Getting from Ideas to Concrete Projects with Potential Clients

Posted on by Seniye Groff

Being a freelancer sounds so glamorous to my full-time, gainfully employed friends.  And I agree that the flexibility and versatility is pretty sweet.  But what often gets forgotten, is that I actually have to find my work in order to have work.  So how does a freelancer truly move from concepts to actual paying work with a potential client?  There are a few things that I do that help make an initial vision turn into an actual real project.

Similar to an effective interviewing strategy when job hunting, you need to research the company that is interviewing you.  Go beyond learning the mission and the year the company was founded.  Go beyond finding out who runs the company.  Instead, figure out how this particular company ranks in the industry.  Determine the influencing factors that are shaping the industry. Learn what trends are happening that could effect the company.  So rank, influencing factors and trends are key to crafting a solution that could lead to a project.

Then determine if the particular company you want to work with is a cutting edge company or just follows standard practices. Being cutting edge or run of the mill is not right or wrong, but it does indicate how zany or normal your suggested ideas should be.  For example, if the company you are targeting likes to be a leader in their industry, do not dare suggest boring solutions that everyone else is doing, too.

Another research practice I use is to visit Glassdoor.  Often, job seekers use Glassdoor, but I contend that even as a freelancer Glassdoor can provide you with valuable insight to help aid in the solutions strategy that you must develop.  Glassdoor tells you what is working well and not-so-well at most any company you can think of.  Reading the employee comments helps you see any emerging themes and again, can guide you in your solutions.

Finally, LinkedIn is another valuable research tool.  First, see what the company is posting.  The information will give you insight on what is important to the company.  Secondly, review how you are connected to the company.  Determine if there is anyone you might know and if so, reach out to them and ask any lingering questions you might have.

So examining the industry trends, reviewing Glassdoor and researching LinkedIn are three great ways to find out more about a prospective client.  The information you glean, can help you create a solutions strategy that should be insightful, targeted and educated.  What things have you done when crafting a strategy to learn more about your client and its business?

The Power of LinkedIn

Posted on by Seniye Groff

Almost everyone in the professional world is familiar with and uses LinkedIn (at least I hope so!).  I was recently updating my profile and noticed a few new things I could do and thought I would share.

  1. There is now a headline area.  Oftentimes, it is just a person’s job title, but you can actually write an attention-grabbing line.  If done correctly, a reader can immediately figure out what you are passionate about or where you add value.  Pretty cool.
  2. A background photo can now be added.  So in addition to a profile photo (head shot) you can add a background picture.  Again using this feature, is a great way to tell the recruiter or who ever is viewing your profile, what you are all about or passionate about.
  3. In the experience section, you can add a link to the employer’s site.  This can add credibility.
  4. Make sure you add your volunteer experience (this is not a new feature) but show’s the world you are a well-rounded individual.
  5. Under Interests, there are some features including Pulse, Companies, Slide Share, Online Learning and Groups.  Some of this I am using and some I am still exploring.  It’s pretty robust!

What features of LinkedIn do you use?

The Beauty of Instructional Design

Posted on by Seniye Groff

I recently found an article titled, “Instructional Design for Unfamiliar Topics“.  It really helps explain how instructional designers (IDs) are able to do what they do.  Almost every piece of content I am asked to develop into training or documentation is information I am unfamiliar with.  The key to success is to do your due diligence by exploring any documentation, website or other materials that exist to learn what they heck “they are talking about”!  During my discovery phase, I look at websites, employee surveys, site visits, documents, tools and meetings with management.  Once I have reviewed all the above resources, I usually assemble an employee meeting of about 15-20 people that have various roles in the organization, as well as, varying levels of tenure.  Viewpoints from a veteran are certainly different from a newbie!

I then assemble and ask great questions.  Everyone I meet, either one-on-one or in group meetings are asked lots of questions.  From there, emergent themes usually evolve and then I can put together an initial instructional plan (IP). From this IP, I meet with SMEs to see if I have hit all the important points.  Finally at this point, I have a firm grasp on the content and can move forward with developing materials.

What are your tried and true tactics to writing about something you are not familiar with?

Change Management Starts with You!

Posted on by Seniye Groff

Why is it that change is so difficult for people to master?  I believe that change is about loss of control.  Same old, same old creates a comfortable blanket of habit.  Habit allows us to operate on “auto pilot”.  So how can companies help employees with the control loss?  Lots!  Some of my ideas include:

  • Communicate early and often!  You truly cannot over communicate.  Use a variety of methods: open forums. newsletters, games etc.
  • Consider asking a group of employees what some obstacles might be, and then create an FAQs page addressing each of those questions.  And continue to update the list when real-time questions occur.
  • Make change part of the fabric of your company’s culture.  Discuss change openly and even create fun events around little change.  This arms your employees with practice before big, important change really happens.
  • Create a pilot group and have them involved in all aspects of the upcoming change.  They can alert management to items that were missed or not considered and they will become your change advocates down the road.
  • Execute well.  There is nothing worse than poor delivery to hinder momentum for your organizational change.

What have you seen in your workplace that helped change happen successfully or likewise, a dud?  Let me know!

Bread!

Posted on by Seniye Groff

I realize it is currently popular to cut carbs and even gluten, but I love baking bread.  I love the process of trying various recipes and have been exploring more recipes that require proofing the bread for longer and longer.  I find the longer a bread is proofed, the more it tastes like what I find in my local bakery.  I also love the aroma that fills the house once my bread is baked.  Instantly, when the kids walk into the house from their long school day, they smell it and smile.

The most recent recipe I made was Smitten Kitchen’s oat and wheat sandwich bread.  The recipes says that the longer the bread proofs, the better it gets.  I let mine proof for two days and it was delicious!  This is truly a nice dense bread and the kids did not mind that it was made from whole wheat flour and oats!

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Have You Ever Tried a Float?

Posted on by Seniye Groff

Last night a friend picked me up and did not tell me where we were going.  She had planned an outing for us to celebrate my birthday.  I truly had no idea what she was doing.  We landed not too far from home, but a world away from anything I had done before.  Actually she had never done it either!  We were going to float.  I had never heard of it and was intrigued.  My friend disclosed that she was a little nervous.

I entered a private room, notably called, “The Princess Room”.  I undressed, showered in the dark (with a shower head that displayed multiple colors of lights, and got into a salt water tank.  I kept the lights on at first, but then decided to try the “total darkness” option.  Because of all the salt, you float in about four inches of water.  It is dark and completely silent, so you lose track of time and frankly don’t even feel your body.  I did this for one and a half hours and at first, I really wondered how I was going to last that long doing “nothing”.

The weightlessness is amazing.  You really do not feel your body.  I closed my eyes and just drifted.  I will say that it would have been PERFECT if the room was ten degrees warmer.  The water was 93.7 degrees and that was fine, but any body part not in the water felt just a little too cool for me.

Interestingly enough, my friend did not enjoy it and actually ended her session early.  It was probably one of the most thoughtful birthday gifts I have received.  It really forced me to try something new (which I do believe I am pretty good at, but this definitely took it up a notch).  I have decided that for the next 365 days I am going to try or to do or to learn something new.  It could be something tiny or something really “out there”.  This experience was the perfect way to kick it off.  Today, I ran a totally new route.  Day one, check that “new” thing done!

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Bread Making for the Home Cook

Posted on by Seniye Groff

I like to bake bread and have made sandwich loaves for years.  You know the drill…warm the milk, get the temperature precise, knead, rise for two hours, knead, rise again and then finally, BAKE!  I have wanted to up my “bread game” and try to create the more sophisticated loaves that I can buy at the corner bread shop.  I have poured through recipes and learned that this type of bread is the result of longer fermenting times.  So instead of two hour rise times, use less yeast but let the dough rise (or ferment) for 18-24 hours.  I found a recipe that is so UN-labor intensive I figured there was no way the bread would turn out, but to my surprise, not only did it turn out but it is delicious (aka my 13 year old daughter ate almost the entire loaf in one sitting!).  It’s that good.

On my second loaf I added a sprinkling of kosher salt on the outside before cooking it (my husband’s idea!) and it resulted in a really yummy, crispy crust. I played with the recipe and found that the water needed ranges from 1 1/2 cup to almost two cups.  The dough might seem dry, but you will see after fermentation that it is quite wet.  Have no fear…it will taste delicious in the end!

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Writing Effective Assessments

Posted on by Seniye Groff

There are many types of assessments used to check learning.  Generally, formative assessments are learning activities that appear throughout a course, whereas summative assessments usually appear at the end. The table below summarizes the differences.

Formative

(learning activities, challenges, learning aids, knowledge checks, guided practices, learning modules)

 Summative

(activities, tests, quizzes, challenges, exams, assessments)
  • Low consequences for failure (learners can reverse decisions and responses)
  •  Feedback prescriptive and instructive, guiding the learner
  • Used as a learning aid or practice
  • Can be used to diagnose areas where learners need to improve
  • Used as a basis for improvement or checkpoint before continuing to the next section
  • Feedback appears frequently, usually after a learner chooses a response or makes a decision
  • Usually appears at the end of a section and covers only one or two sections (non-cumulative)
  • Qualitative feedback
  • High consequences for failure (learners may have to retake the whole test)
  • Learners only given one chance to answer each question
  • Decisions (such as in a selling simulation) not reversible
  • Used to determine if learners pass or fail the course
  • Feedback is corrective (learner should know material by this point)
  • Feedback can appear after each question or cumulatively at the end
  • Usually appears at the end of a course or after many sections (cumulative)
  • Qualitative or quantitative feedback (depending on number and nature of previous assessments)

Match assessment types and questions with the outcome you want

The best place to start in your assessment is with your learning objectives. In fact, you can map out your assessment questions before even writing the course as a way to keep the questions focused on the objectives. What behavior or outcome do you want to affect? This is where it’s useful to pull out the Bloom’s Taxonomy and decide which level of learning you want for each assessment question or section.

Try to focus on the behavior you’re trying to affect. For example, say a learning objective calls for sales reps to know enough about product specs to make the right recommendations to customers. You may find yourself writing assessment questions that test learners’ knowledge of product specs, but is memorization the behavior you’re looking for? Probably not. What you probably want the sales rep to do is know how and where to find those specs. In that case, your assessment would instruct learners to use the sales tools at hand to find the right specs instead of requiring them to memorize the specs.

Tips

The following tips are guidelines for knowing what to do and what to avoid when writing summative assessments:

  • Map your questions to the course’s learning objectives.
  • Feel free to use prescriptive feedback (especially if the course is light on activities).
  • Keep feedback short.
  • Make sure correct answers are similar in length to incorrect responses (i.e., avoid the tendency to make the correct answer the longest one).
  • Make all possible responses reasonable (second-guess some incorrect responses that learners might come up with).
  • Use humor sparingly.
  • Avoid constructions like “Which of the following is NOT…” and, in your feedback, “none of the above” or “A and C only.”
  • If you use “all of the above,” make sure it isn’t always the correct answer.
  • Make sure the answers to assessment questions can be found in the course; if you want learners to use data sheets or other sales tools, indicate that in the instructional text.

What has worked for you when you write assessments?