Devlin: [00:00:00] Right now, we’re doing a special series on, How to Become an Instructional Designer. We’ve compiled our most valuable content from interviews and question and answer sessions with top experts on how to become an eye dee, to help you launch your own thriving instructional design career. So let’s get started with Episode 5 in the series, Career insights for aspiring instructional designers. 

Devlin Peck: Hello everybody and welcome to this career insights session with Ashley Chiasson. You all probably know Ashley already, but if you do not, she has been doing freelancing and working in many different positions for over a decade now. I want to share her site here. This is a site that helped me a lot when I was getting into the field like, several years ago.

And Ashley has tons of great content on here. You can check out her portfolio for some nice eLearning examples. And these Storyline tutorials She's probably one of the most prolific Storyline tutorial creators. I think she even published a book on one of the earlier versions of Storyline, Mastering Articulate Storyline.

Recently, [00:01:00] Ashley's been putting all of these tutorials on YouTube, so if you are not subscribed here, definitely come and check it out, because look, this is a goldmine of Storyline content. We're going to dive into Storyline portfolios working for higher ed, working for a big compliance company, and freelancing.

So we have so much to discuss. So with that being said, let's welcome up Ashley and let's dive into these questions.

Hi, Ashley. 

Ashley Chiasson: Hi!

Devlin Peck: Hello, hello. Thanks for joining us today. I think we have questions here already and if you're okay with that, how about we dive right in? [Sure thing] All right. So our first question is from Alexandra Hi, Ashley, what are three things that are most important to showcase in a portfolio if you're looking for corporate opportunities?

Ashley Chiasson: So I think this kind of goes hand in hand with a question that was asked a little later on or I'm not sure where it got upvoted, but what to include in a [00:02:00] portfolio or what types of things should you focus on? And I think from my perspective, it really would be about researching the types of companies that you want to work for and seeing what they're doing so that you can structure your portfolio so that it's something that they'd be looking for or that it's maybe a similar style and then put your own flair on it. I would avoid including full interactions include some full interactions, but you don't have to include a 20 slide course. So I'd probably try to create some samples with various interactivity, showcasing a few different types of things. And toss those in there. [Laughs] 

Devlin Peck: Yeah, I've seen some people have a lot of success with these, just these eLearning interactions that are a few slides long. They look nice. It's showing off some sort of like, Storyline interactivity most of the time. And people have had success with that. It definitely shows off like some visual design and Storyline development skills.

Maybe you'll need to get credibility for like the [00:03:00] ID skills another way, but... 

Ashley Chiasson: Absolutely. Another thing that you might want to consider is if you can find what they're using. So not all corporate gigs are going to be using the same authoring tool. You may want to tailor your portfolio a little bit so that you have Lektora samples or Captivate samples or, oh, they're doing a bunch of video based stuff. You can maybe look to set yourself apart by looking at previous job descriptions for similar roles in the organization, if available. 

Devlin Peck: Nice. I feel like we don't hear this very much.

I feel like it's, oh, you're building a portfolio, use Storyline, get some stuff up. But you're saying, if you have an idea of the organization you want to work at, right? Because it seems like if you, I want to work for Apple, or I want to work for this company, study those job listings, see what it is that they're using.

And if it is very clear that they're using a specific tool, actually hone in on that and show that you can use the tool that they're looking for. 

Ashley Chiasson: Yeah, for sure. And I think In that same vein if you're looking for a [00:04:00] job and you know that you absolutely hate working in a certain tool, I don't enjoy working in Captivate, so my portfolio has no Captivate in it.

I think that I would avoid including samples made with tools that you wouldn't care to work in again because you will get questions about them. You'll see people asking you, 'oh, I saw you did this in your portfolio. Can you talk more about that?' And if it's something you absolutely hate working in, you're probably not really going to enjoy that role.

Devlin Peck: Yeah, good point. What if you're someone who you just want to land a gig. You just want to break into the space. You don't care who the company is. You want something that will appeal to the biggest variety of companies. Do you have any suggestions about that?

Ashley Chiasson: Yeah, I think in that case it would be more about creating some really solid pieces that aren't really branded for one type of like for higher ed or for corporate or for whichever [00:05:00] industry. I would just create some really solid pieces and have a nice range.

So I wouldn't do ten tabbed interactions. I wouldn't do a bunch of the same stuff. I'd try to vary it a bit and use the same style so that it's cohesive in your portfolio, but change some of the content up and the look and feel up. 

Devlin Peck: Good point. All right. We may have more questions about portfolios, but I think for now we will move on to the next question, which is from Paola.

 We're diving right into the meat here. So this question is about pricing. Could you share a good pricing strategy for someone that is just starting out? How would you go about structuring pricing? And again, we have a disclaimer. Short answer is it depends, but let's hear Ashley's take on this.

Ashley Chiasson: Yeah, it definitely depends. When I was first starting out in freelance, I didn't know how to price my services and I think everybody goes in too low. If you go in too high and you don't have the experience [00:06:00] for it, that could also be a deterrent. So it's really a trial and error exercise. I think a good rule of thumb when you're just starting out could be to take your last salary or hourly position or the hourly figure that you think you would have if you worked at any job posting.

A job's hiring at, 50, 000 a year or something. Take that hourly breakdown and then multiply it by 50%. Mark yourself up 50% from that hourly because you should be charging more than that, but you're at least going to cover things like your taxes and the things about freelancing and pricing that a lot of people don't talk about.

When you work as a full time employee, your organizations usually take those deductions from you automatically. And as long as you're starting with a decent base and then marking it up enough to cover [00:07:00] whatever it is like your pension contributions or your health or your taxes. 

Devlin Peck: All the software, I mean your home office. I think I calculated it yesterday. I'm paying like $600 a month for like software just for running the business. And there are good calculators out there where you put in like the annual salary you're like going for or were making, and it will spit out an hourly rate. But yeah, hourly rates do seem safe when you're like just getting started because fixed pricing is nice, right?

Because if you're efficient, you can multiply that hourly quite a bit. But when you're just starting out, you don't really know how long things are going to take you. You don't know how to fully scope a project. I got burned on some of my early ones. Like, let's do a branching scenario. This is going to be like so engaging and amazing. And then I'm building out like three courses and I'm like, what am I doing here? 

Ashley Chiasson: By the time I calculate my hourly rate, I'm now getting paid below minimum wage. Yeah. I think that's a really good point. From an hourly perspective, I like to use hourly pricing when I'm working with a [00:08:00] new client that I don't really know much about.

I don't know if they're going to give you the runaround with scope creep and all of that jazz. So it's a nice way to protect yourself versus project based pricing. Which is fantastic, but I think you need to be very specific about what is in the scope of that project based price. 

Devlin Peck: Yeah, that's the trick with project pricing, but good stuff!

And review cycles as well, so. WHat is this deliverable going to look like, and how are, how is the review process going to go? Because... 

Ashley Chiasson: Yeah, make sure, define how many review cycles they get. 

Devlin Peck: Yes, exactly. Because I've been on some projects too, where it's, 'Let's bounce it to our team in Europe. Let's bounce it to our team over here'. They're giving feedback that like contradicts other people's feedback and you're locked into like 10 review cycles and it's like what is going on here? 

Ashley Chiasson: Yeah, it's the review apocalypse, I think you've heard it called? 

Devlin Peck: Yeah. It happens. Cool. Another question from Paola here.

What do you think are the top three things to do before [00:09:00] starting to look for customers as an instructional design freelancer? 

Ashley Chiasson: Research would be my biggest tip because you want to research customers or clients and find out who it is that you would want to possibly do work with in the future, because you might think, 'oh, this company is great', and then you do a deep dive into some reviews.

Glassdoor is really great for employee and past employer reviews. Are people trash talking those companies? Because if they are, then you may not want to commit to those types of companies. I think knowing the industry that you'd like to be in, when I first started with higher ed, I actually had cold emailed. All of the directors of online learning or distance education, all of the individuals that I wanted to get in front of to talk to. I don't think you really have to do that now with the way social media is, but it was really helpful because five years later, when the [00:10:00] one position became vacant at one of the universities, I got called in to come in and chat.

So I think knowing the industry that you'd like to be working in and then doing the research accordingly. 

Devlin Peck: Nice. All right. Do you have anything else to say about that? Top three? You have research. I feel like we don't hear that enough, but that's a good point.

I imagine a lot of people they just, 'I want to land some work. I'll do it for higher ed. I'll do it for corporate. I'll do it for anyone'. But it seems from what you're saying already that your approach is more like strategic and thought out from the beginning with researching the clients, researching the industry, figuring out exactly what it is that you want.

Ashley Chiasson: Yeah, there's definitely a strategy now. There wasn't always a strategy when I first started freelancing. It was just , 'okay, take all the contracts because I don't know when I'll get more contracts' or, 'Oh, this one sounds good. And that one sounds good.' And then all of a sudden you're [00:11:00] over capacity and you're just working two full time jobs trying to stay on top of everything. So I think it is important to be strategic because there are a lot of organizations out there that are lovely to work with and then there's a lot that aren't. And so the big bright shiny lights of what you see when you see certain employers or say, big kind of fortune 500 type names, it might seem great but when you dig in a little deeper you may quickly find out as I had with higher ed, what you think it is, is not always the reality. 

Devlin Peck: True. Good point. And I feel like that's one of those things where it's kind of like, you got to live and learn. Like, Sometimes you get into a contract, it seems so amazing in the beginning, and then it's a nightmare by the end.

And then sometimes you're taking a risk, but it turns out to be this , long term, really beneficial engagement. Yeah, Freelancing is a lot of experimentation and figuring out who you like working with, what works and what [00:12:00] doesn't. Good stuff. Alright, looks like we're getting into some software questions now.

We have a question from Lindsey. Do you have any tips for getting to know a specific software, Articulate, Storyline, Adobe Captivate, in order to gain hands on experience without having to spend a lot of money? I know you have tips about this. 

Ashley Chiasson: Yeah, I'm not certain about Captivate or some of the other authoring tools.

I'm fairly confident that they all have trials that you can do a 30 or 60 day trial. Articulate has a 60 day trial of Articulate 360. So what I would do before signing up for one of those free trials is, be strategic. The Articulate eLearning Heroes community, they post almost weekly prompts.

I think they have over 300 now for prompts to create a certain type of eLearning or interaction. And what I always recommend, regardless of [00:13:00] authoring tool, is go there, because there's 300 and some odd ideas. And then you can see what other people are doing, and you can try to replicate on your own. Once you have that strategy, that's when I would sign up for the free trial so that you can get the most out of that trial period.

Another really great approach for learning would be checking out YouTube. Everybody's got tutorials of some sort. So Articulate has tutorials. I have tutorials. Go on to LinkedIn Learning because if you have a membership there, you can get free tutorial or training for a variety of authoring tools.

And I think it's really just to challenge yourself to think outside of the task of creating your own content. And we're going to make excuses for ourselves because humans just like to procrastinate. If you're not a procrastinator, big ups to you. But I think once you can get [00:14:00] past the challenge of.

Hey, I have to do this thing and just go do it. You'll be all the better for it. 

Devlin Peck: Yeah, learning the tools was always the fun part for me. Every class assignment I got when I was doing my master's program, I'm like, 'can I use Storyline for this?' Yeah, I mean, just build stuff.

Like If your goal is just to learn the tool, like just try building things, recreating things that you see out there. And like Ashley said, the eLearning Heroes community is great because not only do you have these nice prompts for what to create, but you can see hundreds of examples for each one of those prompts of what other people have created.

You can even share your stuff there and get feedback from people with way more experience. So, yeah. 

Ashley Chiasson: One of the things that I used to do when I participated in the eLearning Heroes challenges, I would go on to Pinterest or Dribbble or some search site where you could see what people were doing with certain types of user interfaces or 'oh, I want a floating menu' or whatever.

Find a cool example of something [00:15:00] and then try to build it in whatever tool you're using because that can be really inspiring just from a logistics perspective of, 'hey, I don't know how to do this thing, so I'm going to make it my goal to create it and make it happen' regardless of what the functionality in whichever tool you're using is.

Devlin Peck: Nice, and you're saying you don't need to just rely on what people are creating with eLearning authoring tools. You're looking beyond that. You're looking at UI designers seeing what they're creating and saying, 'okay, how can I create this in my eLearning authoring tool of choice? [Exactly.]

Okay. Seems we have a question from Chelsea here. What recommendations do you have for instructional designers trying to land their first freelance clients?

I think we touched on this a little bit, but we touched on like what you should do before trying to land them. But yeah, this is a very popular question, popular topic. A lot of people right now are trying either have full-time jobs and are venturing out into freelancing or just trying to freelance from the start.

Ashley Chiasson: I think my biggest tip is to have a [00:16:00] portfolio. Even if you don't do something visual, eLearning development, for example. If you are strictly an instructional designer that doesn't do development, doesn't have a goal of doing development, you still have pieces that you could put in your portfolio because you're still creating design documents, needs analyses. You're still creating storyboards. So you have assets that you're working in and those would be the items that I would include in my portfolio so that prospective employers kind of see what you're capable of doing in the world of instructional design and they can reach out to you and connect that way.

I think it goes back to research again. So portfolio and then research. If you don't really care which organization you're getting hired at I think that's fine, but I would still research best practices in terms of what are the cool things that's happening in a given industry [00:17:00] and how can I speak to those things? Like, oh, if I know that, for example, compliance training is doing a ton of scenario based stuff, maybe I should educate myself a little bit on writing scenarios or developing scenarios and include some samples of that in my portfolio. 

Devlin Peck: Nice, okay. And yeah, if you're looking at these tech companies and you know they do a ton of like software simulations, you're saying, develop some pieces like that for your portfolio. 

Ashley Chiasson: Yes, because I find that it'll, just position you in a more desirable place. Now making the leap from corporate or full time employee to freelance, that's its own other beast. I think what I would recommend the most for that portfolio and then networking, there's tons of opportunities on LinkedIn, on Twitter, in the eLearningHeroes communities to build a brand for yourself and a reputation.

Because if people know what you're capable of [00:18:00] doing in those communities, they're also more likely to refer projects to you when they experience overflow or say they aren't taking on new jobs. They can funnel it down to people that they know and trust. 

Devlin Peck: Good point. Yeah, I like that you bring up the portfolio part, because that always seems to be like step number one.

 When I was first trying to start freelancing, I didn't do research, I just saw what people like you and other people I respected and followed in the industry were saying, which was create a portfolio, that's the first order of business. So I used assets I was creating for my classes and personal projects and stuff and just put it up there, and leads started coming in from LinkedIn, which maybe that would be my tip there, is optimize your LinkedIn profile, because that's where I got all of my business at first, people would just find me via keywords.

Look at the portfolio and then yeah, government leads and tech leads and from every angle. So now I'm trying to be much more strategic, but it was good for getting started because there's so much work. If you're working hourly at like the market hourly rate, there is like so much work [00:19:00] out there to be done it seems, as a freelancer. 

Ashley Chiasson: Yeah, and I think in the same vein as networking and LinkedIn, staying active on those social media platforms and active in your industry, because when I'm looking at people to hire, and I'm thinking, oh, I'm not really sure who this person is. And I know I'm not the only one that's nosy.

 One of the things I like seeing is when people are engaging with the learning and development community. So they're not just operating in a silo, unwilling to enhance their own professional development. It shows initiative. 

Devlin Peck: And it makes it easier to trust that person.

Like, there are some names I've seen, and whether this is their first year in the industry or they've been doing it, obviously, for like decades. Like when you see those names over and over and you see them helping people and sharing content and sharing their projects, if someone like that reaches out and is like, 'oh, you have anything?' If I do, I'm probably going to give it to you versus someone random. 

Ashley Chiasson: Yeah. And I did see a comment asking about [00:20:00] platforms like Upwork and Fiverr and all of that jazz. And there could be a time and a place for Upwork and Fiverr. And when I first started freelancing, I actually wasn't looking to freelance in instructional design. I was just, 'what is this freelancing unicorn you speak of?' I had a full time job. I was looking to pay off my student loans. And so I went to freelancer.ca and I just took on all these terrible jobs to like proofreading thesis. And I just did my master's. I had enough proofreading of thesis. So I took a bunch of really crummy jobs and definitely was not paid my worth at all, even as a proofreader or editor. So I took these crummy jobs, paid off my student debt, and then I vowed off freelancing. I was like, 'I'm never doing that again'.

That was a horrible experience. And then about a year later, I said, you know what, I think strategically, there has to [00:21:00] be companies out there that are looking for eLearning contractors or instructional design contractors. And then I got off of those bid sites because the winning bids are usually going to be the lowest prices. It's not necessarily all about quality there. And it is hard to build your ranking up on those sites as well. 

Devlin Peck: Yeah, and on top of that, they take a big chunk of your earnings. 

Ashley Chiasson: Yeah, 10% or whatever commission they're taking for running the platform and giving you the ability to hunt for your own gigs.

Devlin Peck: Yeah, and just to give another little piece of perspective on that. A lot of people might've heard me say this before, but I landed like one of my very first paid project on Upwork because it seemed like the natural place to start. It's like, Oh, all these people are looking for work here. I was bidding on projects.

Yeah, I got this 200 little micro learning project. but, I used it in my portfolio, and then the next client was like, 'oh, do you have any paid work in your portfolio?' And I was like, 'yeah, that thing. It was for an actual client'. So it did feel like a [00:22:00] nice little stepping stone, but yeah I wouldn't really recommend building your business on Upwork. I think there are very few people who make a lot of money on there.

But yeah, it's like 1% of the projects are probably actually viable. 

Ashley Chiasson: Yeah. And I think that's when I say that there's a time and a place for working on bid sites, I think that's a really great example. And not everyone that you work with, regardless of where you're getting the job, is willing to allow you to put a portfolio piece or put their work in your portfolio.

So if you are going to be working for something that you know you're being underpaid for, that's fine. But I would just be up front about it and say, 'hey, I'll do this project, but I'd like to use a piece of this in my portfolio'. 

Devlin Peck: Oh yeah. Good point. Okay, I think we answered that very thoroughly.

Okay, this is a good question for you especially. So this is from Rosina. Please highlight the role of instructional designers in the higher education sector. Is it important to learn more about the learning management systems than the [00:23:00] authoring tools if you're seeking a career in higher ed instructional design?

Ashley Chiasson: So for me, I'm not sure if it's going to be a just uniquely Canadian perspective, but hi, I'm from Canada, and I'm not even sure if it's nationwide, but in our province, what I didn't know about working in higher ed was that you're bound by faculty collective agreements in most cases, and so my big excitement about getting a job in higher ed was, you know, I'm so excited. Like I can convert all of these courses to online ed and will increase accessibility. It'll be fantastic for students that physically can't come to campus. This will be so great. And then what I found out was that, yes, I can do that, but it has to be done within the box of the faculty collective agreement, and what I mean by [00:24:00] that is that a faculty member has to come and either say that they would to develop a course online, or they're voluntold that they have to develop a course online, and those would be the individuals that I would consult with.

It wasn't just 'hey, we need some more sociology courses, let's go figure that out'. And yeah, it was very different than what I thought it would be. And I did no development because as part of that faculty collective agreement, we weren't legally allowed to be developing. We would help faculty members out, but they had to physically be the one to develop the actual content and put it online. And then we just audited. So from my experience, higher ed was really about working in all of those other I guess ,themes of instructional design. So the analysis, the design. Not the development, but the implementation and the evaluation for when we had to do the next year's run of the same course.

So it [00:25:00] was very much about guiding faculty and helping people that weren't quite sure how to translate their face to face courses and content to online and trying to bridge the gap there. I didn't really work in any development tool other than the LMS every now and again for us.

And I would say that it was more heavy on the instructional design theory and educational principles. 

Devlin Peck: Nice. Yeah, I think that echoes a lot of what I've heard from thing about things stateside as well. So good call out.

So to answer that question, it sounds like the development chops aren't super important for if you're trying to be an instructional designer in higher ed. And what I have heard, maybe you can comment on this, is that education, it does become more important when compared to corporate instructional design.

Ashley Chiasson: Yes, I think for me, government and higher ed were the two industries that valued [00:26:00] my formal education the most out of any of the roles that I had. Whereas my current employer loves me very much and I'm not sure if they know what my two degrees are in. 

Devlin Peck: Yeah, nice. Cool. Good perspective. We have a question from Anita. Do you think that opportunities for full time remote work within the instructional design space will increase going forward, or will companies still require designers to work from the office? Have you seen any particular trend since the pandemic? 

Ashley Chiasson: Yes, I have seen way more of a trend and more companies being receptive to remote work.

 I feel when I was first freelancing in Canada, finding anyone who would be willing to hire you remotely if you lived outside of any of the larger provinces was a mythical creature. It was a unicorn sighting. It just never happened.[00:27:00] Everybody wanted you to at least be able to have your bum in a seat somewhere so that they could maybe measure your productivity or what have you. Now, technology has really allowed us to work remotely with grerat ease. It's not as hard as it once was, and I feel like with the pandemic, I think it's shown a lot of employers who ordinarily would have a lot of bums in seats that they really don't need to have, that be paying high rates for office spaces, and I think there's also something to be said with the infrastructure that's required for a giant cubicle firm in an office.

Now, if you can allow remote workers and invest in the technology to allow the work to get done properly, then all of your staff can really be remote. 

Devlin Peck: Yeah, and I don't know how much of this is just from COVID, but obviously so many instructional design jobs right now, especially are [00:28:00] remote. You see some where it's remote until, further notice, but I imagine there's going to be way, way more remote jobs even after COVID because before there was some remote instructional design full time jobs. And I would look here in the States before I knew I'd be freelancing full time, I would look for those. And when you find one, it's, ' oh, wow, there's a remote job. Let me throw in an application for that.

But now it seems it's just like the norm almost. For freelancing, especially though, it's never a question. For me now, that it's remote.

Ashley Chiasson: And I, think that there's going to be a lot, a nice upswing in the trend of people who prior to the pandemic hadn't worked remotely, got a taste of working remotely.

[yes] and don't go back to an in person job. [Exactly.] Rather than just say, okay, I'm out, I'm going to go find something that is willing to let me be remote' because it does afford you some flexibility. I don't have to worry about, 'oh, I forgot my lunch, so I'm going to go to the cafeteria or go out and forage'.

I can just go to my [00:29:00] kitchen.

Devlin Peck: For sure. I think there's going to be a lot of pressures on companies to offer that option if they want to be competitive, at least attracting applicants. 

Alright, this next question is from Nick. What's the most challenging thing for Ashley while designing a compliance eLearning course? 

Ashley Chiasson: So for us, we do what we lovingly refer to as binge-worthy compliance training. So our whole shtick is to take what's popular in popular media, the concept of news, news and broadcasts and streaming, and bring those to a compliance training course so that all of a sudden taking a two hour mandated preventing discrimination and harassment training doesn't make it feel like you've been sitting there taking two hours of mandatory training.

So I think the challenge is really about finding that balance of entertainment, engagement, [00:30:00] and compliance. 

Devlin Peck: Nice. Wow. I want to see some of that. I'm sure a lot of people do. Because when you think of compliance training, you don't really think of binge-worthy. So, that's interesting.

Ashley Chiasson: Yeah, it's always nice when we were allowed to travel and I'd hit the border service agents and they'd ask why you were there and what you do for a living and I tell them and they'd be like, I don't understand what you're talking about. What is an instructional designer? And I'd say, 'you probably have to take recertifications and mandatory eLearning for your job, and they'd be like,

Devlin Peck: 'oh, get out, you're not coming in' 

Ashley Chiasson: and then you're like, 'all right well, I make that suck less. So that's my job.' And then it's, 'okay'. 

Devlin Peck: Yeah, that's okay. That's a good selling point, yeah. 

Ashley Chiasson: 'Go wherever you want to go,' stamp. 

Devlin Peck: True. With that angle, yeah, come on in. Nice. So what's the most challenging [00:31:00] aspect of that, I think it was the question. Did we get to that? 

Ashley Chiasson: Yeah, so I think the most challenging aspect really is trying to find that balance of engagement with compliance, because engagement doesn't mean having the learner do all the things, for us, we do have interactivity within our courses, but we also shoot host intro, we have talking heads where they are introing and outroing certain topics. Then we have scenario videos that are shot very realistically and professionally to make it seem like we're watching something unfold. And then we have all of the state mandated content that's in there as well. It's trying to find that middle ground so that you aren't just creating two hours of painfully dry compliance training. 

Devlin Peck: Yeah, cool, good answer. Okay, another question from Rosina here. Since the inception of [00:32:00] online schools for K-12, do you think instructional design as a career will grow in the K-12 sector too? I don't think you have any particular expertise in K-12, but... 

Ashley Chiasson: I hope so, and I really say that because, so I taught Masters of Education students Instructional Design. And it was a special topic, so it was the course that I would get students who were nearing the end of their curriculum, their Masters of Ed in Curriculum Studies.

These were students who, most of them were K-12 teachers, and I really hope that there is an uptick in K-12 hiring instructional designers because I think it's needed. Curriculum developers, for sure, often have experience in instructional design, but I think for K-12, it's more about teaching to the curriculum.

And so it's, students are the [00:33:00] bank and you're making deposits. It's that type of thought pattern and I don't see as good instructional design happening in K-12, just from what I've seen. I'm sure that there are K-12 institutions that are doing a fantastic job, but I really hope so, because I think those students in that demographic really need more scaffolding.

 They need a better foundation than just saying, 'okay, university student, you're going to take your course online'. They have a lot less motivation than older students. 

Devlin Peck: Yeah. And even just, I know in Florida, not that Florida is a paragon for public education or anything, but you know, there are like the state objectives, and then like everyone's supposed to base their curriculum and like lessons off of that, but like the master's program and stuff, we're looking at objectives from that, and it's examples of what not to do, so I'm like, they should invest in instructional designers, especially if everything needs to follow from these objectives. When you have objectives like 'understand [00:34:00] World War II' and stuff like that, it's like, what does this even mean?

Ashley Chiasson: Yeah, it's like, how are you measuring understanding? Yeah, and that every student in your classroom is actually understanding World War II. I know that the provinces all have curriculum developers, but I don't really think it's been a high priority to develop K-12. 

Devlin Peck: I agree. That's something I noticed early on too. I'm like, you don't really see many instructional designers to work in the K-12 space, but it's just a gap. Obviously a big part of that gap is probably because of funding.

Ashley Chiasson: Yeah, there's definitely a funding element of it, but I think especially with students learning online for so long in this pandemic, I would hope that somewhere out there, someone is going to be doing research that says, 'hey, the cohort of students who were learning entirely online, [00:35:00] this is what worked well, this is what worked horribly, they're further behind than they should be, or they're more ahead', or what have you.

I'd like to see some hard research on the effects of that and then maybe some more sound decision making when it comes to, 'okay well, how are we going to have online learning, but still ensure that the students are at the level that they're supposed to be at', at the end of the year. 

Devlin Peck: Nice. Okay, I'm sure we can keep discussing that, but let's, try to move on to the next question here. That's good. Good questions though. So a question from Heather, what are your top three suggestions for creating a 90 second elevator pitch for a freelance instructional designer to use while networking? Okay, okay. [Oh gosh.] Do you have an elevator pitch? 

Ashley Chiasson: I don't have an elevator pitch because I am so incredibly awkward in person that I am just hoping that the awkwardness doesn't bleed into every [00:36:00] single thing.

Yeah, so I don't really have a pitch. I did do Demo Fest a couple of times at a few different conferences. And I found that really outside of my comfort zone of, 'hey, I actually have to pitch to get votes and I'm a sales person'. So I think I don't really have a 90 second pitch, but my recommendations would be get business cards and give them to everyone that you meet or shake hands with, because a lot of people don't have business cards and then you're wondering like, 'oh yeah, I thought I met Heather once. I don't really know where she's working or what she's up to', but yeah, at least have a business card so you can show that in someone's hand. 

Devlin Peck: Nice. Yeah, I don't have an elevator pitch either, so I'm not sure I can contribute anything to that question either, but nice. Okay, let me scroll through here. Vicky knows that you're a Storyline expert, but how do you step outside of eLearning as an [00:37:00] instructional design solution for your client? Do you lean on any other products? Do you often build ILT materials, instructor-led training materials, or job aids?

Ashley Chiasson: I don't really have to build many job aids currently, and eLearning isn't always the answer, so if you wanted to teach someone how to turn on the projector in a conference room, you don't need eLearning for that.

All you need is a job aid, probably beside the projector, that tells the person how to turn it on. So I think that eLearning isn't always the answer and you can get by with creating text-based materials that, things that don't need to be interactive, facilitator guides or job aides, or maybe it's an answer key to an assessment bank. 

Devlin Peck: Nice. Apply the Cathy Moore method in determining what type of training is needed. Yeah, that's a good approachable way to start thinking [00:38:00] beyond eLearning and think, what do these people actually need to accomplish the goal at hand?

And Kathy Moore talks a lot about job aids in there, 

Ashley Chiasson: Yeah, you could definitely make a decision tree. Put the goal up here and the task and then, 'do I need eLearning, yes or no', follow your funnels on the decision tree. 

Devlin Peck: Yeah, good point. eLearning is definitely not always the answer.

In the corporate space right now, it does look like that with what people are looking for or what people are paying for, but if you have the freedom to, it's always good to step back and think what actually will help here. What do we actually need? And we can have a whole conversation about that, I'm sure.

All right, what do we have next here? This great question from Jonathan Rock. He's wanting to know if we would sing a duet, but that's going to have to wait for the karaoke series that someone else will start, but great question, Jonathan. Sorry to let you down. I wouldn't want that. Ashley says she'd be down if it was an in person event.[00:39:00] 

[I would.] I don't think you'll ever find me singing karaoke though, unfortunately. Okay, a question from Jen. Alternative instructional design positions, such as working for a non profit or military, how are they different? I think maybe we talked a little bit about this with higher ed and corporate and I think that's what you're, most experienced with. Have you worked for a non profit or in the military space?

Ashley Chiasson: So I actually started working in instructional design in the military space. I worked for a defense contractor and we did all of the eLearning for the Air Force's helicopters. So very riveting content. I do think that it's a little bit different because while military can often afford to do some really cool things, we did some stuff with gesture based learning, we did some really cool augmented reality stuff, at the end of the day the bread and butter of eLearning in the [00:40:00] military space was animated flowcharts and very practical training aids where you could maybe go into, ' oh, the rotor blade in the field of this aircraft needs to be fixed. Oh, I can go to my job aid, watch a demo perform of how to do this and know how to do this task that I might not have to do very often'. The province that I'm in is very heavy in almost all of the instructional design jobs are with the defense sector.

And I did find it a very small box to be in. There wasn't a lot of room for creativity or doing things differently because you really had to follow the specs of operating guides. I guess it was a more stringent world than I wanted to be a part of for the long term.

Devlin Peck: I see. And now you're in compliance, but it does seem like you get to have some fun with it. 

Ashley Chiasson: Yeah, we do [00:41:00] really creative things for compliance, which is nice. It's a nice kind of trade off. With the military, we would get a 400 page operating manual. Okay, build eLearning from this very dry textbook. And like I said, some of it's really cool and you get to do some really neat things, but most of the time it was a little bit drier. 

Devlin Peck: Nice. Good answer. Alice is asking about how you would navigate a career transition into educational technology or instructional design. If you were making the jump now, enrolled in a master's program, what practical steps do you take to break into the field?

Ashley Chiasson: Yeah, I think for me it would be creating a portfolio by using tools and playing with them, kind of a trial and error type situation. If you want to do multimedia development, and you're going to be doing a lot of video based stuff, maybe start producing small little teaser videos so that you can show a prospective employer what you're capable of doing, [00:42:00] or work in one of the tools and create some samples and just get your feet under you that way. Because when I started working in instructional design, I was unemployed and I had just graduated from my undergrad, and my girlfriend said, 'hey, I work as this thing called an instructional designer and we need warm bodies, and I think you're smart. You can do this. And so, interviewed, got the job. And before that, I had never touched any learning authoring tool. And so I think it's really just about being proactive about your own professional development, doing things on your own, watching videos, demos. Taking the training sessions offered online or face to face or whatever you're doing, and just be a sponge and absorb all of the PD that you can.

Devlin Peck: Yeah, it's definitely overwhelming in the beginning. You like, need to learn the theory, the tools, the language of the field and all that. But I feel like what most people say when they are making this [00:43:00] transition, it's month by month, they don't recognize where they were a month before, just because there is so much to learn, so much to absorb that six months down the line, you're like, 'wow, I'm actually in this now, like I actually know what's going on', whereas in the beginning, it's 'how am I ever going to understand all of this?' There's so many people out there that are just sharing like so much and making it easier by the day for new people to break into the field.

Good stuff. All right, I think we can get to another couple of questions. Katie asked if you have any instructional design certification recommendations. I think we get this question a lot. I don't think you did a certificate. You did a master's program. 

Ashley Chiasson: Yes, I did my master's of ed in post secondary studies, but I think we had one course on instructional design, so it was really just on the job learning for me for ID and eLearning development. I did take an online teaching certificate through the Online Learning Consortium, just because that was one of the approved opportunities at the university that I worked at. [00:44:00] But yeah, other than that, I don't have any . 

Devlin Peck: Yeah, me neither, so I can't comment on that either. I think the general advice with that is your portfolio and the quality of work that you're presenting are going to go further than a certificate. And yeah, a master's degree is much more important in government and higher ed.

And I don't think the certificate would hold the same weight in those spaces. 

Ashley Chiasson: For sure. Yes. The government and higher ed definitely value education, more so informal education in particular, right? Corporate or any other industry, I think it's a toss up whether your potential employer would even care that it's there.

Devlin Peck: But I guess the one benefit of doing something like that, if you're taking like these, foundational, like instructional design classes, I guess it could help you get your, wrap your head around like, the full scope of the instructional design process and just like, get a formal introduction to the language. But as far as specific program recommendations, I do not have any. 

Ashley Chiasson: Yeah, [00:45:00] ATD, I've only heard good things about their certificate programs. But, yeah, and I also think that there's University of Wisconsin Madison, I want to say, that has a decent program. And Oregon State University, I know, also has something.

Devlin Peck: Nice. Okay. Let's move on to this question from Susan. So Susan is new to instructional design, and she's asking, how are content creators and instructional designers different? Considering the ADDIE process, content development seems to take up a lot of time. Just the needs assessment and analysis seem to require a lot of time and different skills compared to content creation. Yeah, do you have any thoughts about that? 

Ashley Chiasson: Yeah, so I think that content development definitely takes a lot of time. I think it depends on what type of development you're doing. For example, with compliance training, there's a lot of upfront considerations. While I can't give you exact metrics, I know that there is a lot of time spent upfront, because it's compliance [00:46:00] training and there's legal requirements usually. There are more considerations to the analysis and design. Whereas I think a lot of corporate gigs, the instructional designer ends up being the content developer in most cases. And it's oftentimes, rapid prototyping, so you're not storyboarding something first and fleshing that out. You're doing it all at once in the tool, and so you're essentially cramming two jobs into one which is why it would take longer. 

Devlin Peck: Yeah, I agree, I think that is definitely true right now on the corporate side of things, and even a lot of freelance work, it's, 'we need this thing built, we need this thing created'.

And I think I could talk a lot more about that just because we've, created a lot of content for the industry. I mean, maybe you can talk about this, how do you view like all of the tutorials and stuff that you're doing for other instructional designers? Do you view that as doing instructional design work, or do you view that as something separate?

Ashley Chiasson: For me, in my tutorials, [00:47:00] I view them separate. Because it's really just a rapid, 'hey, I have an hour of free time, and I'm just going to hang out with these tutorials'. And so they're very quick and to the point, and 'here, this is how you do a thing'. But with that being said, when I make those videos, I do think about, 'hey not everyone is going to know where they find the slide master, so I'm going to show them how'. So I'm taking some instructional design cues of sequencing things properly, because otherwise you're just going to confuse people when they come to your videos and they're like, 'what the hell is she showing us?'

Devlin Peck: Yeah, like I think there is a good amount of overlap and this is an idea I've been really interested in lately between like content creators, non instructional designers, but content creators, like content marketers, people producing content on the web, because the good content creators have a very deep understanding of like who their audience is, how they can provide value to them, and where the audience is so that they can provide value to them, on Google or on YouTube or whatever it [00:48:00] is that they actually are active.

So I'm like, we have these people who are not trained instructional designers who are providing so much value right where people need it. And now we have instructional designers creating these stuffy or eLearning courses that are like sitting on an LMS where people may or may not be accessing it.

So I've been really interested in that idea before because I'm at the intersect with creating the content and then also like, the eLearning projects. 

Ashley Chiasson: Yeah, I think if I had more time, my videos would definitely be more strategic from an instructional design perspective.

They're more so job aids just to get the content out there. But yeah, it would be interesting to have a content marketer turned instructional designer / eLearning developer perspective on it. 

Devlin Peck: Yeah, true. All right, I think we are at the top of the hour here and... And that's a wrap!

Thank you everyone who submitted questions, Hopefully we provided some value here. How can people get in touch [00:49:00] with you if they wanted to? 

Ashley Chiasson: LinkedIn. I'm on LinkedIn, Ashley Chiasson. I'm on the internet, AshleyChiasson. com. I have the YouTube channel. I'm on Twitter at AMDChiasson. I'm always happy to help if anyone wants to reach out and connect. 

Devlin Peck: All right. And I know you have a mailing list as well, right on the top of your website. It's that get the free course development plan and then they'll be on your list. So if anyone wants to stay in touch with Ashley, that's a good way to do it as well. So thanks everyone. Thank you so much, Ashley, and I will see you all next week.

Ashley Chiasson: Thank you.

Devlin Peck: Bye bye.