faith 😛

In addition to the concurrent sessions, I am most sad about missing out on two certificate programs in particular:

  • The Accidental Instructional Designer by Cammy Bean – I’ve been reading Cammy’s blog for awhile now and admire her. Because my own path to Instructional Design has been paved accidentally, it would have been great to attend this program.
  • Using Advanced Features of Articulate Storyline to Build Complex Learning Modules by Ron Price – As I work extensively within Articulate Storyline, this would have been a great program to attend in order to leverage my full potential within the tool – maybe next year!

The conference is fast approaching, and I look forward to reading everyone’s conference updates next month – have fun!

Leave a Comment Filed Under: Instructional Design

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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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