Basic Elements of an E-Learning Course
When something’s new, it can feel complex and difficult. And when you’re first getting into e-learning and you view a finalized course, it’s hard to imagine what all the moving pieces are. However, when you pull back the curtain and look at the most basic elements of an e-learning course, you’ll realize that most courses are made up of the same fundamental components. If you’ve taken or designed at least one online course, you should recognize most of these course building blocks. While there’s no rule saying you must include these components in every course, it’s helpful for new e-learning designers to be familiar with the basic elements and where they fit into the overall course structure. Course Welcome or Opening This is the first thing your learners see when they open your course. In addition to welcoming learners visually, it usually provides options for navigating the different sections of the course. Remember that the welcome content sets the tone for your course, so it’s important to start off strong! Here’s an example of a welcome screen created in Rise: Here’s an example of a Content Library welcome template you can insert into your Storyline 360 project: Instructions Depending on the type of course you’re creating, you may want to include instructions to help learners understand how to navigate through the course. If you’ve built your own custom navigation using a slide-based authoring app, you could use arrows, callouts, and text to point out the important features of the course player. Noteworthy features include navigation buttons, resource tabs, a transcript menu, and help buttons. If you’re using the built-in course player that comes with your authoring app, you may not need to go into that level of detail. But even if you’re using standard navigation, it’s still helpful to let your learners know if they need to turn on their speakers, whether there’ll be a quiz at the end, and how much time they should set aside to complete the course. If you’re using a web-based app, like Rise, it might look something like this: If you’re using a slide-based app like Storyline, a simple instructions slide could look more like this, for example: Learning Objectives Objectives give learners an overview of the course goals. Usually presented in bullet point format, the list shows actionable tasks the learner should be able to do after completing the course. However, objectives don’t have to be listed in bullet point format. Often, it’s the client, business partner, or organizational style guide that requires objectives to be presented that way. There’s a trend in the e-learning industry to find creative alternatives to the bulleted format. For example, you could create an accordion interaction in Rise so your learners can explore the different objectives at their own pace, like in the screenshot below: Or, if you’re using a slide-based tool like Storyline, you can create a stylized objectives layout to catch your learner’s eye: Here are some additional resources and discussions on making bullet points more engaging: Convert Your Bullet Points to Interactive E-Learning with Video Five Surefire Ways to Get Rid of Bullet Points Ideas on Getting Rid of Bullet Points to State Course Objectives Reducing Bullet Points and On-Screen Text Animating Bullet Points — Is It Possible to Animate More Than One? Content This section is the meat of your course, where all the learning happens. Here you can include text, images, charts, tabs or timeline interactions, scenarios, screencasts, videos, and much more. There are many different ways to present your content, but here are a couple of ideas to get you started. Text and Images Example created in Rise Content Library template available in Storyline 360 Scenarios Example created in Rise Content Library template available in Storyline 360 Timeline Interactions Example created in Rise Content Library template available in Storyline 360 Depending on your content and course objectives, your course could include just one or two of these elements, or all of the above and much more! Let your objectives guide you through the creation process and help you decide how to best present your content to help your learners reach their target. Practice Activities The purpose of practice activities is to help learners strengthen their skills and knowledge. As such, they should include content presented earlier in the module so learners can apply what they just learned. Here’s an example of a practice activity you can create in Rise: And here’s another example created in Storyline 360: Knowledge Checks & Assessments Knowledge checks and assessments are quizzes at the end of each topic, module, or course, where learners can test their progress during a module. The main difference between the two types of quizzes is that knowledge checks do not generally count toward the final score, while assessments do. They might look like typical quizzes (i.e., true/false, multiple choice, etc.), or take on a more casual format, such as a scenario in which learners must make decisions about what to do in a real-life situation. Check out this example of a quiz question created in Rise: And this one created in Storyline 360 : Summary At the end of each topic, module, and course you’ll often find a summary of the key points from that section. They can include links to additional resources to help highly motivated learners take their knowledge to the next level. In Rise, that could look something like this, for example: Or if you’re working in Storyline or another slide-based app, you could create a slide like this one: Contact Info & Resources At the end of each course you’ll usually find contact information for the trainer or subject matter expert (SME) as well as some additional resources to help support learners as they apply the skills they’ve learned in the course to their jobs. Typically they include one or more of the following: Contact information: People to contact for help or questions about the course Continued learning: Additional resources beyond what was in the course Job aids: Handouts from the course that can be used as performance support In Rise, you could create something that looks like this, for example: Or you could build a slide like this in Storyline or another slide-based app: Final Thoughts As a course designer, you have unlimited options for combining e-learning elements in your courses. Your experience level, combined with expectations for your course and learners, will influence many of your choices. If you’re a new e-learning designer, try covering these common elements to start. Good luck! Leave a comment or post in the forums if you have any other questions about these e-learning elements or want to share ideas for combining them in unique ways. Follow us on Twitter and come back to E-Learning Heroes regularly for more helpful advice on everything related to e-learning.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.7 Tips for Writing Effective E-Learning Scenarios
Scenarios are a great way to make your e-learning content more relevant and meaningful for learners. They give context to the training and allow learners to determine whether they’re really grasping the knowledge and skills outlined in the course by giving them an opportunity to apply them in a real-life situation. If you’ve never designed an e-learning scenario, you might be feeling intimidated and unsure where to start. Don’t worry, we’ve got your back! In this article, we’ll walk you through some things to consider during the scenario design process. 1. Identify Real-Life Opportunities to Apply Knowledge Most courses are designed to help employees improve job performance and gain specific skills, so the key to creating an effective scenario is to identify real-life situations where the learner will need to know or apply the information or skill they’re learning. Let’s say, for example, you’re a training designer at a company called Pharma Inc. The Product Development VP just gave you a bunch of PowerPoints about a new product, and you need to train the company’s sales reps on it. You decide the best way to do that is to design a scenario-based course. Now what? Start by asking yourself when the sales reps need to know or apply this information about the new product. One likely scenario would be when they’re trying to sell said product to a potential customer and need to know how the product works, its benefits, and key selling features. So that could be the basis of your scenario: a sales rep is trying to sell the new product to a client. 2. Think of a Choice or Decision and Potential Actions Now that you’ve identified a common real-life situation that the learners would face in the workplace, you need to think of a realistic problem or decision that would require learners to use the training content. Going back to our Pharma example, what realistic conversation or situation might lead the sales rep to talk about the new product? One idea: maybe an existing or potential client mentions a problem the new product could potentially solve. As such, you could present the learner with a few responses to choose from and ask them which one they think would most likely result in a sale. 3. Use Relatable Characters Characters are a central piece of your scenario. When developing your characters, it’s important to think about your audience and choose characters that will resonate with them. This applies not only to the profile of the character (what’s their job?), but also to the image you use, if you choose to show them on the screen. Another way to make your scenario feel more human and personal is by giving your character a name. In our example, let’s say the learner is the sales rep and they’re meeting with a potential client named Amir. 4. Incorporate Important Details It’s also a good idea to include any details that would be present in real life to make the scenario feel as relatable as possible by giving your learners all the context they need. Let’s say your sales reps have to sell to a variety of customers. Some are medical professionals, such as doctors and surgeons. Others are regular everyday people with no medical background or experience. Whether or not the customer is a doctor changes the way the sales rep interacts with that customer, so a realistic scenario needs to include that information. For our scenario, we could specify that Amir is a doctor. 5. Provide Feedback That Illustrates Consequences Instead of simply telling the learner they made the right choice, try showing them the consequences of their choices. This is often more meaningful and effective because it allows them to visualize what would happen in real life. When it comes to consequences, it’s often more effective to showcase worst-case scenarios: for example, lost earnings, wasted time, or maybe—in some serious situations—injury or death. Because they’re extreme, these tend to resonate more with learners. If we go back to our Pharma example, we could imagine a few different potential outcomes. If the learner provides Amir with the info he needs, they land the sale and get promoted. And if they don’t, they lose the sale and the bonus they were counting on to pay off their student loans. This kind of feedback feels real to the learner and is more likely to stick with them long after the course is over. 6. Keep It Realistic Even if you’re looking for worst-case situations to make your stories dramatic, you never want to sacrifice realism. Avoid exaggeration and include just enough details so your stories seem authentic and appealing without overwhelming learners with extraneous information. So if we go back to our example, if the learner chooses the wrong option and Amir decides not to buy the new product, we wouldn’t want to say their boss threw their computer out the window and lit their desk on fire. We’d simply state that they didn’t get the bonus they were hoping to get to help pay off their student loans. 7. Lean On Your SMEs Your Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) are a valuable asset for crafting effective scenarios. They can give you insight into some common problems that come up in real life. They know your audience, so they can help you decide what types of characters to use in your training. Your SME can also fact-check your scenario and let you know if it’s plausible or too exaggerated. And they can help you strike the right balance when it comes to the level of details in your scenario. Don’t try to go it alone—lean on your SMEs for help as you design your scenario. Together, you can ensure the scenario is both meaningful and realistic. The Bottom Line Like almost everything in life, practice makes perfect. The more scenarios you design, the faster and easier it’ll be. It won’t be long before you start imagining scenarios the minute someone hands you source content! Want some more pro tips before you dive in? Check out these articles: How to Easily Create Compelling E-Learning Scenarios How to Choose the Point of View (POV) for Your E-Learning Scenario Help Learners Practice Their Skills with Scenarios in Rise 360 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.E-Learning: Storyboard vs. Prototype
If you’re new to e-learning, you may have heard people throw around terms like storyboard and prototype without daring to ask the question: What’s the difference? Well, don’t worry, we’ve got you covered! In this article, we’ll walk through the definitions of both as well as some advantages and disadvantages of using one over the other. Let’s get to it! E-Learning Storyboard A storyboard can act as a blueprint for developing custom, interactive e-learning in apps like Storyline 3/360. Using a storyboard helps you lay out the visuals, multimedia, text, audio elements, interactions, and navigation details (where does the learner go next?) of each and every slide in your course. By viewing the storyboard, the stakeholders should be able to understand what learners will see, hear, and do during the course. Often, storyboards are created with Microsoft Word or PowerPoint. While this makes it easy to share the course content and design with stakeholders, the drawback is that it can be harder for them to imagine what that experience will be like. For people who have never been part of an e-learning project team before, storyboards can feel a little abstract. However, the more experience stakeholders have with e-learning, the easier it is for them to look at one and imagine what the finished course will be like. Advantages Helpful way to get stakeholder buy-in. Quick and easy to create and edit. Puts focus on the content itself instead of functionality and layouts. E-Learning Prototype We like to think of a prototype as a halfway point between a storyboard and the final version of a course. Like a storyboard, it lays out all the course content. And like a finished course, it’s clickable, so stakeholders can interact with it. That way, instead of having to imagine what that experience will be like, they can actually click through for themselves and get a feel for the flow of the course. Sometimes, prototypes include branding elements—like the customer logo, colors, and fonts—which allows the stakeholders to approve their usage. However, unlike a finished course, prototypes usually contain only mockups of graphics, and not the final versions. They also don’t include the final version of the voiceover audio. In fact, sometimes they don’t include any audio at all—just the script that’ll be used to record it later on. Other times, designers will include text-to-speech audio to allow stakeholders to hear for themselves what the audio script sounds like when read aloud. That way, if stakeholders notice anything that sounds awkward, they can request changes before the audio is recorded. Advantages Often easier for stakeholders to understand. Gives stakeholders a preview of what the entire course experience will be like. Saves the designer time by getting approval before developing the final course. More Resources Some e-learning designers swear by storyboards, claiming it’s an essential step in the course creation process. Others skip straight to prototyping, saying it’ll save them time in the long run by helping stakeholders better understand what the final course will look like. In the end, there’s no right or wrong answer here, it’s all about personal preference. Looking for more storyboarding and prototyping tips? Check out these helpful resources. Articles 11 Best Practices for E-Learning Storyboarding Storyboard Like a Pro with Storyline 360 and Review 360 What Information Do You Include in Your Storyboards? Downloads Storyline: Storyboard/Prototype Sample Storyline: Storyboard Template Based on the definitions of storyboard and prototype above, what do you think are the pros and cons of each? Do you always create a storyboard, or do you prefer to skip straight to prototyping? Leave us your thoughts in the comments! Follow us on Twitter and come back to E-Learning Heroes regularly for more helpful advice on everything related to e-learning.What to Include in an E-Learning Storyboard
As the blueprint for a course (with all the details about content, multimedia, and assessments), storyboards are an important piece of the e-learning design process. However, they’re tricky to develop because there’s no set template or content required to make one. So, how do you know what to include? In some cases, a storyboard might be visually rich and closely resemble the final output. Other times, it’s a simple text document that doesn’t provide much indication of what the product will look like. In addition, the tools used to develop storyboards can vary widely, from PowerPoint to Word or even Storyline 360. The format, look, and content of a storyboard depends on the stakeholders on the project team, how familiar your stakeholders and audience are with e-learning, and what type of content and interactions your e-learning course includes. For example, if you’re designing and developing a course without the help of a Subject Matter Expert (SME), your storyboard doesn’t need to be very descriptive or include detailed notes for the developer (since you are the developer). However, if you’re handing off the storyboard to someone else to develop, you’ll need to include clear and descriptive instructions. So, while you’ll rarely see two storyboards that are exactly alike, there are some basic best-practice items that most storyboards include, regardless of how the project is staffed. Let’s have a look. Screen ID A fundamental thing to include in your storyboard is an identifier or a screen ID. This should be present on each slide, so you can easily identify content and slides in the course. You might not want the screen ID to appear in the final output, but it’s definitely handy to have it visible during the editing and review stages. Also, carefully consider how you want to number your slides. You’re going to end up removing and adding slides throughout your project, so your numbering scheme should be able to accommodate that. Speaking from experience, there’s nothing worse than moving or deleting a slide and having to manually renumber everything that follows. Text Your on-screen text delivers information to your learners—so it’s a critical component that needs to go in your storyboard. Be clear about how to format and position the text on the screen. And remember to edit for spelling, grammar, and language so the developer can simply copy and paste the text from your storyboard into the e-learning course without having to edit it. Images The graphics included in an online course also communicate important information. If you’re developing a more visual storyboard, you might choose to include the actual photo or an image placeholder. If you’ve already selected an image, be sure to include notes to the developer about where to find it. Once you choose an image for a course, set up a shared folder for media with clearly labeled files. Then, in the storyboard, tell the developer which files to pull from the shared folder to use on each specific screen. If you’re relying on your developer to both choose and insert your graphics, you’ll need to include detailed instructions on the tone, feel, and context of the images you want. Narration and Audio Audio can add variety and interest to web-based training. If you plan to include narration, add the narration script to your storyboard, as well as notes for how to sync it with on-screen text. Be sure to also include details about the type of voice talent you want. If you’re using other types of audio, such as sound effects or background music, consider selecting specific clips in advance. Then, in your storyboard, let the developer know how to access the specific file through a shared folder (like we did with our images). Navigation You don’t want your learners getting lost trying to navigate your course. Confusing navigation distracts learners and gets in the way of their experience. When in doubt, simple is best. Have your course developer create a clear click path through the course using Previous and Next buttons. If your topic requires complex branching paths linking to various screens, make sure you include clear, concise instructions for the developer about how navigation should work on each screen. Once everything is set up, take the time to navigate through your course. Do your Previous and Next buttons link to the right slides? Are the on-screen buttons easily noticeable and clear in their function? When a stakeholder or e-learning developer looks at your storyboard, the navigation should be crystal clear. Animation and Transitions Finally, animations and transitions add visual interest that sets your course apart. Just keep in mind that, if you plan on using animations, you’ll need to determine how they look and feel in the course by actually watching them. You can proceed without final animations; just make sure you give the developer clear notes about the timing of the objects and types of animations or transitions to use. Wrap-Up No two storyboards are the same, but most include the basic items covered here. It all depends on your specific project and its requirements. Want more storyboarding advice? Check out these articles: 11 Best Practices for E-Learning Storyboarding Storyboard Like a Pro with Storyline 360 and Review 360 Do you have any tips of your own for what should be included in a storyboard? If you do, please leave a comment below. We love to hear your feedback! And remember 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.4 Easy Ways to Organize Content For E-Learning
Picture this: you’re designing an e-learning course and you’ve gathered content from your Subject Matter Experts and completed your own research on the course topic. You’ve sifted through all your materials and sorted the “nice to know” from the “need to know.” Now you’re ready to go! You can start laying out the content in your course … except, you’re feeling a bit stuck. You know order and organization are key to a successful learning experience. And as an e-learning designer, you want to set your learners up for success and present content in a way that helps them focus on what they need to know. But how do you decide what to present first and what to present last? And how do you make sure not to overwhelm your learners with too much information at once? Let’s walk through four tried-and-true methods for organizing course content in a way that makes sense. Alphabetically This is a straightforward and logical way of organizing content. And since we all learn the alphabet at a very young age, it’s an intuitive and traditional system for organization. This method lets learners easily find specific information without needing to provide much direction or instruction. This works particularly well for presenting textual content such as terminology or keywords. For example, if you work in an industry with a lot of technical jargon or acronyms, it makes perfect sense to present those industry terms to your learners—along with their definitions—in alphabetical order. Order of Importance Another effective approach for organizing content is to place items in order of importance or priority. Learners are likely more focused at the start of your course and they may lose steam (and potentially interest and attention span) as the content progresses. That’s why it’s a good idea to share your most important content early on in your course, while also communicating what concepts or information take priority over others. For example, if you’re developing a product course for your sales team, would you present the $500 rust-proofing kit as your first product? Or would you start by showing them the $30,000 car? Probably the car, as it’s more important and leads to more revenue overall—a key consideration for a sales team. Sequentially When it comes to explaining a process or a task, it’s best to share the information sequentially. It makes much more sense for learners to view steps 1-2-3 in the proper order, rather than viewing them backwards or even out of order. By organizing your content sequentially, it’s easier for learners to retain the process so they can carry out the steps on their own. For example, say you created an e-learning course that trains salespeople on how to close a sale. It would make sense to share that process in chronological order, starting with how to approach and greet the customer, how to handle objections, and, finally, how to close. Going about this process in another order could confuse your learners and be detrimental to the learning experience. Categorically Sometimes the best way to share content is to cluster it into shared themes. By grouping similar content together in logical categories, you’ll help learners identify related subjects or patterns. This is a particularly useful method when all the information you’re presenting shares equal importance and nothing needs to be shared in any particular order. Breaking content up into shared categories also reduces cognitive load and helps learners digest related information. For example, say you’re creating an e-learning course that helps onboard your sales team and teaches them about all the products available in your organization. Instead of presenting all the products at once—which could be intimidating for a learner—you can break them up into categories (Electronics, Outdoor Living, Furniture, etc.) and let learners explore smaller and more manageable sections one at a time. Wrap-Up As you evaluate your own content, let your subject matter guide you. Sometimes your content will naturally lean toward one particular organization method over another. Other times, you may find multiple methods could work and it’s up to you to make the call. The most important thing to consider is what your learners will need to do with the content you share. Do they need to replicate the steps in a process from memory? If so, sequential organization is the way to go! Or, maybe they need to quickly and intuitively reference the material while they interact with customers. In that case, alphabetical or categorical organization might work best. Do you use other content organization methods in your e-learning courses? Let us know in the comments below! And as you continue collecting and organizing content for your e-learning course, be sure to check out these helpful articles: 5 Steps for Collecting Content for Your E-Learning Project What to Do When Your Course Has Too Much Content Why & How to Tailor Content to Different Audiences 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.Save Development Time and Storyboard Directly in Storyline 360
Storyboarding your project is a crucial step in the e-learning development process. The storyboard is the blueprint for your course, so to speak, and will serve as a guideline when developing your final course materials. The storyboard includes information such as: Screen or Slide ID Text content Images Navigation instructions Animation details The specific information you choose to include in your storyboard depends on the specifics of your project, as well as who’s involved in it. If you’re acting as an instructional designer only, and passing on your storyboard to a Storyline developer, you’ll want to include more information and detailed notes than if you’ll be developing the course yourself. Learn more about what’s typically included in a storyboard in the following articles: Storyboards for E-learning: What to Include? What Information Do You Include in Your Storyboards? The tool used to storyboard varies from one developer to the next; some instructional designers use a Word document with tables, others use a PowerPoint template. I want to share with you one way you can save a huge amount of time in your course development process: by storyboarding directly in Storyline. Here’s an example of a fully developed storyboard created in Articulate Storyline: View | Download When you’re storyboarding directly in Storyline, you’re actually creating what some may call a prototype. A prototype is a sample you can click through and experience, which has benefits. (Want to know more? Click here to learn more about the difference between a storyboard and a prototype.) Benefits to building your storyboard or prototype in Storyline are: You get a sense of course flow. When you’re looking through a storyboard that is laid out in tables in a document, it’s really hard to get a sense of how the information will flow when you actually click through it. You’ll have a much more “learner-like” experience if you create your storyboard in Storyline and let your team click through the slides, like the learner will. It’s clearer for the developer. When the content is laid out on each slide with clear instructions and notes, it’s much easier for the developer to take the storyboard and bring to life exactly what you envisioned, as opposed to working from a Word document or something less visual. You’ll have less back and forth and revisions to do when you’re content is laid out clearly from the get-go. You save development time. When you build your storyboard directly in Storyline, the shell of your course is already built and most of the content is already there; all that’s left to do is the styling of your content to make it look nice. With these benefits in mind, let me share some of the tips and tricks that went into creating this sample storyboard for my Safe Travel module. Sort out the navigation details In order to let the learner “click through” the storyboard, you’ll need to set up all of your hyperlinks in your prototype. This is part of what makes a storyboard in Storyline so helpful and time-saving: getting all of your navigation details and links sorted out from the beginning. You will know exactly what buttons are on each slide, and exactly where everything links. Another tip for building out your navigation: don’t leave the Next and Prev button links to “Jump to next slide” and “Jump to previous slide.” Go through each of those and hyperlink to the actual slide you want the buttons to link to specifically. Focus on content, not style Your storyboard is intended to get the flow and content just right. You might decide to include images, or only image placeholders, depending on your project’s requirements. But working out the details like background specifics, font style and size, and accent colors can be done later. First and foremost, you should make sure the content is solid and accurate. Make sure it’s clear for those reviewing your storyboard that styling will come later, or they might get hung up on that. My tip is to give everything a simple wireframed look with black and white, and a super-simple default font. This ensures the focus is on the actual slide content, not the styling or look-and-feel. Include detailed notes Using the Notes field to include detailed instructions or information for reviewers and developers is a great time-saving tip. The level of detail you include in your notes will vary depending on your requirements, but it’s a good idea to provide any details you can about timing and animations, navigation, specifics about images or graphics, or anything else you want the developer to know or include in the course. The great thing is: once you’ve created your storyboard or functional prototype directly in Storyline, you can simply do a “Save as” of your .STORY file and start developing your course directly from the storyboard. This will save you tons of development time, as your images (or placeholders) and text content are already all included. Simply style your course, add multimedia, and—voila!—your course is complete! Plus, when you storyboard in Storyline, you’ll not only make the development process easier for your developers, you’ll also speed it up. Do you have any tips of your own about storyboarding directly in Storyline? If so, please leave a comment below. Want to try something you learned here, but don’t have Articulate software? Download a free 30-day trial, and come back to E-Learning Heroes regularly for more helpful advice on everything related to e-learning.11 Best Practices for E-Learning Storyboarding
Anyone who’s spent time in E-Learning Heroes has probably heard the term “storyboarding.” But what exactly does it mean? Storyboarding is a critical planning step for any slide-based e-learning project, during which you are essentially creating a blueprint before you start to develop your course. There are tons of different moving parts in slide-based e-learning development (the content, the navigation, the visual design, etc.). In order to make sure you’re on the right track before it’s too difficult or time-consuming to turn back and start over, you’ll want to start with an e-learning storyboard. If you’re using a web-based authoring app like Rise 360, you can skip the storyboarding phase and go straight to development. Since the navigation and design are both predefined, you can just concentrate on your content. And because it’s so fast and easy to create lessons in Rise 360, if you do end up changing your mind later on, it’s no problem! So in this article, we’ll focus on the storyboarding process for slide-based courses. Let’s take a closer look. Planning Your Storyboard To help you define the scale and scope of information for your project storyboard, use the following planning steps. Chances are you casually thought about these as you prepped your project, but it’s critical to document the information so you can get a big picture of all the stakeholders, objectives, and resources for your project. To plan your storyboard, you’ll want to: Define the Project Team Identify all stakeholders and participants on the project, and clearly communicate their roles in the group. This information is critical to determining how much detail your storyboard will need. For example, if the person creating the storyboard is not the same person who’ll develop the content, then you’ll need to be sure it includes all the info the developer will need to build the course. Do a Feasibility Check Make sure you know what apps will be used and what skills the team has before you storyboard, to ensure everything you include is actually feasible and appropriate for the project. Do Your Instructional Design Homework Know what learning activities you want to include in your course, and how you plan to sequence them. You’ll want to determine in advance if your client has particular exercises in mind, so you can incorporate them into your course design. Decide Which App to Use There’s no right or wrong way to build your storyboard. Some people prefer to build it in Word, others use PowerPoint, and still others develop their storyboard directly in the authoring app. Depending on the project, you may or may not be able to choose the format yourself. Sometimes it’s the client who dictates the app you use. When I have a choice, I prefer to storyboard directly in the authoring app, which in my case is usually Storyline 360. I find it’s a huge time-saver to get started directly in the app. That way I don’t have to copy the content over later on in the process. Committing the time and effort for these planning steps is well worth it in the long run to help you avoid costly reworks. With these four steps complete, you’re ready to start constructing your actual storyboard. Building Your Storyboard Now you get to assemble all your information into something tangible (or virtual, as it were). If you’re a creative geek like me, that’s really satisfying. To build your storyboard, you should: Use a Template You Like Don’t reinvent the wheel. If you have a template you like and you’re comfortable with, then use it. If you don’t, then browse these free storyboard templates and use or modify one to your liking. You can also post a thread here in the E-Learning Heroes forums asking for storyboard templates, and chances are the helpful folks in the Articulate community will put up samples in no time. Use a “Goldilocks” Approach to Detail Strike the right balance to give your team and stakeholders enough information about the navigation and links, media, text, interactions, on-screen elements, and programming notes without overwhelming or losing them in too much detail. The level of detail will depend on who, ultimately, is building your course from the storyboard. If it’s you, then you probably don’t need to describe in detail the kind of animations you’re imagining. But if you’re handing the storyboard off to a developer, you may want to include that information to ensure the end result corresponds to your intention. Consider Including a Visual Map If your course has complex branching or dynamic content, you may want to create a visual map so your team understands where learners land with every decision point. Being able to see the navigation flow is sometimes easier than trying to follow line numbers and references on a spreadsheet. You could create your visual map on a single slide in Storyline, using squares to represent slides and arrows to represent branching. Or you could simply build out your branching scenario using separate slides and the branching features in Storyline and take a screenshot of the “Story View.” Use Reference Labels in Your Storyboard Give each slide a reference label, whether it’s numeric, letters, or alphanumeric. Maybe your first slide is labeled A001, the next A002, then A003, and so on. Then, when you build the prototype of your course, you can include these reference labels, making it easy to map the slides in the storyboard with the actual slides in your course. This is especially useful if you end up changing the order of slides, because you’ll always have the original reference label. Remember, you’re not creating your actual course, so don’t write a book. This is simply a detailed outline that will set the framework for and scope of your course. Using Your Storyboard The great thing about a storyboard is that it’s not something you create in the beginning of the project and never look at again. It’s a living tool you can use to align your team around the directional details of your project. Before you start to develop your course, you should use your storyboard to: Act as a Review Checkpoint Circulate it to the team (as defined above) for review and approval. Doing so will build consensus on the project direction and approach, and can help flesh out scope and design issues before you’re deep into building, when it’s harder—and more costly—to change direction. If you’re using Storyline 360 to create your storyboard, then you can publish it to Review 360 so your team members can view and add comments directly. If you’re using a tool with a track changes feature (like Word), make sure to switch it on before sending the storyboard to them so you can easily see their revisions. Consolidate Client Feedback If you’re using Review 360, there’s no need to ask your reviewers to consolidate their feedback, as it’s already all in one spot. If you’re using another tool, like Word or PowerPoint, consider switching to something more collaborative, such as Google Docs or Google Slides, so all the comments are visible to everyone involved. Otherwise you could end up with multiple, slightly different versions of the same storyboard, which will result in you spending time consolidating them. Not a very effective use of your time! It’s also good practice, from an efficiency standpoint, to collect feedback in one fell swoop, by a certain date, rather than piecemeal, in a protracted and loosely defined review process. Find Opportunities for Efficient Development You don’t need to follow the linear path of your storyboard when you prepare to develop your course. Instead, you can identify nonoverlapping course sections and plan to develop them in parallel. This might mean a team member works on a later, discrete section before switching to collaborate on an earlier or sequential section. You’ll need to manage what work gets done when, but oftentimes you can find opportunities for completing more than one section at a time. When you finish your e-learning storyboard, you and your team will have a comprehensive view of how your course will look, feel, and function. Your storyboard may even save you time in the long run, since you’ll have the content and structure clearly mapped out and ready at your fingertips. Let your storyboard do some heavy lifting up front, so building your course is easier, faster, and more fun later on. 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 comments, please share them below.
