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Tag: eLearning

Building Your Personal Brand

A few months ago I was invited to be part of a panel discussion on personal branding at the Australian Institute of Training and Development (AITD) national conference. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to attend so I asked Michelle Ockers (who lead the discussion) if it would be ok if I wrote a blog post on the topic, using some of her discussion questions as a basis of the post. She kindly agreed and so here are my thoughts…

Michelle defines a personal brand as:

“While we associate brands with large corporations and products, the idea of having a personal brand is relatively recent. It would be easy to dismiss the idea of building a personal brand as hype or inauthentic. Perhaps it helps to view your personal brand as another term for your professional reputation. It is about who others think you are, what your purpose is, and what you stand for.”

This sums it up nicely and I would also add that it’s your actions both online and in person that both define and support your brand.

Describe your personal brand.

I started being active online about three years ago and I never intentionally set out to build my personal brand, its evolved over time. My driver came from seeing a lot of negativity towards eLearning and rather than just being a critic, I thought why not flip it around and do something about improving my own practice and helping others in the field do the same.

This is why my website contains mostly practical (and hopefully helpful) content designed to give others some ideas that they can use in their projects straight away. I also use my website to reflect and show that I’m still learning as I go too.

I’ve never been motivated by numbers of followers or connections and while it’s nice to see them grow (because hopefully it means that I’m reaching more people) I don’t set targets in terms of numbers.

Why is a personal brand important?

A lot of people (and I was no different) wait until something happens with their career – maybe they’ve become unhappy in their job, things change in their workplace or they lose their job altogether – before they take action and think about who they are and where they want to be.

Most people have a resume and/or an online profile and often they are just lots of descriptors about what someone says they can do. They all start to look the same after a while but a personal brand can bring those words to life and show who you are, what you can do, what you’re good at and most importantly help you to stand out from the crowd.

I’ve also found that having a personal brand can open up other opportunities career wise such as invitations to speak at conferences which in turn helps you to reinforce your message.

What are some of the most valuable things you’ve done to build your personal brand?

I’ve done a few things to build my brand – starting this blog, using Twitter and LinkedIn in a targeted way and being active in the Articulate E-Learning Heroes community. But with all of them the one thing I did was participate. While you might start off watching from the sidelines, you need to get involved and if you want to build a strong brand you’ll need to move from just consuming the work of others to also being a creator and putting your own work/thoughts/ideas ‘out there’.

How do you find time to build your personal brand?

It’s not always easy to find the time but if you learn to use your time more effectively you can fit things in, for example use the time you spend commuting to work on the bus or train (I wrote the first draft of this post on a plane trip home), get up a little earlier or set aside a couple of hours on the weekend. If you’re serious about building a personal brand, you either need to find the time or make the time. It takes effort to build and maintain your personal brand but the investment is definitely worth it.

I’m also fortunate that my employer – B Online Learning – is supportive of myself and my colleagues having our own identities in the wider learning community.

Any advice for those new/wanting to build a personal brand?

Firstly, ask yourself: What am I passionate about? Building a personal brand is a bit like gardening, there’s a bit of work in the beginning to get things in place but then you need to maintain and keep working on it otherwise it will wither away. If you’re not passionate, you won’t be able to sustain the effort needed to grow your brand.

I’d also suggest starting out small and building from there as there’s no need to do everything at once. Also keep in mind that you may not get much response to your actions initially but don’t give up as people need to get to know you and what it is you’re about.

My main tool for building my personal brand is my website that started out as a blog and has grown to include samples of work, suggested folks to connect with, downloadable templates and more recently ‘how-to’ video clips. I also use Twitter and LinkedIn to promote myself (be careful not to overdo the self-promotion) but I also like to promote others via these same channels. You need to find tools that you’re comfortable using.

When you decide on the tools you’ll use you need to be consistent in posting and sharing. Try to do something at least every day so that others will see your passion.

In terms of an online profile a couple of tips would be have a good picture of yourself (not a cropped picture from a holiday or function) and also have a description of yourself that summarises who you are and what you want to be known for.

Remember, your personal brand is up to you.

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May 6, 2016
Sliding Along with the Force

A few weeks ago I was delivering a Storyline 2 session in Brisbane and we were looking at the slider interaction and how you can use a slider to change the state of an object and also use it to show layers. In the change of state example we were looking at, you slide the thumb along the track and the colour of an image changes. One of the participants asked if it were possible to change the colour of the thumb to match the colour of the image and my response was “I’m not sure, I haven’t tried that before but let’s check it out and see if it can be done”.

So, I clicked on the slider and went to the states area and I was pleasantly surprised to see that sliders have ‘states’. As it turns out, you can add new slider states and then format the slider for your new states (in our class example, I could change the thumb colour to match the image colour). Cool! I was also happy that person asked this question or I may never have known about slider states!

Flashback to late 2015, and David Anderson created an ELH Challenge to coincide with the release of the new Star Wars movie, The Force Awakens. E-Learning Heroes Challenge #110 – Awaken Your E-Learning Force. The brief was to build a Star Wars-themed interaction, this week your challenge is.

Sometimes ideas for challenge demos come to me quickly but sometimes I need to percolate ideas in my subconscious for a while and this was one of those challenges. I did have some illustrated Star Wars characters that I wanted to use for the demo and an idea of a trivia type interaction, just no solid idea for bringing them together in a different way.

Jumping back to the present and after I discovered that sliders have states, I thought that’s it! I could create a slider state for each character (six in total) and I could also have a question for each character to correspond with the change in image.

So this is what I did:

I inserted a slider and in the Thumb Fill area, filled it with a picture of my first character. I had to play around with the sizing of the thumb so that it wasn’t too small. For the track, I chose no fill and no outline which made it transparent. Then I created a new state for each character and named each state to correspond with the character:

The thumb picture changes using a change of state trigger (one for each character):

Each of the questions is built on a layer:

I used shapes for my questions and feedback with 40% transparency and shapes for my answers choices too. As there was only one correct answer, I grouped the choices in a button set which only allows one answer to be selected at a time. The correct/incorrect feedback boxes are on this layer too and they both start as ‘hidden’ and change state to normal depending on which answer is chosen. This is what it looks like for the Stormtrooper layer:

To save some time, once I had the first layer working the way I wanted, I duplicated it and then changed the information and adjusted the triggers. A show layer trigger based on the slider position makes each layer show. So as you slide the thumb along, the picture changes to a different character and a question for that character is also shown along with some feedback (and where possible, I used a quote from that character from one of the movies).

You can try the demo yourself by clicking on the image below:

Let me know what you think and you can see all of my ELH Challenge entries on My Portfolio page.

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March 7, 2016
Looking Closer at Images

E-Learning Heroes Challenge #114 – Interactive Video: Zooming and Magnifying Images in E-Learning. The brief: This week, your challenge is to share a solution to allow learners to zoom in or magnify parts of an image, graphic, document, or video.

This was one of those challenges that I wanted to have a go at because even though Storyline has built-in zooming (which is pretty cool) to make parts of an image larger or to get a close up of a section of a scene, I wanted to try to create a way of making parts of an image larger without using the zoom feature. I had this coffee machine image that I’d used for something else and I thought I could use it again this time to explore the different parts.

I kind of flipped the challenge idea on it’s head because rather than zoom in to look more closely at the parts, why not have the parts become larger so they can be seen along with a description. Because it’s a demo, I didn’t build out the interaction completely but just made a couple of the parts clickable – the control panel and the handle where the coffee goes.

Initially I tried to build all of the interactivity on the slide (base layer) but I ended up needing to use a couple of layers. I created my first layer for the control panel and copied my image and pasted it onto the layer (when you do this, the image is pasted in exactly the same position as it is on the base layer). Then, while still on the layer, I cropped the image so that only the panel section was visible. Next I added a motion path to the cropped image to make it move away from the complete image.

I decided to use a change of state to make the cropped image appear larger, so I created a new state for the control panel:

The great thing about motion paths is that you can add triggers to make other things happen once an object reaches the end of its motion path. In this demo, the image of the panel changes to the large state, the text box description changes state (from hidden to normal) and the whole coffee machine image also changes to a washout state – I added that later – when the motion path animation completes. I repeated this process on the second layer (the coffee handle).

It was a bit of trial and error to get the large versions of the cropped images to appear in the right place but it didn’t take too long to get it right. I also added a trigger to hide each of the layers when the timeline ends. This worked ok for the purpose of the demo but I’d probably add an object for someone to click on to hide the layer if I was going to use this in a project.

Then back on the base layer, I inserted two freeform hotspots that give the user something to click on to show their respective layers:

Interesting fact: Hotspots are 53% transparent!

That’s it, an interaction that makes part of an image larger without using the built in zoom. You can try the demo yourself by clicking on the image below:

Let me know what you think and you can see all of my ELH Challenge entries on My Portfolio page.

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January 26, 2016
Happy Same Year!?

Welcome to 2016!

As a new year is upon us, it’s that time again where folks who blog about learning and development share their predictions for the coming year. It’s always fun to see where people think the field is going and it would be interesting to look back on the year in December to see how close their predictions were.

So, in the spirit of a new year I thought I’d throw out a few ideas of my own about L&D for the year ahead (specifically for those working in L&D). My overall prediction is that what’s easy to do will be favoured over what’s necessary and while there may be good intentions across the L&D field to change, most of these won’t come to fruition.

Here’s some specific thoughts:

Professional Development
Attending conferences will be the main source of PD for learning folks, after all it’s a day or two out of the office, the food is usually good and there’s the possibility of gathering some forward-thinking ideas from the presenters. Then it’s back to work all juiced up with the intention of ‘doing things differently’ but the ideas will either be forgotten completely within a week or will be blocked by someone at a more senior level and subsequently abandoned without a fight.

Formal courses will also be relied on for the ongoing development of learning and development folks which will be the reason why courses will be offered as the default option to upskill employees. After all, if L&D people only take courses they’re not exposing themselves to different ways of learning so how can they offer other methods to others?

Workplace Learning
Online courses will continue to be used as stand-alone, one-off learning experiences or a way to convert classroom sessions and will involve shovelling copious amounts of content at those who are forced to take them. Considered design, user experience, contextualisation and personalisation will take a backseat to content dumps. Micro, on-demand and social learning will not feature on the L&D radar or be integrated with more formal approaches. Many learning folks will be left scratching their heads as to why courses don’t deliver value or change behaviour and the business will again dismiss L&D as a waste of time.

Learning Research
There’s a large existing body of learning research and evidence about how people process information and learn. This year, the research will again be ignored completely in learning design (mainly due to a lack of awareness that it even exists) although a preference for incorporating learning styles and use of the MBTI instrument will remain as popular as ever.

Social Media
Using tools like blogs, LinkedIn, Twitter, Yammer or Pinterest will be largely ignored by learning professionals (for personal and workplace learning) apart from a short spike in usage after attending a learning conference. This will fade in the days after the event as pre-conference ways of working and learning take over. The perception of SoMe as ‘goofing off’ will remain strong in organisations and at the same time the opportunity for free, on-demand learning will be lost as connection to people and access to knowledge is blocked by corporate firewalls.

While this post is somewhat tongue-in-cheek and generalises everyone, it does reflect what I see among learning and development professionals that I come into contact with. I do know that there are L&D folks who are chipping away at change but they are definitely in the minority. I’m really hoping that the opposite of what I’ve written here happens in 2016 so let’s check back at the end of the year and see…

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January 15, 2016
Looking Back at 2015

Well another year has just about come and gone and at this time of year like many folks who write blogs I like to look back and reflect on the posts I’ve written. Blog writing is a personal thing and everyone has their own style and approach which makes the diversity between writers and topics both interesting and thought-provoking. If I had to sum up where I’m at with my blogging and the style of posts I write in one word, it would be Practicality.

I read a lot of posts and tweets that are critical of eLearning modules (some for good reasons) and I often tell people that an eLearning module is a learning solution it’s not always the learning solution. But it does have a purpose, so instead of constantly bagging it out, my approach is: Why don’t we do something about improving the standard of eLearning?

So that’s why I like to share posts that explain how to do something and allow the reader to take something away and maybe use in their own course development. Sure, at the moment there’s a focus on using the tool which is important but I intend to expand this next year because eLearning is much more than knowing how to use an authoring tool.

I’m learning stuff all the time so why not share the knowledge and put it back into the community so here’s my posts from the year that was, grouped by topic area. Click on a title to view the post.

Storyline 2

These posts are about things I’ve learned about or discovered in Storyline 2:

More than One Way with Storyline 2 – How I updated a slider-based interaction to a button and number variable interaction.

Template Facelift – How I redesigned my ‘Meet the Team’ interaction.

Spinning Around with Storyline 2 – How I created a carousel-style interaction using a slider and layers.

3 Things I’ve Just Discovered in Storyline 2 – I’d just started a new job and my colleagues made me aware of these three handy features.

E-Learning Heroes Challenges

These posts take a behind-the-scenes look at how I created some of my challenge demos. I used to call them ‘Showing My Work #x’ but I didn’t think it was helpful to the reader plus it sounded a bit wanky so I started to give them a catchy name:

Pushing My Buttons – ELH Challenge #89: Creative Button Styles.

100 Not Out – Celebrating 100 ELH Challenges.

Bingo Time! – ELH Challenge #98: E-Learning Bingo Games.

Making Videos Interactive – ELH Challenge #94: Interactive Video.

Showing My Work #11 – ELH Challenge #18: Using Characters in E-Learning.

Showing My Work #10 – ELH Challenge #52: Using Interactive Sliders in E-Learning.

Showing My Work #9 – ELH Challenge #71: Teaching Math Concepts with E-Learning.

Theoretical

These posts delve into the area of information processing and cognitive load which are important areas to know about when creating eLearning:

Designing Effective Multimedia Lessons for Learning – a university essay I wrote about the Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning and research-based principles that will improve eLearning design.

The Human Memory System – a university essay I wrote about human cognitive architecture.

Reflective

Sometimes I just reflected and put down my thoughts and ideas. I’d like to do more of this next year:

Half-baked Ideas – a few random thoughts that may become posts of their own in the future.

Looking Behind the Façade – my thoughts on showing your work and working out loud.

Evolution – about how my career has changed for the better.

Practice and Sharing: The Keys to Success – an older post with my two takeaways from LearnX.

Flipped Networking – about how it’s becoming more common meet people online via social media before in person at a conference.

Thanks to everyone who has read or commented or liked or shared something from this site, I really appreciate it. I’d like to wish you all the best for the festive season and for the new year ahead.

Who knows what 2016 will hold…

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December 13, 2015