Articulate 360’s Content Library comes with thousands of e-learning templates. Each template is made up of theme fonts and theme colors. Theme fonts and colors are an easy way to manage and update course files.

Here’s a common issue and easy solution when troubleshooting e-learning courses. Instead of using theme colors many developers do quick color picks or custom colors. This is fine until you need to make a change to the slide and the colors aren’t updating when you change the theme color.

Our template developers have a simple technique to check the theme colors and make sure that they’re used throughout the various template slides.

Here are the steps:

• Create a new color theme.
• Make every color bright yellow.
• Save the theme colors.
• When you apply this theme, everything on the slide should use those colors.

Whenever you need to test a template to ensure it’s using the theme, apply that test theme color. Everything on the slide should be bright yellow. Whatever isn’t, is not using a theme color. That makes it easy to fix issues on the slides.

The example above, when I apply the yellow test theme, all of the objects change except the purple circle because that’s not using a theme color.

Simple tip. Easy to do. And a big timesaver if you use theme colors, which you should.

Events

Free E-Learning Resources

Want to learn more? Check out these articles and free resources in the community.	Here’s a great job board for e-learning, instructional design, and training jobs	Participate in the weekly e-learning challenges to sharpen your skills
Get your free PowerPoint templates and free graphics & stock images.	Lots of cool e-learning examples to check out and find inspiration.	Getting Started? This e-learning 101 series and the free e-books will help.

When someone first starts to build an e-learning course, one of the first things I recommend is determining the colors they’ll use. And from there, create a template and assign the theme colors.

The benefits to theme colors is that they allow consistent use of colors throughout the course; and if one needs to change, it can be changed once, and that change is applied wherever the color is used.

The next recommendation is to determine how to use theme colors. This is often confusing because, you get six theme colors and five derivatives per color. However, there’s no rhyme or reason in terms of how they should be used. They’re just six boxes that can be filled with colors. You can use those boxes anyway you like.

But that’s not how you should use them.

I recommend that you define a theme color structure and then use them consistently. This way, every time you build a course the theme colors are set up the same and you can easily swap them out when needed.

How to Set Up Theme Colors

Here are a few ideas that may work:

• You get six theme colors. But you don’t really need to use all six.
• Define how you do want to use the colors, whether it’s six or four or two.

• Use theme colors consistently in all templates you create.
• Courses usually have a main color and an accent color. If you only used two colors, you’d have twelve to use because of the iterations. That may be all you need.
• Most courses have some positive and negative feedback color, usually green and red. Use two of the theme colors for positive and negative feedback.

Here is one way you could define your theme colors:

• Accent 1: base color. Usually this is your core brand color.
• Accent 2: accent color. Most brands have an accent color. If you don’t have one, you can use a color theme site to create one. I typically will select a complementary color of the base color.
• Accent 3: open. Why create a color you don’t need?
• Accent 4: open.
• Accent 5: positive color. Green pulled from the base color’s palette. Use this for quiz feedback or icons to show a good decision.
• Accent 6: negative color. Red pulled from the base color’s palette. Use this for quiz feedback or icons to show a wrong decision.

For the two open colors, I may look through my organization’s web site and marketing collateral and see if there are other secondary colors used that I could add to the palette. Most of the times, two colors are all I need.

If every course is built with consistent use of theme colors, they can be swapped in seconds. This is a critical part of building and re-using interactions and templates. It’s a little more work upfront (which should be done anyway). But in the long-term it offers some time-saving benefits.

Do you have a strategy when using theme colors?

Events

Free E-Learning Resources

Want to learn more? Check out these articles and free resources in the community.	Here’s a great job board for e-learning, instructional design, and training jobs	Participate in the weekly e-learning challenges to sharpen your skills
Get your free PowerPoint templates and free graphics & stock images.	Lots of cool e-learning examples to check out and find inspiration.	Getting Started? This e-learning 101 series and the free e-books will help.

One way to speed up production in your e-learning course design is to use themed slides. You can create robust and visually varied templates like the ones you get in Content Library. The templates are a combination of layouts and two themed elements: fonts and colors. However, you don’t need to have a complex template to leverage theme colors.

Theme colors allow you to pre-determine the colors you’ll use in your course’s slides. There are several benefits and reasons when using theme colors.

Make Easy Updates to Theme Colors for E-Learning

Here’s a common scenario: insert an image and then do a color pick of the image to pull a color to use for outlines or shapes in the course. Later someone suggest changing the color. The challenge is going through every slide and making changes where that color was used.

Use theme colors to quickly modify all the objects with that same theme color. This doesn’t require a lot of consistency in terms of how you use the colors. It just means that if you do a color pick, for example, you add that to one of the accent colors so you can apply that accent color through the course.

If you have red shapes and they need to be blue, if you used a theme color to fill the shape all you need to do is change the theme color.

Create a Loaded Palette of Theme Colors for E-Learning

You get six accent colors, and each has five derivatives. You don’t need to have a real strategy when using theme colors. You get six slots. Figure out what six colors you need in your course and then create a palette, so you always have those six available to you.

You can use the colors willy nilly with no consideration to any real structure. The key advantage is having a palette of desired colors on hand.

Develop a Strategy for Theme Colors for E-Learning

Assuming you build a lot of templates and you re-use them, then it makes sense to be strategic about how you use the theme colors. You get six slots. Use them the same way every time you create a theme color. That makes it easy to create a new theme and re-use templates because you know that the theme colors are applied the same way to the same objects.

Determine how you want to use the color slots and then use them that way consistently. This allows you to quickly apply new color themes knowing that the entire template will change, and the colors will make universal changes to the entire course.

Some people are very strategic an organized in how they use theme colors. And some just use them with no sense of structure. They just want a place to load some colors and have quick access. That’s fine, too.

What you want to avoid is using single colors outside the theme that can’t easily or quickly be updated later. Theme colors help prevent that and save time when building courses whether your strategic or just using a palette.

Events

Free E-Learning Resources

Want to learn more? Check out these articles and free resources in the community.	Here’s a great job board for e-learning, instructional design, and training jobs	Participate in the weekly e-learning challenges to sharpen your skills
Get your free PowerPoint templates and free graphics & stock images.	Lots of cool e-learning examples to check out and find inspiration.	Getting Started? This e-learning 101 series and the free e-books will help.

Templates offer a lot of value and power in your e-learning course design. They help keep things consistent, provide a good starting structure, and they make it easy to swap and replace theme elements.

The main benefit of a template is saving time. But templates come with constraints and when attempting to customize them you may be robbed of the time saved. This is something I see all the time when working with e-learning developers.

To keep things simple, I like to consider templates from two perspectives.

Option 1: The E-Learning Template is Plug and Play

Use a template where the layout and all its features are pre-determined. The goal here is to select a templated screen and expect to make minimal changes. The value of the template is that everything is there and all you need to do is add your content.

All you want is a slide with a specific look and swap out the placeholders for your course content. You don’t want to change layouts, redesign the slide, add new elements, or customize colors.

The core value is that the template is pre-designed and all you do is add content. This is great for quick authoring and for the person who has limited graphic design experience.

Option 2: The E-Learning Template is Customizable

Use a template where all the features are themed. This usually consists of layouts, colors, and fonts. The value of this type of template is that you can easily modify it by making universal changes to the theme elements. And those changes are applied across all the slides in the course.

This second perspective requires a bit more forethought and restraint in using the features. For example, all the text and colors on the slide need to use theme text and colors. Also, all layouts need to be mapped to the same placeholders, otherwise, they’re not interchangeable.

Avoid the Mushy Middle

Think of these two perspectives as two ends of a spectrum. On one end you have the convenience of a pre-built screen that only requires content. Select it and add the content.

On the other is a screen that is built to be modified. It’s not tied to content but the theme elements.

Realistically, you can do both by making a designed slide with themed elements. But…and this is a big but (cue Pee Wee Herman) most of the issues I see when people work with templates is that they want the convenience of plug and play and then they want to customize, too. Inevitably this leads to a lot of time wasted trying to make things work.

So, I usually recommend this: if you use a template you didn’t create, accept the fact that what you select is what you get and all you need to do is add your content. Don’t expect to import it and then begin to make too many edits. At that point you lose the power of what the template gives you.

Or…

Create your own templates. Design specific layouts and multiple versions of them. For example, if you build a tabs interaction, design a 3-tab, 4-tab, and 5-tab version. Don’t just design a 3-tab and expect to modify it.

When you build the slide template, only use theme elements.

• That means you use create placeholder layouts and use them consistently on the various slides.
• Determine your theme colors and only use colors from your theme. And use them consistently.
• Set your theme fonts (usually a heading and body). And all text on the screen uses the theme font. You don’t insert that one cute curly font to make your course engaging. One, it isn’t engaging. And two, it’s not a theme font.
• Before using a template like that, you determine a new theme font and color scheme. And then insert the slide and apply the new theme elements.

Notice how the first option is just plug and play and the second requires a lot more intention and more production? That’s the big consideration. The template should provide some time-saving guidance. If you need to make a bunch of tweaks or mess things up because you didn’t plan on the theme elements, have you really saved any time? Did the template offer real value?

There you have it: two perspectives on when to use a template. Use it as is for quick authoring with minimal changes. Or use templates where you can make universal changes to the themes and quickly create new looks.

Events

Free E-Learning Resources

Want to learn more? Check out these articles and free resources in the community.	Here’s a great job board for e-learning, instructional design, and training jobs	Participate in the weekly e-learning challenges to sharpen your skills
Get your free PowerPoint templates and free graphics & stock images.	Lots of cool e-learning examples to check out and find inspiration.	Getting Started? This e-learning 101 series and the free e-books will help.

E-learning templates can be a bit challenging. On one hand, they speed up production. And then on the other they may introduce constraints in the learning experience design.

An e-learning course screen has a specific structure. It’s usually rectangular and contains text and imagery. The text and imagery are laid out on the screen and is constrained by up, down, left and right placement. Of course, the possibilities for layouts can be endless, but there are probably just a few dozen layouts that make sense for e-learning courses.

Here are a couple of recent posts where we discussed the anatomy of e-learning templates and how to get the most value out of templates.

E-learning Template Value

Templates work for repetitive processes because they can be used over and over again. For example, most courses have some sort of simple list of learning objectives. While the course content may change, those course screens are usually consistent.

E-learning Template Constraints

Courses consist of content that is contextual. And from a learning experience, that contextual content has specific teaching requirements. For example, if I teach how to use software, then the screens are dependent on screenshots. And if I teach how to interact with a customer, the visual context is best represented in a manner similar to how you may interact with the customer.

I may find some good general layouts for simple content, but as soon as I have to work with specific content, I find that there’s a lot of tweaking and adjustments made to the templates that may mean I save more time just starting from scratch.

E-Learning Template Hybrids

I like to separate my templates into three parts and find the most value in using templates in the first and third.

• Entering the course
• Course content
• Exiting the course

Most courses have the same or similar starting points with welcome screens, instructions, objectives, sections, etc. And they also have similar exit points such as summary screens, next steps, and exit instructions.

Those two parts, the entering and exiting of courses, are perfect for templates. The templates are easy to insert, update, and contextualize. The middle part that deals with the actual course content is different.

Course content templates are great for simple text layouts. They break down as the content design becomes more specific. That’s fine, just use templates for the beginning and end and for simple text. But don’t waste time trying to force content into a template. Or worse, don’t create a template and force the course authors to make the content comply with a template.

Templates are great for e-learning. However, they exist to save time. Keeping templates for easy-to-repeat screens makes sense. Forcing content to fit templates probably doesn’t. But that’s OK. Just use the template screens where you need them and start with blank screens where they need customization. Don’t waste time fitting a square peg into a round hole.

Events

Free E-Learning Resources

Want to learn more? Check out these articles and free resources in the community.	Here’s a great job board for e-learning, instructional design, and training jobs	Participate in the weekly e-learning challenges to sharpen your skills
Get your free PowerPoint templates and free graphics & stock images.	Lots of cool e-learning examples to check out and find inspiration.	Getting Started? This e-learning 101 series and the free e-books will help.

There’s a lot to say about gamified e-learning. I’ve shared some ideas in previous posts with links to some examples, free templates, production ideas, and recommended books.

One thing that seems to be a common challenge for many e-learning developers is crafting the right visuals for a gamified experience. Even though gamification and games aren’t the same thing, often I look for game user interfaces (GUI) to provide some simple visual ideas. They offer a visual design that is cohesive and includes a lot of common objects, such as content holders, progress indicators, badges, and buttons.

Many stock image sites sell GUIs. Below is a screenshot from Deposit Photos. If you have a subscription to one of these services, you’re all set.

If you’re not in a position to buy a GUI, here are a few free options. You can also search some of these sites for additional free GUIs. I’m sure you’ll find more that the few I share.

Even if you can’t use the free GUI, it’s worth spending some time reviewing what types of assets and content buckets they offer. That may give you some ideas for your own interfaces. Keep in mind, most of these free downloads require other tools to open and edit the files.

Free Game UI: Jungle Game

Craftpix.net has a lot of free game image resources. They do require a free account to download the GUI.

• Download the free game ui
• The file uses the Soup of Justice font
• License: free for commercial use

Free Game UI: Cartoon Game 1

Graphic Burger is another site that shares a lot of free stock assets. I like this GUI and use it in one of my workshops where we learn to work with variables.

• Download the free game ui
• License: free for commercial use

Free Game UI: Cartoon Game 2

DesignShock often shares free resources. You do have to look at the license agreement to make sure they resources can be used for commercial work.

• Download the the free game ui
• License: free for personal use; slight fee for commercial

If you use any of these types of interfaces, I’d love to see what you’ve done. Feel free to share the links in the comments section.

Events

Free E-Learning Resources

Want to learn more? Check out these articles and free resources in the community.	Here’s a great job board for e-learning, instructional design, and training jobs	Participate in the weekly e-learning challenges to sharpen your skills
Get your free PowerPoint templates and free graphics & stock images.	Lots of cool e-learning examples to check out and find inspiration.	Getting Started? This e-learning 101 series and the free e-books will help.

I get lots of questions about e-learning templates. Recently, I shared some tips on how to get the most value out of a template, which I’ll build on today.

Templates make sense to speed up production and create some visual consistency. They don’t make sense if you’re doing a lot of editing and tweaking. At some point, it becomes easier to build from scratch rather than modify templates.

Many people mix and match templates, which generates many of the questions I get. Today, I’ll like to share some thoughts on what makes a template and how that impacts mixing and matching.

Most e-learning templates consist of a few core elements:

• Fonts
• Colors
• Layouts
• Design elements

E-Learning Template Fonts

Most templates consist of a header and body font. If you mix and match templates, you’ll want to make sure they use the same fonts. This works in other tools, as well. For example, if I use a Storyline block in Rise, I want the Storyline content to look like it’s part of Rise. So I’ll incorporate the same template elements. In this case, I want the fonts to match even if they use different means to manage the fonts.

The same thing if I import PowerPoint slides. They use a header/body template structure, too. When you leverage existing PowerPoint content, switch the template elements to match.

E-Learning Template Color Schemes

Generally you can use as many colors as you want in a course. However, in Storyline (and PowerPoint) you get six colors. And with the five tones, that gives you thirty color swatches. You probably don’t need thirty color choices. I usually recommend two colors: a main color and a complimentary color, and perhaps a third accent color.

Regardless, when working with templates and colors, you want to be consistent in how you use them. If the main color is accent one, then do that with all templates. The challenge with already existing templates is that the template designer may have followed a different rule. Thus, when using different templates, you want to get them aligned and using colors the same way. Then, going forward, they’ll all work the way you want.

Rise 360 makes it easy as you get one accent color. However, you can also bring in other colors using the block fills and font colors. But, you’ll still want a plan as to how you’ll use colors.

E-Learning Template Layouts

There are all sorts of ways content can be laid out on the slide. Things can be up, down, left and right; and aligned at different percentages.

The key thing with layouts is that the content placeholders are the same. They don’t need to be in the same position, but they need to be the same in terms of content placeholders. When they start the same, then you can mix and match different templates and apply different looking, but similar, layouts. If they’re not the same, the inheriting template won’t know how to assign the extra content placeholders. This will require extra work to get it aligned.

For example, the layout above has a header and three content placeholders. Applying that layout to a different slide, requires that the other slide has the same core structure of a header and three content placeholders.

Before inserting a layout from one template to the next, make sure they having matching content placeholders. If they don’t, that’s OK. You can modify the template or just know you’ll need to make some adjustments later.

E-Learning Template Design Elements

There are design elements that are unique to the templates. When I mix and match, I try to identify what makes the template visually unique outside of the things mentioned above. Then I add those elements to the other content so they have unifying characteristics.

Here’s an example where I integrated some Storyline content into Rise, which is a completely different type of tool. One of the key elements of the template is the rounded rectangle and pill shape. I integrated some images with those shapes in Rise and the two pieces look like they belong together. You’ll notice I leveraged the colors and fonts to match, as well.

Those are the four core elements that make up most templates. Before mix and matching slides from different templates, review how they use fonts, colors, and layouts. And then identify the design elements that make the template unique. Add those to the new slides where appropriate.

What template tips do you have?

Events

Free E-Learning Resources

Want to learn more? Check out these articles and free resources in the community.	Here’s a great job board for e-learning, instructional design, and training jobs	Participate in the weekly e-learning challenges to sharpen your skills
Get your free PowerPoint templates and free graphics & stock images.	Lots of cool e-learning examples to check out and find inspiration.	Getting Started? This e-learning 101 series and the free e-books will help.

Here are three time-saving tips to consider before building your e-learning course.

Determine the Story Size

Many e-learning courses are 4:3 aspect ratio. The other common aspect ratio is 16:9. However, you’re not confined to either one of those aspect ratios. What if you want something more like a book? Or perhaps square?

Determine the story size and resolution before you start working on the course.

What we often see is that someone opens the e-learning software and starts working on the course using the default settings. And then somewhere in the process wants to change the size and resolution of the course. This can be problematic because when you modify the aspect ratio of the slide, it means the existing content may get skewed or require a bunch of tweaking to get it re-aligned. Thus you want to determine the course’s aspect ratio before adding content to the slides.

Choose a Template Before Building the Course

Another common process is that the course author starts to build content and then later wants to apply a template. However, templates are made up of specific layouts and theme elements. If the content the author builds doesn’t start mapped to a layout and the theme features, applying a new template to it somewhere in the process can cause issues and require a lot of extra work.

The point of a template is to guide the design and speed up production.

Before you start working on the course, curate your content and then pick a template appropriate to the context of your course and the type of content it has. From there, add your content to the template and then make some simple modifications to the theme colors and fonts. Choosing the template first will definitely save time.

Set the Theme Colors and Fonts

Generally, most e-learning courses have two core fonts: headers and body. You really don’t need 8 million fonts in your course, two is usually fine. On top of that, many fonts are part of a font family with different variations so you could get by with one font family. Then just determine which font is used and when.

After choosing your fonts, set one as the header font in your theme and one as the body. This way if you want to apply a different theme you can do that easily. If you don’t use the theme fonts it requires slide-by-slide editing to make changes.

The same thing can be said about theme colors. Determine the colors you want to use in your course and then set those colors in your theme. This way every object you insert will have the same theme colors. And like the fonts, can be swapped instantly.

When you create theme colors, remain consistent in how you use them, You get six accent colors. There’s no rhyme or reason to how they should be used. They’re just six color options. However, I like to use accent 1 as my main color. And I use accent 2 (and sometimes accent 3) as complimentary colors. I don’t use all six colors so I don’t worry about coming up with six colors to fill out the accent color options.

The main point is that regardless of how you use accent colors options, be consistent in how they’re used. This makes it easy to swap the theme colors.

Do those three things above before you invest time building out the content. It will save you a lot of production time. And it forces you to be a bit more intentional in how you are building your courses.

Do you have any other quick production tips before starting the course construction?

Events

Free E-Learning Resources

Want to learn more? Check out these articles and free resources in the community.	Here’s a great job board for e-learning, instructional design, and training jobs	Participate in the weekly e-learning challenges to sharpen your skills
Get your free PowerPoint templates and free graphics & stock images.	Lots of cool e-learning examples to check out and find inspiration.	Getting Started? This e-learning 101 series and the free e-books will help.

E-learning templates are great. They speed up production and deliver a professional and polished look. And there are lots of e-learning templates from which to choose. Articulate 360 offers slides and interaction templates for both Storyline 360 and Studio 360 in PowerPoint.

With all that said, there are some challenges with templates and issues I run into when delivering the e-learning workshops.

• Mix & match templates. The course author wants to mix and match templates. Generally, this is easy enough to do. For the most part it’s a matter of changing theme colors and theme fonts. But this assumes that the person who created the template used the accent colors the same way. Also, if the colors aren’t mapped to the color themes, then they can’t be changed through the themes and need to be changed at the slide level.

• Inconsistent slide layouts. In the same sense, it can be a bit tricky when trying to apply the layouts from one template to another if they aren’t mapped to the same type of content and layouts.

• Different design elements. Templates often have visual design elements (and layouts) that make the template design unique. Thus trying to modify one to another style may create some additional work to get a similar look and that often defeats the time savings and efficient production that the template should produce.

A template is designed to provide something specific and not require a lot of customization. They’re great when it’s mostly a matter of adding new content without a lot of editing.

Customization (such as what’s noted above) breaks the concept of the template. As soon as the author needs to customize the template, it often involves deconstructing and reconstructing the layouts and some functionality. This usually requires as much time (sometimes more) as building the screens from scratch. And at that point, the value of the template is lost.

Thus, the big question: how to get the most value out of the template?

It starts with understanding your content and how it needs to be displayed. Once you know that, you can determine how to add your content to the course and how you want it displayed.

Screens are going to be made of text and media (buttons, pictures, shapes, and video). They can be laid out any number of ways: up, down, left, and right.

• Select a single template style. You can always change the colors and fonts to match your brand and course requirements. But you want a single template.
• Download all of the slides for that template. I usually add them to a side scene and then copy and paste what I want to use. I delete the unused scene right before I publish the course.
• Modify the theme fonts and colors if needed. Then apply those to your template.
• If you need a new slide (and want to build it from scratch), use the layouts that are part of the template and not outside of it. This keeps it using the same theme colors and fonts.

If you understand your content and stick with a single template, you’ll find working with the templates to be easy. If you try to mix and match templates, you may find it’s more work than creating content from scratch.

Events

Free E-Learning Resources

Want to learn more? Check out these articles and free resources in the community.	Here’s a great job board for e-learning, instructional design, and training jobs	Participate in the weekly e-learning challenges to sharpen your skills
Get your free PowerPoint templates and free graphics & stock images.	Lots of cool e-learning examples to check out and find inspiration.	Getting Started? This e-learning 101 series and the free e-books will help.

Many of you know I’m a big fan of the e-learning challenges posted each week in the community. The intent is to get you to think about different ways to see the tools, be inspired by other examples, and practice using the software to learn new production tips.

I am always impressed with the diverse ideas that are demonstrated each week by both experienced and novice developers. On occasion I like to feature specific participants because they do really nice work and offer some creative ideas.

Today, I’d like to feature Andrzej Jabłoński. He really comes up with some interesting ideas and he often shares the files so that you can learn how he created what he did. This is the spirit of community in action. Here are a few of his recent challenge entries.

E-Learning Example: Leadership Template

This is one of my favorite demos in all of the challenges. There’s an elegance to the template structure and playfulness with the subtle animations. And yet, because he started with an existing graphic, it’s relatively easy to build something similar, especially for the person with minimal graphic design skills who has to work with stock imagery.

• View demo
• Download file

E-Learning Example: Paper Cutout Effect

I love the visuals in this one and the depth created with the paper cutout look. He always does a nice job with the animations in his demo and this one features some moving next buttons and bring content in and out of the screen.

• View demo

E-Learning Example: Meet the Team Interaction

Great use of the flashcard effect with really nice animations. There are a lot of interesting production tips to glean from this demo.

• View demo
• Download file

E-Learning Example: Space Game Navigation

This mimics an older arcade style game. This is a great demo to deconstruct so you can learn more about working with keyboard-based navigation. And there’s an off/on audio toggle.

• View demo
• Download file [developer mode]

E-Learning Example: Miscellaneous

Scenario Ideas

• Office
• Slider conversation

Exploration Activities

These are great activities to build familiarity with content, especially imagery or terms. They’re simple game activities, but can be sued effectively in many e-learning course contexts.

• Word Search [download]
• Accordion interaction 
• Start a Fire
• Vertical infographic style

Andrzej is just one of the many talented e-learning developers who regularly participate in e-learning challenges. I’ll feature more in the future.

Hopefully, you’ll be inspired to participate and share some of your own ideas. If not, at least make it a point to check them out each week to see what people share. And take advantage of the free tips and downloads that you can use to learn and build your own courses.

Are there any recent challenge entries you’ve enjoyed?

Events

Free E-Learning Resources

Want to learn more? Check out these articles and free resources in the community.	Here’s a great job board for e-learning, instructional design, and training jobs	Participate in the weekly e-learning challenges to sharpen your skills
Get your free PowerPoint templates and free graphics & stock images.	Lots of cool e-learning examples to check out and find inspiration.	Getting Started? This e-learning 101 series and the free e-books will help.

Many of us are challenged to convert our linear content into something more interactive and engaging. I was digging through some old workshop files and stumbled upon one I built a while back but never ended up sharing it outside of the workshop. In the workshop activity, the objective was to not build completely from scratch. We started with an existing template that was shared in the community, and then we explored a few ways we could add some gamified elements to create something that is a bit more effective and engaging.

Here’s a breakdown of some ideas from the workshop activity.

From Linear Content to a Gamified Experience

We started with a nice clean template designed to meet the team. It’s interactive, in the sense that you click to learn about each team member. This is great for an exploratory interaction where you need to collect information.

Original Template Example

See original template in action.

In our activity, we used the template as a mechanism to interview team members and collect information to make the right decisions. We also added some other elements to gamify it a bit.

Gamified Template Example

Click here to view the gamified example.

Gamified Learning Challenge

The assumption is that there is some sort of challenge and the learner has to determine what to do. But first they need to collect information. They do this by interviewing the team members.

• Each team member has something to say. Some of it is relevant, some not. That’s part of the learning experience. The learner will have to determine what’s what and whether the information is useful.

• Each team member is assigned a point value. Some are low points and some higher.
• You can only collect a specific number of points before you’re asked to stop. Thus, who you ask is important. You don’t want to waste time or opportunity. Another part of the learning experience.

• The information you collect is added to a notebook and you’ll be able to review it later to make a more informed decision. Thus, the more information you have the better.

Gamified Template Modifications

Here’s a video tutorial where I walk through some of what I did to modify the template to go from the original meet the team structure to the gamified interaction. I’ve also included a download with the original and modified files.

• There were ten possible interviews. We added a progress meter to track how many were interviewed. We used a number variable and added 1 for each interview.
• Created a disabled state for each character so you can interview only once.
• Collected information by clicking the star. This is tracked with a T/F variable that we use in the notebook to determine whether to display the interview content or not.
• Added a notebook that shows which answers are collected. The notes have hidden states and the T/F variable is used to show the information that is collected.
• Each character gets a point value. Too many points collected and you’re cut off. Used a number variable to track total points. Each interview adds X points to the variable. Once it exceeds 12 points, the interviews are stopped.

Gamified Learning Opportunities

There are a number of ways to create gamified learning experiences. Of course, this mock up isn’t complete, but here are a few things that I added to the template to increase engagement:

• Put the content into a relevant context. Instead of just sharing information, frame everything around an event where the learner would use the information in real life.
• Challenge the learner to make a decision. For the demo, it’s assumed something happened and the person needs to make a decision. To do so, they need to have all of the information. The more information, the better…maybe. Some of it could be false or irrelevant.
• Create a means to explore and collect information. They can choose who to interview and what information is relevant and add it to the notebook for use later in the course.
• Add risk and pressure. Choosing the wrong people means they collect less information and may not be able to complete the task. This is all part of the learning process: knowing what’s important and what’s not, and where to get the resources or correct information. Again, the demo isn’t completely developed, but you can see how this is important to decision-making opportunities.
• The person gets to demonstrate their understanding of a given topic through the decision-making process and how they use resources. The decisions made produce consequences which create opportunities to add feedback and additional instruction.

I love doing this activity in the workshops. It forces us to work with the constraint of existing templates and find a few simple things we could do to make it a more meaningful and engaging learning experience.

Take the Gamified Template Challenge

Find a template (or a slide with content) that is mostly static or linear content. Convert that linear content into a decision-making interaction. What do you need to do? How do you do this at the speed of business where you don’t have the luxury of working from scratch or building the most complex gamified experience?

Events

Free E-Learning Resources

Want to learn more? Check out these articles and free resources in the community.	Here’s a great job board for e-learning, instructional design, and training jobs	Participate in the weekly e-learning challenges to sharpen your skills
Get your free PowerPoint templates and free graphics & stock images.	Lots of cool e-learning examples to check out and find inspiration.	Getting Started? This e-learning 101 series and the free e-books will help.

We all like to see good e-learning examples. That’s one reason I really enjoy the e-learning challenges. They’re little nuggets of creativity. They’re usually not full-fledged courses, but they often have some interesting elements.

In a recent challenge on course starter templates for leadership training, community member, Andrzej Jabłoński, shared a really nice example. Check it out below.

Click here to view the demo.

Here’s what stood out:

• The visual design is fun and clean. I think often our e-learning courses look too formal or corporatey (if that’s a word). We think because it’s a serious topic that the visuals need to look serious. Maybe they do, maybe they don’t. I like this design because it doesn’t look like a typical corporate course. Yet it’s professional and engaging.

• The subtle animations work well. They get your attention, but they’re not gratuitous. Break down the course and look at how he used the animations.
• Leverages existing illustrations. He used an image from freepik to create the visual elements for his demo. As he says, “I mainly work on redesigning and adjusting images for my projects. It’s also a good way to learn how to design when you have to work on ready-made elements. I often try to add something more from myself to develop graphic skills.”
• Andrzej also shared the source file so you can open it up to see how he created the animated effects and other slides. You can find it in the recap post.

Look at what he did, find an image, and see what you can do to apply similar effects for your own template design.

Events

Free E-Learning Resources

Want to learn more? Check out these articles and free resources in the community.	Here’s a great job board for e-learning, instructional design, and training jobs	Participate in the weekly e-learning challenges to sharpen your skills
Get your free PowerPoint templates and free graphics & stock images.	Lots of cool e-learning examples to check out and find inspiration.	Getting Started? This e-learning 101 series and the free e-books will help.