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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A couple of weeks ago, David posted a challenge where community members were asked to share their storyboard templates. As you can see, there were quite a few different storyboard templates shared for downloads. There are also additional free storyboards in the community downloads section.

What I found interesting was some of the conversation about storyboards. There are quite a few who don’t use formal storyboards. Instead they just build everything from inside their authoring tool.

Why There’s No Need for a Storyboard

Years ago when I first started working with e-learning, storyboards were really important. That’s mostly because it wasn’t just me working on the course.

The storyboard was how we determined how to construct the screen layouts and user interface. We determined where things were placed, how they animated, and what supporting media was required. Because more than one person worked on the course, the storyboard was really critical to communicate on the project design.

On top of that, working with customers and getting them to “see” what we were building was a challenge because it wasn’t as easy and quick to prototype the courses back then. Thus, we used the storyboard to walk through the course design with out clients.

This helped them understand what we were going to produce and get their agreement. It was also an easy way to show what other assets were required and the extra production required to deliver the course.

Rapid E-Learning Changed Things

A lot of this changed when we shifted from custom development in Flash and Authorware to Articulate Studio and PowerPoint. PowerPoint let me add all of the assets (or placeholders) and build animations quickly. Because I could prototype quickly in PowerPoint, I found I spent a lot less time working with formal storyboards. I suspect that’s common for many of you as well.

And it’s only easier with Storyline because there’s so much more interactive capability and one could build a quick prototype faster than it probably takes to complete a formal storyboard.

If you’re a team of one doing most of the production yourself, then a formal storyboard is less likely. Essentially, the prototype course really is a storyboard. It’s just in the authoring tool and not a separate document.

When a Storyboard Makes Sense

Throwing a bunch of slides and quiz together and calling it a course is one thing. In that world, what does a storyboard solve? However, when you start to build more complex learning experiences, you need to be more intentional about what you design. That requires a lot more planning. And most likely there’s a lot more media production.

In those cases, working with a storyboard helps you properly plan the course structure as well as the required content and media.

Also, when working with a clients (especially paying clients) it’s important to show them you’re organized. And a storyboard helps you walk through the project requirements before spending a lot of time prototyping and working on more time-consuming interactions.

There’s obviously a lot more that can be said about storyboarding. I find that people who’ve been in the industry a while, use storyboards more often than not. But people who’ve joined the industry over the past three years or so, don’t rely on them as much. Which makes sense, because the tools are so much easier to use.

I’m curious. Do you storyboard your courses? If so, how are you doing it? If not, why not?

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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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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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We all want to give proper credit to our sources when presenting content. Many of us learned to cite our sources when writing reports for school work or research papers. But does it work the same way for an e-learning course?

I had a great question from a blog reader last week:

I am a relatively new instructional designer, but I was an English teacher for nearly 20 years. When I started my new job, I found that other designers and trainers in my company were just quoting and copying resources without stating where the information came from and this really rubbed me the wrong way.

What are some best practices regarding how to cite sources for e-learning? Is there any guidance out there for something like this? It is a bit weird to stop in the middle of a scenario or game to state where the info originated, but attaching a bibliography in a resource tab seems a bit unclear.

I’d appreciate any thoughts you have. 

Credit for Free Assets

I wrote a blog post a while back that dealt with how to credit the source of free assets we find online. We covered a few different ways to give credit to the sources. I assume the mechanics of displaying content on the screen is similar. But that’s still different than citing sources of the content.

Click here to view the demo.

Citing Sources for Web Pages

There are a number of places that explain how to cite online sources and some even provide a way to create the citations. But again, a lot of that focuses on research and isn’t specific to an online course.

• Bibme.org has you covered for APA, MLA, and Chicago.
• Citation Machine also provides similar resources.

Big Question: Citation for E-Learning

Creating an e-learning course is different than writing a research paper. And an e-learning course is different than a web site. Is there a different way to do this? I’ll throw the question out to the community and see if we can glean some best practices.

What do YOU do (if anything) when citing sources in your e-learning courses?

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In a recent survey, 68% of e-learning developers told us that they build compliance training. In fact, it’s the majority of what people build. Compliance training is a bit tricky because e-learning contains the word learning, but often compliance training doesn’t really have a real connection to learning. If we’re honest, a lot of it is a big information dump with little real connection to the learner’s day-to-day activities.

For example, you don’t hire a bunch of unethical people and then figure it’ll all work out after they complete their ethics training. Instead, you have ethical people and the training clarifies and reinforces the organization’s guiding principles. But it doesn’t really change behaviors much, unless your work the mob, maybe.

That doesn’t mean there’s not a real learning component to compliance training, it just means that it’s usually more about certification of understanding rather than changing behaviors.

Here are a couple of things to consider when building your next compliance training course.

What does the law say?

“We can’t build good courses because the law requires we do XYZ.”

That may be the case. However, often it’s not. I’ve worked on plenty of compliance training programs that were driven by the myth of legal requirements. I always challenge that statement. If it’s true, it’s true. But prove it.

If it’s not, then don’t use that misunderstanding to dictate how you build your courses.

Let your learners test out.

Since most compliance training is about certification and many of the people already know the content, why not let them prove it upfront?

Give them an option to take an assessment at the front end of the course. If they can prove they understand the content, then they’ve met the compliance certification objectives (outside of any special legal requirements). If they can’t prove it, they understand why they need to take the training.

Keep in mind that assessing their understanding doesn’t mean it has to be a bunch of boring multiple choice quiz questions. It could be a series of case studies or interactive scenarios.

Some employers don’t want people testing out. The argument is usually along the lines that even if they know the information, it’s a good thing to see it again. I’d start with the cost of training and how forcing people to take courses where they already know the information is not necessarily good stewardship of the organization’s resources. And then take it from there.

Compliance training isn’t always the most engaging content we work with; and it does waste a lot of time. Find out what you really have to do to be compliant. And then create the best learning experience you can.

What do you do to make your compliance training more engaging?

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We’ve all heard about analysis paralysis where we spend a lot of time collecting data and then worry so much about how to interpret it (or building the right course) that we never get anything done.

I’ve worked on plenty of training projects where that was the case. It was frustrating for the customers, as well as the training team.

Here are a few ideas to help in the analysis and getting things done at the speed of business.

Focus on Relevant Content

Training exists for a purpose. It’s a solution for something. Be sure to keep your eyes on the right goals and objectives. Build training relevant to real needs. Get out of your cubicle and meet potential learners. Find out how they’d use to content in your course. And then build training around those real-world scenarios.

What about compliance training? It doesn’t always meet relevant needs, but it’s important to the organization.

True. Odds are you don’t need to do a needs analysis for compliance training.

Create a Pilot Team to Help

If you can’t get out of your cubicle and go onsite, assemble a team from a pool of your learning audience. They’ll help you see the content from different perspectives. You don’t need a big team. It could be just a couple of people.

If you can’t build a formal pilot team, at a minimum you can send out a survey to collect information and feedback. There are all sorts of free and inexpensive survey tools out there. I like to use Google Forms and SurveyMonkey.

Build Proof of Concept Courses

The nice thing about today’s e-learning tools like Storyline and Rise is that you can quickly prototype your courses and build interactive learning experiences. Then roll them out to test and get feedback. You can send them out to subject matter experts and your pool of learners. Sometimes things missed in the analysis present themselves when used in real life.

I like to use Review to get the courses out there for feedback and then manage it all in one place. That type of simplicity wasn’t available a few years ago.

Who Needs a Needs Analysis?

This may be sacrilegious to some of you, but skip the analysis. Between your customer’s insight and your training instincts, odds are that you’ll be fine without investing a lot of time doing detailed needs analysis.

Now I say this knowing that most of us don’t build overly complicated training. If you work for NASA or are in an industry where the training has life or death consequences than make sure to do a proper analysis so that you get things right. But the reality is that most training needs exist because the client or someone has already identified it. In those case, a needs analysis is probably less critical.

I’m curious, what type of needs analysis do you do when asked to build training? Are there times where you skip it?

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Every two years I take my car in and have the emissions tested.  The goal of the test is to certify that my car meets specific emissions standards.  If the car passes, I am certified and I can move on.  However, if it doesn’t pass, then my car has to go under a different series of tests (and perhaps repairs) to get up to the appropriate standard and certified.  Of course, this takes more time.

As I was waiting in my car, I was reminded that a lot of what we call “e-learning” is similar to the emissions testing process.  The purpose of the course is not to learn, but instead to demonstrate what we already know.  If we don’t pass the certification, then just like the car, we have to go through a remedial process.

When I worked for a healthcare organization, we did a lot of training like that.  We weren’t really training the staff since they already knew the subject matter.  Instead, we were certifying that they knew it.

Like the healthcare industry, there are many industries that require annual refresher or certification testing that has little to do with learning.  In those cases, the goal is not so much to teach new skills; instead it is to certify existing knowledge.  Of course, when a person doesn’t pass the certification, it identifies a clear learning opportunity.

One of the frustrating parts of the emissions testing is that, while the actual test only took a few minutes, waiting in line to take the test took a lot longer.  This is especially true if you wait until the last Saturday of the month when all of the other procrastinators also show up.

Sitting in the car and waiting in line is not very productive.  The same can be said for those people who already have existing skills and yet have to go through an “elearning course” before they can be tested.  The ideal situation is to create an environment to assess the person’s skills and then direct them based on their results.

If the person can demonstrate the skills and knowledge, then go ahead and certify them, so they can go back to work or surf the Internet.  If they can’t demonstrate the skills and knowledge, put them on a path to get it, and then reassess them later.

Compliance Training: A Real-World Example

I was talking to a colleague recently who works for a very large financial institution.  Needless to say, they have many certification and annual refresher training programs.  The problem he ran into with his courses was that many of the employees already knew the information, but the organization still made them go through the entire course before they could be tested and certified.

This was a great source of frustration for the employees.  In addition, most courses took anywhere from 30-60 minutes to complete and each employee had to take a number of them throughout the year.

Let’s look at this from a financial perspective.  The organization has over 30,000 employees.  Just a ball park figure shows that 30,000 hours at $50 per hour is $1,500,000…for one course!  That’s a lot of money and lost productivity.

Surely there was a more efficient approach to meet the regulatory requirements and get the employees certified.  There was!  Here’s what his team did to create a more efficient elearning certification process.

• They contacted their law department to better understand the real legal requirements and certification process.
• They found that in many cases they weren’t legally required to deliver a “course.”  Instead they only had to document that the employees were certified and had a certain level of understanding.
• With this new information in hand (and the legal department’s blessing) they changed the structure for many of their courses by allowing the employees to test out of information they already knew.

And, what type of results did they get?

They found that for the more complex information, if they offered a pre-assessment, about 30% of their employees could skip past the course.  They also found that in some of their simple 15-30 minute courses, almost 70% were able to skip past the course and be certified.  Run some numbers on paper and you’ll see the savings add up quickly.

Our industry is always talking about demonstrating a return-on-investment and this seems to be a slam dunk.  There’s no better way to show your value than to demonstrate that you’ve created a more efficient way to certify your employees.

Of course, this approach doesn’t work for every industry or every elearning course.  But it does for many. If you do a lot of regulatory training, now might be a good time to rethink your elearning strategy.  Get with your legal department and find out what the exact requirements are; and then build a course that helps you meet them.

Many of you are in industries that require certification and regulatory training, I’m interested in hearing some of your best practices.

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I’m asked to review courses all the time and one of the most frustrating things is to go through the course and find the developer has locked every slide. This requires that I have to click through every screen, interaction, and quiz before I can get to specific places for review.

For those asking for feedback in the community, it’s extra frustrating trying to troubleshoot a course and having to click through everything to get to a specific place in it.

An easy solution is to create a secret menu that lets you, as the developer, gain access to any place in the course.

Two Ways to Create Quick Access Points

Create a shortcut button. I usually put a button in one of the corners that gives me quick access to slides. Sometimes, the button just skips the slide. I may do that if it has longer narration or animations. Other times, I may add a link to a menu area where I have access to all of the slides.

• During production, I keep it visible so I remember it’s there or can easily direct reviewers to it.
• After production, I either delete it or hide it by making it transparent or use a hotspot. It is nice always having access to it once the course is live.
• Put the button on the master slide so it’s available on all the slides that use the layout.

Create a menu tab on the player. The benefit of a player tab is that the link to the shortcuts is available regardless of the slide and layouts. It’s ever present. And then when you’re ready to publish, just disable the player tab.

• Create a slide with menu links. I usually create a separate scene and make sure it’s not visible in the player menu.
• Insert a custom player tab and link to the secret menu slide.
• Hide the player tab when the course is published.

One of the benefits of this over the slide master is that the slide master sits on the bottom. It’s possible that the slide content is on top of the button and not available on a given slide.

Click here to view demo course.

Above is a demo course where you can see both options in action. I locked the sidebar navigation and each slide is locked for five seconds. The first three slides don’t have access to the onscreen shortcut button.

Create Quick Access to Variables

In a recent post, I showed how to do something similar with variables. Instead of going through an entire interaction (or course) to see if the variables are working properly, create access to a variables dashboard. There you can assign custom values to the variables for testing and to see if everything is working as it should.

Click here to view variables demo.

Having quick access to specific slides or be able to jump to certain places in the course is a big time-saver when reviewing the course.

I’m curious how many course designers do something similar and what you do to create shortcuts.

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’s an issue I run into quite a bit: I need a map for my e-learning courses; but I don’t need a detailed map.

Stock image sites are fine for generic illustrated maps but they’re usually too generic. The other option is to do a screen grab of an online map, but then that’s often too detailed.

Recently, I was working on a map demo where I needed a specific map, but I didn’t want a real map screen shot because it was too busy and I knew the stock sites couldn’t provide what I needed because it was too specific. Fortunately, I found this site, Snazzy Maps, that makes it easy to customize Google’s online maps.

Examples of Custom Maps for E-Learning

Here’s why this comes in handy.

Most maps have too much visual information. For example, if I built a labeled graphic map of some historic sites in Washington, D.C. I need a simple map for reference, but I don’t need all of the street names and colors that may distract from my labels. Instead I want a map that gives me some context, but allows the label to be the star of the show.

In the example above, the real online map has way too much visual info. It’s hard to know where to look first. In fact, it’s difficult to see the markers because of all of the colors, text, and roads. I’m not using this map to drive an Uber so I probably don’t need all of the detail and distracting visual information.

This next example above is the complete opposite. All of the colors are turned off as well as many of the roads. A gray scale map like this allows the accent colors from the labels to really pop. In fact, one of the best simple tips for course design is to get rid of competing visual information like colors and then only use color to accent or highlight content. In this example, the marker colors are much more distinct.

For this particular interaction, I like having a little color to show the park and monuments in relationship to the city and water. I turned off the titles and some of the roads. You can still recognize it as a map, yet it’s not quite as busy.

Customizing the Maps

To be honest, I don’t have the patience to learn how to use the Snazzy Map site. So I started with one of the maps someone with more patience created. And from there it was just a lot of clicking around to see what I can edit. Most of it makes sense and with a little practice you can get almost any look you need.

If you need a custom map for your e-learning courses, check out the site. It may come in handy.

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.