Fix Your E-Learning Mistakes #33

E-Learning Challenge #33

Happy Friday, E-Learning Heroes!

Last week we took a fun—and slightly painful—look at common e-learning mistakes. You came up with some classic mistakes that we’ve all made at one time or another.

This week, it’s time to clean up your mess. Yep. You made the mess, now you clean it up!

Challenge of the week

This week your challenge is to give your slides a proper makeover. Assume the bad slide designs were given to you by your client and that it’s your job to make them right.

If you listed the mistakes you made, use that list to guide your makeover. Tell us how you addressed each mistake in your makeover.

This is a great opportunity for you to demonstrate your design approach while helping new users see how to fix similar issues.

Alternative Challenge

What if I missed last week’s challenge?

If you skipped last week’s challenge, you can still participate!  Here’s what you can do:

1. Create a slide or two showing common e-learning mistakes
2. List the mistakes you made in the comments section below or on your personal blog
3. Correct your mistakes in a new slide and tell us what you did to fix the slides

Be sure to include the mistakes you made in the comment section so other folks can focus easily on your specific mistakes.

Tools

You can use Articulate Storyline, Articulate Studio, or PowerPoint to clean up your e-learning mistakes.

Last week’s challenge

Before you start cleaning house, take a look at some of the silly mistakes e-learning designers make:

• Matthew Mason kicked off the week with a big course featuring classic branding and ordered lists mistakes. Thanks for sharing, Matthew!
• Dan Sweigert overloaded us with information and on-screen mistakes in his storytelling example. Dan also shared some more info in his blog post. Nicely done, Dan!
• Matthew Guyan shared three all-too common mistakes in his “What NOT to do with e-learning courses” demo. Great examples, Matt!
• Jeff Kortenbosch shared a list of common mistakes that are easy to prevent and fix.
• Yours truly shared a bloated writing example common in many compliance courses.
• Nick Russell shared another hilarious example featuring patronizing activities and gratuitous background music. Classic!
• Montse Anderson shared an example of common alignment issues found in slide designs.
• Sophia Xu shared some classics compliance e-learning mistakes in her Dealing Fairly with Clients presentation. Sophia followed up with her makeover example.
• Bruce Graham shared cacophonous example featuring a kitchen sink of e-learning mistakes. Want to be good at e-learning? Do the opposite of everything shown in his example.
• Bianca Woods broke nearly every rule in the book with this single-slide example of common e-learning mistakes.
• Lindsey Ball dug into the bag-of-mistakes to showcase classics such as: floating characters, exaggerated bullets, inescapable layers, and more. Well done, Lindsey!
• David Glow shared the best statistics question ever written on a chalkboard. Can you spot the mistake?
• Liz Braden shared more e-learning classic mistakes in her example that features: poor alignment, redundant navigation, irrelevant graphics, and so much more!
• Ashley Chiasson shared her favorite mistakes including: animation assault, inconsistent fonts, overlapping images, and a wide-range of colors.
• Mike Taylor shared an IT roadmap that is sure to have learners looking for the off ramp!
• Nancy Woinoski shared some doozies in this hodge podge of common e-learning mistakes. You can’t unsee this so proceed with caution!
• Dana Dutiel shared her list of glaring “what not to dos” in e-learning. You’ll want to check out what she put together!

More about the e-learning  challenges:

The weekly challenges are ongoing opportunities to learn, share, and build your e-learning portfolios. You can jump into any or all of the previous challenges anytime you want. We’ll feature your work and provide feedback if you request it.

Wishing you a mistake-free week, E-Learning Heroes!

Even if you’re using a trial version of Studio ’13 or Storyline, you can absolutely publish your challenge files. Just sign up for a fully functional, free trial, and have at it. And remember to post your questions and comments in the forums; we're here to help. For more e-learning tips, examples, and downloads, follow us on Twitter.