E-Learning Challenge

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:

Twitter Post Image:

Facebook Post Image:

Pinterest Thumbnail Image:

Pinterest Post Image:

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.

This week’s e-learning challenge is all about smartphone video training. In a world where smartphones are ever-present, it seems like a really cost-effective solution to record your own training videos to meet basic training needs. Heck. I still consult YouTube for basic procedural information – have you ever had to auger your toilet? It took 29 years for me to get there, and when I did, I swiftly consulted a video tutorial.

The Concept

This challenge encouraged participants to use their smartphones to record, edit, and publish a training video. Personally, I find video training basic for procedural demonstrations, so I chose to show you the Dos and Don’ts of something I feel most folks can relate to – inserting a duvet into a duvet cover. For YEARS I hated this chore; the Internet wasn’t around when I first started dealing with duvet covers, and I always thought I had to physically insert myself into the cover to complete the task. The end result is cranky and sweaty and no fun – maybe this was my mother’s way of paying me back for the teenage years I made her deal with? Hmmm…

In any event, there is a right and wrong way of putting a duvet inside of a duvet cover, and I show you both ways!

The Method

I set my iPhone up to record video, and had my husband record the two videos, balancing the iPhone on the baby gate to our room (anyone with a herding dog and cats will understand), for stability, while I demonstrated both approaches.

Once recorded, I sought out my iMovie app…only to realize I had removed it from my computer in favour of Camtasia. Here I had to do a little bit of challenge cheating, using Camtasia instead of my smartphone app to edit and publish the video. Now, had I not removed iMovie, I would have edited in that – but hey. It’s the thought that counts!

I added in some annotations, steps, removed the original audio, and added some background music (in retrospect, there’s a song called Duvet I used to really enjoy…maybe that would have been more appropriate? Ah well!). Once completed, I published and uploaded to Vimeo.

The Result

Duvet Dos and Donts from Ashley Chiasson on Vimeo.

 

(Image credit: David Anderson)

Hat’s off to David for this week’s e-learning challenge – this was a fun one! I’ve never been interviewed, but I feel like it helped me out in chatting candidly (or kind of candidly…alright…not really at all – I scripted myself haha) – something I’m going to be doing next month at the E-Learning Heroes Community Workshop in Toronto…I’m scared!

The Concept

This week, we were tasked with recording our responses to the following 10 questions:

– Tell us a little about yourself and the types of e-learning projects you most enjoy.

– How did you become an e-learning or instructional designer?

– What are the essentials of good e-learning design?

– Tell me about your most successful e-learning project.

– What are the most important criteria in evaluating e-learning?

– What are some common mistakes new course designers make and how can they avoid them?

– How is designing mobile learning different than designing for the desktop?

– How do you evaluate whether your course was effective?

– How do you keep up your skills and stay current in the industry?

– What is the future of e-learning?

The Method

I loathe public speaking and I’m working on getting better, so the first thing I did was script my responses to these questions, because I’m really not great at responding to questions on the fly. After scripting out all of my responses, I hit up Camtasia and recorded (and re-recorded) all of my responses! I exported to .wav format (thanks advanced export options!) and uploaded the entire playlist to Soundcloud, added tags and a description, and saved the playlist – easy peasy!

The Result

You can listen to my recording, below (or by clicking here), in all of it’s awkward glory – hopefully you find my responses insightful or informative – that was the goal!

Another late one, but better late than never, right? This has been yet another nutty week, and originally I had wanted to brush up on my Linguistics degree and include some phonetics or morphology, but instead you’ll get to see some semantics in action! I may come back to this challenge at a later time and make another contribution, but we’ll see what happens!

The Concept

This week’s challenge was to build a spelling or vocabulary quiz that could leverage user interactivity. While I wouldn’t consider my result much of a quiz (in length), it gets the job done.

The Method

After reading 30 Incorrectly Used Words That Can Make You Look Bad by Jeff Haden, I was inspired to create a vocabulary quiz, using some of the terms identified. I created a free-form drag and drop interaction utilizing sentences with blank shapes. The user would need to drag the correct term from the bottom of the page to the correct placement in the corresponding sentences. This would test the user’s ability to distinguish between the appropriate use of various terms.

The Result

To view the complete interaction, click here.

I’ve been feeling pretty slack lately, but I won’t argue about being too busy to participate to my fullest potential. In any event, this week’s e-learning challenge is all about interactive step graphics in online training – coming from a Defence background, this is a great challenge for me, because at least 80% of the work I did previously was procedural training for complex procedures (e.g. aircraft maintenance training). I will warn you that this week’s submission is 1 – a throwback to one of my initial portfolio pieces (because this month has been all about the hustle) and is 2 – likely not going to dazzle you as much as an Electronic Performance Support System (EPSS) for removing the main landing gear of an aircraft.

The Concept

Create an interactive step graphic that trains users on a very important procedure. In this case, I chose to discuss the steps for bathing your cat. This is a very tricky procedure, so be especially cognizant of Step 3. Full Disclosure: Our cats are very good at cleaning themselves and we have never had to forego this procedure first-hand. Please let me know, in the comments, how you’ve fared in your attempts. I’ve heard that some cat’s need to be sedated; if this is the situation you’re faced with, and you find it challenging to administer pills to your feline, Bruce Graham has a lovely training module to help you with this problem.

The Method

For some reason, I really wanted to have a background image, so I sourced one from ColourLOVERS and modified the transparency. Then, I sought about creating some cute looking tabs and writing the procedural documentation for how to bathe a cat. I consulted WikiHow for these assistance, and they did not disappoint, providing me with many fantastic images to use within the module.

I tossed everything together and added triggers to my tabs, with each trigger displaying a layer. Images were called up within a new lightbox-esque (but not to be confused with an actual lightbox) layer, and Bob was my uncle.

The Result

 

To view the complete interaction and potentially save yourself a world of hurt (literally), click here.