155: Essential Tools for Being an Effective L&D Professional with L&D Experts - Heidi Kirby, Tom McDowall, and Holly Owens

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Hello everyone. am super excited to be hosting this webinar with iSpring. It's inside the Expert's toolbox, top solutions for high impact e-learning design. I'm Holly Owens. I'm going to be your moderator. And I have the honor of having two fabulous people in the room with me as well. So I am going to go ahead and actually share my screen.

And then I'm going to have my two colleagues introduce themselves. So we're really excited to present to you today. And this is going to be a fun build conversation. All right. I already talked about the recording. I'm Holly. You know, I'll talk about myself a little bit later, but I want to bring Tom up to the forefront. So Tom, welcome. Tell us a little bit about you. I see that you're the chief learning geek at Evolve Learning and Development. Go ahead and tell us a little bit about yourself before we jump into the question.

Hello, I'm Tom. I'm the chief learning geek at Evolve L &D, because if you're going to create your own job title, why do something sensible? Other people go architect or head of, no, not me. At Evolve, really, what I do is all about working with L &D teams to help them be what we call radical but essential components of the business. And one major component of that is choosing the right tools to get the job done. So that's kind of my into the conversation today.

I love it. And I'm so happy to have you here. I presented at a conference with you. I don't even know how many months ago that was. It was a while ago. It was like at the beginning of this year. So we're reconnecting now, which is fabulous. And then we have the amazing Heidi Kirby. So Heidi, you know, welcome on in and tell us about you. Hi, yes. I'm Dr. Heidi Kirby and I'm a learning and development consultant at Useful Stuff.

And we also now have a useful stuff community. So I love all things L &D and being involved in L &D and talking about it like both of you on this call today. We talk about it when we are working and when we're not working. And my whole thing is just to be as useful as possible and to help people learn and work.

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I love it. And it's so great that we all get to finally sit down and have a conversation synchronously and share expertise and our ideas about tools that, you know, across the spectrum, communication, e-learning, authoring tools, you know, as instructional designers and learning and development people, we use so many different, our tech stack is stacked for sure. So we're going to dive right into it. I do encourage people, if you have questions and you want to submit those,

You can type those in the chat. We will do our best and, you know, as I kind of moderate this session, I will do my best to get those answered. And we'll also have time at the end for questions. There's going to be a lot shared here. So just, you know, be patient with us. We might put some links and things in the chat. But rest assured, again, it's being recorded and everything will be shared with you following the presentation. So sit back, relax, and enjoy the show. All right.

So let's talk about it. So the first thing that I had on the agenda that I want to talk about in terms of learning and development and the different things that we do is these written in communication tools. When we start in our roles, these are essential things that we have to be able to do. We have to be able to communicate with our colleagues. So what I want to ask, and I'm going to start with Heidi, is what are your favorite communication tools to use on your internal team?

or if you're working by yourself or maybe you're working with a client. So what are some of your favorite ones that you go after? Yeah, so as far as things for grammar and spelling and things like that, I don't use any of that because before I landed in L &D, I was a college English professor. So I am overly confident at my grammar and punctuation, and I will fight for the Oxford comma all day long.

Now that said, I will draft things. one of the things I've always hated doing as long as I've written, as long as I've been a writer, is intros and conclusions. So one of the things that I've started employing is chat GPT, because it's a good tool. I don't have it draft anything initially for me, because it's pretty terrible at that. And I prefer my own writing style, quite frankly. But it's very good at once you

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have something written giving you feedback on it. So letting you know things that you can expand on. That's something I ask usually is like, how can I expand on this? How can I make it clearer? How can I make it more concise? I have, coming from an academic background, sometimes we add fluff to add fluff. Right? Right? my gosh. All the jargon. a habit. And it's very hard to break when you get into the real world.

Oftentimes I'm asking for help making it more concise and making it clearer or like tying ideas together It's very good at that too. Like looking for a theme But in terms of like internal communication channels I really just am good with whatever they have I like slack a lot. I've liked the companies that have used slack, but I like specifically when a company has

clear channels for clear purposes, right? Because a lot of companies have a lot of communication channels, no clear purpose for any of them, and you don't really know where to put what. So I like when there's a clear, like, Slack is for non-serious conversations. Email is for more serious questions if it involves more than one part. You know, like, where there's rules and organization around the communication.

Yeah. So the effectiveness around some of these tools is really about setting the expectations of how they're going to be used. Like the tool itself doesn't operate what you do. It's like the, how you, your routines and things. Tom, I want to go to you now. What are some of your favorite tools to use? Like when you're writing and you're communicating, I mean, I could sit here and like I talk and I jump on my words a lot. like what Heidi was saying, chat GPT really helps me too. but Tom, what about you? What's your favorite?

So the biggest thing for me in terms of writing is Dragon, the natural language processor, because I'm dyslexic. So actually writing is a freaking nightmare. The amount of money I have spent on hiring proofreaders over the years, I could have bought houses, I should imagine. So being able to just talk and have the writing bits done for me is tremendously useful. Dragon's pretty accurate.

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I use that over like Windows narrator because Windows narrator is a word I shan't use on a professional channel, but it's not great, let's say. So Dragon Lies Book, what it also allows me to do is I think that the way I learned to write was through performing plays. And that's how I learned to love language. so often when I'm writing like e-learning material, I'm writing with a cadence. I'm trying to think about

Where are the beats in this story? Where's the narrative? The easiest way for me to think about that is to say it, not type it. So whatever I'm writing, chances are writing it by speaking to the computer. And then when it comes to sharing it, this is where it gets more difficult. Fewer and fewer communication platforms are actually compatible with platforms like Dragon Slack. Whenever I see someone goes, let's use Slack, my heart sinks. Cause I know I'm going to have to drag it into Dragonpad, then copy and paste it cause it won't work directly.

which is why I'm a big advocate for discourse, which no one else likes, because it's very complicated, but it integrates really well with voice typing. So it's one of those things where for me, I kind of just have to go, well, I'll get over it, I'm the outlier here. But when we talk about accessible workplace and the ability to use language, that becomes a much bigger issue, which I think often gets overlooked. And if there's a Slack developer in the chat, sort it out. It's not difficult. You're a big platform.

Make it work. Yes. I love that, Tom. And I was just about to point out the things that you're talking about are accessibility expectations here and things that should not, it should be built into the platform that we shouldn't have to necessarily worry about as users with different types of, you know, like dyslexia, those, those different types of things. We shouldn't have to use that when we're logging into these platforms. are 100 % correct. Well, you both shared some great tools and chat GPT. You talked about a little bit about Slack dragon.

and you're written in communication tools. And one of the things that I wanted to ask is just listening to you, you talk about that is what do you think are the most effective ways to communicate? And you've both probably been on large and smaller teams to communicate across those teams. I find that going into different companies, depending upon the, how big they are, how small they are, like everybody does it differently. So maybe I'll go back to you, Tom, how do you.

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What are some tips we can give to people? Like, how do we do this? We have the tools, but how do we do this in an effective way?

going to really boring now and say rules, clearly documented rules and standards and how you communicate. And that doesn't necessarily have to be like Slack channels. I'm going to use Slack as an example, it's the most common. You should have designated Slack channels. But for instance, have codes that everyone knows what they mean. So if something starts up in FYI, does that mean you all need to do this? Or does that just mean, hey, this is information, but please feel free to ignore it.

I worked at an organization recently that had this and we had FYI. We also had do before a message that meant you need to do this. There's no debate involved. You just need to get it done. And there's another one where we had idea and this was just, Hey, I've got an idea, but this isn't enforced. Please don't take this as something that's a task to do. Having standards like that in place, just avoid confusion, especially when it's asynchronous or when there's a time difference.

there's nothing worse than leaving a message with a 12-hour time difference between two readers and then you've got 12 hours of confusion before someone can clear that up. You just remind me, we neglected to mention where we're all sitting right now so speaking of time zones, Tom where are you sitting right now? So I'm in not really very sunny but Edinburgh in Scotland. Very nice and Heidi? I'm in Cleveland Ohio and it's actually sunny here for once.

Very nice. I'm sitting in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania right now. So, you know, we're all in different spaces, having this and communicating across these, this platform and talking about tools. So, so it's amazing. Tom's finishing his day. Heidi and I are kind of just in the middle of our day, which that is an important point to bring up is how you use those tools. Cause I know sometimes Slack has that, like, do you really want to tell everybody across all the different time zones is saying, are you really sure you want to that button a little?

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the little guy comes up, hey, what about you? What's a tip, you know, working across different teams about, you know, using these tools and communicating effectively and efficiently? I think that there, I've seen for whatever reason, like this push towards asynchronous, SME wrangling, for lack of a better term, we're just gonna call it SME wrangling.

and this very strong push to get SMEs to review things asynchronously. And I'm sure that part of it is because we're a globally distributed workforce in many places now, right? But the tip that I would give is that if you are doing a review with a SME, get on a video call, talk to that person in real time, whatever time zone you really have to negotiate, even if it has to be between multiple people.

There's nothing like talking to people like we're talking right now, right? Especially because what we run into with SMEs and stakeholders is they have an idea about training that may or may not match what we really do, right? Like everyone, it's not like software development, right? Where some people have just never even seen code, right? They've lived their entire lives. They have no idea. They have no preconceived notion.

But with training or education, everyone has a preconceived notion of what they think it is or should be. So if you're working with subject matter experts that are dispersed and you're trying to show them something, not only talk and be with them in real time, but have something to show them, a prototype, a storyboard, a graphic, something like that. Just even think about your normal life.

right, like your personal relationships. A lot of stuff gets lost over text message, right? Like my boyfriend and I have this rule where like we pick up the phone and call each other. If we start getting too confused and the conversation starts getting too muddled, like just call me because a lot gets lost over text. So if you're trying to get a review through email, through a form, through a survey, throw that out the window and put a meeting on somebody's calendar. The best part is

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If you do still want to do an asynchronous review and it can be done that way, you can use that calendar meeting as, as kind of leverage and say, Hey, I'll take this meeting off the calendar. you send this to me before. love it. Yeah, that's great. Extrinsic. Yeah. Protip. Extrinsic motivation. Get people to, you know, give you that feedback at this meeting, the stakeholders involved in, and you can take a meeting off the calendar for sure.

I mean, Heidi, you hit the nail on the head right there with like the texting, like the, definitely gets lost in translation a lot of time. Like your feelings and emotions, just like, you know, kind of if you're doing things with AI aren't emulated through that necessarily. I mean, I just take to somebody in all caps, which I didn't mean to do Kristen. I'm very, Christine, I'm very sorry. So, I mean, that's just, I just, I did that on purpose for the purpose of this presentation, but really that kind of stuff, you need to clarify that. the.

the deliverable, the end product, you just have to get on a call. Sometimes it's uncomfortable, but establishing those relationships and communicate effectively, like right off the bat is going to be helpful to you as an L &D professional structural designer, whatever that may be. All right, we could probably talk about this all day like some of the other ones, but I'm going to move on to a very relatable category, which is task management and productivity.

So as learning and development professionals, you have so many different things we're doing constantly. Tom and I were just talking and Heidi, we have so many different projects going on at one time. Tell me, Tom, what are some of your, the tools that you think are most effective in using to kind of be productive, but also manage all your projects and your tasks as a learning and development professional? So the most effective for me.

personally is sticky notes on my office window. Which is the you're working on your own, this works wonderfully. It is not at all helpful for clients or your team. It should be noted you can not send them photographs of it. That's not effective. For that reason, I run the businesses tasks and productivity stuff through Notion. The real reason being that we have the combined ability to have all the

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you know, the Kanban boards and the database stuff, but also all the actual work, all the conversations, all the knowledge base, all the links to articles are all in one place. The thing I can't stand is going, well, you go to Asana for the task, and then you go to Dropbox for the information, and then you go to this intranet page over here for that. That to me is counterproductive when we're talking about productivity. And Notion lets me kind of build a very simple workflow between the task, the materials, the communication.

which is the key thing for me. I can't put it on my window. It should at least be easy and all in one place. Yeah, Notion is a good one. What about you, Heidi? I too use a interesting mix of analog and Notion, as it were. guess this is it. So I was going to say that I love buying fancy, nice notebooks from- Your kindred spirits. This one is Marshall's.

You always get a really good deal on really pretty notebooks at Marshall's or TJ Maxx. And that's where the, because I'm freelance, because I run my own business and community and have like a kid who has sports, like that's the best place for kind of like my daily task management where I kind of like funnel everything from all the different areas in. Because depending on the client, we use,

Actually, the last few clients I've worked with have used some form of whatever the Excel is. So it's either Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel to track all of our projects and things like that. So a little bit more traditional, but I use Notion for useful stuff, for kind of like the high level, what I'm planning, projects, and things like that. But my daily task lists are pretty analog. I'll also use, I'll buy these big sketch pads from Five Below.

And like for brainstorming things, I'll use that too. So, yeah, that I love. I I'm saying, well, I have the same thing. have a five star notebook with a little pocket dividers and I write stuff down for me. just like kind of brings it out more, but then I'm like, I'm kind of organizing my thoughts there and I'm putting it into notion and I actually use motion.

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to project manage very similar to notion they rhyme. did that on purpose notion motion. And I love it because I just write it down and then I put into motion like how long it's going to take me. And then it spits out the information about how much time I'm supposed to be sending on each on each task and how for how long so I can kind of plan my days around that and incorporate meetings. So that really helps me be productive.

I feel like I have undiagnosed ADHD and have my whole life. So like the shiny thing, if Slack is popping up or if a notification like I'm getting text messages right now are popping up, I have to put those off the screen and like, know, complete turns off in order to be productive. And those tools help because they remind me like, this is what you should be focused on. And also using like the Pomodoro technique. So the 25 minute.

Yeah, the 25 minute thing helps me tremendously. You focus on one task for 25 minutes. And then after that, you get a five minute break. Once you do that four times, which is roughly in what two hours, then you get a 15 minute break. So you can go for a walk or do whatever you can set it up, however you want. But that's something else that helps me keep on track and productive. so definitely I agree with you with the analog and then putting it into something virtual.

Yeah, don't, yeah. Type it into Google. Cause I'm probably going to spell it wrong anyways for Pomodoro. So definitely. so any other hacks or things that you both can share that help like with instructional designers or learning and development professionals that you use in order to, be more productive. Because like I said, we have such a vast array of different SMEs and stakeholders that we're working with. You know, what's the one tip like.

do this and it's going to increase your productivity. One thing that I do as a freelancer that I think has helped me a lot is even though I know that it'll shift week to week, I've mapped out like my ideal weekly schedule, right? Because I usually like usually your clients want you to give them an idea of when you're like available during the day. So I'll give like one client

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this like my morning chunk, one client, my afternoon chunk, and then like I map out what an ideal week would be, like where I would be spending time each day. And for me, it's really important because I co-parent my son. So I make it specifically so that on the days that I have him, I can log off earlier and then work longer days on the days that I don't have him. So it really helps because now I can get to like,

midweek and go, OK, I'm a little bit behind where I normally should be on this job. Like I need to add a few extra hours in for this client this week or whatever. And you're able to kind of have a sense of where you should be. And it really helps you to focus on, OK, well, tomorrow is going to have to be a longer day for this client because I missed something because of a doctor's appointment or whatever. it allows you to kind of create those benchmarks, right, where you should be kind of throughout the week.

Yeah. And it's all balance, right? It's really, it's about balancing everything. And that's hard. That's difficult. Tom, what about you? What's your tip? think it would also be calendar related, but it would actually be about guarding your time. So the one thing, and this is, I will say this now, is much easier running your own business versus in-house, but it can be done in-house. You just have to lay down the law and then stand by it. People will adjust.

your whole working day should not be open for people to book timing. Because there are tasks you need to do every day. So put them your calendar, block out time, and then create effectively like internal office hours. So if you try and book time with me and my calendar, you'll notice that my calendar is open 11 until three each day. Now I do work outside of those hours. I wish that was all I ever worked. But outside of those hours, I don't want people booking calls because I need to actually do work. So if you...

by constraining those hours, whether that's to everyone or certain people or whatever it might be. And there are loads of easy tools. I use Tidycal because it's a single purchase, but you could use Calendly. You can use Google Calendar natively, think now supports some degree of time booking and controlling what hours are technically available. It's really important. It's awkward as heck the first time you try and introduce it because everyone's like, well, what makes you so special? And your response can be, I'm a productive employee. Why aren't you?

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if you would like to be as combative as me, you may want to come up with a more workplace appropriate way of saying that, but once you get people on board, everyone will agree that it makes them more productive. So you have that first awkward conversation about it and you'll find it catches on really quick. Yeah, that's definitely a cultural shift for a lot of people. put focus time on my calendar. Google has that built in or nobody can put meetings on your calendar. And it's like.

All day, some days it's like eight meetings a day, like after eight meetings a day mentally, like I'm not ready to jump into a project. Like I'm not, I'm not fully aware or awake enough to like start that next project. So I agree with you, Tom. That's a great tip and having that focus time and, protecting your calendar. Also too, like we, there's different things like people are eating lunch at their desk a lot more often, like.

You need to break away from the computer just a step away. So that's a great tip into blocking off that time for sure.

All right, let's jump into. All right, so this these are all kind of very related, but sort of not depending upon how you look at it. So we did talk a little bit about project management stuff. how what are some of the tools that you like for using? Like if you have my gosh, I don't even know one time I maybe had. Eight or nine projects going on at one time. What are some of the ways?

What are some of the tools that you both like and Heidi, I'll start with you, that you used to project manage and maybe do some of that automation in terms of like figuring out like where things need to go and how long you need to spend on it? Yeah, that's a really good question because I've used so many different things over the years. But I'm going to tell a tale here. So once upon a time when I was working at NASA,

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there was this process where we literally were required by law to go in and at least look at, like we had to at least open every course every year to make sure that the SOPs and the different things that it was referencing were up to date, right? It was a legal mandate. And the process used to be before I got there that they would send an email

there were about six or seven subject matter experts that owned like 10 to 20 courses each, right? And they would get an email that would say, hey, look at this course, tell me if anything needs to change. And the email response would then be printed on a printer and placed in either a red, yellow or green folder, depending on the level of edits needed for that course. And then walk.

to the desk of the person who was making the edits. so, when my boss came in, my boss was like, we're using teamwork.com, which is basically like a monday.com or a click up or it's just another project management software, right? And so when we started using teamwork, we were able to not only track that project, but also tag those six or seven subject matter experts so that they could see

where they had which course they had to review, but then they were also getting email notifications. So if they didn't give it back on time, I didn't have to do anything. I didn't have to email them and be like, per my last email, do you have any updates? know, you're like me, Hey, hi, it's me again, because they're just getting those automated now. And it's like the big red pass do and I don't have to do anything. And they're like, I'm sorry, this is late, but here it is. And like,

You know, and it just was a very easy way to take that process and make it so much easier for everyone involved, everyone. Yes. And you don't feel, it feels icky sometimes sending those emails out. Like you want to be very like professional about it, but you're like, I really need this from you. You don't know how to structure it, it does it for you. don't have to worry about it. Yep. What's the ownership on the person to get done what they need to get done. Yep. Tom, what about you?

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So very sort of similar stuff. I'm a big fan of next. There's a platform called next cloud, which is you need to self host it. It's a bit of a pain to set up a few. If you don't like doing that stuff, once it's set up, you can very quickly set a connection up using something like Zapier between that and say notion or Asana or however you do your task management. What that then gives you rather is a file storage space attached to your task management space attached to your communication space.

So you say when you push a, Hey, this is done or it's ready for review. The files located here. People get emails, people get chased. You can set deadlines. I think we often fall into the trap thinking deadlines only sit with us, that we're going to get chased. So we may as well chase them back. And if you can automate it more, better. the biggest thing workflow automation though is getting comfortable with something like Zapier. If you can get comfortable with that platform, you can automate.

almost anything that has an API attached to it, which is almost anything at this point. I want to come sit with you one day and just go through all of this stuff. Can I just come to Scotland like today and we can just talk about all of this? I know I just you're you do it so well. I was so excited. This is why I'm so excited about this. know, know, know stuff. Tom knows stuff. I know stuff. It's going to be so much synergy and fun.

I just want to come there and sit next to you. Sorry, go ahead. A couple of years ago, doing something like that would be really technical, really complex, way beyond me. The only reason I can do it now is because the software has made it so easy. I'll drop a link to Zapier there, but the whole point of Zapier is connecting to APIs with absolutely no knowledge of

coding or how APIs really work or anything like that. So this is going to be a horrible big one of those nasty links that you get straight off Google. it just makes the process easy. When I create connections like that, I don't spend time coding. I don't open Visual Basic. I go to the API. It's a graphical interface. It's the one time I like a drag and drop. I literally drag and drop, Slack, and Asana.

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And whatever it might be into a nice visual chain that tells me who's passing a message to what super easy. Anyone can do it now. You do not need a technical background to do it. Yeah. That's the best part of it is you don't need that technical background because so many people are kind of like intimidated by some of these systems. They're like, my gosh, it's going to take us so long to stand these things up.

But really, if you work on the front end, it's going to save you so much time down the road. And that's a thing too, for instructional designers and L &D professionals. We are definitely a work smarter, not harder type of group because we have so many different things that we have to do. There's such good stuff. I'm loving it. I'm learning so much. I'm taking notes as I'm presenting and doing all these different things. All right. So now we're going to jump into a bit of.

the nitty-gritty of instructional design and tools and things that we use when we are basically creating those deliverables that we're sending out to people. So when we think about, you know, tools such as like iSpring and Articulate and some of the different like eLearning, authoring tools, what are some of the things that you consider? And we haven't really talked about this with some of the advice we give.

How do you evaluate what is the best tool to use for your purpose? So Tom, I'll start with you. Does it meet the needs of the users? That's literally the only metric is because I think the danger is we start talking about tools that we like, that we prefer to use, and that's putting us at the center of a decision that is not about us. It's about the user.

And there are tools that I personally enjoy using, but I know users do not respond well to. It's all too tempting to create content using them, but I'm not doing my job if I make those decisions based on that. So it's really essential. The one really important metric, there are other things to consider, but the one thing at the center should be what's best for the end user. What about you Heidi? I think that's a really great point because I think when we think

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learner centered, right? We try to make everything learner centered. We imagine ourselves as a learner, which is what we're supposed to do if we're going to be able to see their point of view. But sometimes we imagine that we are that learner, right? Instead of like, we are a learner, right? And so like Tom said, we tend to use the things that we like to use or that we are confident using even, right? Like,

something, I know I can use this and I'm good at it and I've been using it for 25 years and not realizing that, my gosh, those videos of the hands with the pen drawing things, like that was popular 20 years ago. No one's using those anymore. That's yeah. Like, you know, you're so cool, Heidi. my gosh. Like I think we have to focus on what the end user it needs, but also like,

What deliverables are we able to offer? Like what does our company provide? What means of communication? What means of information sharing can we use and can we leverage to create deliverables in a way that doesn't impact and end up with time off the floor? Like we shouldn't be pulling people off their work into the LMS for every single little thing, right? That's ineffective. It's not useful. It's not engaging.

So really looking at what are the different delivery options that we have? Do we do webinars? Do we do live training? Do we do in-person training? Do we do videos? Like what do we as an L &D team provide and offer? And then what tools do we need to do that? Yeah, I agree with you. And I found that like doing the shift from education to corporate in the LMS space,

Education, and I'm going to give them a thumbs up here, is they do it a lot better than corporate does with the LMS, I would say, because if you go into an education-based LMS like Canvas or the Blackboards or the World, you make the edits and it's completely live. But in the corporate space, there's a little bit more of a challenge with that around SCORM files and different things. And I can say one thing and definitely give iSpring props for this. If you design an iSpring and you have their LMS stuff,

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Click it, it's live. It's just like, it's right there. And that's one of the reasons that I do love iSpring so much. And it's so easy, like in native and PowerPoint is putting it right there because I feel like a whole lot of mess could happen into having to download the SCWARM file. And then you got to go back and something's not reading and the, like the reporting and stuff like that. just, it's just.

it's just too much. So it has to be something like Tom is saying that is good for the users, but also for us, like it can't be multiple steps that are taking hours of our time or even like a few minutes of our time. Maybe something really quick and manageable for sure. Yeah. I think also, budget, obviously we didn't mention budget yet, but that's really important. Yeah. Because whatever other like,

I always encourage people to first look at what the marketing team is using for content creation and if there's any space for you to use the same tools. Because for instance, I was working on a team where one of my team members didn't want to use Canva. She wanted to use InDesign because she was more familiar with it. Which is never the way, right? But she was from a graphic design background. That's why I hired her.

Like I needed someone with that strong background. So I reached out to the marketing department. They literally had an extra seat and just gave it to her. It didn't affect the budget of my team at all. So when we can share like that, oftentimes we can also share budget. And one of the downsides of authoring tools, especially some of the authoring tools in this space, is that they are so cost prohibitive and we are the only team using them.

So one of the things I really like about iSpring is that they have a pricing tier for freelancers. Look for that with your tools. as if you're an individual, if you're a freelancer, if you are working by yourself as a consultant, that is massive, right? Because you are shouldering that budget yourself. And a lot of times the clients expect you to come ready with the tools, right? And the other thing too is don't...

EdUp L&D (36:33.707)
just use one tool. And I know that that's like sometimes bound by your company, but I think companies that only provide one tool for their L &D teams are pretty, they're setting their team up for failure, right? So you have to have more than one option to deliver the content to. Yeah, I agree with you. What do you think, Tom?

I was just sitting in the chat and there's a couple of things in there. think one of the ones is how do I get away from storyline? Don't get too obsessed with getting away from or to anything. Again, go back and ask sort of why is it you want to get away from storyline? Because if the business has done it, if everything in the business is based on it, yes, they will need a really good reason to switch because that means reauthoring all their existing content. And that's a calamitously large amount of work or

You're asking them to pay for two tools rather than one. That's just bad business decision making at that point. So you've really got to think about why you want to change tools. Because you can argue some tools can do some things that others can't, absolutely. But being an effective instructional designer sometimes is about adapting to what tools you have available. Because I'm kind of lucky again to be external, so I've got access to

Storyline Chameleon, Adapt, Evolve, all these things sat there ready to go for when they're needed. But some organizations, even with all of that, they'll go, hey, our entire core stack is built in Captivate, let's say. I'll go, okay, so do you want to change? No. Cool, let's work in Captivate. Let's see what we can do within the confines of that, of your tech stack. The worst thing you can do is start introducing excessive numbers of tools.

That's how we get labeled the wasteful department, right? I think what Heidi was saying is exactly right. There is probably more stuff in the business than you think already you can make use of. So whenever you can do that, that's kind of the way to go. You think about Genially is being mentioned in the chat. Genially was not an e-learning authoring platform at Conception. It's kind of become that, but it was a graphic design and slides thing not long ago. I remember when it first came out and there was

EdUp L&D (38:54.019)
There was no school, there was no like say PI things we generally consider to be really important. Turns out they're not that important if you can actually design something effective in it. So I would just say, yeah, be a little bit careful with that. want to get away from in businesses because it can seem like you're just pushing a personal agenda rather than actually trying to make a good business decision. And that's more important than ever right now. And definitely come back into the bait. The basis of what you're saying is, it good for the user?

The accessibility portion of that, one of the things I noticed when I first started using iSpring is it has like these little pop-ups that it notifies you if things aren't accessible in some other eLearning author and tool that does not have that. And I think that's really, especially with WIC CAG 2.1 coming down in the United States in 2026, where things are going to have to be accessible, like the government's going to intervene. You need to make sure we should already be doing these things. So making sure that we have these

tools that are already helping us with this do you know, we don't have to think about it. It's just there and it's it's for us to use. But also the end user is getting exactly what they need. So, yeah, definitely that's a common theme throughout this. Whatever is good for the end user, whether that be ourselves, the sneeze or the stakeholders or the learners, that's important. And I put a link in for the demo if you wanted something for ice spraying the LMS and also now the

if you want to try iSpring for free for 14 days because they have a 14 day free trial that you can try and it's very useful. You can go and you can see exactly what it all does and I've done previous presentations about iSpring so go check those out. Anything else as far as like you know, you know how are there any specific like what am I trying to ask here?

For efficiency purposes, like in instructional design, think it's really important. Like I'll say this at Amazon, we were shifting LMSs so much. Like, is there anything to be said about sticking with something for a long time or like, why should you shift something? Like Tom, you're saying don't move away from it, but like certain people, they're like, this is the brand new thing and this does this and it's going to fulfill this need for us. So how do you kind of navigate that stuff?

EdUp L&D (41:20.879)
One thing I kind of really advocate is your tech stack should be under constant review. You should be constantly asking the question. First of all, know what's in your tech stack, as in all of it, right the way from how do we look at emails through to how do we deliver score and get reporting? Know what's in there and then every month, week, whatever, however often you can ask the questions, is it effective? Is it efficient? As soon as one of those answers is no,

It's time to change something. But if both those answers are yes, then the follow up question is, so why would we change something just because something new and shiny has come out? It might be amazing. Doesn't mean you need it. Right. You know, so I need a new iMac. It's it's so pretty. They come in different colors right now. I really want to pretty, you know, that's that's the kind of way that the industry kind of markets to individuals in sort of this e-learning authoring realm is like we're incorporating AI or we're incorporating this, but.

Us as experts in learning development, we know what the core things that we really need. And honestly, if you are not talking to your instructional designers or the people who are doing this work about what should be in your tech stack, you're making a huge mistake. You're making a huge mistake because you're going to pick something, you're going to deploy it, and it's not going to work for what you need to. You need to talk to them. You need to talk to us. That's basically what I'm saying.

All right, I know we can spend a lot of time on the LMS and course authoring tools, but I want to shift gears a little bit so we have time to talk about all the different things. So when it comes to, so instructional designers, and I saw somebody in the chat was talking about this, like people are instructional designers becoming more like graphic designers. need to, we do all the things and we need the graphics, we need to market, we need to be the therapist for the SMEs and the stakeholders and keep them moving and motivated. We got to do all this stuff.

So when it comes to those types of tools, what are, Katie, what are some of your favorite like quick graphic design tools that you use and getting stuff out there, quality and not sacrificing that and taking that into consideration? Yeah, so graphic design is probably the weakest point that I have in L &D, right? Like it's probably the thing that I am the least confident in.

EdUp L&D (43:34.515)
And it's always been that way. Like I can look at something and be like, that's really cool looking. But my ability to recreate is subpar. So for that purpose, I like to use the everyone's graphic design tool. And that's Canva, right? Literally anyone can use Canva. I use it. I'm now like the invitation person in my family because I use it so much. Like if we need baby shower or the admin, yes, I'm the one who has to create them now.

that's how good I've gotten at ripping templates and making them my own, right? Because that's the thing about canvas. has so many templates that you can alter and make it your own. Like it's just such a, it's such a good thing for like branding and creating something quickly. And, you know, it's like, there's so many, like it's connected to Unsplash. So you have access to all these free images and free elements that you can add and build together.

But I also really like TechSmith products as well. So Camtasia and Snagit. I have largely ditched authoring tools in my practice. I actively try not to use authoring tools because they tend to slow me down. I like for the learning experiences that I create if they're supposed to be a course for them to either look video-based, kind of like what you'd see on YouTube, or web-based, like what you'd find on a blog.

So when I create content for a course, I prefer to do it text-based with images and videos where it makes sense. So it looks like you're viewing a web page rather than that very slide-based e-learning. So Canva, Camtasia, and Snagit are must haves for that type of thing, because then I can just take the text.

build it out, run it through chat, GPT, get it looking real nice and clean and concise, and then add in the graphics where it makes sense, add in the videos where it makes sense. And now it's a full, fully functioning multimedia experience. Yeah. you know, Heidi, I love the fact that in some of the posting that you've done, like in recent months about the moving away from the e-learning, authoring, and that you're still completely functional. It's like,

EdUp L&D (45:46.029)
We gravitate towards these things because we think we need them so much. But really, if they're supporting us in a way that's useful, that's when we need them. But it's not like the end all, like if we don't have blank, it's not going to work. We can find ways to do it other ways as well and be innovative even in these systems. What do you think, Tom?

I think I'm on the opposite end of tool selection here. I'm an Adobe house. But that comes from knowing it before getting into L &D. It was already my tool set of choice. And even then I move away from it. So for instance, for graphics, I'll use Illustrator and Photoshop. For web design, I think I'm still one of the few people in the world going, yeah, Dreamweaver. Dreamweaver is the way forward. That's how the internet should be built.

And then when I do a video, chances are we're doing it in DaVinci Resolve or Premiere Pro. The main reason I use the Adobe stuff again, being external, is that all of my clients will have Adobe licenses somewhere in their business. So it just makes sense. But when I speak to people getting into the industry, would I recommend learning Adobe? No, it's a ridiculous learning curve for very little additional ability to do your job well.

So if you don't already know it or have another reason just to want to learn it anyway, tools like Canva, Figma, Miro, they're all much better options for what we actually do. Especially as generally speaking, I'll create something in Illustrator or someone on the team will create something in Photoshop. So I can't stand Photoshop. First thing we're then going to do is export it and put it into Figma to show it to a client, which really is a really stupid and inefficient workflow.

If you're not already really comfortable in the Adobe stuff. Yeah. So bad example. Don't follow the way I did it unless you already have the software. I like your example too. I'm afraid of the Adobe products. I've learned the basics of them, but I'm very much, I'm okay with admitting that to this larger crowd and you all, they stay intimidate me. And I really just want something that's easy and quick for me.

EdUp L&D (47:54.143)
and I have the opportunity to learn Adobe back in like 2011, 2012, but I probably should have taken it, but I didn't. So, so here we are. is there anything else in terms of like the graphic designer, any of the multimedia tools? I know there's a lot, you know, we're trying to get things out like micro learnings and quick like trainings and stuff. Is there, are there any tools or things or advice, that you have for.

people, what are they gonna use? We're kind of aligning with what's happening in our culture, like the TikToks and stuff like that. Either one of you pop in. Yeah, I mean, I always try to look at how people are learning in real life or how I'm learning in real life, right? Like what is the last thing that I learned how to do here around the house, right? Like I'm not taking an e-learning to learn how to...

switch around my doorknob so that it opens the right way. You know what I mean? I'm watching YouTube short for that, right? So how can we kind of emulate how we learn in real life in the workplace? And then what are some of the tools to do so? if there's a like, if you need to show someone your screen really quickly and just give them a quick explanation, Loom is a really great tool for that.

It's not a tool to create training unlike one of my former managers bought it for. That was really bad because you can't edit it. It's really, it's a communication tool. It's to show an idea. So I had two really busy subject matter experts and I wanted to show them a prototype that I had come up with to automate something that they were doing. So I created a quick loom video walking them through the prototype that I created.

And they were like, my gosh, this is great. Do it. Green light, go. And it was just a really nice way to get that across. I think somebody in the chat asked about software simulation. I tend to not create software simulations whenever I can. I either do walkthrough videos and ask someone to follow along.

EdUp L&D (50:09.659)
Or I look for a sandbox, because a lot of the products and tools that we use nowadays have some kind of sandbox because they have to for testing, for frequency of updates, things like that. Getting people in the actual tool into a sandbox is going to be 1,000 times better than any software simulation you can create, because hotspots are very finicky, right? they're only an Not accessible.

They're not accessible and software simulations in and of themselves are do not account for human error. They're like what we call the happy path. It's like you only do the correct thing. But as we know, people will click random stuff whenever they want. I remember one time my mom was like, I clicked everything that was on my computer when I opened it because I wanted to see what it did. my gosh. And the computer wasn't working because she had opened everything at once and it didn't have enough memory to run.

She's like, my computer broke because I opened everything. But we don't account for that kind of human error in software simulations. So giving them a sandbox is giving them that full access. There's also what's called digital adoption platforms that we haven't talked about yet, or DAPs, like Pendo or Walkme, that you can actually put.

into the actual product itself to give kind of those tips. Like we've all seen it. You log into something the first time and it gives you a little tutorial and says, over here is this thing. Like when you pay a bill or something over here is where you do this. Over here is where you do that. And so those are really helpful too. Yep. I agree. What about you, Tom? Just to tag onto that, Pendo also gives you the best user data you have ever come across. If you ever get the opportunity to use Pendo, just do it.

You will understand your users so much better. But then from a multimedia perspective, look for tools that make other people do your job for you. So for instance, I have a platform called StoryTagger. And what it basically says is you send questions to other people in the business, they then answer them to camera, and that distributes to everyone else in the thing. Marvelous. Wow. Job done. No editing required, no SME interviews. You just get the content and then send it to the users.

EdUp L&D (52:30.959)
crazy idea. it, tools like that just make sense. They make sense for everyone involved. They can do it at their desk. They don't need to book time in their calendars. It supports them. It gives them little tips like, Hey, that's a bit bright. You don't want to be stood in front of a window when you record this video. Move. Real simple stuff. But otherwise we have to do what? Review their video, then figure out how do I tell this person to not be an idiot?

but I can't word it like that. So instead I'll write full paragraphs of this is a marvelous video, but, so any tool that takes work off your plate like that is worth it in the, in the content side of things. Well, I'm absolutely sure that we could definitely continue the conversation and all of these areas we're running, but we had about six minutes left in the webinar. So I definitely want to know your, before we go into the question session portion of the presentation.

Your last minute tips around general, general efficiency and any tool integration. Like people are out here on teams and they're like, there's, have like the hugest tech stack ever. Like, and we like, we were using one tool that does one thing well. So how do we navigate that? Where are your, your best, let's give the top two tips from both of you so that people can walk away with and be like, this is what I'm going to go back to my team with. Why don't we start with you, Heidi? So.

My first tip is don't skip the needs analysis of your team, right? Your team is made up of people. Those people have skill sets. Those skill sets align well with specific tools. So don't skip that and don't buy the tools based on the tools. Buy the tools based on a need. Don't say, well,

Because I see this all the time, people ask for recommendations, things like, what LMS should we buy? What's a good LMS? Well, gosh, it depends on what you're trying to accomplish. There are LMSs for every single different type of thing that you're trying to do. There are tools for everything you're trying to do. So don't try to fit the job to the tool. Fit the tool to the job. have a stack.

EdUp L&D (54:51.225)
have more than one option. Like, you know, my partner works in the trades, they don't just give him a hammer to do his job. Like how, how is he supposed to snake a drain with a hammer? Right? That's not a thing. So just having one tool, like one authoring tool to do all of your work, that's not going to be enough.

What about you Tom? I would say we often think of tech stack just being software. It includes your hardware. That means machines that can actually do the job. If you're doing video editing, you do not need a six year old laptop that can barely run Windows. You need something that can actually work. But more sensibly as well, things like Streamdex with little macro buttons on them save you so much.

time if you're regularly using the same authoring platforms or LMS or systems or whatever it might be. And it might seem like an extravagance, but if you go to your business, actually that's going to save me 20 minutes a day, but that just pay for itself in a week. you know, these things actually make us far more efficient than we might think they do. Yeah. I love it. And I loved everything you both have said. can't honestly can't thank you enough for sharing.

all that you've shared. I'm going to stop sharing my screen right now. We're going to spend the last three minutes answering as much questions as we can. So we had, let's go to a question about, so either one of you can answer this. What tools do you recommend to help record task achieved, hours worked, and we didn't really talk about this in invoicing. So if you're like a freelancer out there, and Maude put this question in.

So I really like Clockify because it's free. It's the one that I use. what it allows me to do is it allows me to break it down by client. So if you're a freelancer, you can manage multiple clients, which is fantastic for invoicing. You can also put your rate in there and see how much money you're going to make. It has a manual timer as well as

EdUp L&D (57:10.967)
like the you can put in, or I'm sorry, it has a timer as well as manual input. So you can like run the clock while you're working if you want, or you can put your time in manually every day, which I do because I forget that I run the clock and then it goes for like 16 hours and then I have to fix it. But I'm sorry, I wanted to put it in the chat real quick. Clockify, there we go. But it allows me to break down.

within the client you can do by project and then by task. So it has a pretty granular leveling too. That's why I like it. Very nice. Very nice. All right. Here's another question. What advice can you give to those who are transitioning and choosing ID tools? Question we get a lot. So what kind of like advice for people who are transitioning in this field? how do we, what do they choose? What do they pick? I say use all the free stuff you can.

before you even pay and invest in anything. Use all the free stuff you possibly can. Yeah, there is no need to spend any money, not a penny. Nothing. Buy nothing. There's so much free stuff. If you want an authoring tool, start with Adapt. It's free, it's open source, it's easy to get started with. You will outpace it over time, but start there.

All right. Is is SCORM industry standard for an LMS in the corporate space? Yes. Government? Yes. I would say yes. What about you two? Yeah, unfortunately. Yeah. Yes. Yes. I would be unfortunate for another day. Yes. OK. Any Cheryl has a great question. Any suggestions on how to approach management or getting new software to improve the workload? She works in government and it seems to hit a wall.

Listen, I have worked in government before and I'm working in government again as a client. And what I can tell you is first talk to IT about what you already have because on average it typically takes between 18 months and three years in government to get a new tool approved. And by the time that happens, it's going to be outdated.

EdUp L&D (59:20.867)
So my biggest suggestion is to talk to your IT team and find out what tools you already have access to that have already been approved and leverage the heck out of those. Awesome. All right, we are right at time. I know we had some more questions in the chat, but everything we're going to share where to find Heidi, where to find Tom. And I do want to give you both at least a minute each to say where you can find you, what you're working on.

how people can connect with you. So Tom, where can people find you? LinkedIn is the best place. If you message me, there's a better backlog. I'm not very good at keeping on top of my inbox. And if you want sort of more hints and tips, go to the Instructional Design Tips YouTube channel, where you can find lots of videos about general L and D nonsense and the occasional helpful hint. What about you, Heidi?

Same thing. LinkedIn is the best place to find me and on my LinkedIn page, you can find all the other resources and all the other things that I do. So connect with me on LinkedIn. Fantastic. And I just want to plug that Heidi and I will be a Dev Learn in a couple of weeks. We'll be at the Ice-Spring booth. think it was. Tom will be there too. Tom will be there. Yes. That is the best news I've heard all day. can't wait. I am even more excited now. I am like, you just made my day by telling me that Tom, I'm going to, I hope you're a hugger.

because I'm so excited to meet you. Okay, I won't. But that's awesome. So we're all going to be at DevLearn. So find us all there, say hi, come by the booth. We're to do some presentations and things. And we so appreciate you all sitting with us and listening to us talk to all this. Thank you both for your time. Really appreciate it. And I can't wait to go to DevLearn in a couple of weeks. So bye everyone. Have a great day.