If I Show You My Portfolio, I Have to Kill You

It may be similar to a popular line in many movies, but "if I show you my portfolio, I'll have to kill you" is no joke for many people.

In the field of instructional design, eLearning and training, professionals often get jobs or new contracts based on their documented performance.  This means that potential bosses and clients can look at work that you have done for previous clients. This gives prospective employers a very good idea about what you can do for them. 

It is very common now that prospective employers/clients ask to see samples of work.  As professionals in instructional design, eLearning, and training, it is safe to say that we are at a great disadvantage if we cannot share our work samples with others.  

So what do you do if you work for the National Security Agency, or Apple?  They won't let you talk about what you do, much less share your work samples with other companies. This presents quite a dilemma for people who work at places that have policies that forbid employees and contractors to share work samples.  In the government security arena (NSA, CIA, DOD, etc.), it is common that employees can't even talk about work with people outside their work environment.  The main reasons an organization may do this can include confidentiality, proprietary information, trade secrets, or security issues.

The first thing you need to do is check your employer's or client's policy about showing your work. The purpose of this is to find out exactly what you can do and what you cannot do.  If you are unclear you should ask questions. It may be helpful to pose real questions about some work you have already done.  With some smaller employers, be prepared that they may not have a policy on this.  

After finding out what your organizations' policy is here are some possible options:

1. "White out" or redact references to your company name in your work samples.

2. Use approved excerpts as a smaller sample of your work.  For example, you may be able to use 18 pages form a design document that totals 50 pages.

3.  Use work sample that are not confidential or proprietary such a "new employee orientation training" or a compliance training course that you created.

4.  Use approved screenshots from eLearning courses if you cannot provide access to a live course.

5. Revisit older work samples.  We sometimes forget what we've accomplished.  Look at old resumes or employee performance appraisal to find ideas or leads on older work samples that you can use. 

6. Revisit academic work samples.  You may have work samples from classes that you can use. Our Instructional Design program at UMBC requires students to create projects that many use as portfolio samples.

7. Volunteer for an organization to create a new work sample that you will be free for you to share.  It is rare for an organization to turn down a volunteer in our field.  This option will take time, but it may be the only option for some people who work in restrictive environments.

8.  At times, some people may be able to get hired or win contracts based on referrals from former employers or former clients.  While it is not the same thing as using work samples, this can work for some people.

Work samples are very important to our career advancement.  Make sure you are clear about who owns the content and how the work can be shared.  

What I Wish They Told Me Before I Taught My First eLearning Course

With online learning being so popular now, many trainers and college faculty are learning to teach their first online class.  Today a number of great resources are available to beginning online teachers.  These resources range from blogs and websites dedicated to this to entire books on the subject.  Additionally, there are numerous great courses now that help you learn how to teach online.  I taught my first online graduate level course over ten years ago.  The resources were not as plentiful as they are now.  I was given a syllabus and an empty course shell in Blackboard.  I think someone wished me good luck. That was about it.

Looking back there are a number of things that I wish someone told me before I taught my first online class. Here are some of them:

1. Know Your Students - It is important that you get to know your students (and their motivations). For example, do they need your course to graduate this semester?  Are they working three jobs and taking care of kids?  Are students taking your course because they love the topic?  Or did they register because all their other class choices were filled?  Have they taken online classes before?  Beware the students taking you class because they think that online classes are "easier".

2. Be Deliberate About Communication - Have a plan about how and when you communicate with your students.  For example, I tell my students to expect a response from me in 24-48 hours when they post a question or send me a direct email.  Don't leave them guessing.  Over the years I have received numerous VERY long emails from students.  They have dozens of questions and concerns about their performance in the course.  Rather than respond via email, I usually ask them to talk on the phone with me.  It gets to the point quicker and helps to deal with any issues directly.  Additionally, it may be a good idea to have a course FAQ.

3. All Students Will Not Read the Syllabus - As teachers we are very proud of our course syllabi. Be prepared that a number of students will not read it.  How do you deal with this?  You can structure an assignment that forces them to read the syllabus (scavenger hunt).  Or you can award bonus points if students can answer questions about your syllabus.  Remember that the syllabus is the contractual document between the students and the college.   When there are issues over grades, the courts always refer back to the syllabus.

4. Technology Will Fail You and Your Students - No matter what you do, technology will not work at times for you and your students.  Murphy's law mandates that this failure will happen at the worst possible moment.  Encourage (require?) your students to have access to a backup computer. Additionally, have them save everything in MS Word first before they post it.  It's also a good idea to have them save files online using tools such as Google Drive and others.  This will minimize issues such as "my hard drive died and my assignment is gone".

5. Check Your Course Every Day - I originally thought that checking my course every few days would be more than enough.  Wrong!  What I discovered was that it makes much more sense to check in online every day, even if it is only for 20 minutes or so.  Students constantly want feedback in a timely matter.  Additionally questions may pop up that are time sensitive and need to be addressed quickly.

6. Simple Is Good - My original course design was much more complicated than it is now. I used to think that "more was better".  What I discovered over the years was that I sometimes confused students by giving them too much information. They didn't know what to do or where to go on the course site.  Now I've really scaled my course design back.  The lesson I learned was "it's not about the technology".

7. Students Know How to Take An Online Course - Even though the first online course I taught was in 2004, I really thought that students knew how to take an online course.  Boy, was I wrong! Taking a course online is a completely different experience than taking a face-to-face course. What I've learned is that just because I have a lot of experience teaching and taking online courses, it doesn't mean that my students do. We sometimes forget that everybody does not use a computer every day.

8. Students Will "Disappear" - I was surprised to learn that a handful of students simply "disappeared" from my course.  What I discovered was students simply stopped showing up or stopped participating in the class.  Even worse, they never even told me why.  I had to seek them out myself. What I found out was they had work issues, personal issues, medical issues, etc.  Some stopped participating just because learning online wasn't for them.

Over the years, I've learned that online courses are not for every student, nor are they for every instructor.  As an instructor, it is helpful to keep an open mind and realize that you can always learn and get better.  Ten years from now, who knows what I'll write about this topic.

For more info, check out my video on this topic check out my video at http://www.gregwilliams.net/GregWilliams/Videos.html

Finding the Balance with Design and Development

Design or Development?

What skill are more important in creating a course...design or development?  Are they overlapping skills?  Does one feed off the other?  Confusing?  You bet!

Can you have both?  Absolutely! There are many instructional designers who are also experts with software development tools. Then again there are great authoring tool experts who really don't know that much about instructional design.

Today I see more and more people blurring instructional design and instructional development.  Both are important and both are necessary for creating effective instruction.  Design and development seems to be overlapping now more than ever.  Just take a look at job descriptions for "instructional designers and "eLearning developers".  Some employers seem to want candidates that have it all.

Anyone can claim they are instructional designer. Instructional design is not a profession that is regulated by a professional association such as  certified public accountants (CPA), project management professionals (PMP) or professional engineers (PE). I met someone once who told he was an instructional designer because he knew Dreamweaver.  I asked him if he knew how to write instructional objectives.  He said no, but if instructional objectives were important that he would figure out how to do it.  But that doesn't stop him from saying he is an instructional designer.

There is a current school of thought where some people confuse the use of developing courses with software authoring tools (e.g. Captivate, Articulate, Flash) with instructional design skills.  Someone may be an expert in Articulate's Storyline. That development skill may enable them to create a class. However, that doesn't guarantee that they possess the knowledge, skills and abilities of a well trained instructional designer.

For example, I know how to swing a hammer. Therefore, I can build a house if I wanted to, but how well constructed would the house be? Wouldn't it be better to work with a trained architect to design the house according to the client's specifications?

I imagine that some of this phenomenon can be attributed to the competition for the work itself.
Keeping with the contractor example, I know that some carpenters do masonry work when demand for carpentry work slows down.  Some consulting companies do the same thing.

Several hiring managers have told me that authoring software keeps getting easier and easier to use. Therefore, they contend that they think it's more important that their employees have very strong analysis and design skills.

I am not sure there is a right or wrong answer to this.  What do you think?