Hand-Drawn E-Learning Courses #41

Shortly after the dust storms rolled in last night, most of Phoenix lost power for several hours. Power outages are rare in Phoenix, but they can be scary for cats, dogs, and 5-yr olds. To keep our kid’s mind focused on happy thoughts, we gathered around our candle-lit table and made flower fairies.

Getting Back to the Basics

While we worked by candlelight, I remembered a story I’d read about the 2011 Japan earthquake and how a town’s newspaper used pen and paper to manually print news of the disaster, shelter information, and general support efforts.

“For six consecutive days after the twin disasters, reporters used flashlights and marker pens to write their stories on poster-size paper and posted the ‘newspapers’ at the entrances of relief centers around the city. Six staff members collected stories, while three spent an hour and a half each day writing the newspapers by hand.” Newseum

View the video story at Newseum

One reason I think I like this story so much is that it’s a great reminder that technology is only part of the answer. It also highlights the speed at which designers can move when they aren’t focused on technology or any single solution.

Power’s out? Pen and paper are in. Back to work everyone!

Challenge of the Week

This week, your challenge is to create an emergency-response course using pen and paper.

Select a news story or training course that focuses on a disaster or emergency event and create a 3-5 slide course to help learners navigate the event. Because you’re creating everything by hand, you’ll really need to focus on the basics.

Consider adding one or more of the following elements:

• Information - What happened and what do your learners need to know?
• Checklists - Can you provide steps or procedures for your learners to follow?
• Resources - Are there any additional resources available to learners?

Note: This challenge is not about prototyping. This one’s all about designing an analog course using basic drawing tools. 

Tools and Resources

You can use crayons, markers, pencils, or any non-digital drawing tools to create your mini-course. You can digitize your handwritten slides any way you like.

Suggested ways to share your images:

• Your personal blog
• Pinterest
• Flickr
• Instagram

Last Week's Challenge

Before you pencil in some time for this week’s challenge, take a look at the instructional design quizzes your fellow community members shared in last week’s challenge:

• Jackie Van Nice kicked off this week’s challenge with a monster-iffic interaction that challenges learners to motivate learners using the ARCS design model. You can learn more about this creative interaction over at Jackie’s blog.
• Melissa Milloway followed up with a super fun Fact or Myth interaction featuring character scenarios that challenge learners on common instructional design myths. Nicely done, Mellissa!
• Liz Braden took things in a different direction by focusing her interaction on helping learners get the most from SMEs. You can learn more about Liz’s creative activity at her blog. Thanks, Liz!
• Sophia Xu shared an interactive, fill-in-the-blank timeline on instructional system design that challenges learners on influential theorists and their contributions to ISD. Awesome, sophia!
• Richard Watson shared his own version of a Fact or Fiction to quiz learners on common instructional design concepts. There’s a lot of Storyline goodness going on in this interaction so take a few minutes to read more about how it all came together. Thanks, Richard!
• Allison Nederveld asked learners to construct their own slide based on Richard Mayer’s principles of multimedia learning. Love the concept behind this interaction! You can read more about the interaction over on Allison’s blog.
• Chris Chagnon jumped into his first challenge (Woot!) with a Monty Python-inspired quiz that challenges learners on ID myths. Creative concept and here’s hoping we see more from Chris!

New to the E-Learning Challenges?

The weekly e-learning 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. I’ll update the recap posts to include your demos.