A Year of Quick Tips & Tricks from Articulate Training 2022
View the 2022 Quick Tips & Tricks compilation video There’s no doubt about it; our monthly Quick Tips & Tricks webinars are one of the best ways to take your e-learning expertise to new heights. Whether you’re new to e-learning or you’ve been building courses for a while now, our quick tips sessions feature practical tips that will help boost your skills. But we know you’ve got a lot going on and may have missed an episode or two. That’s okay because we’ve got you covered. From essential authoring tips to creative insights that help you work smarter and get more from your Articulate 360 subscription — we’ve compiled a year’s worth of Quick Tips & Tricks into 10 hours of binge-worthy on-demand training. Remember, if you’re ever looking for help with your own projects—technical, creative, or want to try out some new ideas—just post your question in the community where helpful folks are always willing to help. And who knows? Your question might get featured in the nextQuick Tips & Tricks. Here's an outline of the featured tips and tricks we shared over the past year. Quick Tips & Tricks 76 Using Dials as Menu Navigation Creating Conversations in Rise 360 Motion Paths and Spinning Animations Quick Tips & Tricks 77 Zooming Tips for Storyline 360 Scrolling Panels and Masking Effects in Storyline 360 NEW: Real Content Templates in Rise 360 Quick Tips & Tricks 78 Image Sliders and Production Tips in Storyline 360 Rise 360 Image Dividers Drag-and-Drop Effects in Storyline 360 Quick Tips & Tricks 79 Using Themes & Templates in Storyline 360 Using Rise 360 for Virtual Presentations Creating Text-Entry Interactions Quick Tips & Tricks 80 Markers & Labeled Graphic Interactions in Storyline 360 Simplifying Production with States in Storyline 360 Importing PowerPoint WordArt into Storyline 360 Quick Tips & Tricks 81 Using Number Variables to Create Assessments in Storyline 360 Adding Character States Over Multiple Layers in Storyline 360 Recent Updates in Storyline 360 Quick Tips & Tricks 82 Custom Labels for 360° Images Removing the Play Button in Storyline 360 Output Customizing the Storyline 360 Menu Quick Tips & Tricks 83 Custom Drag-and-Drop Tips for Storyline 360 Troubleshooting Tips for Storyline 360 Working with Motion Paths in Storyline 360 Quick Tips & Tricks 84 Drag-and-Drop Tips in Storyline 360 Cover Slide Design Ideas for Storyline 360 August 2022 Updates for Storyline 360 Quick Tips & Tricks 85 Looping Animation Effects in Storyline 360 Scrolling Panels in Storyline 360 Tips for Working in Review 360 Quick Tips & Tricks 86 Using True/False Variables Menu Navigation Using Custom Motion Paths in Storyline 360 Drag-and-Drop Production Tips Quick Tips & Tricks 87 Animation Timing Tips for Storyline 360 Recent Updates to Storyline 360 Branching in Rise 360All 12 Quick Tips & Tricks Webinars From 2023
Our monthly Quick Tips & Tricks webinars provide answers to your questions, practical tips to further your skills, and creative tricks to help speed up your course development. Whether you’re brand new to e-learning or a seasoned professional, our quick tips sessions offer something for everyone. We record each month’s session since we know that you’re busy, and it’s not always easy to attend a live webinar. For your viewing pleasure, we’ve compiled this year’s Quick Tips & Tricks into one on-demand video. If you’re ever looking for help with your own projects—technical, creative, or want to try out some new ideas—just post your question in the community where helpful folks are always willing to help. And who knows? Your question might get featured in the next Quick Tips & Tricks. Here's an outline of the featured tips and tricks we shared over the past year. January 2023 Creating Graphics in Google Slides Working with Combined Hover and Selected States Storyline 360 Workflow Updates Using a Simple Text Effect to Increase Readability February 2023 Working with Audio in Markers in Storyline 360 Using the Embed Block in Rise 360 Working with Conditional Navigation in Accordions Audio for Sound Effects March 2023 Using Subtle Backgrounds in E-Learning Creating Dividers for Use in Rise 360 Creating Smoother Mouseover Interactions with Characters April 2023 Unrestricting Access in Storyline 360 if You're Using a Pre-Assessment Test Working with a Click and Hold Timer in Storyline 360 Recent New Features and Updates to Storyline 360 May 2023 New Features in Review 360 Tips for Working with Drag-and-Drop Interactions Trimming a Long Audio Track into Smaller Track Using Studio 360 June 2023 Working with a Zoom Region in Storyline 360 New Features in Rise 360 Resetting Only the Incorrect Drag and Drop Choices in Storyline 360 July 2023 Skipping Animations in Storyline 360 Creating a GIF from a Peek 360 Video New Review and Collaboration Features in Articulate 360 August 2023 Creating GIFs Using PowerPoint Creating a Magnifying Slider Effect Adding Numbers to Markers in Storyline 360 September 2023 Additional Ways to Create Scenarios in Rise 360 Using the Morph Transition in PowerPoint to Make GIFs Tips for Working with Audio in Storyline 360 October 2023 Ways to Work with a Drag and Drop Out Animation Using a Checklist in Storyline 360 and Rise 360 Using Sliders to Measure and Align Objects November 2023 Ways to Have a Consistent Character Size Background Playlists and the New Trigger to Control Audio in Storyline 360 Finding an Image's Size and Resizing Images Without Stretching Them December 2023 Animation Effect Example Optional Content in Rise 360 Share Link Permission in Review 360 Common Questions from Recent Webinars
How I Made This Progress Meter in Storyline 360
Including a progress meter in your e-learning course is a great way to give learners visual feedback about how far along in the course they are. Progress meters can take many shapes and forms, but typically you’ll see a bar near the bottom of the slide that fills up as the learner moves forward in the course, like in the animated .GIF below. Click here to see the interactive version. It’s particularly useful to include a progress meter in longer courses, so learners can estimate how much longer they’ll need to finish the course and can then decide whether to finish up or come back later. Orienting learners also helps prevent them from feeling lost or overwhelmed due to having no clue as to where they are in a course. Thanks to slide numbers in Storyline 360, you can create a custom progress meter like the one above by adding a single trigger. Let me quickly walk you through how I created mine. 1. Insert & Format a Slider If you want the progress bar to appear on all your slides, you’ll need to put it on your slide master. To do that, open the view tab and click Slide Master. From there, open the insert tab, click Slider, and select one of the slider options. For this example, it doesn’t really matter which one you choose because of the formatting options you’ll apply later. Next, go ahead and insert a thin rectangle that’s the same length as your slide. This rectangle will be what fills up the progress bar as the learner advances through your course. With your rectangle selected, choose the fill color you want and select No Outline. When you’re happy with the formatting, right-click on the rectangle and choose Export Shape as Picture. Save your rectangle to an easy-to-find location—like your desktop—and give it a name that’s easy to identify. Then, click on the rectangle in your project, go down to the timeline, and click on the eye to hide it. We’ll use it again later, but for now we want to make sure it doesn’t get in the way. Now, select your slider, open the format tab, click Thumb Fill, select Picture, and browse for the rectangle you just saved. The next step is to adjust the size of your slider until the rectangle (or thumb) is entirely off the slide, as shown in the animated .GIF below. If you’ve set it up correctly, the rectangle (or thumb) should be completely off the slide. The part of the track that's on the slide should be empty but take up the entire width of the slide, like in the screenshot below: Once your slider is the right size, you’ll format it to look the way you want. For this example, you’ll choose No Outline for the thumb border ... … and No Fill and No Outline for the track fill and border. Next, unhide that rectangle you used to create the slider thumb. You’re going to use this rectangle to create the outline of the progress bar. For this example, get rid of the fill color and add a gray contour, so it looks like the screenshot below. Then move your slider and rectangle to the bottom of the slide and line them up. You want the rectangle to be slightly taller than the slider thumb—as pictured below—so you might need to adjust the height of your rectangle. Once your rectangle is the right height, center it on your slide. Finally, click on your slider, open the design tab, and change the end value to 100. 2. Create a Trigger Now that your slider is all set up, you’ll need to add a trigger to make it show your learner’s progress. Here’s what the trigger should look like: Note that the object should be the name of your master slide, so it might be different than what you see above. 3. Insert a Hotspot Next, you’ll want to add a hotspot to prevent learners from clicking on the slider and changing its position manually. To do that, simply open the insert tab, click Hotspot, and select the rectangle. Then, right-click on your hotspot and uncheck Show Hand Cursor on the hover option so learners don’t think there’s something to click on. If you’d like, you could stop here! Your progress bar should now be fully functional. However, if you want to take it further, move on to step four. 4. Add a Hover State (Optional) To take your progress bar to the next level, add the exact percentage of the course that’s been completed to the hover state for learners to see when they hover over the progress meter. To do so, open the insert tab, choose Slide Number, and click More in the drop-down menu. Then select Progress through project (or Progress through menu, if you’re using the menu order to number your slides) and click on the place you’d like to insert it on your slide. The percentage will appear in a textbox, like this: From there, you can format the text—change the color, for example—and move it to the exact spot you’d like it to appear, like I’ve done below: To make the hover state work, you’ll need to add a trigger since there’s a hotspot preventing the learner from interacting with the slider. Here’s what that trigger should look like: And that’s it! Now your learners can see how they’re progressing through your course. Here’s what the end result looks like. Keep in mind that this isn’t the only way to create a progress meter. Feel free to get creative! Want to download my file to better understand how I've set everything up? Pop on over to this page. More Resources Want to learn more about the slide number feature? Check out this article for ideas of ways to use this feature and this tutorial for a step-by-step guide on adding slide numbers to your project. If you want to try something you learned here, but don’t have Articulate 360, why not start a free 30-day trial? And be sure to subscribe to our newsletter to get the latest e-learning inspiration and insights directly in your inbox. You can also find us on LinkedIn and X (Formerly Twitter).How I Designed This Immersive Scenario on Prioritizing Tasks
Recently my fellow instructional designers Sarah Hodge and Madison McCartney and I teamed up to prove that there’s always more than one way to present course content. Each of us created a mini-course on prioritizing tasks, using the Eisenhower Decision Matrix as our starting point. In this article, I’m going to walk you through how I got from this: … to this: View interactive version | Download template Without further ado, let’s get into it! Setting the Scene Since I created this project as an example, there’s no real target audience, much less learning objectives. But to make it feel realistic I set some basic parameters to guide my design thinking. Here’s what I came up with: Audience: Novice e-learning project managers Learning objective: Be able to identify tasks, classify them as important and/or urgent, and prioritize them accordingly Coming Up with the Concept Over the years, I’ve seen a lot of great e-learning examples in the E-Learning Heroes community, but a few really stand out to me. One in particular is this time management game by Phil Eagles. I love the way he took a series of simple multiple choice questions and made them into a scenario that feels real and meaningful. And since time management is so closely related to task prioritization, it’s the first thing I thought of when I started brainstorming ideas for my project. I wanted to create something similar—but put my own spin on it. Because I wanted to create a totally custom and immersive scenario, Storyline 360 was the perfect choice for this project. I decided to simulate a desk and let learners identify tasks and prioritize items for themselves. The idea behind this was to emulate real life—where learners have to identify tasks and decide which ones to do first—while also following one of the key principles of adult learning by giving them control over their learning experience. Refining the Scenario Once I had a general idea of what I wanted to do, it was time to iron out the scenario details. I wanted to give learners enough opportunities to practice prioritizing tasks without it feeling repetitive. I included a few different types of tasks—since that’s what it’s like in real life. In the end, I settled on a total of six tasks, including a few emails, a couple of text messages, and a Post-it. As I started to build out my scenario, I ran into some challenges. One of the main issues was that my slide was getting overcrowded. To overcome this challenge and help learners focus on one thing at a time, I divided the process of task prioritization into two parts: Step 1: identify and analyze the tasks to determine how urgent/important they are Step 2: prioritize the tasks based on their level of urgency/importance For step one, I used a series of toggles so the learner can decide if each task is urgent and/or important. Based on their answer, I provide custom feedback. This is how that turned out: For step two, I made a simple drag-and-drop interaction so the learner can decide where each task belongs on their to-do list based on its level of urgency and importance. Here’s what that ended up looking like: Because this project was intended for adults who may have previous experience with the Eisenhower Decision Matrix, I made the explanation walk-through optional, as shown in the screenshot below: Is this how I initially envisioned my project? Absolutely not. To be honest, I don’t think I really had a clear mental picture of what it would look like. Some people can map out their entire project before they even open up the authoring app, while others do better jumping straight into building and get inspired along the way. Both methods are totally fine as long as you always keep your learners’ needs at the center of your design. Designing the Graphics As someone with no formal graphic design training, I can be challenged to come up with ideas for the look and feel of my courses. To find inspiration, I usually start by checking out the examples and templates on E-Learning Heroes as well as the Content Library 360 templates. Even if I don’t find exactly what I need, I usually come across something I can use as a starting point. Personally, I find that starting with a template is less intimidating than starting from a blank slide. And even if the final result ends up looking completely different than the original template, having something to start with helps me channel my ideas and inch closer to a place I feel good about. So, once I knew that I wanted to create an immersive scenario, I headed straight to E-Learning Heroes to look for templates I could use as a springboard for my design. A quick search for “desk” led me to this template, which I thought was perfect: Download Template After opening the template, I made some adjustments and played around with different color options. Here’s what my first version looked like: There’s nothing wrong with the way this looks, but—as I mentioned earlier in this article—it was at this point I realized there wasn’t enough room on the slide to allow learners to both identify and prioritize tasks in one spot. Splitting the activity up into two parts gave me more screen real estate to work with. Around this time, I also decided I wasn’t sure about the mint green wall and wanted to give white a try . . . . . . but I wasn’t totally sold on that either. I also felt lukewarm about the way the desk looked and decided to incorporate some texture. This is what the next version looked like: Wondering how I created the wood texture? I did a Google search for “flat design wood,” inserted one of the images I found onto my slide master, and then used the curve tool and shapes in Storyline 360 to achieve a similar effect. This is what it looks like behind the scenes: I was pretty happy with the way this looked, but when I started adding other objects to the screen, I realized they didn’t stand out enough against the dark blue background. That’s when I settled on the design you see in the final version: I went through a similar process for the other slides in my project, so I thought I’d share the different versions with you as well. . . . and here’s the final version. You’ll notice that in the final version I pulled in the computer screen from the previous slide to tie it together a bit more. I also changed the size of the boxes to make it all fit on the screen. As I was working on my core content slides, I also started to pull together my title slide. Since my other two slides used a flat design style, I wanted to stick with something similar. I found this simple slide template in Content Library 360 and used it as a starting point: I didn’t want to include characters, so I deleted those and changed the color of the background to match the dark blue I was using at the time. After taking out the characters and changing the color, I felt like the slide was too minimal. It was missing something, so I sat and thought about how I could incorporate more visual interest. That’s when I had an idea: what if the title slide was a view of the desk from above? And since we’re talking about prioritizing tasks—and many people write their to-do lists in a notebook—I thought that might make sense and look nice. So I went back to E-Learning Heroes for some inspiration and ended up finding this spiral notebook template: Download I imported it into Storyline 360 and made a few adjustments to make it all come together. Here’s what it ended up looking like: As you can see, graphic design isn’t always a straightforward process. It doesn’t necessarily go from zero to perfect in one fell swoop. In many cases it’s an iterative process involving incremental changes until you’re happy with what you’ve got. So the next time you’re feeling stuck and unsure about your design, try doing what I did and search E-Learning Heroes or Content Library 360 for a template you can use as a starting point. Then, make small changes here and there. Eventually you’ll get to a place where you feel good about your design. More Resources Hopefully you’ve found this inside look at my design process interesting and insightful! Remember, it’s okay if your first draft isn’t perfect. Design (whether it’s instructional or graphic) is a process, and it often takes trial and error to get it to where it needs to be. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that! If you enjoyed this article and are looking for more insight into what goes on in the minds of instructional designers as they’re creating courses, be sure to check out these articles: How I Designed This Personalized Decision Matrix How I Designed This Interactive Dial Matrix A Behind-the-Scenes Look at How I Designed This Gamified Quiz Want to try building your own immersive scenario in Storyline 360, but don’t have Articulate 360? Start a free 30-day trial, and come back to E-Learning Heroes regularly for more helpful advice on everything related to e-learning. If you have any questions, please share them in the comments.Guide to Creating Illustrations in PowerPoint for People Who Don’t Know How to Draw
Visuals are a key element of any e-learning course. They help attract the learner’s attention and reinforce key messages. If you don’t have a graphic designer on your team—or access to an asset library like Content Library—you may be struggling to find or create the visuals you need for your course. If that’s where you are, don’t worry! In this tutorial you’ll learn how to create your own illustrations in PowerPoint using freeform shapes. What Is a Freeform Shape? On the Insert tab of PowerPoint, you have access to a whole host of default shapes to help you create your own illustrations: But did you know that hidden among those default shapes is a freeform shape that allows you to draw your own personalized shape? It looks like this: In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to use this super-powerful feature to create your own illustrations—even if you have zero artistic ability. Set Default Shape Format When you draw a freeform shape, PowerPoint automatically applies the default shape format—meaning the fill and outline colors—to your shape. And while you could just use that and change the style afterwards, I recommend changing the default style to something with a contrasting border and no fill color. Why? If you’re tracing over a photo, the contrasting color makes it easier to see where you’re drawing. And with no fill color, you can still clearly see the image you’re tracing. So how do you set a new default shape style? It’s easy! Just insert any shape, format it however you’d like, right-click on the shape, and select Set as Default Shape: Now, when you draw your freeform shape, it’ll automatically take on the format you’ve defined. Find a Photo to Trace Let’s say you want to include a visual of a hand holding a phone in your course. Unless you’re already a gifted illustrator, it’s going to be difficult to draw that freehand. The easiest thing to do is search for a photo of what you’d like to draw and trace it. Here’s a good example of a photo you could use as a starting point: Tracing a photo is also a great solution for times when you’re not sure whether you have the right to use a given photo in your course. Draw a Freeform Shape Now that you have your photo, you can insert it into PowerPoint by clicking on the Pictures button on the Insert tab. Then, also on the Insert tab, click on the Shapes button, and select the freeform shape tool. There are two main ways to draw using the freeform shape tool in PowerPoint. 1. Press and hold your mouse: Use this technique to draw an illustration freehand. This option is best for people who are comfortable drawing and have a pretty steady hand on their mouse (or access to a graphic tablet). 2. Press and release your mouse: Use this technique to draw an illustration one point at a time. This option is best for those of you who (like me!) are not comfortable drawing freehand. It allows you to create a shape by connecting a series of points. But you don’t have to choose one or the other; you can actually combine these two methods while drawing the same shape. It’s up to you to decide what works best! To create a closed shape, continue drawing until you are back to your starting point. To create an open-ended shape (or a line), double-click at any point to exit the freeform shape tool. Edit Points Once you’ve finished drawing your shape, you can fine-tune it by editing each individual point. To do that, just right-click on the shape and select Edit Points: When you’re in Edit Points mode, you can see all the places you clicked to create your shape and adjust them as needed. To move a point, just click on it and drag it to the place you want it to be. If you want, you can take it a step further by right-clicking on a point and choosing one of the following options: Add point: If you messed up when you were drawing your shape, you can add in extra points afterwards and position them as needed instead of starting over from scratch. Delete Point: If you want to get rid of an unneeded point. Open Path (if it’s closed): If instead of a closed shape, you want to create an open-ended path, choose this option to unlink the first and last points you drew. Close Path (if it’s open): If you meant to create a closed shape, but accidentally created an open path, choose this option to link the first and last points you drew. Smooth Point: To make a point more rounded, choose Smooth Point or Straight Point. When you choose Smooth Point, the handles on the point will stick out straight, instead of forming a corner. When you drag on one side of the handle, the other side will automatically adjust, creating a symmetrical curve. By playing with the length and angle of these handles, you can change the shape of the curve. Straight Point: This option also makes your point rounded, but this time you’ll notice that the handles work independently, meaning that if you drag on one side of the handle, the other side of the handle doesn’t move. This allows you to create an asymmetrical curve. Corner Point: By default, all the points on your shape are corner points. If you change your point to a smooth or a straight point and aren’t satisfied with how it looks, choose this option to revert to the default setting. By adjusting your points, you can smooth out your drawing considerably, as you can see in the before and after photos below: Before After Format Shape Once your shape looks exactly the way you want, you can hide the image you used to trace your shape and change the color as needed. If need be, you can draw another freeform shape or use a combination of default shapes to complete your illustration. For this example, you could create a cell phone out of a combination of shapes. Start by inserting a rectangle with rounded edges to make up the base of your phone: Now, as you can see, the part of the thumb is now hidden by the phone. To make it look like the thumb is on top of the phone, add a second rectangle with rounded edges that starts below the thumb and goes until the bottom of the phone, like this: Now, right-click on the first rectangle you created and select Send to Back. Your illustration should now look like this: Now repeat this process with two gray rectangles with square edges to create your screen: Finally, insert a circle for the camera, a rounded-edge square for the speaker, and a rounded-edge square for the home button of the phone. Here’s what your finished illustration should look like: And there you have it! Thanks to PowerPoint, you can create your own custom illustrations without being a professional illustrator. Thirsty for more PowerPoint illustration tips? Check out these tutorials: Creating Custom Shapes in PowerPoint How I Created These Handy People Icons in Powerpoint Did you enjoy this article? Be sure tosubscribe to our newsletter to get the latest e-learning inspiration and insights directly in your inbox. You can also find us on LinkedIn and X (Formerly Twitter).How to Use GIFs as Cover Photos in Rise 360 (with Free GIFs!)
Adding a cover photo to a Rise 360 course is an easy way to make your course look beautiful, inviting, and customized. And you’re not limited to still photos!You can addGIF files to your Rise projects to make them really come to life. That’s why we’re giving away abundle of six GIFsfor you to use in your Rise 360 courses.Grab the download, then check out this simple tutorial to see how easy it is to update your cover photo with one of these gorgeous GIFs: And remember to subscribe to our newsletter to get the latest e-learning inspiration and insights directly in your inbox. You can also find us on LinkedIn and X (Formerly Twitter).Making Built-In PowerPoint Templates Your Own
Here you are again at the beginning of a new e-learning project, staring at a blank slide and wondering how on earth you’re going to come up with yet another unique look and feel for your course. I’ve been there, and have just the solution to your blank-slide woes: built-in templates! Before you groan, hear me out. I’m not saying you should take these templates and use them as is, but rather take them and make them your own. Not sure where to start? Check out this easy six-step process and you’ll be on the road to success! 1. Choose a Built-In Template Start by selecting a built-in template whose general background appeals to you. Try to disregard the colors, as you can easily adapt them. Remember, you can change any aspect of the template that you don’t like. 2.Define the Theme Colors Once you’ve selected a starting built-in template, you’ll want to adapt the colors. To do so, simply open the slide master via the View tab, and click on Create New Theme Colors in the Colors drop-down menu. Depending on the project, you may or may not have a predefined color palette. If you do, go ahead and use it to create your new theme colors. If you don’t, try doing a key-word search on the internet to see what colors others associate with the topic of your course. Still not inspired? Play around with this color wheel to see which colors look nice together, or check out the examples hub on E-Learning Heroes. Once you’ve adapted the theme colors to your liking, choose a name for your new color palette and click Save. The default template is then automatically adjusted according to the new theme colors. If you like your new template as is, you can stop here. If not, you have two options: go back and change the colors in your theme or manually change the colors of the background objects. 3. Add, Delete, or Hide Background Objects At this stage, you can choose to add, delete, or hide certain objects to achieve a slightly different look. I recommend activating the Selection Pane to easily hide or unhide objects on the screen without permanently deleting them. Notice that when you click on an object on the screen, it is highlighted in the Selection Pane. In this example, I’d like to hide all the background objects so that my background is a solid color. To do so, I simply select the group of objects and click on the eye icon in the Selection Pane. Note that the Title Slide Layout is generally slightly different than the rest of the slide layouts. If you make changes to this layout, be sure to go back and apply those changes to the main slide master (the top slide) as well, so that it is automatically applied to the rest of the slide layouts. 4. Change the Background Style The next thing you can do to adapt your template is to change the background style. You can either choose one of the default options or click on Format Background to personalize the background style. Make sure the master slide (the top slide) is selected when you change the background style, so your changes are automatically applied to all the slide layouts. 5. Choose the Theme Font(s) Once you’re done editing the background graphics, you can move on to text formatting. Here, you have two options: choose from the default font themes or create your own. The advantage of creating your own is that you can choose a different font for title text and body text. For more tips on choosing the right fonts for your course, I encourage you to read these articles: 5 Questions to Ask When Choosing Fonts for E-Learning 5 Important Elements of Typography My 4 Favorite Free Fonts for E-Learning As soon as you save, the changes are applied to your template. 6. Test Drive Your New Template Now that you’re all done, go ahead and close the Slide Master view and try adding some actual content to your new template. When you do so, you may find that you want to make some minor adjustments. For example, you might find the size is too large or the background graphics don’t give you enough space for your content. No problem! Simply go back to the Slide Master view and tweak your template. I recommend doing this for a couple of slides before applying your new template to your entire course. This will allow you to get a feel for how well your template fits your content—without waiting until you’re 40 slides in to realize you need a different template. And there you have it: in a matter of minutes, a totally different-looking template created from a built-in PowerPoint template! Next time you’re feeling uninspired, remember that those built-in templates can easily be adapted to fit your needs. And the end result will be so different that no one has to know you started with a template. If you like my template, you’re in luck! You can download it here. Here are some other good resources to check out if you’re new to course design or if you’d simply like to take your skills to the next level: How Do I Choose a Design for My E-Learning Course? Your Ultimate Guide to Choosing Graphics for E-Learning 5 Graphic Design Mistakes Newbies Make and How to Avoid Them 5 Ways to Look Like an E-Learning Design Pro (Even If You’re Not!) Subscribe to our newsletter to get the latest e-learning inspiration and insights directly in your inbox. You can also find us on LinkedIn and Twitter. And if you have questions, please share them in the comments.
