Recently I shared some free animated gif resources: animated icons and backgrounds. If you’re using Rise or Rise.com it’s as simple as inserting an image. They’re great for novel attention-getters or simple instructional procedures.

If you’re using Storyline 360, with triggers and state changes you can do a bit more to control how the animated gifs work in your course.

Animated gifs are great, but they do loop. Thus, when you insert them in the slide they just continue without end.

To make it more interactive, I like to insert a static image and then interact with the image to activate the animated gif.

Click to view the example.

The demo above shows a few ideas:

• Selected state is like an on/off toggle. Press on the image to toggle between the static version and animated gif.
• Hover state allows you to mouse over the static image to reveal the animated gif and mouse away when you want to leave.
• Down state is like the mouseover, but works by pressing down on the image to activate the gif, and releasing the mouse, stops it. I like this option the best.

Bonus idea: do the opposite and start with the looping animation and create an interaction where the animation stops when clicked.

• Visited state indicates when an object has been clicked. Use the animated icons as markers and then insert the static image in the visited state. This provides a nice visual indication of what’s already been viewed.

View the tutorial on YouTube.

What’s cool about all of the choices above is that they’re super easy to build and don’t require any triggers. Sometimes the looping can be a bit distracting to start, so having an interactive option is nice. I like them because instead of a looping animation it allows the image to become interactive where the user can click to view it and activate the animation.

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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.

Who doesn’t like free and animated .gifs? They’re great for e-learning courses. Use them to create novel attention-getting images, add some humor, or show instructional procedures.

Recently, the AppSumo site gave away free animated .gifs via Lordicon. The offer no longer exists, but the Lordicon site still has a pack for 50 free animated gifs. It’s actually 100 images because you get outline and solid options.

These are great to use in your Rise 360 and Rise.com courses. Here’s an example course from one of our training webinars on how to create compliance training.

Use Free Animated Gifs As Header Graphics

Use Free Animated Gifs As Bullet Point Alternatives

Use Free Animated Gifs with E-Learning Interactions

Bonus Idea

I sign up for sites like AppSumo (there are others, too) because often they have media-related offers that can be used in online course development. This Lordicon offer was free and they gave away 1000 animated gifs. They also recently had an offer for Depositphotos images at $.39 each. That’s a great deal. That’s one that seems to come around every few months.

Most of the offers on those sites are not relevant so I ignore them; but I do like it when I come across one of the low cost (or free) multimedia deals that I can use for my courses. It’s worth checking out.

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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.

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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.

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Rise 360 is a great application to create e-learning. It’s form-based so it’s easy to use. Pull all of your instructional content together. Then go into Rise 360, select from dozens of various content blocks, and add your content.

Super easy. No programming required and because of the way it works, it doesn’t require any design work.

But what do you do if you want some graphics or illustrations to go with your Rise 360 courses?

Check out these open source illustrations from unDraw.co. They look nice and they’re free to use for commercial projects. You can download PNG or SVG versions of the illustrations.

Here’s why I think these free illustrations work well with Rise 360.

• In Rise 360, you set a core accent color.

• In unDraw, you set an accent color.

• Use the same accent colors for the Rise 360 course and the unDraw illustrations and they look like they belong together.
• The illustrations are editable if you use an SVG editor. And because they’re open source you can customize them to your hearts desire.

Here’s an example where I matched the accent color in Rise 360 with the free illustrations from unDraw.

If you need some quick, easy-to-use free illustrations to complement your Rise 360 courses, then give these a try.

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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?

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Recently, I did a webinar on transforming PowerPoint content into an interactive e-learning course. One of the tips is to save your PowerPoint file as a video. Here’s why I like that tip.

Save PowerPoint as Video

Assuming the PowerPoint slides look good and the content doesn’t need to be restructured, why spend a lot of time copy and pasting from PowerPoint into a different application? Save a lot of time by outputting your PowerPoint slideshow as a video.

All of your animations, narrations, inserted media, and slide transitions remain in a single file. If all you’re doing is sharing the content, this is an easy way to go. It’s one click to create the video.

Here’s an example from the Duarte group. They built this really dynamic presentation in PowerPoint that they shared in a previous version of PowerPoint. In includes animations, narration, slide transitions, and even other video. Here’s an example of the file as a video.

Click here to view the example on YouTube.

Assuming the slides are fine and you don’t need to rework your content, saving as video is a no brainer. The challenge is how to get the video into your LMS so you can track it as a course.

How to Get the Video Into Your LMS

Articulate 360 comes with a number of great authoring tools. It also comes with Review 360 where you can upload your courses and solicit feedback from your clients and subject matter experts.

Another nice feature is that you can upload a video into Review 360. And from there, export the video for LMS. This lets you set the LMS tracking options and how to measure completion.

You’ll get a .zip file with the video and all of the LMS required files so that you can load it on the LMS and treat the video like a trackable course. Super fast and super simple.

Click here to view the tutorial on YouTube.

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Technically converting a PowerPoint file to an “e-learning course” is fairly easy. You can import the slides into Storyline or just publish them from inside of PowerPoint with Articulate Studio 360.

But is that really a course? Maybe, but probably not because it’s not about just putting content in front of learners.

Here are three things to consider when converting a PowerPoint file into an e-learning course.

Presentation content isn’t the same as an e-learning course. Sure, presenting content in your course is part of the process, but it’s a passive form of learning. The solution is to find a way to make delivery of the content more active.

PowerPoint presentations used in face-to-face training tend to have a PowerPointy look. An e-learning course doesn’t need to look like a PowerPoint slideshow. Use some of the Content Library templates to get away from the presentation look. You can even customize them to fit your organizational brand.

However, there is a look that fits the content and objectives of your course, and that’s where you want to put your energy.

Convert bullet points to interactive content. Instead of showing screen after screen of bullet points, why not convert them to micro interactions? For example, three bullet points could be three interactive tabs.

Those are three real quick tips when converting PowerPoint to an e-learning course. Of course, there’s more to it.

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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.

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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?

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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?

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Here’s some content that spans the past decade or so of rapid e-learning. Originally, the interactive scenario started as a PowerPoint file that was published with Articulate Studio to demonstrate how to create simple branched scenarios in PowerPoint.

Interactive Scenario: PowerPoint

Click to view the interactive scenario create with PowerPoint

Since PowerPoint is linear and doesn’t offer tracking logic, it requires a lot of slides to create the illusion of movement and branching complexity. The slide number increases exponentially with each additional choice and gets to a point where it’s not manageable.

In those cases, PowerPoint isn’t the best solution for interactive courses.

Interactive Scenario: Storyline

The same content goes from 154 slides in PowerPoint to just 18 slides in Storyline. That’s a dramatic decrease in slides and the production time required to create an interactive scenario. It really shows off the power of Storyline and why it’s so well received as a preferred authoring tool.

Interactive Scenario: Rise 360 Content Blocks

When we launched the Rise 360, I wrote about the new approach to rapid e-learning. Rise 360 is form-based so the authoring process is different than PowerPoint or Storyline.

I played around with how to convert the PowerPoint scenario into Rise 360, a completely different type of tool. Here’s the first attempt using content blocks.

Click here to view the interactive scenario using content blocks in Rise 360.

Interactive Scenario: Rise 360 Scenario Block

The content block scenario works, but with the scenario block in Rise, I am able to create something that is visually more in line with what I want and it’s a lot easier to build. Here’s an example of the same content in the Rise 360 scenario block.

Click here to view the interactive scenario using the scenario block in Rise 360.

Interactive Scenario Resources

• In a previous post, I showed how I created the menu design for the interactive scenario using PowerPoint.
• Here’s a tutorial to learn more about the scenario block where I used some of this scenario for the demo.
• I am doing a free webinar on May 21, if you want to learn more about the scenario block. If you can’t make it, register and you’ll get a link to the recording to watch at your leisure.

It really is interesting to see the evolution of rapid e-learning through this scenario content. It started with PowerPoint, passed through Storyline, and now it’s part of Rise 360.

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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.