Community Insights: Preparing and Planning your visual design for Articulate Rise
The beauty of Articulate Rise is that when it comes to development, you don’t always have to plan everything. You can jump into the blank canvas, easily add and delete blocks, play with interactions and figure out what works as you go. The ease in which you can chop and change things is often what draws people to rapid authoring tools. Being able to bring your ideas to life in the click of a button, without any complex programming or coding. Whilst this method of ‘figuring things out’ as you go can often work well for building out ideas, when it comes to visual design, sometimes a little bit of planning can go a long way! The blank canvas that Rise brings can offer scope to be as creative as you wish with the visual identity of your course, but naturally this can also feel just a tad overwhelming. This sometimes then leads to two outcomes. We have those who love the freedom of a blank canvas but try to shoehorn in too many styles at once. Or those who just don’t know where to start, so play it safe and end up with a boring, blocky, black and white build. The good news is with proper planning you can avoid both those eventualities and craft a beautiful, accessible build without needing to be a graphic designer! Consistency is key So, what is the point in planning your visual design before jumping into development? Well, it’s not about creating something overly complex, or spending hours crafting a character that you’ll only use once in the course. No. It’s about ensuring consistency. Consistency plays a big role in how our learners are going to perceive the eLearning. Good design will go unnoticed, but bad design sticks out like a sore thumb! Even something as simple as having different icon styles or suddenly switching from using photography to illustrations, can be jarring to a learner. This results in the focus being drawn away from the content and can actually have a negative impact on a learner’s perception of the quality of the content too. Think about it, have you ever visited a website and been immediately put off because of the way it looks? Did you buy the product or access that service? Probably not. Quality of design and consistency of design can have a significant impact on perceived quality and cognitive load. We want our design choices to enhance and support the user experience, not detract from it. Making design decisions before jumping into your authoring tool can help support consistency and leave you with a Rise build that feels polished and professional! So how do you start planning and what do you need to include or consider? Let’s take a look! Create a blank moodboard space. This can be in whichever tool you prefer using. I like PowerPoint or Miro as I can quickly copy and paste things into the slide space. The key thing is that you can access this moodboard easily and have enough page or slide space to jot down your ideas. This will become a bit of working document that you can add to during the initial scoping of your project. Add in any existing brand assets. If you’re working within an organization or with a client, it is likely they will already have some brand guidelines for you to work with. This could include font choices, colour schemes and even suggestions for photography styles. Often these come in very large PDF documents, so take half an hour to read through and pull out any information that could be useful for you. Within your mood board add a title for ‘fonts’ and make a note of the chosen font for both your body text and headers. Sometimes I even add a little paragraph of dummy text so I can see how the font will look. At this stage you can also decide on font sizing too and make a note of this. Next, begin to pull together your colour scheme from the brand guidelines. I like to create a few rectangles within my moodboard and fill them with my chosen colours. Next to each swatch I add the HEX or RGB code so that I can easily copy this over when I get to development. It’s also a good idea to label your colour swatches with their intended use, for example header text, body text and accent colours (colours used for icons, graphs etc.). Sometimes brand guidelines will contain multiple different colour palettes for different uses. This is where it may be worth a chat with your Stakeholders to ask them to decide on just four or five colours. Too many can become overly busy and distracting! Check for accessibility Now that you have fonts and a colour scheme decided, it’s important to check for accessibility. I like to have at least two accessible colour pairings within my colour palette. This means that the contrast between the two colours is great enough to pass accessibility standards. There are lots of helpful websites out there that can allow you to check the contrast of two colours and will let you know if it passes accessibility standards. On your moodboard create a separate section that says ‘accessible colour pairings’ and include swatches of the pairings that can be used. This is particularly important for text and background colour pairings. It’s important to consider the accessibility of fonts too. It can be tempting to go for an elaborate or decorative curly font. As a header with font size 44pt, this may be absolutely fine. But as 16pt body text, could be completely unreadable. Standard fonts such as Poppins, Arial and Open Sans tend to work really well for body text and offer bold / black alternatives for headings too. Decide on an illustration, photo and icon style It may seem pedantic, but sudden changes in icon style can be really noticeable. So next up on your moodboard add the title ‘icons’ and provide a couple of icon examples in a consistent style. Sites like Flaticon are fantastic for sourcing icons of a particular look and feel. Consider whether you want icons coloured or just an outline and how detailed you wish them to be. Play around with a few different styles until you find something that you like. I sometimes find it useful to visit my client’s website and get inspiration from the icons used there. Once you have decided on a style and the colours in which your icons should be, add your examples to your moodboard. If you want to go one step further, why not create a folder in your documents called ‘icons’ and quickly gather a bank of icons that you feel you’re likely to use in your course. When you start the development, you can just grab and go! Make sure you don’t forget to jot down where you sourced your icons from too. This will make it much quicker to find others in the same style at a later date. When it comes to photography and illustrations, the likelihood is your client / Stakeholders may already have guidance on what is appropriate to use. Whether you go down the route of characters, or stock imagery, it’s important to keep this consistent throughout. Head over to a royalty free site and search for a range of images based on the content or subject matter of your eLearning. In the case of photography, search for consistencies in backgrounds, shot type (close up versus wide screen), colours and poses. As a rule of thumb, I tend to avoid overly staged imagery where the person is staring directly into the camera. More subtle stagings where people appear to be interacting more naturally with each other can feel a bit more pleasant and less uncanny valley! Look for diversity in your images too, try to ensure a range of ethnicities, races and genders. Once again, add the title ‘imagery’ to your moodboard and provide a handful of examples you can refer back to later. When using characters or illustrations it can be slightly more tricky to ensure consistency in the style. However, royalty free sites such as Storyset allow you to search through a bank of illustrations all created in the same look and feel. You can even recolour them on the website without needing any graphic design software too! Gather inspiration for layouts and interactivity Did you know website designs can offer a great source of inspiration for Rise? Due to the continuous, one-page, nature of Rise it functions in a similar way to a website. Whilst you may not be able to replicate the functionality or interactivity of a website, you can translate some of the design choices! Head over to Google or Pinterest and type in ‘UI website design inspiration’. Here you will be able to find flatlay images of websites. Consider how the text is segmented, how colour and shape is used, and how images are presented. It can help spark ideas for dividers, background styles and more! Gather your reference images and drop them into your moodboard with the title 'layout inspiration'. Check everything fits together Great, you’ve finished gathering the pieces for your visual design puzzle. But now the most important step, looking at everything together and making sure it fits nicely. So, what do I mean by this? Essentially it means looking at everything as a whole and considering if it is conveying the message you want. For example, moodboard containing a colour palette with sunshine yellow and bright orange and photography of people smiling, may be a rogue choice for a fraud eLearning. This can also include looking for any contradictory elements to your moodboard too, for example a bubbly, rounded font but imagery that is serious and corporate. 🌟 All elements need to feel cohesive and intentional. Consider if you can explain the decision making behind your choices, if you’re finding you can’t really express why you’ve chosen a particular font, or colour, or image style, it’s probably not the right fit! And you’re done! You have your completed moodboard now ready to present to your client, share with colleagues, or to use as your reference to begin developing your Rise build. Remember, this doesn’t need to be a polished document, it should support you in maintaining consistency throughout your build and provide a point of inspiration to help you create Rise courses that break free from being boring and blocky. Once finished, why not share an example of a moodboard you’ve created? Share the tool you used and where you sourced any assets. 💡 Keep Learning Explore more member spotlight articles to discover how other learning designers are building their skills—and shaping the future of learning. Community Insights: Peer Guide Spotlight | E-Learning Heroes Community Insights: How Support Takes You Far | E-Learning HeroesMade by Members: On-boarding New Team Members
This month we’re spotlighting submissions across several eLearning Challenges that, when combined together, make an onboarding experience. These examples show how a variety of techniques can create memorable and easily referenced guides to simplify the fire hose of information that accompanies onboarding. Mix and match these examples for your specific use case if you’d like to give it a try, and be sure to comment below with what inspired you! A Blueprint for Day One and Beyond by SMcNicol Designed as a leave behind for after an interview, this course shows not only what an interviewee could use as a pitch for their first months in a job, but a clean and organized method for general 30/60/90 day plans. 💡Inspiration to take: How to use what Shannon describes as an “AI assisted workflow” to tailor plans and content Layered descriptions of not only what a process looks like, but concrete tactics for success Who is behind the scenes? By Kate_Golomshtok A bright example of vector image use, this submission shows a quick and memorable way to introduce different team roles. This approach makes it easy to understand the division of responsibilities in complex teams or projects. 💡Inspiration to take: Vector images that clarify tool use and positions for projects that could be confusing at first glance An “insider” approach to content presentation that includes field specific lingo Data Security Training by BrilliantTeams Submitted as part of the accordion interaction challenge, this submission shows how to make compliance training into an easily referenceable tool. New team members can easily dig down into more detail, while keeping high level information such as common initialisms above the fold. 💡Inspiration to take: Compliance training is notoriously a slog, so use engaging interactions to break up detail heavy content Stack information with the rationale behind it to help contextualize the “why” of procedures Meet the Team by AsweniGD Just what it says on the tin, this team introduction is a new team members’ dream for understanding organizational flow, titles, and personalities. Between the color coded org chart and detail on responsibilities this would help new hires understand who to ask what, when. 💡Inspiration to take: The morph transition makes for a clean transition from contextualized visuals to greater detail information Embrace color coded visuals to leave more room for what Ash describes as “human centered” introductions 🏅 Want to Be Featured Next? We’re always looking to highlight inspiring examples from the community, and your work could be next! Here's what we look for in a standout submission: A downloadable .story file or link to your Rise course so others can explore, adapt, and learn from your build. A clear explanation of what you built, how it works, and what makes it unique. Behind-the-scenes insight into your process, techniques, tools, or challenges you tackled. Purposeful design, whether it’s solving a problem, teaching a concept, or experimenting with a new approach. Bonus: Share your ideas for how your design is widely applicable beyond the specific example. Got something cool to share? Post it in Share Examples, and you might see it featured in an upcoming roundup!10 Tips for Coping With Vague E-Learning Project Requests
The typical advice when you start a new e-learning project is to find out as much as possible about the problem you’re trying to solve, the audience you’re creating it for, and your stakeholders’ vision for the solution. And while this is a best practice for a reason, sometimes it doesn’t go as planned in the real world. Maybe new regulations require you to provide training on a topic but don’t specify much other than course length. Perhaps your only guidance is that doing anything new is better than what your company is doing now. Or you could be dealing with the problem our Articulate User Conference attendees faced in this Training Trailblazers activity—stakeholders who don’t know enough about training to understand what exactly they need. So, what should you do when you need to know a lot more about a project before you can move forward? Let’s look at some useful strategies community members suggest for digging up that information! 1. Start by outlining what you do know If you feel overwhelmed by project ambiguity, sometimes the simple act of summarizing everything shared with you so far in one document can give you a better sense of what to do next. Also, if all the project conversations and decisions up to this point have been fragmented across lots of meetings and teams, your stakeholders and subject matter experts (SMEs) may not realize how little has been settled. Rounding up the few facts you have and sharing them with those partners can make it easier for you to highlight critical project gaps. 2. Create a list of questions—and experts to answer them Another way to narrow down next steps is to list the big questions that come to mind as you consider the project. Once you’ve finished your initial list, consolidate what you want to ask, ensure you’re covering all your information gaps, and triage the items so you’re asking the most vital questions first. When you finish the list, review each question and identify the best person to answer them. Project stakeholders or SMEs are logical places to start. But also consider if there are others inside or outside your organization that could have helpful information to share. 3. Analyze the problem with the project requester One source for answers can be the person or group who first contacted you for assistance. Even if they’re not experts in the material, they may have insights into what problem they want this training to solve and what they want people to do differently after they take it. If the project requester doesn’t know the answer off the top of their head, it’s worth spending some time chatting with them to try and uncover the answer. After all, if the requester doesn’t know what performance gap the training needs to fill, you’ll be hard-pressed to make that happen. 4. Get to know your audience It’s hard to design training when you don’t know much about who you’re designing it for. Learning more about your target audience can answer lots of questions about what your project should cover and formats likely to work well for them. Not sure what information is most important to find out? This article on how to do an e-learning audience analysis can guide you along the way. Your audience is also a valuable resource when your stakeholders know the gist of what they want your training to address but are foggy on the specifics. Interviewing and surveying your audience members can fill in those content gaps and give you practical ideas for what training experiences would help them the most. Not only that, but their feedback can also point out aspects of the topic you can leave out because your audience already has them mastered. 5. Research common problems and solutions If the initial request is vague about what exactly your training should cover, try exploring the most frequent issues people have with the topic and best practices for overcoming them. That way you can uncover tried-and-true ideas for your course content. This approach may not work well for niche, company-specific content or challenges. But it’s a great starting point for more general training topics, like leadership, communication, or compliance training. 6. Dig into metrics If your stakeholders aren’t sure about the specific areas your audience is struggling with, data may paint a clearer picture for you. Performance metrics can give you direct information about learner strengths and gaps. And you can infer a lot by looking into what company goals they aren’t currently meeting. This approach also has a bonus—it gives you concrete numbers to compare pre- and post-training. That’s a handy way to show the impact of what you create. 7. Consult official documentation or regulations When designing compliance training—or any courses related to legal requirements—the regulations themselves can offer guidance on the content your project needs to cover and what behaviors need to change. While it may take some work to convert this information from legal theory to real-world application, that effort puts you in a much better position to craft learning experiences that effectively meet your compliance regulations and land well with your audience. 8. Review historic courses and related training Has this training topic been covered by your organization before? Digging into what’s been done in the past may give you inspiration for what to do in the future. Old or retired courses can point out what approaches click with your audience and which fall flat. And you may even discover that you don’t have to create your project from scratch after all, but can instead rework existing course materials to meet your new training needs. To keep your course content streamlined, try investigating related courses too. That way you can spot if there are subtopics you don’t need to touch on because they’re covered in other training your audience is taking. 9. Investigate what other organizations are doing in this space Chances are, other companies are tackling similar challenges to yours. And thankfully, we work in an industry where people tend to be generous about sharing their work. Webinars, white papers, conference sessions, podcast interviews, social media posts, and articles are some of the many places you can learn about the training approaches other organizations have used. But publicly available insights aren’t the only resources to check out. Consider reaching out to former colleagues and industry connections outside your company to chat one-on-one about what training they’ve created or seen on your topic. 10. Do a needs assessment Finally, if you’re not in an emergency time crunch, one of the best ways to get all the answers you need and more is to take a step back and do a full training needs analysis. This process helps you analyze the business problem or performance gap your stakeholders want to address and determine the best approach to help—sometimes even identifying when interventions other than training are better suited for the job. Wrap-Up Vague project requests can be stressful and confusing. But these approaches can help you cut through the ambiguity, giving you the details you need to make your e-learning a success. Want more practical tips for starting a project on the right foot? Try these articles: 6 Agenda Items for Your E-Learning Project Kickoff Meeting All About Training Needs Analysis The 7 Questions You’ll Want To Ask When Deciding What Kind of Training To Create And if you’re looking for even more ideas to make every stage of e-learning design and development easier and more effective, 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). And if you have questions, please share them in the comments.Keep Your E-Learning Project Moving Forward with These 3 Tips
Kicking off an e-learning project is exciting—you get to meet the client, make design choices, and work with a talented team. But once a project starts, the momentum can sometimes lag. Sometimes this slowdown is a result of changes to the project plan, a challenging review cycle, or a miscommunication, but other times you find yourself behind schedule without knowing why. The good news is, with a little planning and critical thinking, you can avoid common pitfalls and keep your project moving! Read on to find out how. 1. Use a Flexible/Iterative Process While having a plan is important, your ability to adapt the plan to meet client needs and address unexpected changes is just as crucial. Using an iterative process to manage your project lets you continuously gather feedback and quickly adapt. For example, say you get feedback asking you to make changes outside the scope of your initial plan. If that happens, you’ll want to consider a few things: What you would need to be able to apply them. Do you need extra time? More money? Both? How far outside the scope the requested changes are. Will it require months of extra work or just a few days? Do you need to significantly raise the budget or just scrape together a tiny bit more? How critical they are. For example, if the requested changes relate to compliance or safety measures, odds are they’re critical enough that you’ll need to find a way to incorporate them. But if it’s just a question of personal preference, it might be okay to decide not to. Once you’ve answered these questions, get together with the project stakeholders and make a decision about whether or not to apply the changes. If you decide to apply them, remember to adjust your project plan accordingly. For more information on iterative and agile project management, check out this article: SAM, A More Agile Approach to E-Learning Development. 2. Maintain Open, Transparent Communication Communication is the single most important factor in project success. As a project manager, it’s your responsibility to provide the right information, to the right people, at the right time. The best project managers know the level of information each team member needs and selects the most effective communication method. For example, anything that impacts your timeline should always be communicated to your primary stakeholder. You can avoid bottlenecks in the flow of information by identifying how your stakeholders prefer to communicate—email, phone call, text, etc. When it comes to other team members, a best practice is to touch base with each of them on a weekly basis. One way to do that is to schedule short meetings to share project updates. In these meetings, encourage everyone to reach out if they need help or any further direction. If you notice certain team members seem lost and aren’t proactively seeking help, make a point to check in with them more often. Another great way to make sure everyone has all the information they need is to use a project management app—like Trello or Basecamp—to track progress and create a central location to find project information. 3. Establish an Effective Review Process One of the most common project roadblocks is an ineffective review process. According to this survey of e-learning developers, they spend a whopping 40 percent of their time iterating courses with Subject Matter Experts (SMEs). But it doesn’t have to be that way. The two main things that cause an ineffective review process—miscommunication and difficulty tracking feedback—can both be easily resolved by using an app, like Review 360, that centralizes feedback. Instead of communicating feedback in an endless spreadsheet, stakeholders can leave their comments directly in the course—making it easier for them to do and for you to understand. It’s a win-win! And if other stakeholders disagree with a comment or if you need further clarification to fulfill their request, inline responses make communication super-easy. For more tips on how to simplify the review process, check out this article: 5 Steps to an Easier E-Learning Course Review Process. Wrap-Up Flexible project management, open communication, and an effective review process are all key components of e-learning project success. Following these tips will help keep your project going and ensure you meet your deadlines. For more project management tips, check out these articles: 6 Agenda Items for Your E-Learning Project Kickoff Meetings 3 Tips for Building an Effective E-Learning Project Team 3 Ways to Ensure Your E-Learning Clients Keep Coming Back For More 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).Make Working with SMEs a Breeze with These 3 Downloads
One of my favorite things about being an e-learning designer is creating courses on a wide variety of topics. I’ve learned so much over the years! When I look back on it, it’s almost like I had to become an expert in every subject in order to create the most effective learning experience. And while some of my knowledge came from my own research, more often than not it was gleaned from the content provided by my project’s Subject Matter Experts (SMEs). Subject Matter Experts play a critical role in course design. They have the knowledge, experience, and insight to help you create the most impactful training. Despite their importance to your projects, working with SMEs can also be challenging. From different perspectives around how content should be presented to old-fashioned beliefs around how people learn, many e-learning pros find themselves in a battle of wills with their SMEs when all they really want is a productive partnership. This problem can be especially vexing when creating custom e-learning in a powerful app like Storyline 360. With so many creative possibilities, there are countless ways to present content. So how do you help your SMEs visualize different treatments and bridge gaps in understanding, all while building positive relationships with your SMEs? Here are three documents I’ve found essential for communicating clearly and aligning expectations from the start. Document 1: Project Kickoff Questions Before meeting with your project’s SMEs, it pays to do a little prep work. If you already have some source content pulled together, study it to get a basic understanding of the material. And if you don’t have content, research the topic or the company to make the most of your time with your SMEs. As you study, prepare a list of questions to help guide the conversation and show the SME how much you value their time. Need to kick-start your thinking? Download and customize this Project Kickoff Questionnaire for your needs. Download With all of your prep work done, you’re ready to set up a meeting with your SME to discuss the project. Make sure to bring your list of questions, and then listen actively and take notes. This is your time to build trust with your SMEs and identify knowledge and performance gaps to determine the right solution. Document 2: Project Plan After you determine the right solution, it’s time to put the details in writing so you’re all on the same page. A project plan can be a great way to align expectations. In the project plan, you can include the project background, course information, deliverables, timelines, and any other important details. Once you’re done preparing the project plan, have the SME review it and confirm its accuracy before moving forward with design. Need help creating a project plan? I’ve got you covered! Download this free project plan template. Download Document 3: Storyboard Now that you and the SME are on the same page, it’s time to start designing the project. If you’re using a slide-based authoring app like Storyline 360, the best way to make sure you have a solid foundation for development is to create a storyboard. A storyboard is the blueprint for a course that outlines the content screen by screen. Storyboards help your SMEs visualize how the content will flow and allows them to make edits before you start development in your authoring app. Note: If you’re using a web-based authoring app like Rise 360, you can skip the storyboarding phase and go straight to development since it’s easy to use and quick to make changes. Need help getting started? Then download and customize this storyboard template with your content. Download What Next? After the storyboard is finalized, you can feel confident knowing you have a solid foundation to start building your course. Taking the time to develop project kickoff questions, create a clear project plan, and storyboard the content before you start developing it in your authoring app will set you, the SME, and the learners up for success. For more ideas on working with SMEs, check out this series on Everything You Need to Know About Working with SMEs. Follow us on Twitter 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.4 Simple Steps for Updating Old E-Learning Courses
Something all training departments should do but often don’t is review their existing courses regularly to ensure they’re up-to-date and functioning as expected. There are a few common reasons this critical task is often overlooked: Launching a course is considered the last step in the process—reviewing and updating isn’t on anyone’s radar. Everyone’s focused on creating new courses. There are so many existing courses that maintaining them all seems daunting. If you’re in the same boat, now is the time to make a change. After all, if your training courses are outdated or broken, it’s a waste of time for employees to take them. When you think about it like that, it really highlights the importance of making time for course maintenance. To make the process feel more manageable, I’ve broken it down into four simple steps—and I’ve even included some tips for improving your courses while you’re at it. Let’s take a look! 1. Make a List Start by compiling a list of your existing courses. Use Google Sheets, an Excel spreadsheet, or any other app you’re comfortable with to get organized. Here are some things you might want to include: Course title Date published Authoring app Published course URL Source file location Actions needed (e.g., republish, refresh, remove, or redesign—we’ll talk more about these options in the next section) Notes Priority Here’s an example of what that could look like: Like how I’ve set this up? Download my template to help you get started. 2. Review Your Courses Once you’ve made a list, set aside some time to do a thorough review of your courses. Ensure your interactions, animations, and other course assets work as intended, that the content is still relevant, and the graphics are up-to-date. For a complete list of things to watch out for, use this handy resource: E-Learning Maintenance Checklist. If you come across some things that are broken or out-of-date, decide whether it makes most sense to update the existing course or to rebuild it from scratch. If the choice isn’t immediately obvious, head over to this article to help make the call: Update or Rebuild: How To Know if an Old E-Learning Course Can Be Revived. Then, update the spreadsheet you made in the previous section to include information about next steps. 3. Make a Plan Before you start updating, sit down and make a plan. Look at your list and decide the order in which you should update the courses. Prioritize business-critical courses such as new employee onboarding, software training used by your frontliners, or training that’s urgently needed to support business goals. Think about whether it’s something you can do on your own or if you’ll need to enlist the help of a coworker or a freelancer (via our job board, for example). Decide whether to update the courses all at once or little by little. Put together a schedule for updates to keep the project on track and set up checkpoints (using calendar reminders, for example) to ensure it’s progressing. 4. Take Action Once you’ve made a plan, you can start converting your content. Here’s how to update your courses based on your decision to republish, refresh, remove, or redesign. Republish Let’s say the course content and visuals are up-to-date but it’s not working anymore because it includes Flash content that’s no longer supported by most browsers. If you created the course in Storyline 1, Storyline 2, Studio ’09, or Studio ’13, just upgrade your course to Articulate 360 (which includes both Storyline 360 and Studio 360) or Storyline 3. Both options can do the hard work of converting older content for you, so in just minutes your legacy courses will work on modern browsers. We’ve made it super easy to upgrade. Just follow the steps outlined here: Upgrading Courses to Storyline 360 Upgrading Courses to Storyline 3 Upgrading Courses to Presenter 360 Upgrading Quizzes to Quizmaker 360 Upgrading Interactions to Engage 360 Once you upgrade a course, be sure to republish and reupload it to your Learning Management System (LMS) or website. Refresh Go through and edit the course based on your notes during your review. This might include updating visuals, rewriting some content, or fixing minor technical issues. And check out this article for some tips on how to quickly update the design of your older courses: 4 Fast & Easy Changes That Will Make Your Old Storyline Courses Look New Again. Remove Even if you no longer need a course, take a look at the slides and see if there’s anything you want to recycle—an image, a cool interaction, etc. If there is, and you’re using Storyline 360, you can save those slides as a Storyline template to import later or use Team Slides to easily share with your team. When you’re done reviewing, remove the file and move on. If removing a course makes you a little nervous—even if you know it’s not needed—do what I do and keep a backup of the source file in case you want to revisit this content someday. Redesign If your course’s source files are no longer available or if the content is really out-of-date, you may need to redesign the course. When you’re faced with a redesign, start by deciding which app to use. Here’s an article that can help you make the call: Which app should I use—Rise 360 or Storyline 360? From there, ask yourself questions like: What content changes need to be made? What new graphics are needed? Are there videos that need updating? Would this content be better broken up into smaller courses? More Resources I hope these steps make it easier for you and your team to stay organized and keep your content up-to-date. And in case you forgot to bookmark the helpful articles mentioned earlier in this article, here they are once again: E-Learning Maintenance Checklist Course Update Spreadsheet Refresh or Rebuild: How To Know if an Old E-Learning Course Can Be Revived 4 Fast & Easy Changes That Will Make Your Old Storyline Courses Look New Again 6 Ways to Quickly Update an Outdated E-Learning Design Rise 360 or Storyline 360: Which One Should You Use for Your Project? And be sure to follow us on Twitter 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.What You Need to Know About File Versioning Your Storyline 360 Projects
If you’ve ever worked on a large Storyline 360 project, then you understand the amount of effort and development time that go into building a course that looks and works just the way you want. Getting to the final product is often an iterative process that includes a lot of checkpoints and reviews along the way—you edit text, adjust images, record narration, and time animations. As you go through that process, it’s a good best practice to ensure you version your Storyline 360 projects along the way. What is file versioning? File versioning simply means to make a copy of a file. Creating a new version of your Storyline 360 project is as easy as doing a “Save As” of your .STORY file and giving the file a new name. Why do you need file versioning? Having more than one version of your file is a safeguard, in case something goes awry with your existing .STORY file. What if your file becomes corrupt or unusable for some reason? What if you need to roll back a change you made and return your file to a prior state? These are just a few good reasons to use file versioning. How often should you version? This is a personal preference, but you might want to consider how much work you’re getting done in a day or week, and how much you’d be willing to re-do should your file become corrupt or lost. You’ll likely want to consider creating a new version of your document daily, weekly, or, at the very least, monthly. What to name versions? Everyone tends to have their own approach to final naming conventions. One way to make sure files are easy to sort through is to use the date at the start of the title, like so: 2019-09-5_FileName.story 2019-09-11_FileName.story 2019-09-18_FileName.story How long to keep old versions? It’s a good idea to hang on to your versions until the end of the project, in case you need to recover your work. Once the project is complete, you’re probably safe to delete most of the versions, but it might still be a good idea to keep a few indefinitely, just in case. How often to back up? Keep in mind that all these versions will be useless if your computer crashes and you lose all your files. That’s why you need to back up your work to an external hard drive or a cloud-based program. Doing so at regular intervals will allow you to easily and quickly recover any past versions of your file should something happen to your computer. Wrap-Up Having a file-versioning strategy is a good way to avoid frustrating and time-consuming rework. Do you have any other tips for backing up and versioning your project files? How do you name your files, and how long do you hang on to them? Let me know in the comments below. Want to try something you learned here, 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.E-Learning Maintenance Checklist
As an e-learning designer, it’s good practice to periodically review your e-learning courses and make sure they’re up to date and functioning as expected. Depending on how many courses you create every year, this task may feel daunting, but think of it like this: if your training courses are outdated or broken, having employees spend time taking them is a wasted effort. To make it a little easier for you, I put together this list of things to watch out for when you review your courses. Outdated Information This is the main reason it’s important to review e-learning courses: stuff changes! And when an internal policy changes six months after you create a course, you won’t necessarily think to update that course. Here are some things you should look for during your review: Are there any references to events that have since passed? Are there any references to products no longer on the market? Is there any mention of people who have changed positions or left the company (photos or text)? Is all the information about internal processes up to date? Is all the information about laws and regulations up to date? Is all the contact information (email addresses and phone numbers) still accurate? Outdated Visuals Another thing to pay attention to during your review is the visuals. For example: Is the branding (logos, fonts, colors, etc.) used in the course up to date? Do any of the screenshots feature older versions of tools or images of people wearing outdated uniforms or logo apparel? Technical Issues Technology changes and web pages disappear, so when you’re reviewing your course, it’s important to be on the lookout for things that don’t work as expected. Here’s a list of issues to watch out for: Does the course still load correctly? Do all the links still lead to working web pages? Do all the buttons still work? Do videos still load and play back as expected? Content Mistakes You reviewed your course when you made it, but sometimes when you’re too close to something, you can’t see the forest for the trees. While you’re at it, you may as well take a look to see if there’s anything you missed the first time around. Things like: Are there any typos or spelling errors? Are there any capitalization or punctuation errors? Is there any incorrect information? Is content formatted in a consistent way throughout the course? Wrap Up Hopefully, this checklist will make the maintenance of your e-learning courses go a little bit more smoothly. And if you're looking for a way to stay organized as you update a long list of courses, download this helpful spreadsheet. New to e-learning? Sign up for our E-Learning 101 email course, a series of expertly-curated articles that'll get you up to speed with course development.A Day in the Life of an E-Learning Project Manager
I recently wrote an article about what my average day looked like when I was an instructional designer in a boutique e-learning firm. I really enjoyed all the feedback I got from community members about how their days compared to mine, so I thought I’d continue the series with an article about my day-to-day as an e-learning project manager. Here goes! 8:50 am Get to work a little early, grab some coffee, and settle into my desk before the rest of the team arrives so I can check my email for any urgent messages. 9:15 am Round up the team and start our daily standup meeting, where everyone shares their top priority for the day. If anything urgent has come up and priorities need to shift, this is where I share that information with the team. 9:30 am Head to meeting room 2 with one of the instructional designers for the Project XYZ kickoff meeting. The client and Subject Matter Expert are already there waiting for us. Since this is their first e-learning project, I start by presenting our workflow to give them a better idea of what to expect. Then I take a few minutes to clarify everyone's role in the project, including naming the key decision-makers. Next, we define the technical requirements and other project parameters before I hand it off to the instructional designer, who will help them identify the target audience and learning objectives. 10:30 am Back at my desk, the phone rings. It’s client QRS calling to say their deadline has been pushed up. They’re wondering if it’s possible to get the final course next week instead of next month. I tell them I’ll talk to the project team and get back to them. 10:45 am Call an emergency meeting of the QRS Project team to discuss whether the new deadline is feasible. The instructional designers say their part is already done. The e-learning developers say they can make it work if the graphic designers get them all the assets in the next two days. The graphic designers explain that they still have a lot of work left and are unsure if they can get it all done by then unless they streamline some of the graphics. We decide to call the client to have a conversation about the trade-offs necessary for a faster turnaround. The client agrees, and everyone gets back to work. 11:15 am After putting out that fire, I finally have time to get back to my desk and finish going through my emails. They sure have piled up! I respond to client inquiries, share any deliverables that are ready, and forward relevant emails to the project teams. 12:15 pm Look at the time! No wonder my stomach is growling—I’m starving. Time to head out and grab a bite to eat. 1:15 pm Back to work! Looks like I finally got a response from client JKL. We’ve been waiting for their feedback for ages! Sounds like they need us to send them the updated prototype by the end of the day. Talk about a quick turnaround! I talk to the instructional designers, who look at the number and nature of their requests and tell me they think it’s feasible. 1:45 pm Now that my inbox is finally at zero and the phone has stopped ringing, I can dive into my to-do list. I have a new project that needs a timeline, and I need to respond to an RFP (Request for Proposal) we received. Looks like I’m going to be heads down for a bit while I try to get these things done! 3:30 pm Client XYZ calls to talk about the outline we sent him this morning. I grab the instructional designer—who’s currently working on Project ABC—and head to a meeting room. The client gives us his feedback orally and the instructional designer takes notes. After the meeting, I tell the instructional designer to prioritize Project XYZ since the storyboard needs to be done by the end of the week, while Project ABC’s storyboard isn’t due for another two weeks. 4:30 pm I have a few storyboards and prototypes to review before we pass them on to our clients. I open them up in Articulate Review and leave some comments. 5:30 pm Before I leave, I check my emails again and make a to-do list for tomorrow. 6:00 pm Time to grab my keys and go home! Wow, that was a pretty busy day! I’m tired just thinking about it. As you can see, working as an e-learning project manager in a boutique e-learning firm can be fast-paced. When you’re managing multiple projects simultaneously—each with a different client—it’s often feast or famine. Sometimes none of your projects will move forward for a few days, and then suddenly all your clients get back to you at once and they all become urgent. When that happens, it’s important to know how to prioritize to get them all done on time. That being said, keep in mind that every project management role, company, and day is unique. In this article, I tried to showcase some everyday tasks and situations I encounter on a regular basis to give you a window into my world. You may find that your day-to-day is markedly different than what I’ve described above—and that’s totally fine! If that’s the case, I’d love to hear about what your day looks like, so please share your experience in the space below. :) Looking for some more e-learning career insights? Check out these articles: A Day in the Life of an Instructional Designer What Makes a Training Team? 6 Common Job Titles in E-Learning To Be or Not to Be a Freelance E-Learning Designer? Like this article? 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).7 Insider Secrets for Working With Large Teams on E-Learning Projects
They say two heads are better than one. That may be true, but they also say that too many cooks in the kitchen spoils the soup. If your project team is feeling more like the latter, this article will give you some tips to get back on track. 1. Use a Project Management Tool E-learning projects are complex. And the bigger the team, the more complex they can be. If you want to manage them efficiently, you’ll need to use some sort of project management tool to help you out. There are tons of project management tools out there, but Trello is by far my favorite. Why? Let me count the ways … It’s super-easy to use It’s a web app, a desktop app, and a mobile app—so you can use it whenever and wherever It’s super-collaborative It’s highly customizable … the list goes on So how does it work? You create a board and add your to-do items as cards. To those cards you can add: Team members Task descriptions Due dates Checklists Attachments Links Labels Comments And much more This makes it easy to assign tasks, ask questions and get answers by “@mentioning” team members, and keep track of the project’s progress, among other things. If you only have a couple of projects, you could create one board for all your projects and organize your tasks by their current status: Click here to view and copy this Trello board. If you have a lot of projects—or if each project is complex and involves many tasks—you might want to create a board like the one above for each project. In that case, it may be helpful to also create a dashboard that allows you to easily see where each project is in the development process, like in the example below: Click here to view and copy this Trello board. In the end, what’s important is to find a tool you’re comfortable with that allows you to easily manage your projects. Looking for more project management advice? Check out these articles: Best Practices for Effective E-Learning Project Management Project Management Tools & Techniques 4 E-Learning Project Management Mistakes and How to Fix Them Five Project Management Tips for Creating Online Courses 9 E-Learning Project Management Resources to Add to Your Toolkit 2. Set Up a Shared Network for Files The easiest way to make sure everyone on the project team can access the project files is to put them on a shared network. If you’re not sure how to set up a shared network, check out this tutorial. However, keep in mind that team members should always copy the file from the network to their local drive before working on it. Working on files directly from a shared drive can cause bugs and even—in some instances—corrupt files. When they’re done working on the file, they should then copy the new version of the file to the shared drive. Check out this article for more information on the importance of working on files locally. 3. Implement a Project Folder Structure When a large group of people is sharing folders, it’s important to establish some rules to make sure that everyone is able to quickly and easily find the files they need. For most e-learning projects, you’ll need the same folder structure because you’ll be working with the same types of files. Here’s an example of what a typical e-learning project folder might look like: Here are some examples of the kinds of files I put in each folder: 01_Project_Info : Project charter Brand guidelines 02_Content Any PowerPoint presentations or Word documents containing the raw course content 03_Storyboard The storyboard file. This could be a Word document, a PowerPoint file, or even a Storyline file. 04_Work_Files The source file you’re using to create the course. If you’re using Storyline, that’ll be a .story file. If you’re using Rise, you won’t need this folder because your source file will be saved directly in the Articulate 360 web environment. 05_Assets 01_Images Company logo Photos Illustrations Icons 02_Audio Voiceover audio script Voiceover audio files Sound effects Background music 03_Video Video files (.MP4, .FLV, etc.) 06_Published_Files Published course files (web, SCORM, AICC, cmi5, and/or xAPI format) Pro tip: If you create an empty version of this folder structure—with no actual project files in it—you can just duplicate it whenever you start a new project. That way you won’t have to recreate the folder structure every time. 4. Save Multiple Versions of Your Course Saving multiple versions of your course—also referred to as versioning—is a good practice no matter what size team you’re working with. But the more people you’re working with, the larger the margin for error. Between miscommunications, clients changing their mind, and co-workers misplacing or overwriting files, it’s a distinct possibility that you could lose hours or even days of work if you don’t put into place a versioning strategy. Duplicating your file every time you work on it will allow you to sleep easy, knowing you can always go back to a previous version of the project. When naming the different versions of your files, I recommend using this format: yyyy.mm.dd_project_name. That way when you sort a folder by name, the most recent file will appear at the bottom of the list. Pro tip: If you want to take this a step further, you can add a subfolder in your work files folder called “_old”. Thanks to the the underscore, it will always appear at the top of the list when your folder is sorted by name. Then, before you copy the latest version of the course to the work files folder, drag the previous version of your course to the “_old” folder. When the project is finished, you can delete all the old versions. Check out this article for more information on versioning as well as other tips for reducing your risk of corrupting or losing project files. 5. Create a Style Guide When you’re creating a course or series of courses, you want to make sure they all have a cohesive look and feel. This can be a challenge even when working alone, but when working in a large team it gets even more complex. One of the ways to make sure everyone’s on the same page is by creating a style guide. Style guides outline in detail logo placement, font usage, colors, and much more. For more information on style guides, check out these articles: Why You Need an E-Learning Style Guide What to Include in an E-Learning Style Guide 6. Create Templates Once you have a style guide in place, the best way to make sure slide layouts, colors, and fonts are used consistently is to create templates that the whole team can use. If you have an Articulate 360 Teams subscription, everyone on your team can access shared templates without ever leaving Storyline, thanks to the Team Slides feature. And if you’re using Rise, you can create block templates that your team members can insert into any of their courses. 7. Use a Review Tool One of the biggest pain points of the e-learning development process is the review process. It’s time-consuming and generally involves a lot of back and forth, and the more people involved, the longer and more convoluted it tends to be. By using a simple review tool, like Review 360, for your internal and external reviews, you can make the whole process faster and easier for everyone involved. Check out these articles for more tips on optimizing the review process: 5 Steps to an Easier E-Learning Course Review Process Follow These 3 Tips to Put the “Pro” Back In Your Review Process The Bottom Line The more people on the project team, the more important it is to be organized and to make sure everyone is on the same page. Hopefully these tips will help your team reap the benefits of working with a large group of people and keep the drawbacks to a minimum. Like this article? 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).
