E-Learning: Storyboard vs. Prototype

I'm with Nicole. I always build my storyboard in Storyline (for elearning at least) so I can use it as a prototype.

Here's my steps:
1. I can get approval on a design right up front by building a few slides with the look and feel and colors I want. Maybe some additional colors for stakeholders to choose from. I insert some of the content as well.

2. I build more slides with content. Not only can the SMEs check the flow, but I think it cuts down on my work. I don't have to copy, paste and format a Storyboard in Word. I do it all in one place.

3. I can make in-line changes when talking to SMEs.

4. I publish to Word when I want SMEs to have full editing capabilities avoiding the separate Storyboard again.

5. Also, I use publishing to Word for developing job aids or guides.

I'm a 1-person development team (but I work with our Marketing Team), so I probably do things differently than some. I actually develop backwards according to traditional methods - I create an "Instructional Design Model", then sort of translate that into a first-round prototype. Then it's incredibly simple to screenshot all my placeholder objects/text/graphics, and copy and paste text to create a storyboard in Google Presentations (this makes it accessible for different stakeholders to edit text directly or comment on graphics/anything else in the modules).

This also makes it easy to step between design and development, so if it turns out there's an easier/faster/better way to do something, I just modify the prototype directly and demo for any stakeholders.

Rounds 1 & 2 typically require a "walkthrough" - I'll demo the protoype, showing others how it's supposed to run, and show the best working parts to give them a feel. By round 3 it's a "no excuses" prototype, and shouldn't require a walkthrough or explanation.

I'm still nailing this down, so I'm open to feedback :)

Hello guys!!!

In my short experience as a e-learning developer, what constantly happens is:
In the early stages of the projects, i make by best to do a good storyboards with all the elements in order for the stakeholders to have a clear view of the online course.

Although it's more clear and visual a good prototype, cause they can have the real experience, by clicking and navigating through the course. And in the review stage it's what works best.

I work on an instructional design team that does not use storyboarding or prototyping because the nature of our company requires us to produce courses at a fairly fast rate. Most of my teammates feel that storyboarding or prototyping will take up too much time, so instead they jump directly into course-building.

I have recently learned about the process of storyboarding, and I would like to know your thoughts: do you think storyboarding adds time to the process or saves time overall? I would love to share your thoughts with my team. Thank you!

hello Alyssa!

It takes some time to create a solid storyboard, and in my case i don't always find the time to spend on it and do it properly. so the solution that i come up with is creat a kind of storyboard in storyline, this way i won't get lost,

Great article!

I normally design a story board as a quick sketch within Storyline, This gives the SME's and Stakeholders a great idea of the course layout, colours, characters and audio. I try not involve them in navigation and branching as this can complicate things when you have instructionally designed the course that best suits the learning path. I'll definably include "Prototyping" into my end to end walkthrough with SME's and Stakeholders and see how it goes. You cant down it unless you've tried it :)

I asked this question by the way in the community and I believe you are indirectly responding to that. Thanks

I was reading the article and the comments and was wondering what level of detail you add to your storyboards?

I think we do kind of a combo - For branching, scenario- based things, I usually do a branching plan in something like PPT or Visio or Mind Manager. Then I can build that framework & storyboard directly in Storyline so none of that initial work is lost. We tend to have a general design template (ish) to stick to, so visuals aren't that difficult to block out, and might even be somewhat "final." Then I publish to Word (& sometimes have to add more screenshots for layered/animation/illustration build slides) to share with stakeholders. Seems to be working relatively well for us, and the planning up front really helps!

Very interesting discussion we have here. Well, throughout my 18 years of developing e-learning content, I should say that 90% of the time, we would go through the Storyboarding process. Why?

1. Like Nicole said, "the storyboard is essentially the blueprint for the course being developed. The storyboard lays out the visuals, multimedia, text, audio elements, interactivities, and navigation details of each and every slide in your course.

Throughout my experience, even though with the Storyboarding process in place, there will tend to be changes, and changes made by Subject Matter Experts every now and then. So, the Storyboards help us in the "versioning" process and to keep track of the "performance of the Subject Matter Experts" (SME)s. In my e-learning exposure, we dealt with tremendous amount of content; namely for training and academic purposes (colleges and universities' type of content). If we don't start off with the Storyboards, the SMEs, being academicians, they would like to see the "blue prints". They want to ensure that their content is developed/designed as they had taught or visualized them. On our part as the developer, designing and developing e-learning content is all about "time", "money", and "performance". If SMEs had to make us change the Storyboards more than 3 times, it reflects their credibility in their understanding of their own content!

So, showcasing the visuals, multimedia, text, audio elements, interactivities, and navigation details of each and every slide in our course help us to:
a. get things right from the very start
b. help SMEs to visualize the content as they had "envisioned" them to be presented to the learners.

2. Storyboarding process also helps us to focus on important information and creativity from the very start. Like wanting to build a house, we have anticipated the "blue print" of the house from the beginning:

a. What kind of "house" are we building? = What kind of content are we developing?
(a small house, large house, a Tudor house, a single story house = a PDF content, a scenario-based content, gamification content, case-studies, etc.)

b. What kind of "rooms" are we creating? = What multimedia elements are we incorporating in the content?
(a bed room, a kitchen, a bathroom, a living room, etc = texts, graphics, animations, videos, VOs, hyperlinks, etc.)

c. What decorative items can be added to the house (colors, shapes, sizes, etc = What interactive elements can be added to multimedia ones: games, quizzes, and activities such as drag and drop, click on, etc)

Having said

Having said that, what kind of Storyboards should be designed in the Storyboards?

1. They are usually just black/white/grey with important texts (that had been chunked during the Analysis stage), graphics that can be represented easily by Shutter Stock or any image bank and instructions to the programmers (navigations, animations, etc). If no images can be presented in this round, IDs will just describe in words the kind of graphics required.

At this first round, what is important is simply to present the "ideas", "content flow", and "content structure".

It is only during the first review, we would usually seek the SMEs opinion/advise in incorporating other elements that would add the "rooms to the house" and the "decorative elements" to be added to it. And we usually get a lot of input/feedback from SMEs from here on.

Having said all above, I; however, do agree that IDs need to be adaptive, flexible and agile in the content development process. If the content is not robust as the ones we usually develop for the academicians, we would usually zoom in straight into the Storyline instead. We normally do this if the content is "lesser than 10 pages of development (10 pages of A4 size content). Our experience IDs have also been trained to "chunk the content' in Storyline itself.

So, in other words, for us, to do Storyboards or not to do depends on:

1. the size of the content
2. the complexity of the content
3. the completeness of the content
4. the experience of the IDs in doing Storyboards (we usually allow only IDs with more than 8 years to skip the Storyboarding that has less 10 pages of content development)

Well, this planning seems to be working well for us!

I hope this contribution does provide some solutions to the Storyboarding process.