STC IDL SIG

by Jamye Sagan

(Based on my original article “Wading in the Presenter Waters as a First-Time Speaker”, Summer 2010, IDeaL: Instructional Design for Learning)

How many progressions?

2010: My first progression – the water sure looks scary!

2011: Water’s not so bad, now that my feet have gotten used to it. Next challenge is wading in deeper.

2015: Water feels pretty nice now; I’m floating along just fine!

2016: Ahhhh! Now I can swim confidently!

Six years ago, at the STC Summit 2010 in Dallas, I first dipped my feet into the presenter pool as a progression speaker. I had been incredibly nervous at first, and the waters seemed quite frigid at first, but once I got used to the temperature midway through my second round, I felt quite at home.

In a progression series, each speaker sits at a round table. These speakers cover a wide variety of topics. Participants go to one table, stay until time is called (about 20 minutes) and then to a second table with a different topic. In years past, we had three rounds, but now that overall sessions are 45 minutes, we have time for only two. This approach gives the participant a fantastic opportunity to explore several topics in a short period of time.

Fast forward to the 2016 Summit in Anaheim – with three progressions and one training evaluation session under my belt, I now swim confidently in the pool. I still get that little lurch of nervousness at the beginning, but once I launch into my topic, nothing can stop me except the moderator’s call of “Time’s up!”

Being a speaker in a progression series is a great way to get your feet wet in the speaker pool, for several reasons:

• Progressions offer a small[er] audience. At any given time during the progression, you speak to about 10-12 people (or however many people can crowd around your table). This year’s Summit was quite different in that we had twice or thrice that around our tables. The intimate setting of the progression helps lessen the intimidation. Instead of standing behind a podium, you get to sit at the table with your audience, on the same level. Although you are the leader at your table, you are better able to interact with your audience.

• It is heartening and affirming, when you consider the many options available to Summit participants. At any one time there are many parallel sessions and tables. Since participants can choose which table they can sit at, it is deeply gratifying to know that the folks have chosen to hear what you have to share.

• You get ample practice in honing your presentation. During a progression you will give the same presentation at least twice. No matter how many times you practice beforehand, you find yourself constantly tweaking your presentation, seeing what works best to convey your idea. You also have the opportunity to incorporate audience feedback and respond to questions.

Everyone has something to share. Whether you have been in the field for five months or fifty years, everyone has something valuable to contribute based on their experiences. These different perspectives enrich our learning (and teaching) experience. You can offer to share it with various STC chapters and SIGs either in person or via webinars! To do so, feel free to speak with the community’s President/Manager or Programs lead. You can also register on TechCommSpeakersBureau.org, a speaker forum managed by the STC Carolina and STC Santa Barbara chapters.

Now that I have several progression series (and a lightning talk!) under my belt, I feel much more confident about sharing my knowledge and experience with others. I have not had the opportunity yet to give a full 45-minute presentation, but when I do, I’ll be ready.

By Jamye Sagan

During the 2016 STC Summit in Anaheim, I attended several engaging presentations. Here are highlights from some of them.

 

From Fred Flintstone to George Jetson – Creating Tension in Training Increases Adoption: Viqui Dill (@viqui_dill)

During her presentation, Viqui described how her company overcame several roadblocks to successfully train 5,000 employees on timekeeping software in just 60 days with no travel budget and challenges in finding demo computers for training and testing.

She reviewed and ranked the types of deliverables used in the training delivery, which included:

• Online help and how-to instructions

• Trainer manual

• Train-the-Trainer hands-on practice

• Face-to-face contact with users

• Weekly emails and announcement posters

Interestingly enough, the most successful deliverables of Viqui’s presentation – including weekly emails and announcements – seemed the least technical in nature and dealt more with the personal touch. I especially liked how she formatted her weekly announcements, with a table showing the when, who, and what of various events. I also liked how she used visuals from The Flintstones and The Jetsons cartoons to add interest.

Overall, a strong, enthusiastic team is the key to success. Learning via coworkers is among the most effective and most used methods.

To view Viqui’s presentation slides, see the Sched tool.

 

Use Your Content to Create Killer Courseware: Matt Sullivan (@mattrsullivan)

In his presentation, Matt addressed major issues most people face when tasked with creating content – how to populate the blank page with content, and transforming dry content into usable content.

The most insightful recommendations from his presentation were:

• Tool choice is secondary. It’s not about the tools; it’s about the journey.

• When trying to decide what content to cover, ask yourself: What’s the one thing you need to teach your learners?

• When determining the goal of your course, fill in the blanks: <USER> can <ACTION> because <REASON>. Once you determine the goal, create a title that draws your users in. Create a journey for them; seek that personal connection.

• Always ask yourself: What’s in it for the end user?

 

15 Ways to Animate Content with GIF: Daniel Foster (@fosteronomo)

Before attending this session, I thought of animated GIFs as just cutesy, cheesy items that served either as mere decoration or pure entertainment. I never realized this seemingly simple concept could be used for more meaningful purposes.

In his presentation, Daniel shared with us some ways in which we can harness the power of GIFs in our technical documentation. Some of these 15 uses include:

• Showing simple procedures for 1-4 steps.

• Showing a series of steps, to enhance detailed, written steps.

• Comparing techniques. GIFs are great for showing correct vs. incorrect actions, comparing old vs. new procedures, and highlighting new procedures.

• Augmenting a bug reporter help desk ticket: Use a GIF to show what actions you took and what went wrong.

• Using GIFs to show quick tips on a basic procedure

For a list of GIF creation tools and basic tips, refer to the last slides on Daniel’s presentation on SlideShare.

 

Getting Creative with Technical Communications: Liz Roscovius (@LizRoscovius)

In this progression topic, Liz shared her techniques for making content both useful and appealing. First, she stresses that before getting creative, you must know who you are writing for! To understand your audience, get insights from colleagues and other departments, and review social media and customer insights data.

I especially liked her Snack/Meal/Dessert analogy in determining how to divide content into bite-sized pieces. With this analogy, the snack serves as teaser content, while the meal contains the figurative meat of the message. Finally, the dessert is the little sweet extra nugget. It’s basically all about giving customers what they want, and when they want it.

Finally, Liz shared some design element tips for further enhancing the appeal of your deliverables:

• Don’t be afraid of white space!

• Place critical information in sidebars

• Avoid “NASCARing” your work with too many fonts. Stick with just a few fonts and remain consistent in text treatment (e.g. bold, italics).

• Images must have a purpose.

• Collect ideas from magazine layouts and other resources for cool formats and ideas.

For handout and slides, see the Sched app.

Even if you did not get to Anaheim this year, Summit Playback provides access to missed sessions. I look forward to revisiting those I attended, and viewing the ones I missed due to parallel scheduling (the choices are so hard !).

Q2 / 2016

From the Editor

by Crista Mohammed

Hello dear readership. We have another exciting installment of IDeaL: Design for Learning. Hope you enjoy.

In this issue, Robert Hershenow—in the co-manager’s column; and Jamye Sagan—in a session review of Summit 2016, confirm that I am a dope for having missed the 63^rd STC summit! Well, no excuses for those of us who missed Summit 2016, we have a whole year to plan for Summit 2017, destined for Washington, DC (May 7-10, 2017).

Robert focuses on the meetings and networking needed for running and managing the dynamic and driven organization that is the STC. Read more

Jamye reviews some of the sessions that were particularly useful and enjoyable. Read more

Jamye makes a second contribution to this issue: She advocates for using progression sessions as a way for building confidence and honing your presentation skills. Arguing that full-length presentations may be intimidating to the uninitiated, Jayme shares her personal experiences with the shorter progression format, and how they have helped her grow from a self-conscious first-timer to a confident veteran. Read more

Mellissa Ruryk shares useful insights on a shared frustration—Word™. Mellissa gives us many, many useful tips for fixing your document layout in Word, many of them new to me. Guess you can teach an old dog some new tricks. Whether these features are known to you or not, Mellissa has described them in a neat, fun-to-read package. I certainly will be sharing her column with my students…with the expectation that I will have better formatted papers to read! Read more

Following on the heels of Virginia Butler who, in our last issue, made a heartfelt plea to mentor in the STC Mentorship Programme, I am issuing a call to volunteer for our SIG and the STC at large. I share lessons learnt from over twenty years of volunteering. Read more.

Finally, “big tings a gwaan” (as Jamaicans say, meaning “big things are happening”) with our student outreach efforts. The IDL SIG recognizes the need to support Instructional Designers in training, as part of strengthening and professionalizing ID practice through formal education. Since SIGs can no longer offer scholarships, the IDL SIG has rolled out a new student support scheme: starting September 2016, students can win free STC and IDL SIG membership for original articles chosen for publication in this very newsletter. Isn’t that simply brilliant? We will encourage budding scholars to share their work with others in the community; and in turn, they will earn membership to a thriving community of practice—the STC. Wow! Read Sylvia Miller’s contribution in this issue to find out more.

From your Co-Manager

by Robert Hershenow, Co-manager

I’m just going to come out and say it: Summit 63 was the best one yet. Besides the educational sessions and programs, the networking and socializing opportunities, the food and beverage surprises (citrus ceviche, anyone?), there were many chances to connect face-to-face with STC leadership to learn and influence where the Society and Communities are headed. And it’s always a treat to stay in a nice hotel (the Marriott has the best pillows) and to explore another city’s restaurants and night life, bowling alleys and ballparks. AND we were right next to Disneyland.

But wait—there’s more! When I reviewed the schedule, I found an enticing session in every single time slot. Not just one that looked OK, but usually several that I wanted to attend. And each one lived up to its promise. Designing and delivering a riveting, dynamic presentation is not easy, but most of them were over before I thought about what time it was. Big thanks to the presenters for rising so enthusiastically to the challenge, and to Todd DeLuca and the Conference Committee for building an outstanding program.

Also impressive was the easy-to-use mobile app, which let me build and display a custom schedule on my cellphone. This was much more convenient on-the-go than pulling out the program booklet or notes on paper, and a month later I’m still consulting it for reference.

For many attendees, the greatest value of the Summit is seeing friends and colleagues with whom we interact only virtually during the rest of the year. Leadership Day (open to everyone this year, not just leaders—what a great idea): the Communities and Honors Receptions, SIG-hosted business meetings and events, and social outings offered by the host Chapter all helped to bring us together, and many impromptu gatherings happened as well. IDL SIG leaders met over dinner at a local restaurant and charted strategy for the year ahead. We also hosted a table at the Communities Reception and two at the Business Meeting Breakfast, where we reconnected with each other, met new members, talked about what we do, and successfully recruited for open leadership positions in the SIG.

At one breakfast, SIG and STC leaders met to discuss the past year’s developments and strategies going forward. STC Executive Director Chris Lyons envisions SIGs working more transparently within the Society as providers of accessible content rather than keepers of proprietary information. Historically, the challenge has been in finding ways to share our insights without threatening the confidential nature of our discussions. Chris has proposed that each SIG add a Content Curator, a person (or persons) whose work will be to “coalesce the discussion into useful content” for all members. We also talked about more closely connecting our multiple online SIG presences, which would give us increased Search Engine Optimization, better analytics, easier access and maintenance, and savings in cost and time. There are many opportunities to contribute, so if you’re interested in helping manage our content, activities, or website, please get in touch.

My top Summit souvenir is a new copy of Technical Communication Today, the text upon which the STC’s Tech Comm Certification is based. I’m studying for the exam in the Fall. For more info on certification see http://www.stc.org/certification.

If you attended the Summit you are already registered for Summit Playback (on-demand access to all the recorded sessions online, through March 2017). If you didn’t, STC members can sign up before 31 August for $199; that price increases to $249 starting September 1st. For details see:  http://www.stc.org/education/technical-communications-summit/summit-playback .

Finally, check out the Summit highlights video online at http://summit.stc.org/. There’s a nice shot of IDL Co-Manager Mellissa Ruryk at 0:26; the back of my head appears momentarily at 0:35; and our own Kim Lindsey gets airtime at 1:40. Wow! Don’t miss it.

About IDeaL: Design for Learning

Publication Policy: We invite letters, articles, book reviews, and other items for publication. Articles may contain up to 1,000 words. Picture formats: JPG, GIF, PNG; Text format: Word, RTF, or ASCII. Send items to Crista Mohammed at newsletter@stcidlsig.org

Advertising Policy and Rates: We encourage advertising as long as it follows STC guidelines and promotes services of interest to IDL SIG members.

Ad sizes and rates:

Half page (7.5×4.5): $75 (1 issue); $225 (4 issues)

Business Card (3.5×2): $25 (1 issue); $100 (4 issues)

Please submit electronic copy only in .TIF, .GIF, or .PNG format. Send ads to Crista Mohammed at newsletter@stcidlsig.org. Make checks payable to Society for Technical Communication and send to: Robert Hershenow, STC IDL SIG, 616 Colusa Ave, Berkeley CA 94707.

Copyright Statement: This newsletter invites technical communicators in the field of instructional design to submit articles for publication. The authors implicitly grant a license to this newsletter to run the submission, and for other STC publications to reprint it without permission. Copyright is held by the author. Let the editor know in your cover letter if the article has run elsewhere, and if it has been submitted for consideration to other publications. Design and layout of this newsletter are copyright STC, 2005‐2016.

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