Ashley Chiasson, M.Ed

Instructional Designer & Consultant

Grab the free Course Development Plan

Sign up for my newsletter and grab your free Course Development Plan PDF to streamline course creation.

Pricing Your Projects: What Works for You?

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?

The Evolution of Learning

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?

Learning Solutions 2014 Geek Out

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!

Electronic Performance Support Systems

Say whaaat?

Not long ago, there was a Learning Solutions Magazine email in my inbox, promoting an article on Electronic Performance Support Systems (EPSS’) which I found to provide a pretty good explanation of what they heck an EPSS is, and why someone may wish to use one.

In an already, at times, confusing e-learning industry, the increased prevalence of acronyms only serves to further confuse folks, so in sum, Gottfredson’s (2013) article explains the difference between an EPSS and a traditional job-aid and an EPSS and traditional help systems. Basically, an EPSS is a dynamic tool which combines the functions of a job aid with the functions of traditional help system, and provides users with the ability to cross-reference materials through branching functionality while providing a more interactive, real-time environment through which the user may learn.

An EPSS may be defined as “An orchestrated set of technology-enabled services that provide on-demand access to integrated information, guidance, advice, assistance, training, and tools to enable high-level job performance with a minimum of support from other people.” (Gery, 1991)

Within my role, EPSS’ have become increasingly popular as there seems to be a greater shift toward practical and at-the-moment training. In the context of procedural training, EPSS’ may provide employees with an untethered support tool for which they may reference when attempting to complete an unfamiliar task. For example, one may need to replace their hard drive from a laptop computer; here, an EPSS would allow the user to go through the procedure, step-by-step, on a mobile device or laptop, while completing the procedure. Furthermore, additional technologies may be leveraged in an effort to enhance procedural training (e.g. adding flash animations or 3D simulations to the step-by-step walkthroughs).

From a development perspective, EPSS’ can make even the most complicated tasks possible for the most novice of learners; often times by the end of my storyboarding process, I feel as though I could complete the mechanical procedure for which I have just described – having absolutely no practical training in the field and/or industry for which the support tool is being developed. Therefore, it only makes sense that EPSS’ would be considered powerful tools when it comes to learning. While the curriculum shift from theoretical to practical knowledge is always up for debate (at least at the secondary level), the support for EPSS-style training may also be hit or miss, but as an individual who has developed this type of training, I must agree with Gottfredson (2013) that EPSS’ are certainly the way to go when it comes to enhancing practical learning opportunities; however, I also agree that if you ask a handful of developers to develop an EPSS, you’ll get a handful of responses – all likely similar, but certainly not standardized. Therefore, effective communication with regard to the potential impact, to the workforce, of EPSS-style training seems integral to enhancing profitability and popularity of this type of learning solution.

References:

Gery, G. J. (1991). Electronic Performance Support Systems: How and Why to Remake the Workplace Through the Strategic Application of technology. Tolland, MA: Gery Associates.

Gottfredson, C. (2013). “What We Got Here is….an EPSS”. Learning Solutions Magazine, August 19 2013. Retrieved from (click here)