Intersections in Learning featuring Erin Chancellor

Lisa Crockett  
Thanks for listening to the intersections and learning and development cast a series from the training learning and development community. My name is Lisa Crockett. And this cast focuses on forging relationships that foster effective learning, no matter where you start, whether you design, develop, deliver, support or consult, and her all of the above, we hope to provide you with new ideas, inspiration and connections across the l&d community.

Erin Chancellor  
Oh, thank you, Lisa. So hi, everyone. Thank you for joining, I see a lot of familiar faces and friendly names in the chat. And I'm, I'm so thrilled that you guys came this morning to listen to me.

Lisa Crockett  
Welcome to intersections and learning. I am Lisa Crockett, and I have my host, invisible Monique St. Paul producing in the background. And the fantastic Aaron Chancellor here to talk to you today. Aaron is a cool designer and she has a passion for excuse me, has a passion for providing learning opportunities for people's careers. And I have to tell you, if you, you have to follow Erin on LinkedIn, like she posts the best posts. So I can totally see how you're into learning and development like I am, like riveted to your posts ever since I found you. So it's really cool. And she works for a software enablement company right now. So she has a master's degree, I hope I get this right. Virginia Commonwealth University. And, and you can teach ESL, you have that endorsement, which is really cool.

Erin Chancellor  
Which must English speakers of other languages.

Lisa Crockett  
And that's got to help in instructional design a lot, especially because you have to think of it from that perspective. And that's always been one of my challenges, actually. But before we get into questions in grilling, Aaron, I want to give her a chance to talk a little bit about herself, and why she's here with us today. So I'll turn it over to you.

Erin Chancellor  
Thank you, Jacob. So I am what's really cool. I am an instructional designer. I'm a curriculum developer right now, at a big tech company. And I'm at the point here, after changing my career I started, I like started the journey, that venture of the career change during a great resignation time. 100%, virtually all remotely, starting in the fall of 2020. And now at this point, I've been working professionally as an instructional designer for the past nine months. So my foot is in the door, I'm, I'm here I'm doing it every day, I'm excited about the line of work that I found myself in After navigating the career change and change of mindset and meeting new people and all that stuff. So I am here today with you all as, as an instructional designer, which is really, really, really cool. I'm, I'm so thrilled to say that,

Lisa Crockett  
you know, coming from a different career. That's like, it must have been very challenging coming over to this. And I'm curious, like you said nine months? Like, what is the difference between how you looked at a project, let's say nine months ago, to the very last project that you worked on?

Erin Chancellor  
Um, I think that the biggest difference is honestly the first. It. I don't think that I necessarily felt insecure when I was given my first project. But I do feel comfortable saying that word like insecure, nervous, because my immediate reaction was, Oh, what do I do? You know, like, it was there it happened, I got the job, it was in front of me. This is the task at hand and I thought, Oh, what do I do? What do I do? Um, so I can say that I had a fantastic mentor, and a really incredibly supportive and kind team that just sort of, like, just brought me in with encouragement and, you know, helping hands pointers, peer reviews, you know, links of places like I had all of the support that I could possibly mean, and a shoulder to lean on from my mentor. So I would say that the first project was a lot of me, asking for help asking for affirmation, you know, just really kind of, I knew here was my total vibe at the beginning. And then I've developed and I've grown as a professional over the past several months that and I've got I got to the point where I actually started helping other other newer, you know, teammates that came on I kind of became the person that knew what to do and knew where to go and how to manage things. Then, you know, now I get my projects, my assignments and I just, it's routine. Am I cool? Here we go. Let's get started. I'm going to do this, this and this and And I've just, I'm, I'm rocking and rolling. It's great. It's great. I will say it took six, I will, I would say six months on, you know, kind of the long end, but it did take several months to get over that. Oh, yeah. Yeah, you know,

Lisa Crockett  
total sense, though. I mean, in any job, any job. I mean, six months is like the sort of period of getting your feet wet culture, understanding your environment, getting to know your team, it makes complete sense. And I think it's funny because I think you hit the nail on the head about the hardest thing about freelancing, you have to end up doing that with each new client. And sometimes with each new project, depending on the sneeze. So getting in that zone and that comfortable place. Like that's a beautiful thing and sort of a wonderful, like, concoction for a freelancer. Since you're sort of you're on the contract side, too. I mean, it's like that beautiful storm of okay, well, but certain things aren't changing every single time. It sounds like that's a good, great

Erin Chancellor  
place. Yeah, yeah, that's completely right. So do you do you feel at Lisa, do you feel like I I'm new here for each new projects, and each new client?

Lisa Crockett  
I would say in that I'm new here. Exactly. You know, I come in with, with the confidence of understanding and having done this for too long for me to actually mention the number of years now. But certainly getting used to what a client wants, right, all of that, how Smee likes to work, every SMQs different inside of an organization or outside. So all of that comes into play unless you've got that same group every time and actually think I when I spoke in the freelancing conference a few weeks ago, even with the same people and the same, you know, there is variation, but there's comfort and being in the same organization, I would think no.

Erin Chancellor  
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, fair is to have the same this same group of, you know, core core people, core teammates, the same procedures. It's, I enjoyed the sense of community.

Lisa Crockett  
So when you're like inside of inside of the organization, and you're thinking about your internal clients, for now, expectations, what they think the learning product might be, but then there's that reality of what we can produce. You know, like, I want Pixar, we've got the kind of, like, how do you set expectations in terms of what you can produce in the time line that's given to you? And what they're kind of? Yeah. Reconcile that

Erin Chancellor  
story? Yeah, that's, that's a really good question. Because of the work that I'm doing right now has a relatively, you know, tight timeline, it's, it's important to get the learning in the LMS and available to the learners and get as much in there as high quality as possible. You know, we're populating this LMS. And, and so it's important to get things done fairly quickly. And I think that it's an interesting, it's an interesting question, when I think about this sneeze and the stakeholders that I work with, I don't know if they come in, if they bring requests to the learning design team, already knowing what the end product, what they want it to look like, I think, and I think that speaks to the trust that our stakeholders have in our learning design team, where they can just say, we need to have, you know, this done, our learners need to be able to, they need to know this, and they need to be able to do this. And these are the resources that we have available for you to you know, you to pull it together, you know, and I think, I think I'm really lucky in that, in that sense that there's a lot of trust there. So that's one perspective, that that's one, you know, kind of learning requests that we get where it's just, this is what we need, trust you to trust you to do it. And then another kind of another kind of work that I do is more consulting on a on a learning project that a subject matter expert themself has pulled together, you know, we're all going and I'll you know, kind of spot check it, you know, bring in some adult, you know, learning, you know, methodology theories, and, you know, fix up the language for voice and tone, that kind of thing. So, I've got, I've got a range of a range of projects that I work on. And I think, you know, the best thing is the is the trust that exists. You know, where we get we work great learning designers on the team, and we make great, great projects, great curriculums and courses.

Lisa Crockett  
And you must have like a really well established process so that that x Vacation? Sort of it's not. It's not yes word for your space, they know what you're already producing. And that's their expectation. And that's the ideal place to get to.

Erin Chancellor  
It's like that golden Yeah, that we have that. And then we also have something that I absolutely love. And it's working with the same Smee or stakeholder more than once. Yes. Um, so I found a great, so we have, you know, we're a huge company, and there's lots of people to work with, and they're all over the world. And it's, it's, you know, a really cool, like, keep you on your toes, meeting new people developing new relationships kind of thing. But I really, really like when I get the same Smee again, so that they can just say, hey, remember what you did last time? Aaron, you know, yeah, that's cool. Or they'll know exactly where to go in, you know, in the project folder to drop the resources. It's just, it's lovely to work with the same person. And I bet you feel you have returned clients as freelance. Oh, yeah,

Lisa Crockett  
well, that's the best part. Right? Yeah, you have you get when you get your cadre of clients. And so I've tried to rotate like four or five clients. And that's a nice when you get that rhythm going. But onboarding is hard. To your point, you know, and I'm sure all of us, as instructional designers have experienced that just getting a process down for collecting feedback, making sure everybody's on the same page, it's usually the communication, in my experience, not really the content piece of it, or even the storytelling, you know, once you can get there that stuff is, can be beautiful, but it's just getting everyone on the same page and communicating, because that's where the tensions tend to come in. And it's totally normal. Because our lives are all

Erin Chancellor  
totally normal. And I would say to that, you know, to that effect, when it comes to communication, I found great success and just being really friendly with sneeze, but also been really encouraging for them as well. You know, like, oh, that's, you know, just when they have, they have great ideas, or they have a great resource, or, you know, what, once they feel comfortable kind of contributing to the arena of learning design, where I feel comfortable asking questions that are probably the most basic thing possible to ask about a product company, and I'll ask them, and we just kind of get that friendliness and conversation back and forth. I think it just, it just helps. It makes all the

Lisa Crockett  
difference. You know, oh, God, I love it. You're hitting on so many just brilliant things in terms of the IP world. And, you know, when you seriously like when you come up against challenges with sneeze, and I have to think about this all the time. Right? Usually, you know, if you think about whether or not they've ever done this before, if you think about whether they're comfortable, you know, once you make someone comfortable, like they have the same questions we do, we don't know the content, but they don't know the process. And no one likes to feel like they don't understand or they're holding something up. And that validation and that acknowledgement, like you said like that is that's everything in keeping the relationship going. And that's how you build that trust, which is why it's lovely that you have that in your environment right now. I love that. So I'm gonna get a little tactical on on you are now and I want to talk. You know, in this community, we talk a lot about accessibility. Luis did the wonderful conference. And if you haven't seen it is free replay on CLDC on accessibility, but really important topic for learning designers, everyone in l&d right now, how do we make sure our courses are accessible? Inclusive all of those things? So I'm curious, like, how do you incorporate those features into the work that you're doing?

Erin Chancellor  
Um, well, I can I know that as, as a company. So company wide, Team wide, of course, we make sure that every image has alt text, and every video has closed captions. So just as a just across the board to you know, to be signed off on the q&a ready to go live for the learners that all the images will have alt text, all the videos, caption, which is really nice. Something that I do, personally, that I found really early on. So I really liked the visual aspect of, of learning. I, you know, I make the posts on LinkedIn I create, I create all those in Canva. I just I love the visual, the visual aspect of the work that we do. So I can say just like as one technical thing that I do is I always check the color contrast between the background color of an image and the text that's on it. You know? That's like one, one little tidbit, the aim aim contrast checker. Do you know that website? I don't, but I'm going to definitely share it. It's like it's my go to where you can pop in the hex codes for the two different colors for the different layers of your image and then you can adjust the hue and then it'll like it'll. Yeah, that's the Aim. Aim contrast checker will other tidbits personally that I do inclusivity inclusivity let's see, one little tidbit of something that we do is to make sure that in our writing, we're not using any like idioms or colloquial terms that are specific to Americans or specific to, you know, wherever else so so that is using when, when people from multiple languages many places in the world are reading are learning

Lisa Crockett  
sounds funny until you're someone from another language who speaks another language natively is like very specific.

Erin Chancellor  
Yeah, I'm trying to think of one right now. But anyone that I think of right now, because I'm on the spot, it's going to be one that like I made up it's not an actual thing. Like don't Don't butter your bread before you toast it. Like

Lisa Crockett  
to think of it right when you Okay, let's look at the chat. Someone in the chat. Help us out.

Erin Chancellor  
Yeah, just there are

Lisa Crockett  
those things like hit the

Erin Chancellor  
road? Hit the road? Yeah, road. Yeah, exactly. That kind of thing. Don't count your chickens. Yeah, just

Lisa Crockett  
don't count you. Count my chickens. I need for goodness sake.

Erin Chancellor  
Even regional to you know,

Lisa Crockett  
Oh, yeah. I'm trying to think of one someone brought up to me the other day and excuse me, I'm actually looking here this I'm looking at a posted because I had to write this down because I love your post it. I have not seen shits Creek. But one of my clients was laughing when I asked them to explain something in a different way to me and they said, Lisa, you need to watch shits Creek, think about folding the cheese. And then then I started thinking about it with no context. And I went, what does that even mean? Like, I know what it means, you know what it means? But does everybody out there know what folding the cheese means? necessarily, you know, that an American thing? Or is that I grew up in the 70s on Kraft macaroni and cheese.

Erin Chancellor  
And I would say that my like the last thing that i i Keep in mind on my end, and I have lots of exploration and learning to do myself on accessibility and in inclusiveness in you know, you know, in general, but, uh, you know, in e learning and on demand, and, you know, in all the way Yeah, yeah. One thing that I was very mindful of, I recently was on a project where we had a, a use case scenario in the curriculum, and we were choosing characters out of, you know, a lineup of granted characters that we were using, and it was just very mindful of them all looking a little bit different. And it was a you know, it's just, it's just there in our minds and all of our minds now to say, well, let's do what let's do another quick glance over and see if just about everyone we could have represented in any kind of way in a cast of seven, isn't there? You know? No, it's hard

Lisa Crockett  
did that reasonably, some of the longest parts of the process? Sometimes they're just getting there? And I actually I remember clients saying to me, not long ago, can you please find any characters outside of storyline, they're all so pretty. And you know, you kind of look at it and go there. It's like a model kind of go up there. And you're like, these are not real people. Like, that's not what I look like, that's not what my people that are looking at this look like and, and that's just that much of nothing of that piece of inclusivity, like making sure that you're using and that it resonates correctly, right. That's a tough one. But all right, I'm gonna swap over to if you were talking about your job, Aaron, and I know you there's so many things involved in your job. And in the work that you do not even just instructional design, but the other work you do around brand awareness. So if you're explaining how you make your living to someone, how do you do that? How do you explain it?

Erin Chancellor  
Well, the way that I started out explaining it when I was changing my career in the fall of 2020, and early last year, I explained to my peers and my colleagues in the people, I knew that I would be designing and creating the blood borne pathogen training. But because of my previous, my previous line of work every year, every staff member is required to watch and take and, you know, check off this, you know, blood borne pathogen training that was filmed in the 80s. I don't know. It's just it's just not good. Elearning. So my, my example was like, Well, you know that I'm going to be doing that, but like much better. So that's still kind of where I fall when I'm explaining, explaining what I do. But I've also kind of I've grown into, especially in the job that I'm in now in the work that I've been doing, I've grown my explanation into saying If I help adults better their careers through automated learning, and I think that's true, that's totally what I'm doing now, you know, providing whatever knowledge skills are needed in a certain line of work, that training, that's what I do. And the end result is people being able to either do their jobs better, or advance in their careers, and learn something new. So I really, I really bring it all back to the career Betterment now, which also fits everything that I did in between the two careers when I was volunteering to help others, you know, navigate the great resignation and finding their next, their next line of work, it's just, it's all coming together beautifully. It

Lisa Crockett  
sounds like it, just the way you talk about it, your whole face lights up, which is amazing. It's so good to hear that because the the work can be difficult sometimes. And when you can still ignite that passion for it and know why you're doing it. And feel good about

Erin Chancellor  
helping people. And that's a lot harder to know, when you aren't interacting with the learners yourself. It's just a lot harder to get that that gratification or, you know,

Lisa Crockett  
validation, right, yeah,

Erin Chancellor  
yeah. And I do I miss I miss having contact with, with learners. So I'm also expanding like, an, in my future I've started, I've tried out, you know, some virtual facilitation lately, and I think I will, I really want to grow in that. And then, you know, as things start to open back up, and we can navigate safely together, I'd love to add facilitation, to, you know, to my skin, around the person.

Lisa Crockett  
And I think you'd enjoy it as well. It's it's a great other piece of, of what we do, really, I'm not gonna like when you're doing your work and thinking about the work, what makes the process move really fast for you, where you're like, where did the last four or five hours go? What would you be doing?

Erin Chancellor  
In, in the, the, let's see in the lineup, if if I were to say, you know, going from needs analysis all the way to, you know, development, and then in my current job, it's the finished product is handed off for, to, you know, to go into the learning management system and spread its wings and fly. That's like, I'm not necessarily a part of that in my current role. But if I were to look at that whole spread of the process, the instructional design process, I really get lost in needs analysis. I absolutely love it. estimative. So you know, just needs it needs analysis, yes. But then also like Project scoping, and everything like that, you should see oh, my gosh, well, I pull up a like a Word doc, a Google Doc, you know, and I'll start going through all the resources that the subject matter experts have provided it is just a color coding, cut and paste comment lines. You know, that meme of Charlie from? It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, where he's like, he's got his his hole. Do you know what I'm talking about? And he's got the whole thing behind him. The board the board? Like he's explaining it, and he's just completely strung out and how much work he's made connecting the dots on this crazy board. I don't know if you guys have seen that meme. I'll share it later on the platform. So you know it.

Lisa Crockett  
Totally. And I think you know, Monique's making comments on her. I think you made a new best friend. That is like, totally her favorite part.

Erin Chancellor  
Oh, yeah. Yay. Oh, yeah.

Lisa Crockett  
Because that might be. But I think we'd make good partners, putting the whole thing together. I'm a development girl myself.

Erin Chancellor  
We'll see. And then I would love to work with you. I love doing the whole instructional design process from start to finish, of course. But if you were like in this question, if you were to ask me, where would I live for a couple of hours? It would be more, you know, towards the beginning. So if you'd like to live in the development, I would love to do. Oh, yeah, that's the great stuff. And then we didn't mean we don't even have to pass things off. Like we don't have to chunk up the process. But it's a little more heavy lifting up the beginning. And if you want me to get the storyboard together, I like I like that. So I really, we need to talk

Lisa Crockett  
offline on this one. Because yeah, I've been on that note, just to keep us I have got to know just because I've had a few conversations with you and I still don't know this. What's a favorite quote or mantra that you live by?

Erin Chancellor  
So I picked this I wanted to answer this question, because I wanted to share with you that I have not always had mantras form myself each year, but I decided to do it for 2021. And I can't remember exactly why or what influenced me or motivated me. But I, I came up with a mantra for myself for the year 2021. And I repeated it to myself all the time, and everything that I did. And every choice that I made, and every rejection that I faced, I told myself over and over again to follow the future. And that was for all of 2021. And I and I did, right, I started this, this career, I have this job this, this was all part of 2021. So I really did follow the future. And it was so successful. When it came to having a personal mantra for me, like I grew so attached to it that I decided I had to do it again for 2022. And then it you know, it had to be different because I was in a different place in my life. And I thought I tried out tons of different things. And I finally landed on what my goal for this year is, is to pursue my potential. And I took the my my part, and I changed the way that I've the way that it's phrased now is pursue your potential. Because in my mind, when someone lots of people ask me for advice, you know, lots of people, LinkedIn, you know, other places, they're asking me for advice. Alliteration, for sure. Love alliteration. My goal, my goal this year is to be able to say not just to myself, Aaron, pursue your potential and the decisions that you make and the doors that you walk through. But I also want to be able to say it to other people who asked me for advice, and be able to say, Well, what I think you should do is pursue your potential. So that P Alliteration is what's going on with me last year that it was the F alliteration the year before. Next year, it'll be like, I don't know. Maybe s, I'll pick a letter pick number. I guess,

Lisa Crockett  
given that you've been doing this, like for nine months is the work, like what you expected it to be? Or is it different?

Erin Chancellor  
It's exactly what I hoped it would be. Oh, that's great. And I realized that I remember talking to my manager. Early on, within within the first month or two, that I was in this position, I remember talking to my manager and saying, This is exactly what I thought instructional design would be. And I was worried going into the position, I had misgivings that perhaps it would just be a position where I had to live in the authoring tools in the software, and just develop all day, which I already knew, you know, even then more towards the beginning of this of this career, that that isn't where I wanted to spend, you know, all of my time. So when I got into this position, and I found that I was expected to take the process in like a generalist way from, you know, taking a project from basically the kickoff through through the handoff, you know, at the end, I was very pleased, I was very pleased. And I love the work

Lisa Crockett  
in control feeling. I mean, it is there's the, you know, I say I don't like the beginning part. But I don't know if I could do the development. If I didn't do the analysis myself, because you do get steeped in the content, it helps to really form the pictures in your mind that then end up on the screen. And in that script. So it's wild, though, so I can talk to you all day. And I know we didn't hit all of the questions we talked about, because this has been amazing. And we're gonna be back but I've been told to wrap it up by my producer. So to leave without a speed round, because that's definitely guys out in the audience. My favorite part of this is putting you on the spot and asking you speed questions. So you ready? No, no, they're easy. There are I promise. You're ready. What's the last song that you listen to? You can have a few bars if you don't know the name.

Erin Chancellor  
The theme song of the office when it plays at the beginning of the show.

Lisa Crockett  
How about the last book you read actual book, not blog?

Erin Chancellor  
Um I think that the last book that I read, I think the last book that I read was girl woman other

Lisa Crockett  
Oh, that sounds good. I'm gonna need to get a download of that. After this. What the What if you do do you fanboy or fan girl anyone? Like a person like a person could be a person in l&d could be a person in A famous person could be just a person you admire, like your grandma.

Erin Chancellor  
Um I fan girl. My grandmother is you gave me that one I have to,

like, big part of my branding and how in you know, and a big part of what I, how I put myself out there. So I found girl, my grandmother. That's a beautiful,

Lisa Crockett  
it's beautiful gift. She gave you your gift of flowers and plants and we're gonna have to have a whole day on that as well. Okay,

Erin Chancellor  
have you started gardening yet?

Lisa Crockett  
Oh, I have I well, so sort of. We're in a new sport. Where are you in are in a new season here in Connecticut. I'm calling it sprinter. So I literally was powerwashing the deck on Saturday, getting all my seedlings out for my sunflowers didn't put anything in the dirt, but just sort of started laying things out. And then lo and behold, by the end of the day, there was an inch and a half of

Erin Chancellor  
snow. Right? Yeah, yeah.

Lisa Crockett  
Yesterday, and so I'm looking at it beautiful snow right now. And so I'm getting ready, and I'm anxious. But all I have is a big jar full of seeds right now.

Erin Chancellor  
Similar in Virginia, oh, a bit of a waiting game.

Lisa Crockett  
It's crazy. Yes, it's definitely sprinter. But thank you guys, I am definitely being told by in the chat by Monique that we have to close it up. So it was so good talking to you, Erin, thank you so much

Erin Chancellor  
for having me. Lisa, thanks for talking with me about instructional design.

Lisa Crockett  
I thank you for talking to us about it. It was an awesome conversation. Everyone. Thank you guys, for listening to us. By the way, our next guest is guest I can't speak to that. Our next guest, this guest is April 26. And that's Danielle kale, and she's going to talk to Monique about design thinking and creativity. So we hope to see you there. And please check in on all of TLD C's fantastic content. I mentioned the accessibility conference from a few weeks ago out or a few months ago rather now outstanding. And if you are interested in coming on the cast with us, please get in touch with us at intersections and learning@gmail.com. And you can also leave us notes in the chat. Reach out through slack anyway. And thank you guys for being here today. Thank you, Erin. Thank you have a good one, everyone. Bye. Thanks again for listening. And if you find value in our content, please consider supporting TLD C with a membership. Go to the TLD c.com backslash join to sign up and get access to hundreds of our recorded videos re entry to all of our live and virtual conferences and events and much more. Your support helps us continue to build community and share valuable resources for l&d professionals around the world.

‍