Community Showcase: Taylor Akioka

Luis Malbas  
All right. Hello, everybody. Thanks for joining us here at the training learning and development community. We are here with another member showcase. We're a little late on the on the clock. But so Crowdcast has actually been stellar and trying to help make sure that we can make this particular Crowdcast meeting happen. And so here we are. And it looks like we have some live folks in the audience. Check here we have like 25 people registered. And who's here, I saw that Cindy was here. Cat is here that you're not Oh, April. Lindsay. Christina, thanks so much for joining today. All right. So we tried to schedule this one last week had some tech problems Crowdcast jumped in today and helped us with making sure that we're broadcasting. So it took us three computers,

different tech, but we are now here. And as most of you know, for these members showcases, I have a series of questions, find out more about about Taylor and actually just learn altogether more about instructional design culture and the people that that populate this industry and work in this industry. And for me, it's just been a fascinating journey. Learning about literally like, I think I've done this a few 100 times. And and every story is always different and interesting and, and amazing. And I'm so glad that Taylor that you're able to take the time to do this

with us.

Taylor Akioka  
Anytime. Yeah, so

Luis Malbas  
what I've got is a series of questions. I'm gonna go ahead and just and just start like, how did you start out into its instructional design? You were a clerk at high V. And you became an instructional designer at Allstate. What? How did that work?

Taylor Akioka  
Oh, it's a really long story. So I hope you're prepared to buckle in. So okay, the the job that HyVee honestly was a I needed a job. I got my bachelor's degree in language arts education, so secondary English, and I graduated in December, which is not really a time that people are looking for teachers. So I just needed something anything brand new, married to just graduated, just married, needed something. So I was working in at the gas station, and my husband was working in the kitchen, it had to be there was a great time for everybody. A friend.

I was also substitute teaching at the time with through the Lincoln public schools system here in Nebraska.

And that was when I kind of decided that classroom teaching wasn't really for me. I didn't really get that classroom management thing down. So I started looking for just a full time job. And one of my friends from high V had gotten a job at Allstate as a term conversion processor. So I started applying it all state, I ended up in the call center for a little bit. And then I transferred over to the same department as my friend. And I stayed there for long enough where I became a training like a trainer for that department, which is where I was like, well. Teaching really is my thing. Yeah. But then they through some decisions, they took that training bit away from me. So I started looking for other positions. And I was applying and applying and applying and I wasn't getting any jobs. And one one day I was in a meeting for another reason why, like talking to the hiring manager, why didn't I get this position? They're like, well, the other candidates just had a little bit more project management experience than you. I was like, Well, I can't get that without being in a job that allows me to get that. Yeah. So then I thought back to a few months prior, where we had had a career fair at all state, and they had a booth for one of the universities in Crete, which is just an hour outside of Lincoln. And they had a program for Instructional Design and Technology. And one of the elective classes was in project management, which is what sparked it. So I applied I got in, I earned my masters. And then I kept applying, had to advocate for myself but the team that I'm currently on, made an opportunity for me specifically after an interview that I had done But the manager and that's how I got here.

Luis Malbas  
Wow. So okay, so the high the experience, this was 2016. Right? So pre pandemic, and then yes. How long did it take for you to get your master's in in instructional design?

Taylor Akioka  
I did it super speedy in a year and a half.

Luis Malbas  
Okay. Okay. Okay. And then it was like right after that, that you were able to get that position and Allstate.

Taylor Akioka  
No, I had to wait until last September.

Luis Malbas  
Okay. Okay. Wow. That's amazing. That's very, very cool. Like us. And you had mentioned earlier that you realize it, you know, that the career in education was like the path for you. How did you know that? Why was it? Why was it that that being an educators with

Taylor Akioka  
what felt right? Oh, I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that once you get me on a subject that I like, I can't stop talking about it until you also know everything that I know about it. Nice. But like, even when I was little I like playing school was what I did. When I got to college, it was like, I really like English. And my mother won't allow me to just get a straight English degree. Because yeah, that's a whole other story. So I decided to pair it with teaching, because of my passion for helping others reach their potential. That's what it's really turned into the more self discovery I've had over the past few years. I just really want people to do their best to.

Luis Malbas  
That's really interesting. Very cool. So you've been a cashier, substitute teacher, writing consultant, faculty Assistant, how has all of that kind of combined to influence what you do now as an instructional design as an instructional designer? Or has it at all?

Taylor Akioka  
Of course, it has everything that every experience that everybody has contributes to who they are, and how they see the world. What that myriad of jobs did for me was it put me in contact with a lot of different people. So I got a lot of different perspectives on how other people see the world, which is kind of essential when you're designing instruction for other people. If I'm just designing instruction for me, it's probably not going to help too many people.

Luis Malbas  
Absolutely. Absolutely. Very cool. Um, how about any specifics? As far as your background as a consultant, a writing consultant and a copy editor that must have helped helped your instructional design quite a bit?

Taylor Akioka  
Yes, a writing consultant in particular was, I would sit down and have a 30 minute consultation with students trying to write their term papers. I go like line by line through what they'd already written, and correct all of their grammar mistakes, and clarity errors. So really, that has made me very nitpicky when I'm doing scripts, and voiceovers and everything, which probably drives some of my teammates crazy with how nitpicky I can get. But it's also taught me like the power of words, and how to get things succinct, and still clear and digestible for the learners.

Luis Malbas  
So as a writing consultant, is that, is that, does that experience kind of parallel maybe working with an SME?

Taylor Akioka  
Yes, yeah. A little bit. Because they would, they also kind of go line through line through whatever we're doing. And we butt heads sometimes about what the right thing to do is for the learner. So the people management skills of trying to get to the right, combination of words.

Luis Malbas  
Right. Absolutely. And what you're doing at all state now, what are the types of learning materials that you do create? Is it mostly writing or what else do you do? As far as an instructional designer?

Taylor Akioka  
It's a little bit of everything. There's like elearning, with articulate, there's videos and sometimes PDF job aids very rarely, live instruct like decks in PowerPoint for live facilitated education. That's most of what we do. But that spans a lot of different things, just with the amount of topics that are available in insurance education, right. How big is your team? Has it seems pretty Small cuz I'm so close with everybody. I think I think there's seven or eight designers, a couple project managers. Our team recently expanded. So I don't know if I have those numbers. Right. But it's it's pretty small 14, maybe can you

Luis Malbas  
share a project maybe that you are particularly proud of that you may have worked on? Since you started doing this stuff? In September?

Taylor Akioka  
Yeah, one of the biggest projects that I worked on this year was our annual compliance content, which is very dry, and very essential. Yeah. So there were a lot of heads in the room, trying to get everything right. And my biggest challenge was trying to turn some very dry content into something very engaging for at least more than it was before. Because it was very just like, Do this, don't do that. Do this. Don't do that. Here's some multiple choice questions. I added some scenarios in rise, that really put the learner in a reflective frame of mind instead of just going for cut and dried. Or in compliance. Yeah. Nice.

Luis Malbas  
So and, you know, something, I want to also go back to a little bit you had talked about how you be, you know, as, you know, gas as a clerk at high V, and a substitute teacher and all that, you know, that you have had to cater to a divine diverse audience, like, you know, be it in customer service or an education. How do you do that? Now, in your instructional design, when you build things do you know, you probably consider all of that stuff. Now, when you're creating stuff, right? Being able to build like, diverse content for different types of people? Is there anything specific you can talk to you about that?

Taylor Akioka  
A lot of it comes down to doing a very thorough needs analysis. But before you get started, knowing who your audience is, is very important into what you end up with as your deliverable. Most of the content that we work with is specifically for insurance agents. But we've also branched out into designing more content for like home office employees and other groups. If we don't know who we're talking about, it's hard to create effective content. A big driver for us this year has been accessibility as well. It wasn't really necessarily a focus in the past, but we have really been working hard to make sure that everything is more accessible this year.

Luis Malbas  
That's awesome. Is there? Was there a particular reason why that became an emphasis.

Taylor Akioka  
We had a learner come through, it was visually impaired, and was not able to access some of our content. And then they needed it. So yeah, we learned from that experience that we weren't doing as well as we thought we were, and are making it a focus to do better going forward. Nice.

Luis Malbas  
So I guess this is where I can pitch the fact that the LDC is producing an accessibility event coming up August 14 through 18. Thanks for that Taylor. Like, like segue perfectly.

Taylor Akioka  
I did actually have that invite open when we were starting this so it was top of mind.

Luis Malbas  
It's great. So yeah, and it's at www.vidc.com. It's actually building it out right now. It's been really fun. It's very energetic and my LinkedIn profile is just going crazy with mentions and stuff. So but register, I mean, we can the seating is limited for this one. So out there, listeners or viewers, you might want to register soon so that you can make sure you get in for the for the live event. Okay, so how about you as a professional, how do you stay up to date with with l&d Best Practices? Are there any resources or communities that that you're a part of aside from T LDC that helps you make sure that you're on top of your game?

Taylor Akioka  
Oh, T LTC is one of the main ones at the moment. I also got in touch with a lot of really interesting professionals through my master's program, and I'm actually working on a doctorate right now. So graduating, next, getting more and more and then I've also been blessed with a team who is very intentional about finding things and posting them in our teams chat tiktoks LinkedIn, learnings, articles, everything. So I get a lot of extra content just from that alone, because we're all pushing each other to do better. Oh, that's

Luis Malbas  
great that that is sounds like a very supportive environment. That's awesome. So why the doctorate?

Taylor Akioka  
Well, because I really like school I like to learn. I'm learning professional. So I, it's always been on my bucket list to get a doctorate. So why now has to do with my husband is in dental school, he's a third of the way through his first year just took his first half of written boards today. Congrats. And I was bored, because he was home like gone, and like doing stuff. So there's only so much TV you can watch.

Luis Malbas  
So just I'll just get a PhD. Why not?

Taylor Akioka  
Why not? Also just a little bit petty because it's, he's going to be a doctor. So I should be one too.

Luis Malbas  
Right? Yeah, gotta make sure that that household has a some some some balance there. And you say that, you know that you're a lifelong learner? What is it that you like most about being an l&d Professional are about this career that you've chosen?

Taylor Akioka  
I really like putting out content that looks good, that is effective for the individual, like consuming it. And knowing that I am actively contributing to helping someone else do better in their life and meeting any that they have. That's really important to me. I also just really love my team. I found more support from learning and development communities than any other community basically my entire life. Yeah. It's just a great group of people to hang out with. And it does make me want to do better, too.

Luis Malbas  
Yeah, no, that's great. What is it about your team that you love so much, I'm really curious.

Taylor Akioka  
We are all there for each other, we're all ready to pitch in and help. We're all really cool people. Our interests really align. And part of it was like, I did officially get the job in September, but I was working with the team kind of as a side project since March, and the way that they opened their arms and let me in and like, helped me learn and get experienced that I could put my portfolio in the resume. And they actually cared. That was life changing. That's awesome.

Luis Malbas  
That's awesome. That's great. Are you do working in an office, you work remotely?

Taylor Akioka  
And work remotely? Okay, that's great. That's a great perk. Um, so as far as the

Luis Malbas  
insurance industry is concerned, I mean, do you see instructional design? Or what you do changing at all now? Are things like, moving quick towards the future of instructional design and insurance? Or what's the what's the pace of things? Like? Are you having to find solutions to things that are more future futuristic? Or does insurance stay pretty consistent all around?

Taylor Akioka  
I mean, I'd like to say that it stays pretty consistent all around, but every industry is changing. Really, what's changing for insurance is not just the l&d, but like the customer base wants something different than it did 10 years ago. So my company is investing a lot into digital tools, and trying to keep up with the way that customers want to buy insurance, which is almost all online. But you still have those people who want to call in or they want to walk into an office. So trying to cater to all those customer perspectives, and then supporting the insurance agents in adapting to whichever one they want to do. Our team in particular is trying to adapt to like we're exploring micro learnings. We're trying to make everything short and sweet. Just to try and help our learners keep up with all of the demands on their time, which are becoming more and more because of the customer base because everybody wants things faster.

Luis Malbas  
Yeah. Now fascinating. I do have a nice question from Christina here. Christina Printy, who's asking can you talk about some of the measures your team is using to demonstrate the effectiveness of your l&d projects?

Taylor Akioka  
Hmm, that's a good one. We do a lot of our reporting through our LMS. But like the bottom line of how effective we're being is whether our agents are being effective. So it all kind of comes around to are the agents making the sales and making the profits? How much are we paying out in claims, all of that. So it's kind of difficult to put numbers around, sometimes we have to do it kind of in a roundabout way. But we do see and track trends from new education that we're putting out, and then whether the metric, the corresponding metric for the agency is also changing.

Luis Malbas  
Wow. That's an interesting way of having to measure your success. But I suspect that's probably pretty typical in the insurance industry. So yeah, that's very cool. All right. Thanks. Thanks for that question, Christina. Okay, so we're gonna go ahead and start wrapping this up a little bit with just a couple more questions. If you weren't like an l&d professional, what do you think you would be instead Taylor?

Taylor Akioka  
I really wanted to be a writer for a while. Which is probably a huge surprise, considering my background. But no, I think I think this is the perfect marriage of like, all of my interests in the workplace,

Luis Malbas  
wow, that's pretty special. Not everybody gets to do that, right? You know, just being able to find something that you actually feel like you, you know, your personality really aligns to, and you have all of these different experiences that you can, that you can collect and apply to a career choice. That's a big deal.

Taylor Akioka  
It was interesting, because I didn't touch on this earlier, when I applied for the Instructional Design and Technology master's degree, I didn't really know what an instructional designer was or what they did. I just remembered that project management course. But then, like, I took the intro couple of courses. I'm like, Oh, this is perfect. This is everything I ever wanted, and the perfect time for me to do it. Because it was I started January 2021. We all went vote.

Luis Malbas  
Yeah, yeah. And so forth to it, is it? Is there anything about your job as an instructional designer that is particularly challenging for you?

Taylor Akioka  
Sometimes there's a lot of hurry up and wait, like, I need you to have this done. But the information that you need in order to create the learning, I'm not going to give that to you for a couple of weeks, or, like just just waiting on other people to get information that I need to create. Because I don't know everything about the products that I'm teaching people how to sell. I don't know everything about the systems. So that's what the SME is for.

Luis Malbas  
Yeah, yeah. Do you build a lot of elearning?

Taylor Akioka  
Do you do? What kind of tools do you use? Mostly articulate? Sometimes, if we're getting fancy, we'll put we'll put a beyond video in there or work in Camtasia. But mostly, mostly articulate.

Luis Malbas  
Wow, well, so that's pretty much the tool.

Taylor Akioka  
You go into any

Luis Malbas  
conferences or anything like that coming up?

Taylor Akioka  
Not in person. And the only one I had planned was the TLT. See one in August.

Luis Malbas  
All right, well, then we're gonna definitely see you there. Last question that I'm going to ask you, Taylor. What is the one thing that people should know about you?

Taylor Akioka  
It's such a hard question. I thought about it, and I asked a few people. And I'm just gonna have to go with Eli's answer. I played Dungeons and Dragons, and I think it's cool. Okay, who's Eli? He's one of my teammates. All right. All right.

Luis Malbas  
All right. So you play dungeon. Okay, so that that is actually really interesting to me, because I'm actually talking with some people right now about or talking specifically with Don Metcalf about integrating, uh, doing a games and gamification event, but integrating DND into it. So I'm gonna have to reach out to you, Taylor, because maybe we could use some feedback on once we come up with that. I mean, tell me what you think about this. If we had a session zero with some DND of fresh aficionados to talk about building this event out? Do you think that would be interesting? I think so. keep you posted. Oh, it's great. Cuz I played d&d to my son, especially mine Nine year old son is crazy about it. So I love it whenever the conversation goes to DND, because I have been plugged in playing since the early 80s. And in some big fan. Well, gosh, Taylor, thank you so much for finally getting in here and having this conversation with me. I really, really appreciate it. And it was great meeting you. And I'm glad that community gets to to learn more about you. I'll be posting this one on the website. And also there's an audio broadcast that I'll be sharing via the TL DC podcast. And with that, let's see we do have one more broadcast this week. We are going to be talking with Rubina haldwani and Totti Norham, about some Viane vignettes that that Rubina has been building and that'll be happening on Friday at 8am. Pacific time. 11am Easter so Eastern, so check that out if you're interested at all about what she's doing with beyond. And with that, Taylor, thanks again. Say thanks to your husband for letting him use your computer for this one. And appreciate everybody out there in the live audience and we'll see you next time. Thanks, everybody.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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