3 Simple Ways to Find the Resources You Need to Build E-Learning Courses

Rapid elearning design is made up of three core functions: rapid authoring, rapid assets, and rapid instructional design.  One thing common to many rapid elearning developers is that while their organizations will fund the purchase of rapid authoring tools, they do little else to fund the development of the assets required to make the elearning course look good and be effective.

For example, a large part of the course’s construction involves the visual design of the course.  It represents building the right look and feel, something we touched on in this previous post where we reviewed a good visual design activity.  It also means have the right screen elements to place in the course.

In the visual design activity, you learn how to determine what screen elements to use; but you don’t learn how to create those elements.  And this is a big challenge for many elearning developers.  Having the authoring tools is one thing.  having visual design skills is another.  Many people don’t have the skills to develop the screen elements, and they also don’t have the budget to acquire the assets they need.  In those cases, they’re left to fend for themselves.

So in today’s post, we’ll look at a few ways to scrounge for some free resources using the tools you do have.

Take Advantage of the Free Stuff

The most obvious place to start is where you already have access to free assets.  Now that the elearning community is complete, I’ve been moving old demos and templates over to the site.

Whatever I create for the blog and conference demos, I try to make available for free.  So you’re more than welcome to use those things for you own courses.   Pick through the downloads and feel free to use what you want.

On a side note, check out the interactive scenario slides that David just uploaded this week.

• Demo 1: Office scenario
• Demo 2: Outdoors scenario

These slides are easy to re-use because all you really need to do is swap out the images and text content.  All of the animations should remain intact if you’re using PowerPoint 2007+.

Visit the E-Learning Junk Yard

Years ago, I owned a Triumph Spitfire.  One day someone backed into the car and left me with a smashed up door.  I didn’t have the money to repair it, so I drove to a junk yard and found a working door on an older Spitfire.

In the same sense, you have access to some elearning examples like in the image above, but you may not need to use everything in them.  But there may be parts of the course you can use, like the menu slides or one of the animation.   Instead of discounting the entire course, download the file and look for a “replacement door” you can use.

Deconstruct Your Free Assets

Let’s be honest, many of the free PowerPoint templates that come with PowerPoint  don’t really work for our courses.  So we tend to ignore them.  But we may be throwing the baby out with the bath water, and possibly missing out on some assets we can use for our courses.

The secret is in breaking apart what you get and pulling out pieces you may be able to use.  So here are a few tutorials that show how to scrounge for usable assets in the available PowerPoint resources.

1. Pull usable pieces out of the grouped clip art.

I’ve touched on this a number of times.  Break apart the clip art images and pull out individual components.  Perhaps all you need is the clip art’s background?  Just remove it and save as an image.  Develop an eye for looking past the immediate image.

2. Break apart the free PowerPoint templates & examples.

Not every PowerPoint template works, that’s for sure.  But there may be some things in the free templates that do work.  Why not use them?  Here are a couple of quick tutorials where I walk through how to look for usable pieces in PowerPoint templates.

• Tutorial 1: Tear apart PowerPoint templates
• Tutorial 2: Look through template samples

3. Scrounge Through Other Templates & Software

The images below show two examples of how you can scrounge through your authoring software to look for some design ideas and free elearning assets.

The starburst background in the first image came from an image I found inside a Quizmaker template.  And the scenario slide background is a modified Engage process interaction screen shot.

Here’s a quick tutorial where I show some ideas on what to look for when pulling out assets from your software application.

Most of us are in the same boat.  We have authoring software that’s easy enough to use.  But an elearning course is more than authoring software.  So when it comes time to design the course with a budget of $1.17, we need to find easy and cost-effective ways to build stuff that looks good.

If you’re working with limited resources, it’s important to be scrappy.  You never know what you’ll find that you can use for your elearning courses.

What tips do you have for scrounging through resources you may already have?  Share them by clicking on the comments link.

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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.