From E-Learning Newbie to Super (Hero) Success Story on E-Learning Heroes
As an independent instructional designer, I’ve benefitted enormously from the Articulate E-Learning Heroes community. I’m always encouraging freelancers and newbies to get involved, but have never shared how the community helped me successfully transition to e-learning. I’ve never even shared my best tips for getting the most out of it! It’s time to fix that. Here’s how I ended up making ELH my online professional home. Step 1: I Learned the Software I discovered Articulate software in 2010 when another tool failed shortly before my very first e-learning project was due. I had to download Articulate Studio, learn it, and be instantly productive. If it hadn’t been for the fantastic step-by-step tutorials and tips (for Studio and now for Articulate Storyline), I’d never have recovered so seamlessly. The client loved the course and Articulate had a devoted new fan. Downloading and using free templates and course assets helped me learn even more. Step 2: I Learned About the Field I was already an experienced instructional designer for ILT, but Tom Kuhlmann’s blog helped me find my center as I learned about e-learning. His Insider’s Guide to Becoming a Rapid E-Learning Pro was perfect to steer me in the right direction to learn more. Spending time in the ELH forums was quite helpful, but getting to lurk and learn from others’ experiences was a game-changer. I knew I was on the right track when I started going to e-learning conferences and felt perfectly fluent and at home in the field. Step 3: I Gained Practice, Visibility, and Portfolio Pieces David Anderson started the weekly challenges in August of 2013, but it took me a good five months to make the time (and get up the courage!) to put in an entry. Once I realized the result was encouragement and support (rather than public humiliation), I was hooked and have completed nearly every challenge since. The challenges were a HUGE key to reaching the next level for me. They provided me with real-world, regular practice in the software and in instructional and visual design. I gained greater confidence in my skills, scads of usable portfolio pieces, and greater visibility in a wider network of my peers. Step 4: I Started Connecting with Others The benefits of reading forum discussions or tossing in challenge entries now and then are great, but I quickly realized that unless I took the time to meaningfully connect with others, I wasn’t going to get the full benefit of the community. As soon as I started answering forum questions and finding other ways to help, I became truly invested. Step 5: I Started Giving Back I wrote blog posts about my challenge entries to share my ideas, how I made them, what inspired me, and links to resources that might be helpful. Then I started sharing templates and other course assets. When people started contacting me for offline help and advice I did my best to help them, too. Finding the time to give back feels like a stretch, but when you see how you can make a difference in someone else’s success, it keeps you going. My (Super)-Secret E-Learning Heroes Tips Here are some ELH success factors I’ve learned along the way. No one taught them to me, but I’m happy to share them with you. Find Your Place I found a natural fit in the challenges, but that may not be a place that you love or feel you can shine in, learn from, or offer the most. Others feel most at home in the Building Better Courses discussions or the more technical Storyline or Studio ones. Find your footing and go from there. Focus You can’t do it all. You can’t be everywhere doing everything and helping everybody all the time. It’s not sustainable. Once you’ve found your place, give it your full attention. Commit I’m busy and could easily say I don’t have the time to stay involved, but I’ve promised myself that I’ll keep up with the challenges and help others when I can. No one forces me to do it. No one expects me to do it. It’s a personal commitment that keeps me going. Connect Meaningfully There’s a difference between responding to someone and thoughtfully connecting with them. As an example, when I want to support someone’s efforts, I find out if they have a blog, encourage them to write and share, and comment on their posts. I’m not trying to get attention for myself; I’m trying to encourage them in a thoughtful way because I’m excited about their success. Even when people contact me via LinkedIn, Twitter, or my blog, I check to see if they are ELH members so I can see what they are working on or contributing to so I can say something personal to them. Is it above and beyond? Yes. Is it an effective way to genuinely support others and build a strong network of peers? Yes. Challenge Yourself Pushing yourself to learn from ELH posts—from peers who know the software inside and out, terrific designers, and others who actively share in our community—will pay off. Your skills and knowledge will increase, your expertise will become more widely known, and it will be easier to reach your goals and stay relevant in the field well into the future. Aren’t we lucky to have such a great community?5 Ways You Can Advocate for Your Value to the Business as a Course Creator
In an ideal world, leadership would always have a clear view of the impact of your e-learning projects and your unique value to the organization. But that view can be much foggier in real life than we’d like it to be. When our company or leadership doesn’t get what course creators like us do or how it benefits them, we can end up on shaky ground. That lack of understanding makes it hard for us to push back against training cuts. It makes it tricky to get budget increases for tech investments or team expansion. And it can even lead to the mistaken belief that we can easily be replaced by new technology or people without e-learning expertise. Thankfully, many of these issues stem from an easy-to-address source—a lack of awareness. Tipping the balance back in your favor is often as easy as advocating for your work and yourself. Not sure how to do that? Here are a few good places to start. 1. Find your champions It’s possible to do this self-advocacy work on your own. But you’ll probably reach more ears and shift perceptions faster if other people are talking up your work too. Think of it like how you might decide where to eat when traveling to a new city. Intriguing social media posts from a restaurant might get your attention. But chances are a trusted friend telling you about their favorite dining spot in town is more likely to influence your decision. Who might step up to champion your work or team? Consider tapping into people like: Subject matter experts (SMEs) that you have a strong working relationship with. Learners who’ve given your e-learning glowing reviews. Stakeholders who’ve seen the impact your past projects made on the business. Trusted coworkers who know how great your work is—and why it should matter to others. If you’re feeling awkward about asking people to praise your work, just keep your requests small at first. For instance, if an SME emails you a compliment about how easy you’ve been to work with, ask them to forward it to your manager as well. 2. Be loud and proud about your successes We sometimes get siloed off in learning and development. As a result, other teams may have no idea what we’re working on and why it’s so important to the company. If you’re feeling a bit invisible, a good solution is to put on your marketing hat and pursue opportunities to share what you’re doing. This is a great time to tap into your manager and champions to help you find ways to share your work. Large-scale efforts—like presenting at a department meeting, sharing an eye-catching infographic about the impact of a course, or making a year-in-review video highlighting your team’s biggest wins—can all help. But even smaller actions—like asking someone who gave a glowing review of your course to tell their team why they should take it too—can get the word out there. While you’re doing this promo work, don’t just focus on the final project. Also talk up the unique skills and ideas you and your team contributed to make it succeed. That way people don’t just get excited about the finished content—they’ll also get excited about what you and your team bring to the table. 3. Share how what you do connects to broader business goals The people we work with may have a vague sense that e-learning benefits the company in some way. But they may not know precisely how. Or sometimes they understand the surface benefits of our e-learning—like how compliance training checks off a legal requirement—but may not see the deeper, more meaningful impacts it makes in the long run. The best way to turn this situation around is to help these colleagues make those connections. Look for opportunities to call out the specific ways your projects contribute to key company goals. For instance, maybe that compliance course also helped reduce workplace injuries or prevented costly fines. And be sure to be direct about these links so there’s no ambiguity about the impact of your work. 4. Talk to your audience in terms they care about While you’re talking up what you do, also think about how you’re framing that information. When you’re chatting with other learning professionals, eyes will often light up when you share how a project met your learning objectives, used a development tool in a creative way, or tied into learning research. But that likely won’t mean as much—or sometimes anything—to people outside our field. Instead, promote your work in ways that will speak to your audience. For instance, if they’ve complained to you about the boring and useless e-learning at their last job, tell them about all the ways you're making your courses interesting and practical. If your project can help with their team’s goals, tell them how it does that. Or, if you know they’re constantly feeling crunched for time, play up the key ways you’re streamlining your projects. That way, they’ll know you’re making a difference on things that matter to them personally. 5. Do the math to connect your successes to the bottom line Want a measure of success that’s easy to get people excited about? Focus on money. In some cases, financial numbers are easy to uncover—for instance, if you launched training on upselling a new product and the sales numbers immediately went up. Other times, though, you might need to break out your calculator to convert one kind of win into a financial one. For example, if you shaved ten minutes off of your company’s annual compliance training, that may not initially sound like a big deal. But if you have 60,000 employees that have to take it, that’s 10,000 hours of saved work time. If your company’s average hourly salary is $25, that ten-minute trim saved the company $250,000. And those are numbers that can impress! Have a situation where your training wasn’t the only factor at play? You can still frame the final savings or profits as something your work contributed to. That way, you’re acknowledging the other factors but not downplaying that your work had an important part to play in the mix. Wrap-Up Advocating for yourself and your work may not solve all the challenges you face in your professional life. But it’s a good first step toward boosting your visibility and ensuring your organization knows just how much you have to offer. Not only that, but it can even open doors for your career that you didn’t know were possible. Want more ideas on building buy-in for you and your work? Check out these articles: 2 Ways To Show the Value of Online Training Here’s How To Prove the Value of Training to Your Organization Use KPIs To Demonstrate the Value of E-Learning Subscribe to our newsletter to get the latest e-learning inspiration and insights directly in your inbox. 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