MADE for U of T | Ep. 12 | Curtis Frye

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Curtis Frye (CF): The origin story is that I was recruited by lynda.com, by a senior person there named Bonnie Bills, and she brought me in for an audition to see if I could, you know, work to the style of lynda.com. And I passed somehow, and we've had a great relationship ever since. So, what inspired me was opportunity, because I saw that book sales were starting to tail off. Even then that would have been late 2008, and even though books remained very popular, for you know, for many years after, it was harder to make a living doing that. My most recent book that I solo authored was Microsoft Excel 2019, step by step. So that was a fair number of years ago, I guess, 5 years now, and that was the last one that I've done, and simply because the opportunity isn't there. The income is no longer there. I actually created my first online training courses with a company called Digital Think, which was based in San Francisco in the early 2000s. I looked on my computer because I'm a pack rat. I keep all of my old stuff because you never know when it'll be useful again, and my archive only goes back to 2013. So, I actually don't remember when those courses were released.

Inga Breede (IB): Oh no!

CF: It seems like it was sometime in the 2004 to 2005 range, and when I went to look for it. Didn't you know I wasn't able to to find it easily, So yeah. So the inspiration was mostly about opportunity and changing markets. But also, lynda.com is a terrific company to work for, and I should say I'm a contractor, not an employee.

IB: So how do you balance the technical aspects of course development with the need to create engaging and accessible content?

CF: If you look at engagement and content separately, I tend to focus much more on the content side as opposed to the engagement side. One of the nice things about being with a company as a contractor like LinkedIn Learning is that they do all the marketing. And they do, you know, all the course production, except for the actual recording. And so that allows me to focus on the information. And I'm not a very flashy kind of person. I have started a Youtube channel for kind of the overflow of movies on topics that either have been in courses that have been dropped by LinkedIn Learning, or that they were like, “nah, this isn't for us.” So we'll do something else. So I focus on the information side, and I focus on keeping my presentations as compact as possible. You know, and obviously not more so. I don't want to, just, you know, have shadows on the wall that people try to try to follow, so I balance it very heavily in in terms of content and the engagement is more or less based on the interest of the learner. And so, if I can, I try to add things like color to the sample files that I use. We don't really do fun examples, because so many of my learners, they either have English as a second or third language or they wouldn't be familiar with my references. So, I don't know cricket well enough to make jokes for our large Indian audience, for example. So that makes it makes it difficult. So I focus on content. And I try to overcome one of the limitations that I find in video, which is that you have very low information density.

IB: Can you elaborate on that?

CF: Sure. Basically the amount of information that you can convey in a specific period of time. And video is much lower. Like right now, we're probably talking about 150 words a minute or so. I tend to go a little bit faster and then the average person can read about 300 to 350, and when you are focusing on technical information, everything slows down, especially on the spoken side. I, you know, work mostly on getting as much in as I can in as quick a time as I can, so that our learners are able to go about their life.

IB: Curtis, you mentioned Youtube. So what trends do you see shaping the future of online learning, video content. And how are you preparing to adapt to them.

CF: The trends that I see are more interactivity. So the platforms that are available have more ability to, for example, work through a code example. Not in any of my courses, but you know that is certainly possible. You can also play matching games for concepts, that kind of thing. And I am adapting to them slowly. Because as of now, the type of courses that I create are still very much in demand, so honestly, I haven't had to switch all that much. But what I'm looking at for the future are, you know, larger bits of interactivity, different ways of creating a courseware to emphasize and reinforce ideas. And I hope I don't have to do it because I'm a wicked introvert. You know, I don't do a lot of podcasts. If you look for me online, you probably didn't see a lot except what I've written. But, for example, a lot of people do a couple of courses through Linkedin learning, and use it as a springboard for their in person training. I don't do that. I much prefer the online either asynchronous learning, or in a one-to-one with an audience environment like this. So in a way, I'm kind of the wrong person to ask about that, because I haven't had to adapt yet, but I'm ready.

IB: Well, you mentioned demand, though. So, there's clearly a demand for the content you're putting out. So can you discuss the role of learner feedback in your course development process. How do you incorporate it to improve your offerings for future content?

CF: Well, there are 2 aspects to that. One is on my Youtube channel, which is a much quicker turnaround. I'm creating an individual video. I typically record 4 to 5 at a time and then release them on Mondays. So, for that, I really only have to work one day a week, you know, except for coming up with what I want to talk about next. And for Linkedin learning, the publication cycle is much longer, and I tend to do, I think the shortest course I've done is maybe 10 or 11 individual movies with each movie typically being around 5 minutes or so as a guideline. And the longest I've done, I think, is approaching 90, which is on Tableau, the data visualization software. And those typically have turnaround times in the months as opposed to the days. So learner feedback on Youtube, people can say, “I'm really interested in this,” or I just look at the number of likes and see what's coming up exactly, and see if there's something else that I can do, because what I do on [YouTube] cannot conflict with what I do on Linkedin learning. So there, there has to be an exclusivity there. And so that's important feedback. And on Linkedin learning, we tend to get a lot of comments, you know, folks going through the courses and those tend to be topic suggestions, if I've made an error and it is made it all the way through quality, assurance, and editing. Then it needs to be fixed.

IB: Do you replace it? Or do you just create new content that corrects the previous content?

CF: We replace it. So typically we will. I will get the change. I will say, Hey, this is how I propose to fix it. My remote training producer, who I've worked with for 6 or 7 years now. She will say “Yes, I believe that Fix will work. I'll submit it,” and then the production team will take it from there.

IB: What's a training producer?

CF: A training producer, so if you go to Linkedin learning, you'll have someone sitting across from you in a separate recording booth, but with a glass window between you. Whereas at home, you know, recording remotely, it's just me. And my training producer accepts the files that I send and make sure they're of the proper format that I didn't forget to turn my microphone on, did it once, and then she you know, handles everything on the production side, including managing the editors and then working with the production team, video and audio, to ensure that it goes out in good form.

IB: Well, Curtis, thank you so much to tell us a bit more about the work you do at Linkedin Learning and on Youtube, we really appreciate you giving us your time today.

CF: Oh, absolutely!

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