I came into rapid e-learning from the world of Authorware and Flash where building courses took a lot of time and cost a lot more money. But I saw the light in the early 2000s when I started using Articulate Presenter. Initially, I only used it to storyboard my course content and interactions in PowerPoint. That made it easier to share my ideas with our Flash developers.

However, I quickly realized I could build most of what we needed in PowerPoint. So why were we wasting money on expensive Flash development?

As soon as I asked that question, I heard all of the bellyaching from our Flash developers and most of the custom e-learning vendors we hired. They felt threatened and raised all sorts of concerns about the future of the industry and the fate of e-learning.

This blog addressed their concerns a decade ago in the 5 Myths of Rapid E-Learning series. A lot has changed over the past ten years, so I think it’s a good time to revisit some of those issues and see where we stand.

Myth 1: Rapid E-Learning Is Crapid E-Learning!

This was the key point ten years ago, and it’s still true today: rapid doesn’t mean crapid! You are in control and can determine the quality of what you produce.

Ten years later, there’s still a lot of bad e-learning. A lot of it is pointless compliance training and the organizations choose to make the least investment possible.

In addition, e-learning will always be ineffective when there are no clear performance goals. Without those goals, it’s a challenge to create measurable objectives and build effective courses.

• Understand Performance vs Information Courses
• How to Create Learning Objectives
• Essentials of Interactive E-Learning

The original post: Myth 1: Rapid E-Learning Is Crapid E-Learning!

Myth 2: Rapid E-Learning Is A Second Class Product!

Today, most authoring solutions fall into the rapid e-learning bucket. That’s definitely a big change from ten years ago. I don’t know many people who still build custom-programmed courseware outside of a few specialty markets or emerging technologies like augmented and virtual reality.

So I’d say the authoring tools that were maligned ten years ago are now the tools of choice.

The argument used to be that the tools were too simple and because of that, they produced simple courses. I’m not sure that was ever the case. The tools are just tools and how they’re used is determined by the author. Of course some tools have more features and complexity than others, but with creativity, you can use most tools to build what you want. And if not, choose the right tool for the job. If you want gamified e-learning you’re not going to have much success with PowerPoint.

The original post: Myth 2: Rapid E-Learning Is A Second Class Product!

Myth 3: A Rapid E-Learning Tool In The Hands Of Subject Matter Experts Is Not Good!

I still hear this quite a bit. We act as if somehow our instructional design degrees have allowed us to corner the market on good course design. I’ll go out on the limb and say there is a lot more bad e-learning designed by us pros than subject matter experts with access to authoring software.

I’ve done hundreds of workshops and can tell you that there is no lack of creativity when it comes to designing good e-learning. If there’s something lacking, it’s usually that the organization doesn’t fully support what’s required to build good courses and many people are left to make do with what they have.

The tools have made building courses a lot easier than it was ten years ago. And there are so many more resources to learn to build good e-learning, not mention a generous and helpful community.

• Help your subject matter experts build better e-learning
• Good instructional design books
• Community resources

The original post: Myth 3: A Rapid E-Learning Tool In The Hands Of Subject Matter Experts Is Not Good!

Myth 4: Since Anybody Can Now Build Training, I Am Going To Lose My Job!

The reality is that over the past ten years, the industry prospered and with e-learning being accessible it created new opportunities for everyone. A lot of developers have gone on to better careers with many starting their own companies. E-learning vendors have reduced the cost of production and with so much more bad e-learning, they can leverage that to sell their expertise. The industry is hotter today than it was ten years ago. And that’s not going to change anytime soon.

With that said, since all it takes is a computer and the software to start a business, there is a lot of pressure to prove your skills. Learn as much as you can, stay on top of what’s emerging, and create a public profile.

• 5 Ways to Kick Start Your E-learning Career
• Why You Need a Professional Portfolio
• Here’s What Needs to Be in Your E-Learning Portfolio

The original post: Myth 4: Since Anybody Can Now Build Training, I Am Going To Lose My Job!

Myth 5: Rapid E-Learning Takes The Creativity Out Of The Learning Process!

This has always been completely wrong. If anything, having the ability to create without being a programmer opens the doors to opportunity and creativity. And in those circumstances where there are constraints, they force us to think outside of the box and learn new ways to work with the tools.

If you do run into a creative block, check out some of the weekly e-learning challenges. I’m always encouraged by the ideas people have and how they approach their challenges.

The authoring tools have definitely evolved over the years. And of course, they have different features where some work better than others. But the tools should never be a hindrance to instructional design.

Pick the right tool for the right type of training. If it’s a quick, information-based module, something like Rise is perfect. If it requires more complex scenarios with variables and adaptive learning paths, then choose Storyline. On top of that, equip the course author to succeed. The authoring tools are only part of the course design process. Knowing how to build good instruction is critical. So it’s important to ensure that those who can build courses with the software also learn to build effective courses.

The original post: Myth 5: Rapid E-Learning Takes The Creativity Out Of The Learning Process!

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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.

[UPDATE March 08, 2022: The essence of the post is still accurate, but you can find an updated tutorial and instructions here.]

I get a lot of questions about free ways to share courses and portfolios. In previous posts, I shared tips on managing an e-learning portfolio and I also shared a few ways to share courses online for free.

Another way to get free storage to share your courses and files is via Google’s Storage Platform. It’s pretty easy to set up.

Tutorials on How to Share Courses Online

• How to Create a Google Storage Account

I created a tutorial on YouTube so you can see the steps, which may be easier. You can upload the files via the browser.

Share Courses Online: Setting Up a Google Storage Account

• You’ll need to sign up. Just follow the directions for adding your contact info.
• You do need to provide a credit card number. However, the cost of storage is nominal and I believe Google gives you a 5 GB/month allowance for free. Odds are that anything you upload will be much smaller. Even if you do pay for storage, my guess is that it’ll only be a few dollars per year.
• Once your account is established, you’ll create a bucket to hold your files. Inside the bucket, you can add other folders. All of that is covered in the video above.

Share Courses Online: Make Your Google Storage Files Public

• Set the permissions for the bucket to allow public access to view.
• Go to the bucket in the browser. To the right, you’ll see three dots. Click that and select “edit access.”
• Select “Add Principal” and type in “allUsers” under New Principal.
• Give them a role to be a “storage object viewer.” This allows them access to the files to view.

Share Courses Online: Add Content to Your Google Storage Account

• Adding content is easy. There’s an option to upload files and/or folders.
• Once you’ve added the course folder, to the right of the index.html (or whatever you click on for the course) you’ll see a “public link.”
• Share the public link.

The process is straightforward. Obviously, there’s a lot more to learn, but these simple steps will let you upload and share your e-learning courses and portfolio for free (or close to it).

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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.

I once had a manager who told me everything I report to him should be presented as five things on a notecard. He didn’t want all of the detail or nitty gritty. He just wanted a quick overview of the five most essentials points.

I get a lot of emails from people who want to transition from their current jobs into e-learning development. They want to know what they need to do (or know) to get moving in that direction. So here are my five things if you want to start a career in e-learning.

Learn About Learning

Sure, a formal instructional design degree helps, maybe. But today it’s not as critical, assuming you can prove that you really know what you learned. There are all sorts of ways to learn:

• Go to school and get a degree. Another less costly way is to get a certificate (especially if you already have a formal degree). Certificate programs take less time, seem to be more project-focused, and are a bit more pragmatic when it comes to applying what you’re learning. Here’s a list of programs recommended by the community.
• Read and learn on your own. There are plenty of good books and I’ve written about the few I’d start with. We also have a great e-learning 101 series to learn more. You can sign up here and get it delivered via email. We also offer a ton of free e-books that cover a broad range of e-learning topics.

Build These Types of Courses

You’ll need practical experience. There are all sorts of things you can do to get it. Volunteer to build courses for NGOs, churches, hospitals, or anywhere else that has limited funds and would welcome some free training.

You don’t want to build the same course over and over again. Instead get experience building diverse modules and types of training. Here’s a good list to get started:

• Assessments. Create a few different types of assessments. The default, blocky type quizzes are fine, but the more custom you can make them, the better.
• Scenarios. They are always popular and they show how to build situational training that closely mirrors real-world interactions.
• Interactions. There are three main ways to interact with the screen: click, hover, and drag. Build some modules that demonstrate your skills creating different types of interactions. Lean more on dragging than clicking.
• Software Training. Most organizations do some sort of software training. Show your skills with screencasts and software simulations.
• Make it interesting. Most e-learning isn’t very good and usually very boring. Convert one of those types of courses into something interesting. Make it look good and make it interactive.

Learn to Use E-Learning Software

Your success hinges less on your academic credentials and more on demonstrable skills and fluency with e-learning software. There’s a lot of e-learning software out there. You can’t learn everything. I’ll give my plug for the Articulate tools for two main reasons:

• Do a job search and most organizations are looking for Articulate course developers. You can’t go wrong getting the skills that potential employers desire.
• All of the demo modules I mentioned above can be quickly built in both Storyline and Rise. You’ll be able to build a professional portfolio using those tools especially if you take advantage of the community resources and the Content Library that comes with Articulate 360.

Build an E-Learning Portfolio

Whenever I hire an instructional designer, I’m more inclined to review their portfolio rather than a resume that documents their experience and education. An instructional design degree is great but to me, the proof is in the pudding. And without a portfolio how can you SHOW your work and skills?

The portfolio highlights your skills and experience.

• Keep it short. Find a few interesting (and interactive) parts of the course and show those. Or build some modules from the weekly e-learning challenges. They’re short and relatively easy to build. And perfect for a portfolio project.
• Looks matter more than instructional design. It is a visual medium so make your visuals strong. Stay away from defaults and add some custom elements. Add some novel interactivity to catch their attention.
• Identify common types of courses (as noted above) and build some modules for your portfolio. This will give you a diversity of projects and showcase different skills.

Learn More About These Topics

There’s a lot that goes into building an effective e-learning course. Here are some additional topics and skills you’ll need to understand to be a good course designer. You don’t need to be a pro at everything but you should be able to speak to them when needed.

• Project management: you manage projects from A to Z and you manage relationships with subject matter experts and customers.
• Basic visual/graphic design: e-learning is mostly a visual medium so it’s important to think visually.
• User experience design: e-learning courses have interfaces and interactions. Good books on UX design.
• Network/mobile technology: understand how the technology works and potential issue delivery courses.
• Media formats: there are all sorts of formats for video, images, and audio. 
• Learning management systems and tracking (SCORM/xAPI): most likely your courses will be tracked so it’s good to know how to get a course online and manage it.
• HTML5: the world of Flash is withering away. HTML5 is still evolving and not all browsers and devices work the same. What do you need to know about HTML5?
• 508/accessibility: more organizations are focusing on accessible content and it’s important to understand the law as well as how to craft the best learning experience for different learner needs.
• Some programming helps: out of the box, the authoring software gives you what you need, but learning more about JavaScript and other web programming opens other opportunities. Here are some experts to follow.

There’s obviously a lot more you need to know to be successful transitioning into an e-learning job. What are the five things you’d recommend to that person? Feel free to share them in the comments.

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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.

I get questions all the time about work portfolios. One of the most frequent questions is “What types of courses need to be in the portfolio?”

Why Have an E-Learning Portfolio?

The portfolio is your proof of skills. It shows that you have more than a resume list of education and experience. It documents some of your projects and also shows your specific skills.

The challenge for many is that the work we do is proprietary and we can’t show what we know. That’s OK. If that’s the case, you want to create a few sample modules that demonstrate your skills and get the attention of the person reviewing your portfolio. And let’s face it, some of the projects that we get stuck on at work aren’t things we want to show anyway.

Here’s What Should be in Your E-Learning Portfolio

Here are the five things you need to showcase in your e-learning portfolio.

• Assessments. Quizzes are the most common element in e-learning courses. Create a few different types of assessments. The default, blocky-type quizzes are fine, but you want to show more than copy and paste skills. Make the quizzes look different and modify the default settings. The more custom you can make them, the better.
• Scenarios. Interactive scenarios are always popular. They’re more fun than click-and-read content and they show how to build situational training that closely mirrors real-world interactions.
• Interactions. No one wants to look at 60 slides of the same content. Instead showcase mini interactions, or pull some of the interactions out of the 60 slide course. There are three main ways to interact with the screen: click, hover, and drag. Build some modules that demonstrate your skills creating different types of interactions. Lean more on dragging than clicking because it’s novel and people like to move things on the screen.
• Software Training. Most organizations do some sort of software training. Show your skills building software training. Add a short screencast video as well as an interactive software simulation.
• Make it interesting. Most e-learning isn’t very good and usually very boring. Convert one of those types of courses into something interesting. Make it look good and make it interactive. Show a before and after version of your course/module.

Here’s a bonus tip: people are drawn to the visual design more so than they are to the instructional design. You want your portfolio to look good.

If you’re trying to figure out how to build those demos or what types to do, check out the weekly e-learning challenges. There’s a lot of variety and plenty of ideas. Any one of them would make a good module to include in your portfolio.

Do you have an e-learning portfolio? If so, what type of content do you have in yours?

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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 is a tip I stumbled upon this week and thought I’d share it because one of the most frequent questions I get from people trying to manage a work portfolio is how to easily share e-learning courses.

Let’s quickly review some of the options that we’ve mentioned in the past:

• Share courses via Amazon S3. You have to create an account, but it’s free (or close to free). As a bonus, with Amazon S3 you can also easily create free text-to-speech narration that sounds really good.

• Share courses using Google Cloud Storage. Similar to the process above.
• Share courses using Review in Articulate 360. Upload courses and get a share link. There’s also commenting so you can solicit feedback from your clients and subject matter experts.
• Share courses via Google Drive. No longer works.
• Share courses using Dropbox’s public folder. No longer works.

Today, we’ll look at another option. It’s not free, but it’s inexpensive and comes with other benefits.

Share Your E-Learning Courses with pCloud

I won’t bore you with all the details and benefits regarding pCloud because you can learn that on your own. To keep it simple, it’s a cloud-based storage service similar to Google Drive and Dropbox. What I like that’s different is that it works like a virtual drive so I don’t need to have all of the files on my computers like I do with Dropbox.

Examples of E-Learning Courses 

Anyway, I was testing out their public folder and loaded a few published Storyline courses to see if they work and guess what, they do. Here are three demos:

• Demo 1: Astley Rotoscope
• Demo 2: Green Monster
• Demo 3: Text-to-Speech

As you can see, the courses play fine. Thus making it a simple solution for those who want to easily share their courses.

Steps to Share Your E-Learning Courses

Here are a few general steps to share your courses using pCloud.

• Create a folder inside of your Public Folder to share courses.
• Copy your published course to that folder. pCloud looks like a drive on your computer so you just need to move the files to the pCloud drive.
• The files are uploaded to pCloud.
• Go to your my.pCloud.com site and access the folder where you saved your published course.

• Locate the story.html and click on Share>Get Link. That creates a link to the HTML file which loads the course. You don’t want to share the HTML file itself because the user will only be able to see the HTML file and not see the course load and play.
• Here’s a quick video tutorial that walks through the steps.

I did notice that when accessing the files from the mobile app, you can only share the file and not a link, so it looks like you can only use the share link from the desktop app.

I find pCloud to be a good solution for my online storage needs, especially since I don’t need to have all of the files on my computers like I do if I want to access them in Dropbox. I also like the upload folder option for people who want to share their files at workshops.

If you’ve tried pCloud to share your courses, I’d love to hear about your experience. Share your thoughts in the comments.

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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 past, I’ve referenced a number of instructional designers who are active in the community where they share all sorts of free downloads, examples, and answer questions.

Today, I’d like to focus on a few instructional designers and course developers who tend to share more advanced course development tips. They go through the nuances of the software, share hacks, and how to leverage JavaScript when using Storyline.

These are peers worth following.

Melissa Milloway

Melissa is a passionate learner and actively shares what she learns (often while she learns).  She’s also been a presenter at a few of our Articulate Roadshows.

Here’s a good series she did on getting started with xAPI and Storyline.

• LinkedIn
• Website
• Twitter

Kevin Thorn

Years ago Kevin won an Articulate Guru award. From there here’s built quite a presence in the e-learning industry. Many of you probably know him from his iconic Nugget head character.

If you want to learn how he comes up with ideas and builds his courses, check out his recent series on constructing a gamified module.

• LinkedIn
• Website
• Twitter

Zsolt Olah

Zsolt is a like a zsolt of lightning especially when it comes to talking gamification and how to engage learners. He has all sorts of really neat ideas and hacks to help you learn more. One of the most original and creative people in the industry.

Check out this example of alternatives to multiple choice questions. Pretty cool.

• LinkedIn
• Website
• Twitter

Nick Shelton

Nick shares all sorts of cool tips and tricks with his unique brand of humor. His site has lots of good tutorial videos and advanced tips.

Check out this example of how to add Cool Overlay Effects in Articulate Storyline with Basic After Effects & JavaScript.

• LinkedIn
• Website
• Twitter

Matthew Bibby

Matthew’s nickname should be the “E-learning Thunder from Down Under.” He presents really organized and detailed tutorials and tips in his blog.

Look at this post on how to use Google Fonts with a variable.

• LinkedIn
• Website
• Profile
• Vimeo

David Charney

David always shares clever tips and examples. I recall sitting at the airport on my way to London and spending a couple of hours trying to deconstruct one of his demos for the weekly challenges.

Here’s a video where he shares a way to mask content using the scroll panel feature. And of course, his review of the original Storyline 0.

• LinkedIn
• Website
• Twitter
• Youtube
• Podcast with Nejc Žorga Dulmin

Owen Holt

Owen does a great job showing how to use JavaScript with Storyline. He’s presented at the Austin Roadshow. He’s also got some popular tutorials.

Here’s one he recently shared that’s gotten lots of play: how to add a print button to the course player [video].

• LinkedIn
• Profile
• Youtube

Ron Price

Ron is CLO for Yukon where he manages and conducts a lot of Articulate training. Ron is also a fixture in our Articulate Live webinars where he shares all sorts of cool tips and tricks.

If you’re an Articulate 360 subscriber you don’t want to miss those Friday Quick Tips & Tricks sessions. Here’s a recent tutorial Ron posted where he answered a training question: Why Does My Custom Menu Lose Track of My Progress?

• LinkedIn
• Website
• Twitter

To the ones above, thanks for what you do to support the community and industry. I know that there are a lot more really talented developers worth mentioning. Feel free to give them props in the comments section below.

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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.

Recently, I’ve seen dozens of portfolios and work samples that are verbatim copies of the work of others. This isn’t a good thing, especially if you represent it as your own work. There’s a difference between being inspired by others and plagiarism. And not knowing this can hurt your career.

To protect the innocent I won’t mention the names of individuals (or companies) that have ripped off the work of others and represented it as their own. I’m sure some of it is intentional, but I suspect that most are just not aware that what they’re doing isn’t in their best interests.

Today I’ll share a few ways to find inspiration from others and use it build YOUR skills the right way. And then use those skills to show off what you can do. The end point should not be an exact copy of the source material. Instead, it should be a derivative work inspired by the source.

Step 1: Find a source of inspiration

Look for ways to be inspired. I focus on visuals and interactivity. E-learning is mostly visual, so it’s always good to learn more about graphics and UX design. And another main point of focus is learning to transition from static content to engaging interactions.

Keep an ideas folder or bookmarks for later reference. Here are some places I like to look for ideas:

• Design sites like Dribbble where you can see what people are doing. Many will even share free assets.
• Presentation sites like Slideshare where you can see how people are presenting their content. They also have an easy way to do screengrabs.
• Mobile apps are a good source of inspiration. I regularly download different apps just to look at how they work and how users interact with them to get content. This gives me ideas for course design. Especially when I want some novel ideas on how to navigate a course.
• Multimedia presentations are also valuable. News sites tend to build simple interactive multimedia demos for the hot news. Unfortunately, today it seems they spend more on the interactions and less on real journalism, but that’s a blog post for another day.
• Template sites like Template Monster and Theme Forest are great to see different types of layouts and get ideas for screens and colors.

What are some sources of inspiration for you?

Step 2: Deconstruct your source of inspiration

One of the best ways to learn is by deconstructing things that interest you. Since I work mostly with Storyline, my initial thought is whether or not I can create what I see in Storyline.  Sometimes I can and sometimes I can’t. The goal is to play around with the idea as well as the software.

• I deconstruct the source of inspiration and try to figure out what’s happening and why the creator may have chosen that approach versus something else. I make notes of what I like and what I may change.
• I try to build a functional prototype. Sometimes the source content is an interaction I like and sometimes it may be a visual design idea. In either case, I try to replicate it in the software to learn what I can do. One side benefit is that I often discover some new production techniques.

At this point, the concern isn’t a final showcase product. It’s more about building a matching prototype.

Step 3: Apply what you learned to something original

Inspiration should lead to iteration. The goal isn’t to build copycat modules. It’s a small industry and people know when you cribbed an idea from another developer. Instead, the goal is practice and then apply what you learned to something original.

If there’s an animation you found interesting, how would you apply it to your own content? Are there layouts you can build into reusable templates? Can you make the interaction work the same way but in a different context?

A few things to keep in mind:

• If you do borrow an idea from someone else and share it publicly, give them props. It’s good form and builds goodwill. It also alleviates any accusations when your work looks similar to someone else’s.
• Share what you build. If you’re going to show off what you built (and it’s not proprietary) it’s a good idea to give something away. Share the source file, a how-to tutorial, or maybe a free template. This helps build your personal brand and expertise.
• If you see something that looks like your work, understand that people will steal your work. Consider it a form of flattery. Also, people often have similar ideas at the same time. There have been few times I’ve had a blog post in the queue only to have someone in the industry release a similar post before mine’s been released. It shows that a lot of common ideas percolate and often we come to them at similar times. It’s just the way it is.

The end goal in this step is to use the deconstruction as a source of inspiration. And then create a derivative work that is uniquely yours.

Continue to practice and learn your craft. Find sources of inspiration and then apply what you learn to your own projects. And then show off what you can do in your portfolio.

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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.

Summer’s approaching*. Many of you are taking days off and, generally, the workload eases up a bit. This is a good time to catch up on things or put together a short-term plan to build your skills.

I’m asked almost daily how to learn more and get better at building courses. Today, we’ll review a few ways you can implement some skill-building activities to make for a great summer time.

Attend an Articulate Roadshow to Build E-Learning Skills

We put together 2-day events where we cover all sorts of e-learning topics. We make them practical and have lots of hands-on activities. Attend one day or both. The roadshows are also a great way to connect with other e-learning developers in your area. Some of them turn into user groups and we’ve even had recruiters show up and share current e-learning job openings. You can always learn more about where we’ll be on our events page or at the bottom of the blog posts.

Create a Demo Interaction to Build E-Learning Skills

The best way to learn is to do. The challenge at work is that sometimes you have to do the same things over and over. So you don’t get to play around with ideas or practice building something new.

We present the weekly challenges as a way to do new things in small doses. Some people build polished demos and some build simple ones where they just show prototype idea. It doesn’t really matter how much time or effort you want to put into it. The main thing is that you have a sandbox in which to play around.

I recommend reviewing each week’s recap to see what people have done. There are some really neat ideas in many of them. And try to commit to one a month. For the summer, make a plan to create at least one.

Here’s a list of past challenges. There are some good examples that may give you ideas for your own projects.

Read a Book or Blog to Build E-Learning Skills

Read an old book. Read a new book. Whenever I travel, I grab an older e-learning book and go through it with fresh eyes. I’m always reminded of something I already know but haven’t thought much about recently. This helps be think about new ways to apply what I already know.

Here is a previous post with good book recommendations that cover everything from instructional and visual design to gamification.

Read a blog post. I’ve been going through some of my older posts to see where I need to update or add new links and I’m reminded of some practical tips that I forgot I shared. If you’re interested, check out the e-learning blog archives and look at some of the posts you may have missed ten years ago.

If you don’t want to your friends to think you’re nerdy, take the cover off of one of the popular books and wrap it around your less trendy e-learning book.

Do Nothing Related to E-Learning Skills & Just Relax

Don’t do anything. Enjoy the summer. Take a break.

Between LinkedIn, Twitter, and your emails, it may be time to just take a break from the unending stream of content. Spend time with friends and family. Stepping away is a great way to step back into things. Maybe all you need this summer is a summer break.

What are you doing this summer (if anything) to build your skills?

*If you’re down under, save this post for when your summer begins and read then. 🙂

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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.

Managing all of the to-do lists and activities for your e-learning projects can be really time time-consuming and a pain. I’ve worked in organizations where it seemed we spent more time managing the bureaucracy related to the project than we actually spent on it.

Someone asked what I use to manage projects. Personally, I prefer a simple process with the least amount of friction as possible. I started using Sortd with my email account and that has really saved me some time. I may do a blog post on that down the road. But for my project management, I use Trello. It’s easy to use and free.

I’ve been using Trello for a few years and what I like best is that it keeps me focused on the actionable items and makes it easy to see the progress I’m making on projects.

Today, I’ll show a few simple tips. This isn’t a comprehensive overview but I’ll show a few of the basic things you can do. And you can take it from there.

Manage E-Learning Projects with Boards, Lists, and Cards

• BOARDS: start by creating a project board for your course. Give it a name and you’re all set.
• LISTS: inside the board, you create lists. I usually use lists to represent either clear milestones in the project or places where I need to hand tasks off to others.
• CARDS: each list contains cards. Cards are great to house individual tasks. They contain checklists and details specific to the tasks. As you move through your project, you move cards from one list to another.
• MENU: lets you see the activity and other settings within the board.

Here’s a video overview of using Trello to manage your e-learning projects to go with the instructions above.

Click to view the video on how to use Trello.

Some Bonus Tips

• Combine Trello with Articulate Review and you have a really powerful way to not only manage projects but also manage the review cycle with your clients and subject matter experts.
• Come up with a system that works and use it consistently. Initially, I found that I was a bit helter-skelter in my approach. This was fine when I only managed a couple of projects, but as I added more, it became less fun and more time-consuming.
• Project management requires management. It’s not set and forget. Develop a routine to check on the progress of your projects. You can invite people as teams and assign cards to them, but you still need to stay on top of things.
• It’s easy to get overwhelmed with your boards, cards, and lists. That’s why it’s important to come up with a process. Also, Trello is a great product as long as you keep it simple. But it can quickly get a bit complicated, especially if you have a lot of boards and cards. I know people who have boards to manage boards. To me, that’s too much. I love Trello for the simplicity and that’s the key: keep it simple.
• Take advantage of the power-ups. The free plan gives you one power-up. If you’re a freelancer explore the options you have to append your Trello boards. For the most part, the free option should be fine.
• Trello has a good guide that offers some instruction and help. If you want to learn more, check it out.

 Also, check out this free e-book on how to manage e-learning projects. If you already use Trello, feel free to share your own tips and suggestions in the comments. If you use a similar low-cost or free solution, let me know.

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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 an e-learning developer, it’s important to document your work experience and skills. One way to do this is with a professional work portfolio.

In previous posts, we discovered why you need a portfolio as part of your professional development. And we even looked at one community member who does a great job demonstrating her skills by showcasing her e-learning modules in her portfolio. Today, we’ll look at a few things to consider when creating a professional portfolio.

Most people I meet don’t maintain a portfolio. So before we get started, I’ll give you two good reasons why you need to actively maintain a portfolio.

Most likely you don’t own the e-learning software to create courses. Let’s suppose you lose your job. Now you’re scrambling to find a new job which means you need to pull together a portfolio. Oh no! You don’t have access to the courses you built and you don’t have access to the software to rebuild them.

When I posted a job for instructional designers, one requirement was to see the applicant’s portfolio. More than 80% of the people told me they didn’t have one and that they were interested in the job, but needed to create a portfolio. Which was fine.

You know what happened, though? I reviewed those applicants who did have works samples ready-to-go and they ended up getting interviews. By the time others sent me their portfolios, we were already into the second round of interviews of those who had them to start.

Your Portfolio Shows Your Work

The main point of the portfolio is to show your work. It’s easy to talk about what you can do, but in a multimedia industry (that’s mostly visual) it’s important to show what you can do.

Ideally, you can show real projects, but as we know that’s not always possible. In those cases, you either have to create dummy versions of the courses or build your own modules. I prefer the “build your own” route. This way you can build demos that are more interesting than the typical type courses you may be forced to build at work.

What’s in the Professional Portfolio?

The portfolio is intended to highlight your skills and experience. It’s not supposed to be an exhaustive inventory.

• Keep it short. No one likes to look at 800-slide courses where every screen looks the same. Find a few interesting (and interactive) parts of the course and show those. Or build some modules from the weekly e-learning challenges. That’s what many in our community do. They’re short and relatively easy to build. And perfect for a portfolio project.
• Looks matter more than instructional design. It is a visual medium so make your visuals strong. Stay away from defaults and add some custom elements. Add some novel interactivity to catch their attention.
• Identify common types of courses and build some modules for your portfolio. Here are a few: drag and drop interactions, decision-making scenarios, software tutorials, and custom navigation. This will give you a diversity of projects.

How to Organize the Portfolio Content

Ultimately, e-learning is a solution. What was the problem and how did the course help? There are four things you should outline in your portfolio:

• Who was the client?
• What was the need?
• What did you do?
• What was the result?

This can be listed as bullet points like above or just a simple statement, such as: At ACME we introduced a new processing machine and needed to train 5,000 employees. The onboarding course I created taught them XYZ and we had all employees trained in 2 weeks and saved a gazillion dollars.

Key point: no one wants to read the War & Peace version of your course. Keep it simple and provide just enough information.

Your Portfolio Builds Your Brand

Your peers are all over the Internet posting articles, sharing their work, and connecting with others. You can do the same with your portfolio.

• Use it to build your brand. There are quite a few I’ve known over the years who I’ve seen grow their personal brand to the point where they’re now recognized experts. For example, it was fun to see Jackie Van Nice at the recent Learning Solutions Conference get mobbed by people who recognized her work in the community.
• Share your work. A great way to build your brand and expand the reach of your portfolio is to share your work. Build simple templates and give them away. Show your work and then share the source files when possible. To the person who values that source file, you’re an expert. Montse Anderson does a great job sharing her nice-looking templates.
• Build your network of peers. Many people make the mistake of just pushing their content out. The best networkers know how to pull people in. It’s important to connect with others. But it has to be real. No one wants to feel like they being played, sold to, or sucked into some sort of multi-level marketing scheme.
• Altruism is the first step. Share freely with no strings tied. Just know you’re helping someone (perhaps thousands). Share as you learn. I love the way Melissa Milloway is always experimenting and then shows what she does. There’s a humility in her approach that works and pulls people in because it’s authentic and not just some salesy thing. You understand her learning journey and feel like you’re part of it.

There are many reasons to have an e-learning portfolio. It’s a good way to stimulate and document your own learning. But most importantly, it’s a great way build your industry expertise and show what you can do. You never know when the next opportunity presents itself, but you want to be ready when it does.

Do you have a portfolio you’d like to share? If so, share it via the comments.

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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.

Having a portfolio is really important, especially in today’s world of digital technology. It’s a great way to document your skills, experience, and qualifications.

Recently, I gave a presentation on why you should maintain a work portfolio, here’s part of the presentation where we’ll focus on your personal development.

What is a Portfolio?

A portfolio does three main things:

• It showcases your skills
• Documents your experience
• Demonstrates your qualifications

Whenever I hire an instructional designer, I’m more inclined to review their portfolio rather than a resume that documents their experience and education. An instructional design degree is great (maybe) but to me, the proof is in the pudding. And without a portfolio how can you show your work and skills?

Common Objections for Not Maintaining a Portfolio

For most people, the big challenge is finding or making the time. It’s easy to know you need a portfolio but not as easy to actually sit down and get one pulled together.

Another big concern is what to do when your work projects are all proprietary and can’t be shown. Three suggestions that may work:

• Replace all proprietary content with lorem ipsum or placeholder content
• Capture a few discrete screenshots and explain what you did rather
• Rebuild the interesting part of the course and use your own content

How to Document Your Learning with Your Portfolio

Most likely you’re reading blog posts, articles, and books. Perhaps you’re taking some classes online or watching self-learning videos on YouTube.

Portfolios are a great way to document what you learn and collect your experiences. I recommend adding a blog to your portfolio and then doing a quick write up of your learning experiences.

• Watched a great video? What made it great? “Five Things I Learned Watching XYZ.”
• Reading an e-learning book? Write a few thoughts at the end of each chapter. Same thing when you read an article or blog post. “Recently I read this article by Tom Kuhlmann and he said…Here are three things I think about that.”

You’re not writing for others, just for yourself. But you should use a voice as if you’re explaining it to others. Over time, those little blog posts add up and they add heft to your portfolio when you are ready to show it.

Use Your Portfolio to Build Skills

Don’t get stuck in a rut. You may build a hundred courses at work, but odds are you’re building one course a hundred times, rather than a hundred different courses. This is true for many of the people I meet.

Use your portfolio as a way to practice. We run the weekly e-learning challenges to help you practice new things or play around with ideas you don’t get to try on real projects. Make it a goal to take on one of those challenges.

• Start small, maybe do one a quarter.
• Share what you created.
• Solicit feedback.
• Write about what you did and learned.

Use a Portfolio to Match Your Skills to Industry Needs

Align your skills with industry needs. If you build e-learning courses then there are all sorts of skills required:

• Project management
• Instructional design
• Visual and graphic design
• Authoring skills in software like Storyline

How are you documenting your current skills and those that need refinement?

Years ago I decided to transition to from media production to training. I went online and reviewed all of the training-related job postings and then I created a two-column list. On one side, I listed all desired qualifications and on the other, my corresponding experience. Needless to say, there was a big gap between what companies wanted and the skills I had.

So I went out and acquired the skills by volunteering or participating in projects. Then I created a portfolio to document what I was learning and the types of projects on which I worked.

This was a great way to guide my personal development and when it did come time to look for work, I had line item descriptions that I could quickly paste into my resume.

Managing a portfolio takes time, but the benefits are tremendous. I’ve found that it keeps me engaged in my work and the industry that is changing rapidly. Now’s a good time to start one.

Keep it simple and focus on just yourself. Don’t worry about getting likes or views. The main thing is to develop a process and habit to nudge your personal development and use your portfolio to document it.

Do you maintain a portfolio? Share your thoughts and link in the comments.

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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.

During a recent interview, someone asked about what I’ve learned over the years. It’s a question I get asked a lot by new designers. One point I always make is to not worry about what’s under the hood. Just worry about getting the output you need. All of the other stuff you’ll get as you gain experience and have to make edits.

However, here are a few key points I shared in the interview.

It’s Not Rocket Science

I know this statement irks some instructional designers, but come on, what we’re doing isn’t rocket science unless of course you’re working for NASA or some other space agency. Learning is innate to humans and while we may not all know how to build the best courses, we probably can do a decent enough job to get started. Besides, I’ve seen plenty of bad courses from people who have their fancy degrees (and some have even written books).

So take a chill pill. Don’t worry about knowing everything about instructional design. Get that first course built. Focus on meeting some tangible objectives and you’ll be on your way. Odds are it won’t be the worst course our industry’s ever seen.

• Do You Really Need an Instructional Design Degree?

A Course is a Course Unless it’s Not a Course

Not everything we call a course is a course. Sometimes, they’re just more like awareness campaigns, like learning about a new company policy. Some courses do have larger performance expectations but practicing the performance happens outside of the course. And then sometimes courses are heavily focused on performance where real-world decisions can be baked into the course design. The key is knowing what

The key is knowing what type of course you’re building. This way you can commit the appropriate resources. No need to build an elaborate scenario when you all you need is a few screens and perhaps a quick quiz. At the same time, you don’t want to build a click-and-read course when the person needs to learn how to make good decisions. That type of course probably requires some sort of decision-making challenge.

• Go Beyond Information Sharing – 5 Ways Your E-learning Courses Can Create Understanding

Looks Matter More Than Instruction

For all of our talk about building good courses, often the ones that get the most play are the ones that look good. And this makes sense because e-learning is a mostly visual medium. People are drawn to things that look good. It’s the initial stage of engagement. On top of that good visual design is a key part of communicating ideas.

In either case, you get more traction when courses look good and are visually connected to the context of the course. This is something to keep in mind, especially when building a portfolio.

• Make Sure Your E-Learning Course Looks the Way It’s Supposed To

Maintain a Portfolio

It’s important to maintain a project portfolio. This is always easier to say than to do because it does take time. It’s a record of what you’ve done and it’s a way to promote your expertise.

Here’s a common dilemma: a person gets laid off and needs to start applying for jobs. Lo and behold, all of the projects are locked behind a firewall and the person has nothing to show. On top of that, the person also doesn’t own the software to build new demos for a portfolio.

• The weekly challenges are a great way to build small modules to pad a portfolio. Here are some good examples of people in our industry who do that: Jackie Van Nice and Joanna Kurpiewska. Be sure to check out their websites.

Focus on the Action

Many of the courses I see are mostly information dumps. Step away from the information and focus on the action. What are they supposed to do? How do they demonstrate that they know how to do it in the real world? What activities can you build in your course that mimic those real-world decisions and actions?

What content do you need to support learning to make those decisions? Build your courses using a backward design approach. Focus on the measurable action and build towards the information that supports it. This is better than a linear information dump. The book, Understanding By Design, is a good place to start.

• The Guiding Principle for all Rapid E-Learners

Sometimes an Information Dump is All You Need

The reality is that a lot of courses are only awareness campaigns or they exist to meet some compliance requirement. In those cases, it makes sense to keep the course simple so that people can get what they need and then get back to work. When I meet with a client I always try to sort courses by their performance requirement. If there are no clear requirements, then it falls in the information bucket which means I spend less time building the course.

• How to Build Course Objectives That Matter

Five Meals a Day is Better Than One Big One

I’m not one to focus much on diet (unless it consists of donuts). However, I do see a lot of headlines that extol the virtue of smaller meals spread over time. The same can be said for e-learning. Building a big course takes time, requires more deliberation, and can’t easily be changed.

Often it’s better to build smaller modules and then space the content over time. The smaller modules are easier to build and deliver. They can also be modified much more quickly. And there’s a lot of good research that shows learning spaced over time is very effective.

• How Long Should My E-learning Course Be?

What Do You Wish You Knew?

I’m leaving this section blank and asking you what’s the one thing you wish you knew when first getting started. Share your thoughts in the comments section.

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.