As you know, we have all sorts of free templates to download for your elearning courses and PowerPoint presentations. The challenge sometimes is figuring out when and how to use the templates for your own projects.

At a recent conference I was chatting with someone who wanted to make her software training look better. Her training was mostly a series of quick video tutorials. She wanted a nice way to present the tutorials. I recommended that she start with one of the free templates and use it as a way to package the tutorials.

Here’s a quick mock up I created for her using a template I gave away in a recent blog post.

Click here to view the demo.

You’ll notice that the free template is a little different than the final product. That’s because the free template is just the starting point. You don’t want the template design to dictate how you’ll build your course. So feel free to make the modifications that help you meet your project objectives.

• In this particular template I got rid of the different sized boxes and created the same size box for each video title.
• I also covered up the connectors lines that were a little busy-looking and possibly distracting.
• The slide layers were also cleaned out to accommodate the videos and playbar. These videos work fine in the preset size. Otherwise I would have set the player to scale up so the end user could make the videos larger.

Here’s a quick video tutorial where I show some of the changes I made to the template so that it worked for my demo. Hopefully that’ll give you some ideas on making your own modifications.

Click here to view the tutorial video.

For the most part, software training centers on explainer videos. In those cases, the template is a frame to hold the videos. What I look for is a good starting page that can serve as a menu or sorts and then space to hold the individual videos.

Here are some other templates I think would work great for software training.

• I like the bookshelf metaphor. The shelves can represent sections and the books are smaller teaching chunks. Each book cover would link to a video.

• Any tabs interaction would work well. The tabs are the menu and they link to the videos. Tabs also make efficient use of the screen space.

• Here’s another example of the free template, Business Circles, modified to add some gamified mechanics for a new hire orientation.

There are all sorts of great templates to use for your elearning courses and software training. Find a template and use it to create your next software training.

If you do, be sure to tell us how it went. Any particular template that you’d use for your software training?

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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.

Want to build better elearning experiences? Want to add game mechanics like achievements, levels, and points to your courses? If so, now’s the time to learn about variables and how they help build better elearning.

At a recent workshop on variables, I asked one attendee what she learned. She said, “I learned not to use variables.” While this produced a chuckle, she was speaking some truth for the beginner who’s never used variables: at first they may seem a bit confusing.

This makes sense if you haven’t used them before and don’t have a programming background. On the surface they can seem complex. But in reality they’re not. It’s just a matter of knowing the terms and gaining an understanding of how they work. And then practice, practice, practice.

Today we’ll start the process of simplifying variables.

What is a Variable?

As I mentioned in a previous post, I learned to think of variables as an empty bucket. The bucket collects things. Once I have something collected, I can use it.

We use variables in elearning to collect values that we can use throughout the course. The values may be things like the user’s name, what they’ve clicked, their achievement, or an adaptive learning path. In either case, it’s a way to collect information that is used elsewhere in the course.

Types of Variables

Generally, there are three types of variables:

• Numbers: used for counting actions or doing calculations
• Text: input names or display text
• True/False: often used to track progress or if items are selected or not

Variables are used for all sorts of things and often the type of variable is interchangeable. The thing to remember is that the value is key and what type of variable you use to hold that value is not as important.

A good example is the True/False variable. Instead of T/F you could use numbers like 1 or 2, or even the text “true” or “false.” As you can see, they’re interchangeable. Of course, there are times when one type makes more sense than another.

Common Uses of Variables

Before we get into the details, let’s look at two common uses of variables: user names and counting clicks.

Variable: Add Your Name

It’s a good thing to personalize the learning experience. One way to do this is by collecting the user’s name and using it throughout the course. In the example below, you enter your name on one screen and see it displayed on another.

Click here to view simple name variable.

Variable: Track Onscreen Actions

Another common use is to track onscreen actions. In the example below you can click any choice but only two are correct. We track your correct and incorrect choices by counting clicks. If you click on a third wrong choice, you get some feedback.

Click here to view counting variable.

The examples above are simple but common to many courses. Now let’s look at variables in a bit more detail.

 How to Use Variables

Working with variables is a three-step process: 1) create, 2) adjust value, and 3) use value.

• Create variable. The first step is to create a variable. You’ll need to select the type, give it a name, and then determine a starting value (if any).

• Adjust value: The second step is to adjust the value of the variable. Generally, the user does something onscreen that triggers a change to the value of the variable. In the example below, we increase the Incorrect variable every time the user clicks on the wrong person.

• Use value: The third step is to use the value of the variable to do something. The value of the variable determines an action. For example, since we can track wrong selections by counting clicks, we can use the value we collect to trigger some feedback. In the example below, after selecting the incorrect choice three times we provide remedial feedback.

So that’s the essence of working with variables. You create them, an action changes their value, and then you can use that value to do something else in the course, whether that’s providing feedback or displaying a user’s name. Your only limit is your creativity.

Your Mission to Learn More about Variables

Years ago when I first started to learn to work with variables, the light didn’t come on until I actually knew what I wanted to do and then had to think through how to do it using variables. So to help you out, I’m assigning three common activities that will give you an opportunity to practice using variables.

• Collect the user name and display it on a different screen.
• Control course navigation using variables.
• Track how many correct items a user selects during an activity.

To help you out, here are some recent articles in the elearning community:

• Mike Enders has great post on doing calculations with variables and then a more detailed series on creating a running calculation. This includes examples, video tutorials, and the source file. Great for a team practice activity.
• The community created a bunch of quick tutorials on how to use variables. These are worthy of bookmarking for future reference.

The key is to practice. And if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to jump in the community and ask. We’re always there to help.

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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.

Here’s a free elearning template I created for a recent workshop. I used it to highlight a few key production tips, which you’ll find below. The free template includes three interactions: two timelines and one process interaction.

Free E-Learning Template Example

Click here to view an example of the free template.

• Download the free elearning template here.
• Here’s a simplified PowerPoint version of the timeline: demo and download.

Timeline Interaction 1

The first timeline interaction features segments with dots that represent events. Click the dot and it reveals a layer with all of the events for that particular segment.

Timeline Interaction 2

The second timeline looks similar to the first. However, each dot has it’s own content layer. This opens up more space for event-specific content. Also, the dot shows a visited state after selecting it.

Process Interaction

The process interaction is a bonus that I created to show how quickly the objects can be moved around to create a different type of interaction.

Key Learning Points

Here are some of the things I pointed out in the workshop:

• Keep with basic shapes when creating interactions. They’re easy to re-use, copy, and modify. Especially when you want to duplicate functionality.
• Format painter is your friend because you just need to format one shape and apply it to the next.
• Animations and transitions work if they’re not superfluous or too dramatic.
• Play around with layouts and template ideas. In this example, I matched the top part of the screen to the player color so it looks like the header blends into the player.
• Naming is important. Notice how the object titles and layers match? This makes setting up triggers really easy. And if you need to troubleshoot it’s easier to spot if a connection is wrong.

Hope you enjoy the template or use it to inspire your own.

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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.

In a previous post I mentioned how to find color schemes using color schemers.  They’re great tools to help find the right color palette for your courses. Personally I find them valuable because I have slight color blindness. So having a system that keeps me in line really helps.

Use the Color Picker to Manually Create Color Schemes

Another way to create color schemes to manually pick colors from an image. In the tutorials I did for Storyline, I show how to use the color picker to pick colors from a background image.

With the color picker, I get colors that match colors from the image on the slides. Look at the image below. The tabs and side panel were color picked from the building on the right of the background image. I also added a colored, semi-transparent shape over the background to add some tinting and subdue the background a bit.

You’re not limited to Storyline, you can also do the same thing in PowerPoint.

Create Color Schemes from a Picture or Logo

Instead of creating a color scheme by manually picking colors, you can create one from the colors in an image. Upload an image and then let the color scheming site create a color palette for you.

• Color Hunter: upload an image
• Color Palette Generator: add an image URL to create the scheme
• Kuler: upload an image or create custom themes using formulas; requires an account
• Pictalous: upload an image and get advice from multiple sites
• Colrd: upload an image and identify your image DNA

Some of you have corporate style guides where the color information is provided. If you don’t have a formal style guide, you can upload a company-related image and have the color scheming site generate a usable palette.

As the image above shows, I uploaded a screen capture of my blog to pull together a color scheme. This is something you can do, too. You can use one of the following:

• Company web site. Take a screenshot of your company website (or something else). Upload it to one of these sites and capture a color palette.
• Company logo. Use the company logo to do the same thing.
• Marketing collateral. You may have marketing or product material that you can use to pull a color palette.

Once you have a color palette, use it to create custom color themes in PowerPoint and Storyline.

As you can see, creating a custom color palette is pretty easy. And once you have one, you can customize your course to your heart’s content.

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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.

Let’s face it, we’re not all graphic designers and it can be a chore to get the right look for your slides. This is especially true if your slide is a little light on content leaving a lot of white space. And when this happens, we feel obligated to fill it with something like decorative clip art.

The following visual design tip is a great way to fill the space and maintain some context. It adds texture, looks nice, and is really easy to implement.

Examples of the Visual Design Tip

I’m not sure if there’s a formal name for this visual design tip but I like to call it the transparent echo technique. You’ll notice that the main image is repeated, like an echo. It’s still present but it’s softer and subtle. Here are some good examples of it in action.

As you can see the transparent echo technique works with objects, characters, and even illustrations. It’s a good visual design tip to have in your tool chest.

Step to Create the Transparent Echo Technique

Essentially you copy and paste the primary object and use it as a background image.

• Duplicate the main image and place on the background.
• Scale the background image up and crop it or move it a little off screen. There’s no right or wrong way to align it. Just do what looks good.
• Subdue the image. There are a few ways to do this. You can make the image semi-transparent or use the recolor image feature in PowerPoint and Storyline. Another option is to cover the background with a white shape that is semi-transparent. That gives you an easy way to play adjust the level of transparency.

Here’s a video tutorial that walks through the process.

Click here to view YouTube video.

As you can see it’s pretty simple to implement and it’s repeatable with different images throughout the course. Thus you can have slides with different objects, but using the transparent echo technique allows the slides and visual design to remain consistent throughout the course. This technique works great for start screens and menus.

Here are some additional production tips and considerations:

• Remove the color from the background image. I find that gray images blend better as they are made transparent.
• Make sure to be consistent in the transparency setting if you use the effect on multiple slides.
• Colorize the overlay shape. Pick a color from the main image and tint a semi-transparent shape that sits over the background image.
• Cut out images work best. You can remove backgrounds from the image in a graphics editor or PowerPoint.
• Play around with the scaling of the image and how it’s framed on the slide.
• Use derivatives of the same image. Look at the doctor image above. Same character but different poses.

The transparent echo technique is an easy way to dress up slides without plastering it with clip art or decorative images. You maintain context and get a nice graphic with minimal effort. If you try your hand at it, I’d love to see what you do.

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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.

Why should one use variables in elearning, especially since the authoring tools are so easy to use?

Good question.

Many course authors transition from facilitated classroom training to elearning development. Their companies buy software and then they’re left on their own to build courses. If you’re using software like Storyline, producing courses is relatively simple. However, the tendency is to keep course design simple, as well.

Because of this, many courses are mostly linear, explainer-type content with generic navigation. This is fine for some courses, but what if you want more than linear content? What if you want training that can evaluate the learner’s responses and provide an experience unique to that person? You can build this type of course, but you need to use variables.

What are Variables in E-Learning?

A variable doesn’t have a fixed value. It can be changed or adapted as things happen. I learned to think of a variable as a bucket that holds something (a value). This value is dynamic and can change based on user input or actions.

For example, if you want to acquire the learner’s name to display in the course, you create a bucket (variable) to collect the name (value). And then when you need to display the name, you reference the variable’s value. The user name value isn’t fixed until the user enters the name. That’s what makes it a variable—the value is dynamic.

In a simple sense, I like to think of the user as the variable. I don’t know what she’ll enter or what decisions she’ll make in the course. But I can program the course to collect and evaluate what she does and use it to create a more dynamic learning experience.

Why Use Variables in E-Learning

Variables allow course authors to create dynamic learning experiences. With variables, we can evaluate what’s happening in the course and tailor an experience unique to the learner. For example, to create a personalized learning experience we can display the learner’s name, allow them to customize avatars and color schemes, and even select a local language.

Here are some other common reasons to use variables:

• Transform a simple course flow to something more complex and dynamic.
• Evaluate the choices the learner is making and provide remedial and custom feedback.
• Create an adaptive learning path and direct the learner based on results.
• Allow a personalized learning experience.
• Track progress and completed modules.
• Gamify the learning process using variable-based game mechanics.
• Accept numeric input and process calculations.

These are just a few common use cases for variables. There’s really a lot more you can do with variables in elearning.

If you’re just getting started, working with variables may seem a bit daunting. But it’s not. It just takes a little practice and application. Start with something simple and build from there. Here are some good tutorials to help you learn more and they include practice activities:

• Introduction to Variables
• Understanding Variables.

How are you using variables in your elearning courses?

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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.

At a recent workshop I showed the difference between creating interactive elearning in PowerPoint and Storyline. For the workshop I created a few different templates. One of them was a tabs interaction. Following is the free PowerPoint template and the corresponding Storyline version. You can use them as you wish.

Free Interactive Tabs Template

• Click here to view the template in action.
• Click here to download the free template.

Free PowerPoint Template

• Click here to view the template in action: side tabs or top tabs.
• Click here to download the free PowerPoint templates.

Production Tips

I usually get questions on how to edit the free templates and make them interactive. Here are a few tips:

• Leverage the master slides. Try to put as much persistent content on the slide master as you can. Sometimes you don’t know what’s persistent until you’re done. That’s OK. At that point, it’s worth adding it to the master slide and then deleting it from the slides. You’ll be glad you did it when you need to edit the slides later.
• Learn to work with hyperlinks in PowerPoint because interactions in PowerPoint mostly work the same way: they are hyperlinks to other slides. Also, hyperlinks work on master slides. Storyline’s a lot easier because you can create triggers to slide layers and add more interactive features.
• Start by downloading some of the many free templates and deconstructing them. That’s an easy way to learn.

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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.

In the spirit of the holiday season, here’s a free elearning template. It can be used as a progress meter, a main slide menu, or simple process interaction.

There are two versions of the free elearning template: Storyline 2 and PowerPoint.

Free E-Learning Template: Storyline 2

• Click here to view the elearning template in action.
• Download the free elearning template.

Free E-Learning Template: PowerPoint

• Click here to view the elearning template in action.
• Download the free PowerPoint template.

Production Tips

• As you can see there’s a difference between the two templates. Storyline has a more complete range of interactive capability so the template employs a hover effect. The PowerPoint version is limited to a click-and-reveal interaction.
• The PowerPoint template is edited in the slide master. Each tab has a link to a specific slide (use CTRL+K as a shortcut).
• The Storyline template uses links to slide layers.
• The templates use the design color schemes, so changing the design theme color should change the colors of the interaction.

Additional Free E-Learning Templates & Assets

Check out these other free templates and assets shared in the community recently:

• Flat Icon Pack (PNG)
• Flat Menu Template (PPT)
• Button Set Icons (PNG)
• Navigation Tips (SL1)
• Checklist Interaction (SL2)
• Spiral Notebook Graphic (PPT)
• Circle Menu Template (PPT)

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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.

For many of you, this is like the start of a new year. The summer’s gone, kids are starting school, and it’s back to building some elearning courses.

I’ll keep this post quick so you can get back to the work at hand.

More Free Stock Photos

I just noticed that one of my favorite free stock photo sites, StartUp Stock Photos, released a bunch more photos. I like their photos because they can be used in a lot of elearning contexts. To save you some time, I downloaded them all and zipped them up into a single download.

• Download the free stock photos here.

You can always find inexpensive stock photo subscriptions. In fact Graphic Stock (which has a good selection) regularly runs a $99/year subscription with unlimited downloads. They also have a video  and audio service that is reasonably priced.

Don’t Share Courses in Google Drive!

Google Drive’s been a popular way to share published courses and web sites. However, that’s all changed. Effective August 31, 2015, Google Drive no longer supports this feature. If you have some shared courses on Google Drive, you’ll need to move those to another service. You have until August 2016.

Here’s a post where I shared a few alternative methods for sharing courses. I like the Amazon S3 option. That’s what I use for the blog.

Articulate Guru Award Winners

Articulate just announced the Guru Award winners. I’ll have to say this year was one of the best because we had so many diverse and creative submissions. One thing that stood out to me is how many people use the elearning applications for more than course creation.

Personally, I love all of the Guru submissions (even the ones that don’t win) because they represent so many clever ideas and production techniques. I like to deconstruct them to figure out how they were built. It’s a great way to learn and get ideas.

Here is an article that highlights the Articulate Guru winners and links to the demos.

GOLD GURU

Enter the Ninja
Phil Mayor
Elearning Laboratory

Click here to view the guru winner.

SILVER GURU

Audiometry Refresher Training
Richard Edwards
MOD

Click here to view the guru winner.

BRONZE GURU

Robot Wars
Nancy Woinoski
Pinched Head

Click here to view the guru winner.

HONORABLE MENTION GURUS

Galactic Games
Jerson Campos
Visual E-Learning

Click here to view the guru winner.

Ebola Fatality Rates
David Tait
4pt Limited

Click here to view the guru winner.

Everyday Employee Relations
Jack Quantrill
Boots

Click here to view the guru winner.

The Case of the Fraudulent Pharmacist
Kate Atkinson
The Training Room Online

Click here to view the guru winner.

Like I said, there were lots of really good entries and many covered more than elearning. As you can see they range from simple games and quizzes to interactive graphics. In either case, they show off some of the capabilities and features of the Articulate tools. There’s a lot to glean from these examples.

Now back to work and have a great week!

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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.

Things tend to slow down in the summer. A lot of people are on vacation and not a lot of work is being done. It’s also a time to prep for a new school year. Why not make it a time to prep for a new work year as you come back from your vacations fully rested?

To help you out, I compiled an assortment of free templates that you may have missed the past few weeks. There are 16 free PowerPoint templates and 15 free Storyline templates.

And if you’re on that side of the planet where summer’s long gone, you can still take advantage of the free templates.

Free PowerPoint Templates

Here are a bunch of free PowerPoint templates. There’s a really good assortment, too. Keep in mind, if you like the template, you can easily change the content and colors to match your needs.

Punchy Tab Template

• Download
• Demo

Circle Lift Template

• Download
• Demo

Creative Team Tabs Template

• Download
• Demo

A Day-in-the-Life Template

• Download
• Demo

Indigo Template

• Download
• Demo

Super Simple Circle Menu

• Download
• Demo

Interactive Office Template

• Download
• Demo

Realistic Desktop Interaction Template

• Download
• Demo

Interactive Desktop Template

• Download
• Demo

Notebook-Themed Template

• Download
• Demo

Interactive Conversation

• Download
• Demo

Tab-tastic Flat Template

• Download
• Demo

Fun Magic 8 Ball-Themed Template

• Download
• Demo

iPad-Themed User Interface

• Download
• Demo

Nested Menu Template

• Download
• Demo

Photo Gallery Template

• Download
• Demo

Industrial Zeal Template

• Download
• Demo

Free Storyline Templates

Here a few really nice free Storyline templates. They run the range of click and reveal activities to interactive quiz examples. Just like the PowerPoint templates, feel free to download them and customize them to meet your needs.

If you don’t have Storyline, download the free trial. You have 30 days. I’m sure you can use the templates and build quite a few free modules in 30 day trial period.

Text Message Style Quiz

• Download
• Demo

Timeline Interaction

• Download
• Demo

Simple Tabs Gray Interaction

• Download
• Demo

Process Drag & Drop Quiz

• Download
• Demo

Flat Office Icon Set

• Download

Circle Lift

• Download
• Demo

Zoom Office Interaction

• Download
• Demo

Tic Tac Toe Template

• Download
• Demo

Desktop Zoom Interaction

• Download
• Demo

Interactive Resume

• Download
• Demo

Interactive Conversation

• Download
• Demo

Compare & Contrast Interaction

• Download
• Demo

Multimedia Glossary

• Download
• Demo

Simple Tabs Blue Interaction

• Download
• Demo

Classic Practice Interactions from Storyline 1

• Download

Here’s a big shout out to those in the community who freely share the modules and templates they create. Hopefully you can find some use for these templates. If so, let me know. Also, which ones do you like best? I like the simple tabs interactions and the text-based quiz. How about you?

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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.

As noted in an earlier post, an easy way to build interactive elearning modules is by choosing a single image and adding interactive elements to it. This is a great solution for those who don’t have graphic design skills or access to a graphic designer. The key is finding a single image that has a few potential content buckets.

Finding images is relatively easy today. I look for images like the ones below. They need to have some visual interest, a consistent context, and potential content areas that can be clicked on or zoomed into.

Interactive Image Example

In a previous post, I shared this interactive image demo and had lots of questions about the zoom effect I used and how it was built. To help you out, I recorded a few tutorials that go through the basics. I used a different image for the tutorials and included a new free template for you to download.

Here’s the new template in action:

Click here to view the demo.

Interactive Image Tutorials

Here are some tutorials that walk through how I created the zoom in and out effect in this elearning template.

• Tutorial 1: Lay the foundation by setting up the slides and links.
• Tutorial 2: Create the zoom in and out effect (this is the main tutorial).
• Tutorial 3: Shortcuts and production tips to save time.

Free Interactive Image Templates

I’ve included the source file for the original demo and a new template based on the image I used in the video tutorials. As a bonus, I used the same image to create a free PowerPoint template.

• Zoom Office template (Storyline 2). I fleshed out the template a bit and added variables to track completion. But you can use it anyway you wish.
• Interactive Office template (PowerPoint).
• Original source file.

• The templates also include a slide of individual characters. Create additional slides in the template and add the characters.

So now it’s up to you—find some images, watch the tutorials above, and create your own interactive image templates.

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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.

This post gives you a two-fer: that’s two freebies for one. I found a free desktop image made available by Anastasia Kolisnichenko. I used the free image to create an interactive course prototype for an upcoming workshop activity. The template is free for you to download and use as you wish.

Below is an example of the template in action. It’s embedded on the blog page. Click here to view the template if the embedded version isn’t visible in the email.

The example above was created in Storyline and uses the zoom region feature and triggers to pause the timeline. Here’s a PowerPoint (no zoom). I like the push transition.

How to Create an Interactive Course Using a Single Image

If you had access to a graphics designer, you could create anything you want. But for many of you, that’s not an option. This means you’re limited to searching the Internet for free downloads and then using those for your courses. The challenge with this is that it can be difficult to modify or customize the free downloads that you find.

However, here’s a simple technique that doesn’t require a lot of extra work. It just requires an image that has clear potential content buckets. Then you add links to those buckets and add your content. It’s a straightforward way to create an exploratory interactive course.

• Locate an image that has multiple components. The free desktop download is a good example. It has areas that can be made clickable with links to additional content. Another example could be a collage style image or a comic book layout image.

• Create a separate slide for each distinct area. In the example above I made slides for the computer, picture frame, bookshelf, microphone, and calendar. Those are all exciting potential content buckets.

• Link from the main image to a slide of the isolated element. Also add a link back.
• Apply a transition. In Storyline, the zoom feature is a wonderful way to transition in and out. In PowerPoint, it’s a bit more challenging to create a zoom that’s easy to edit. In that case, I used a push transition.

In this demo I used the free desktop image to create the interactive course design. However, this production technique works great with other images. The key is that you start with a single image, so you need to do minimal editing and customization.

Download the Free Templates to Create an Interactive Course

Here are the download links to the free template. I also included the original graphic in case the link breaks somewhere down the road. Be sure to give props to Anastasia Kolisnichenko who made it available to use.

• Storyline: contains the Storyline 1 and 2 versions of the file.
• PowerPoint

Enjoy!

 

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.