7 Simple Rapid E-Learning Tips & Free PowerPoint Template

October 5th, 2010

The Rapid E-Learning Blog - questions from blog readers

When I’m on the road, I try to squeeze in some informal Articulate jam sessions to answer quick questions or offer a tip or two.

For example, I’m going to be in Baton Rouge next week. I’m doing a session for the local ASTD. And the next day, I’m hanging around for an informal Articulate jam session where I’m available to answer questions. So if you’re interested, let me know. Space is limited so it’s first come, first serve.

Many of these jam sessions produce interesting discussions with some tips and tricks that don’t require a full blog post. So today, I’m going to share a few of them from a recent meeting.

The Rapid E-Learning Blog - keep losing my elearning files

This was an interesting question. In this case the person didn’t lose files. Instead he was moving things around and broke the connections. It’s something that happens because some people have this habit of moving and deleting files.

I had a customer once delete all of her files because she was “cleaning up the folders.” I showed her how to get them back by going to the recycle bin, but she had already emptied it. She said, “It was getting full.”

If you’re one of those people, here’s a tip: Don’t mess with your files; especially once the course is published. If the course’s player is looking for a file and it’s missing, your course won’t work.

To keep things organized, create a consistent process by which you manage your folders and elearning assets. I start with the same default folder and this way all of my projects are structured the same way. I wrote a post on how to organize and manage your project files. That may help.

The Rapid E-Learning Blog - the big image files make my computer slow

Working with multimedia applications can tax your computer. This is especially true when you have a bunch of large images on your PowerPoint slides. You’ll find that things kind of bog down. This happens to me when I’m working with high resolution stock images.

Here’s a simple solution, you can compress your images in PowerPoint. So if you have high resolution images that are hard to work with, use PowerPoint’s compression feature to make them smaller.

Another option is to start with placeholder images. Instead of using the high resolution images during production, use low resolution versions to begin. When everything is set, swap them out for the higher resolution images.

The Rapid E-Learning Blog - how can I resize my images

Batch editing images is not that difficult. In fact, many of the image editing applications have this type of feature. If you don’t have one, you can always download Image Tuner. It’s free and makes resizing and converting your images super easy. Here’s a quick screencast to show you how it works.

Click here to view the screencast.

Here’s a bonus tip tied to the previous question. Do a batch edit on the entire image folder. Use the smaller resolution images for production. Then when you’re ready to publish, swap the low for high.

The Rapid E-Learning Blog - what size stock images should I buy?

That’s a good question and really depends on your project. I find that when I go to a place like istockphotos, I can select images that run anywhere from $1 to $30 or more. For the most part, I choose the $1-3 images. You don’t really need the highest resolution for your elearning courses.

While I’m on the subject, when I am at computer stores or places like Half-Price Books, I’ll look in the discount bins. Sometimes you can find disks with fonts, clip art or photos for just a few dollars. It’s a worthwhile purchase if you can find them. I’ve also found nuggets in old graphics applications. They usually come with some fonts and images.

The Rapid E-Learning Blog - here's a PowerPoint tip

Not sure if I shared this before or not, but it’s something I shared in a recent conversation.

It’s always easy to remember what you’re doing when the elearning project is current. But revisit the project six months later and it can be a challenge to recall the little tweaks you made here or there. Because of this, it’s a good idea to keep a few notes with your projects.

Below are a few tips and a quick tutorial.

Click here to view the tutorial.

Slide Notes. The most obvious place to add notes is in the slide notes area of the slide. But of course many people use this area for their course transcript. In that case, slide notes doesn’t work.
Use comments on the slide. It’s an easy way to make notes. And they don’t show up when you publish with the rapid elearning tools.
Add off-slide content. Create a text box with notes or a
dd extra images to the slide. What you don’t need move off screen. They don’t show up when you publish, but they’re always available in the PowerPoint file.
Hide the notes and extra stuff. Starting with PowerPoint 2007, you can hide and unhide screen objects via the selection pane. What you have hidden won’t be published. You can also hide slides, too. But I don’t do that very often because sometimes it can introduce issues when converted to Flash.
Move your junk to the trunk. Create a slide in your slide masters to just hold notes and extra stuff. This way they’re not part of the course at all, but available to you in the master slides if you ever need them. It’s a great place to hold all of those extras, even slides not used.

The Rapid E-Learning Blog - what's the difference between a ppt and pptx file

Without getting into a bunch of wonky detail, the new .PPTX format in PowerPoint started with 2007. PowerPoint uses an XML-based file format, thus the X at the end of the extension.

If you want to open PPTX files, you can use the links below:

You can save PowerPoint 2007+ files to .PPT format so people can open them in older versions of PowerPoint. But it is possible that you can run into problems with your PowerPoint files if you’re going back and forth between versions. Just something to keep in mind when building rapid elearning courses.

I created the graphics in PowerPoint using some clipart. The heads come from Style 109 and the rectangular box is from Style 802. Below is a link to the PowerPoint file with the images in them. They’d probably make great call outs or talking point boxes on your slides.

Download the .ppt file here.

The Rapid E-Learning Blog - any bonus tips

Ok, so here’s a bonus tip based on two of the tips above.

It would be great to have an easy way to get the images used in a PowerPoint file without opening it and looking through the slides. Here’s one way to do that.

First, it only works in PowerPoint 2007+ with the .PPTX file extension.
The .PPTX file is a zipped file. So you can unzip it with a free product like 7zip. I’ve even played around with changing the extension from .PPTX to .ZIP. Then you can right click and select “extract all” to unzip it.
Once the file is unzipped, all of the images are available to you in the ppt/media folder.
You’ll notice that the name of each image is generic. Use Image Tuner (which I described above) to rename the files to match the project name. Then you have all of the images from your course in a single folder with a common naming structure.

This is an easy way to create a collection of just the images from your PowerPoint files. This way you don’t need to open the PowerPoint file to find them. Here’s a quick demo of how to do what I described above.

Click here to view the demo.

If you have any additional questions that you’d like answered in the blog, feel free to contact me. I also recommend jumping into the user forums. Some of the best tips and tricks come from people like you who are doing real work and have figured out how to make it all happen.

What tips would you share with your rapid elearning peers? Add them by clicking on the comments link.

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