At my PowerPoint workshops I like to show some of my favorite rapid elearning tips. During the demos I tend to use all sorts of shortcuts. And frequently the questions are less about the demo I show and more about my PowerPoint shortcuts.

In today’s post, I’ll show you three PowerPoint features I use a lot and how to get quick access to them.

The Quick Access Toolbar

In a recent post, I shared how easy it is to create custom tabs in PowerPoint 2010. This lets you keep all of your favorite features in a single tab. I find it handy to have a “rapid elearning tab” for quick access to frequently used features. But if you don’t have PowerPoint 2010, you can still take advantage of the shortcuts using the Quick Access Toolbar.

Click here to view the PowerPoint tutorial.

• Click the dropdown arrow on the Quick Access Toolbar and select More Commands.
• This opens a list of features you can add to the toolbar. Select your features and add them to the right column panel. Hit OK and you’ll be all set.

Quick Access to the Selection Pane

The one PowerPoint feature I use the most is the Selection Pane. It displays the slide’s objects and how they’re layered on the PowerPoint slide.

The Selection Pane lets you change the object layering by moving them up and down. You can also show and hide objects. This comes in handy when you want to isolate an object while editing the slide contents. Hide the rest and you can work on what you want without worrying about the other objects being nudged or accidentally moved.

I also recommend adding custom titles. This is especially handy if you have a hyperlink on the object. Without the renamed title there’s no quick way to know if the object contains a hyperlink or not.

Here’s blog post where I show how I use the selection pane when building an interactive template. It explains a bit more about naming the linked objects.

Quick Access to the Slide Master

If you build rapid elearning courses then you know that you’ll be using the master slides quite a bit. There’s a good review of how the slide master works with interactive content in this post.

Quick Access to the Clipboard

I use the two features above quite a bit. This last one I don’t use as much; but when I do, I don’t want to waste time trying to figure out how to find it.

The clipboard holds up to 24 copied objects. That means you can load it with all sorts of assets and then instead of pasting just the most recent, select from a list of 24.

This feature comes in handy when cleaning up the client’s PowerPoint slides. Create the style palette, copy the shapes, and just paste what you need from the list of 24 on the clipboard.

There are a lot more features you can load on the Quick Access toolbar. Personally, I try to limit them to the ones I use quite a bit or the ones I use infrequently. I also try to limit how many I have to avoid clutter.

Which features do you have at your fingertips? Let me know.

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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 the right look for your elearning course can help engage the learner and set initial expectations because how your course looks tells the learner what to expect.

There’s a look that’s right for your elearning course. It’s just a matter of finding it. And that’s when listening to your visual voice is critical.

What is the Visual Voice?

You may not be a trained graphic designer, but odds are that you can tell when things look right or not. That’s because there’s a voice in the back of your head that lets you know. At least there is in mine (but that could be the result of mental issues and/or beer).

If I design a course for kids, I already have some preconceived ideas of what look is appropriate for that audience. Most likely I’ll stick with primary colors and the characters may be a bit cartoony.

Each one of us has a visual voice that we can hear and learn to build better looking elearning courses. The secret is learning to hear the voice.

E-Learning Workshop Example

Here’s an exercise we do at the workshop. Suppose you’re hired to develop a western movie poster.

• What colors would you choose?
• What about fonts?
• What people would be on the poster? What would they wear?

In most cases, people tend to agree on the colors and general look of the poster. It has that dusty brown look with cactus and tumbleweeds. As far as the font, they may not know the name but they know the right font when they see it. And of course the people in the poster would look like cowboys. In addition, there’d be all sorts of design elements that have a western context (like wanted posters, horses, lassos, etc.).

While we may not agree on all of the details, we’d probably come up with something very similar. And that’s because we have a visual voice that tells us what a western movie poster should be. If it doesn’t look like right, it throws off our expectations.

Suppose you were going to do a Mafia movie poster. What colors would you use? Most likely you’d use black, white, and red. Sure enough! If you do a search, you’ll see that most Mafia movie posters use those colors.

But, if the colors (and fonts) were different you’d probably change your expectations of what the Mafia movie was about. In the example below the fonts and background are changed. How does that change your perception of the movie?

The Visual Voice for E-Learning

These principles work the same for an elearning course. Posters aren’t that much different than the screens in your elearning courses. The design elements are generally the same. You’ll use colors, a background, characters and text.

Here’s an exercise for you. Suppose you are going to build a safety course. What colors come to mind? Which fonts? What types of characters? What would they wear? What design elements do you recognize as safety-related?

Now, let’s switch the course topics and suppose you’re building a course on handling customer calls in a call center. How would the look of the course be different than the safety course? Why?

There are number of ways to tap into your visual voice. Here are four things I try to expose:

• What colors will I use?
• What’s the right font?
• What will the characters look like and wear?
• What images can I use?

The key is that your elearning course is going to look like something. The secret is figuring out what that something is. Tapping into your visual voice helps you figure it out. And from there you’ll be able to set the initial expectations and engage the learner. And this is one of the first steps in creating effective elearning.

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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.

Most people aren’t active participants in the elearning community. That’s OK. No one expects you to sit on the couch, eating bonbons, and chatting in the community. Most of us tend to use the community for quick help and then we go back to work.

Not being an active participant means that it’s possible you miss some really good stuff in the community. So in today’s post I am highlighting some of the free assets that your peers have recently shared in the elearning community.

12 Blurred Backgrounds

Here are some cool blurred backgrounds that can add richness and texture to your elearning courses. Montse Posner Anderson has an example screenshot and a tutorial on how to create your own backgrounds.

I actually used one of the backgrounds for a recent workshop on interactive elearning. You can see it below.

 Click here to view the demo.

48 Stick Figure Characters

Organic, hand-drawn graphics are good for adding contrast to a formal course. They deviate from an expected corporate look and they can be used to highlight important points. They also can lighten things up a bit.

Community member Randy Borum shared some hand-drawn stick figures which may come in handy for your next elearning course.

You can download the files from these two forum threads. There are some additional tips and links to other resources in the comments thread.

• Original Stick Figures
• Son of Stick Figures
• Coming soon: Return of the Stick Figures in 3D

Free Road Signs

Here are some free road signs that are great for quick attention-getters or your next safety course. These are courtesy of Articulate superhero, Steve Flowers.

7 Interactive Downloads

Here’s another freebie from Montse Posner Anderson. It’s a Storyline template with six different tabs interactions.

Click here to view the demo.

She also gave away a pretty slick drag and drop interaction. Just download the files and add your own content.

Click here to view the demo.

Other files shared by your peers in the community:

• Clotheslines template (PowerPoint)
• Evaluation tabs interaction (Storyline)
• Folder icons (PNG)
• Miscellaneous office backgrounds (PNG & PowerPoint): desk and mailroom
• Slide background (PowerPoint)
• Digital numbers (PowerPoint)
• Zombie characters (PNG)

There’s a lot more where those came from! To stay on top of what’s going on in the elearning community be sure to follow the weekly recap in the Word of Mouth blog.

I really appreciate is the generosity and helpfulness of people in our industry. Hopefully these free assets are helpful. If anything, they’re a great reminder that help’s only a few clicks away.

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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’m always sensitive to the elearning developers who have to work with limited resources and usually by themselves. Because of this my goal is to provide practical tips and tricks that offer real value.

This year’s 2012 wrap up post features the tips & tricks shared during the past year that can be applied to your elearning courses right away.

Rapid E-Learning Tips & Tricks

• How to Create a Learning Journal to Go with Your E-Learning Courses
• Quit Wasting Time Trying to Find the Right Look for Your E-Learning Courses
• You Need to Know These Seven Tips If You Build Graphics for E-Learning
• FAQ: How Do You Manage the Graphics in Your E-Learning Course?
• How to Create Interactive E-Learning
• The Guiding Principle for all Rapid E-Learners
• Avoid the Curse of the Frankencourse

Free Applications

• 5 Free Desktop Image Editors for E-Learning
• 5 Free Online Image Editors for Rapid E-Learning
• Need Screenshots for Your E-Learning? Here Are 3 Tools That You Already Own.
• Here’s an Easy Way to Back Up Your E-Learning Project Files

Free Assets

• A Year’s Worth of Free E-Learning Assets
• 5 Free PowerPoint E-Learning Templates
• Here’s a Bucketful of Free Office Themed E-Learning Templates & Media Assets
• Celebrate the End of Summer with This Free PowerPoint E-Learning Template
• Over 40 Rapid E-Learning Posts with Free PowerPoint Templates & E-Learning Assets
• 7 Free Handwritten Fonts for Your E-Learning Courses

PowerPoint Tips

• 3 Tutorials to Help You Get More Out of PowerPoint’s Image Editing
• 5 PowerPoint E-Learning Tips & A Free Template
• How to Find Free PowerPoint E-Learning Templates
• A Simple PowerPoint Technique to Make Your E-Learning Courses Look Good
• How to Create a Rapid E-Learning Tab in PowerPoint
• Clean Up Your Client’s PowerPoint Slides with This Time-Saving Tip
• Want to Become a Rapid E-Learning Pro? Then Check Out All of These PowerPoint Tips

Do you have a favorite post from last year? Which one?

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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 like to use handwritten fonts in my courses. They work well when I add them to speech bubbles, callouts, or captions. I also like the contrast a handwritten font adds to a more formal design. It comes across as a personal note—something I need to focus on.

In a previous post I shared ways to use the handwritten fonts as well as some speech bubbles and free hand-drawn graphics that you can download and use with the fonts.

One of my favorite handwritten fonts is Skippy Sharp. It’s the font you’ll see in many of my blog posts. But Skippy Sharp isn’t a free font. You can get it for about $30.

Buying fonts can be pricey if you don’t have a budget but want a lot of choices. That’s when using free fonts comes in handy. And there are plenty of them out there, but most seem to have the same one.

Free Font Sites

• Font Squirrel
• Da Font
• Font Stock
• Font Space
• Fonts2U
• 1001 Free Fonts

Free (with Conditions)

But one problem is that free isn’t always free. So make sure that you look at the license agreement that comes with the font download. Many have restrictions on commercial use.

The restrictions aren’t extreme. For example, Kimberly Geswein who shares a lot of fonts only charges $5. Surely that’s affordable for an elearning project.

Seven Free Fonts

To help you save time, I looked for seven really nice handwritten fonts that are free for commercial use and each a little bit different. No use having handwritten fonts that all look the same.

• Rancho
• Handlee
• Shadows Into Light Two
• Patrick Hand
• Amatic SC
• Rock Salt
• Permanent Marker This works great with the display templates that you can download in the elearning community.

*Bonus: free fonts in the community.

You’ll notice that all of the fonts come from Google Web Fonts. The reason is that they’ve been vetted and are free to use unlike many sites that say the fonts are free but then it turns out they’re only free for personal use.

I don’t know about you, but I really don’t use too many fonts for personal use so those “free” fonts are not that valuable to me. I guess I could start making more posters at home or elearning courses to teach my kids how to clean their rooms.

Do you have a favorite handwritten font? Or where do you find free (or low cost) fonts? Feel to share them in the comments section.

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Free E-Learning Resources

Want to learn more? Check out these articles and free resources in the community.	Here’s a great job board for e-learning, instructional design, and training jobs	Participate in the weekly e-learning challenges to sharpen your skills
Get your free PowerPoint templates and free graphics & stock images.	Lots of cool e-learning examples to check out and find inspiration.	Getting Started? This e-learning 101 series and the free e-books will help.

At a recent workshop someone asked how to demonstrate that they were successful and that the courses they built made a difference to the organization.

That’s a good question, especially in this economy because the training group is usually one of the first groups targeted when an organization needs to make some cuts to the budget. So we want to make sure that we’re providing real value.

E-Learning is Hot

The good thing is that right now, even with the struggling economy, elearning is a hot industry. This makes sense. For the organization looking to make cuts and still offer training, elearning is a viable option because it can reduce costs.

It’s one of the points we discussed in this post on why elearning is so effective. On top of that, there’s a convergence of mobile devices and remote workers. So elearning is at the forefront of this convergence.

In that sense, if you build elearning courses, you’re in a good industry and probably don’t need to worry about cuts as much as in the past. But let’s get back to the original question about demonstrating value.

Getting a Paycheck is a Good Indication of Success

Often we spend too much time trying to figure out the ROI (return on investment) of our work when that’s already been determined by the organization because they created your position and filled it with you.

Are you getting paid? If the answer is yes, then that’s one of the best ways to measure your value. If you aren’t valued, you’d probably not have a job. And in that sense, it’s less about you determining your ROI and more about providing the value the organization expects from you.

Are Your Courses Aligned to Real Business Goals?

A common solution to meeting business goals is to offer more training. But training doesn’t always meet the organization’s goals. So it’s important to understand the organization’s goals and know where the course fits in meeting them.

Often a client wants a course but isn’t quite clear how the course actually makes a difference, other than the fact that the learner gets exposed to additional information. I always try to drill down to the expected results. After someone takes this course, what do you expect them to do? And then follow that up with, how does this relate to your organization’s goals?

An elearning course is only a solution. Step away from the solution. Find out what the course is supposed to do and why that matters. It’s possible that you may talk the client out of an elearning project. That’s OK. You’ll save time and money by not creating a product that’s a waste of time and that adds real value.

What Type of Course Are You Building?

I put courses into one of two buckets. Is it about information or performance?

Information courses are more like marketing programs that promote awareness with no immediate performance expectations. They can also be performance support resources. They’re important to support performance requirements but they’re not necessarily focused on performance activities.

Some people suggest that all of these types of courses should become supporting documentation rather than an “elearning” course. That’s definitely a consideration. But with today’s tools building multimedia-based information is not any more difficult or expensive than building print documentation. So it’s just a matter or need and which solution meets it.

Performance courses are focused on activities. Instead of pulling together a bunch of information, create decision-making activities that mirror the types of decisions the learner needs to make away from the courses and in the real world.

Once you understand the type of course you’re building, you can create one that offers the most value. For example, an information course may not require a lot of interactivity (which takes more time to build). And in the same sense a performance course usually needs more than dozens of bullet point screens. Understanding the type of course allows you to put your resources in a place where you get the most bang for the buck.

Are You Saving Time or Reducing Costs?

Many times you don’t have access to the types of metrics that really demonstrate the course’s effectiveness. Or you may have to build things like annual refresher training where the metrics can be a bit fuzzy. If that’s your situation, then a great way to demonstrate value is to focus on the production process and determine where you can reduce cost or save time.

• Price out the cost of your courses if you were to hire them out. Then compare those costs to yours.
• Another metric is the difference between face-to-face training and offering the same online.

You may not always be able to state what the course accomplished, but you’ll definitely be able to state that what you provided was cost-effective.

Is Your Customer Satisfied?

While this doesn’t necessarily measure the effectiveness of the training it is still a legitimate measurement. When I start a project I negotiate a service level agreement with my client. Part of it details expectations, timelines, and outcomes.

At the end of the project, I forward this to the client to remind them that we successfully met the agreement. I try to do this right away while things are still fresh. If you wait until the end of the year, they’ll either not respond (because they’re too busy) or they tend to skew the feedback because they either want to seem balanced or they can’t recall exactly how the project concluded. You can avoid a lot of that by proactively collecting feedback.

As you can see, there a number of ways to prove your value and demonstrate success. You may not completely understand the ROI, but your customer does. When I hire the neighbor kid to mow my lawn I don’t expect him to email me a spreadsheet detailing everything he did. I just want to know the lawn’s taken care of.

In the same sense, you were hired to build a course. If you delivered it on time and to your customer’s satisfaction then trust that because you still have a job, you’re proving your value.

What are some things you’d recommend to the elearning developer that wants to know if they’re successful or not? Add your thoughts by clicking on the comments link.

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Free E-Learning Resources

Want to learn more? Check out these articles and free resources in the community.	Here’s a great job board for e-learning, instructional design, and training jobs	Participate in the weekly e-learning challenges to sharpen your skills
Get your free PowerPoint templates and free graphics & stock images.	Lots of cool e-learning examples to check out and find inspiration.	Getting Started? This e-learning 101 series and the free e-books will help.

Here’s a common issue: your client gives you a PowerPoint file that doesn’t look all that great. It’s the breeding ground for a classic Frankencourse with too many fonts, the wrong colors and hokey images. It’s a complete mess. And your job is to clean it up.

At this point the client’s not asking you to rebuild the course. He just wants it cleaned up and published. In an ideal world, you could push back and tell him how this is not great elearning; and then lament the demise of elearning and all things good.

But that’s not gonna fly with the client. So for today’s demo we’ll just assume that you need to clean the content up a bit and get it out the door.

Working with the Master Template

In PowerPoint you can build as many master slides and layouts as you need.

The easiest way to clean up your client’s slides is to start with the master slide. Create the look you need, and then apply the master template to all of the slides. In seconds what once was not so good is now a nice clean and usable product. 

But here’s the kicker. Your client didn’t use the master slide to create the course. He worked on one slide at a time. So each slide is independent of the others. That means you can’t easily make universal changes to the file by applying the master slide and layouts.

What are you to do?

Start with the Master Slide & Layouts Anyway

The client may not have started with a master slide, but there’s no reason why you can’t create a master slide and a few layouts to define the project’s look.

• Look at all of the slides using the slide sorter view. That gives you a big picture overview of the course. You’ll start to see some common elements and layouts.
• Categorize the different types of slides and what design elements you’ll need based on the most common layouts.
• Build the appropriate layouts for those slides in the slide master.
• Then apply the layouts to the slides.

Not all of the slides will accept the changes via the layouts, but many of them will and that will save some time. 

When you’re done, you can go through each slide and make the edits you’ll need to make. Odds are that many of the slides will work with the new layouts and not require a lot of tweaking.

The Floating Style Slide

In a previous post on making your elearning courses look good I showed a simple tip for creating a design slide. I call it my floating style palette because I can move it from slide to slide and quickly apply changes.

Essentially you create a single slide that contains all of the screen elements for the course. Format those elements and then use the format painter to apply their style to the slide objects.

An example would be the title and body text used in the course. They’ll have a font style, size, and color. You can copy and paste the element from the palette slide to the course slide. Then use the format painter to apply the text formatting to the course text.

Once you have a floating style palette, go through all of the client’s slides where the master slide changes didn’t take hold. Use the floating style palette to apply the appropriate changes.

Making Universal Changes to Your Fonts

PowerPoint has a feature that lets you find and replace fonts. That means you don’t have to do that on a slide-by-slide basis. This really comes in handy since almost every single slide will have some sort of text.

The Replace Fonts feature is one of those that are kind of buried in PowerPoint. Your best bet is to add it to your custom tab in PowerPoint. This way you have quick access to it when you need it.

• Select the font you want to change.
• Select the font you want to use instead.
• Click Replace.

All of the text with fonts you don’t want will be swapped out with the fonts you do want. Talk about a timesaver!

So to summarize the steps: 1) create a master slide, 2) reformat the objects that don’t work with the master, and then 3) replace the fonts. Those three tips will help you quickly clean up your client’s not-so-great PowerPoint slides.

Here are some other tips from previous posts that may help, too.

• Start with some existing content to create an elearning template with no money down.
• At a minimum, having a nice background is a good place to start. That’s where the 30 second template technique comes in handy.

All of these tips will help you convert what may be a sloppy start to something that at least is consistent and looks better. And once you’ve got that done, you can start talking to your client about how to make the elearning course a bit more engaging and interactive.

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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.

Whenever I do a post on clip art, I get bombarded with emails and comments about copyrights and whether or not they can use these assets in their elearning courses.

It makes sense, no one wants to violate any laws or steal someone’s intellectual property. So let’s take a look at some options.

What Does the Microsoft Services Agreement Say?

To answer the Microsoft question, the best place to go is their services agreement. As you can see below in section 8.1:

8.1. Office.com and Office Web App media elements and templates.. If you use Microsoft Office.com or the Microsoft Office Web Apps, you may have access to media images, clip art, animations, sounds, music, video clips, templates, and other forms of content (“media elements”) provided with the software available on Office.com or as part of services associated with the software. You may copy and use the media elements in projects and documents. You may not (i) sell, license, or distribute copies of the media elements by themselves or as a product if the primary value of the product is the media elements; (ii) grant your customers rights to further license or distribute the media elements; (iii) license or distribute for commercial purposes media elements that include the representation of identifiable individuals, governments, logos, trademarks, or emblems or use these types of images in ways that could imply an endorsement or association with your product, entity or activity; or (iv) create obscene works using the media elements. For more information, see the Use of Microsoft Copyrighted Content webpage (http://www.microsoft.com/permission).

Should You Use the Free Assets?

To me the services agreement is pretty clear. However, just because you can use the assets doesn’t mean you always should.

There are some projects that you do for use inside the organization and some that you do for consumption by the public. Also, if you build courses for hire, then how you approach the design and construction of the course will be different.

Here’s how I’ve treated it in the past:

• Internal: For internal projects that weren’t public, I was comfortable using the free assets. They saved time and money because I had quick access to them and they didn’t cost me anything.
• Public: For public-facing projects I tried to stay away from using the free assets. Not because I couldn’t use them. It’s just that many of the times they didn’t mesh well with our branding and other assets we used. And because they’re so common and familiar, the projects may have come off less custom or personal. Since these were public-facing projects and potential customers I was inclined to put the best product out there. And if the free assets didn’t work I wasn’t going to use them just because they were free.
• Commercial: When I did commercial or freelance work I very rarely used the free assets—mostly for the same reasons as above. They didn’t look custom. On top of that, I never wanted to put a customer at risk in case someone challenged their legal right to use the assets. Right or wrong, it’s not worth the headache.

My rule of thumb: if you have a budget, then buy the images you need. They’re not that expensive and then you don’t need to waste time asking about fair use. To keep costs down, download the watermarked images and use those as placeholders. When you’re ready, just buy what you need.

If you don’t have a budget, try to get one for the next project you build. All you need to do is ask. The worst that can happen is that you won’t get one. But you may be surprised to find out you will. And if you can’t get a budget, then based on the Microsoft services agreement feel confident using the assets that come with the software you purchased.

What do you think? Click on the comments link to share your thoughts.

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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 lots of questions via email and many of them are the same. So now’s a good time to offer some quick answers and links to additional resources for those just getting started,

I have no budget. Where can I get free elearning assets?

This is the most frequently asked question. The first thing I recommend is to ask for a budget. It doesn’t hurt to ask and you may find that you’ll get one. If you do get a budget then you can stretch your money by purchasing the lower resolution images. You don’t need print-quality images for elearning courses. I usually get my images from Fotolio or iStockphoto but there are dozens of good stock image sites.

The new Microsoft Office site has a lot of the same images you’d buy from vendors like Fotolio available for free. So if you have a licensed copy of Microsoft’s software you can feel comfortable using the images they provide. The new site also has a lot more up-to-date content so you’re not stuck with some of the older clip art (unless of course you’re designing a retro course on using Clippy).

By the way, Microsoft has a blog dedicated to templates and images.

A few more options are to:

• Create your own assets
• Modify existing clip art
• Download the free assets from the elearning community

At a recent conference you said we should learn to scrounge for assets. Do you have a few suggestions?

This question kind of builds on the one above. When you’re working with limited resources you’ve got to find places where you can get good free or low cost assets. One of the things I do is subscribe to sites like AppSumo and Mighty Deals. They usually send a daily email with all sorts of deals. Most of them are not relevant to my needs. But every once in a while there’s a good deal that works.

That’s what I mean by scrounging. Keep your eyes open for places where you can get free or low cost assets. The only downside to the option above is that you get daily emails. I just delete what doesn’t interest me. But if you don’t want the emails, then this option won’t work for you.

Which microphone do you use?

There are a lot of good microphones on the market depending on your needs. Considering that the question comes from those with limited budgets I’ll offer a few ideas on low cost solutions. The links to Amazon mics may produce a slight commission.

I don’t like to use headset mics because I have less control over mic placement. Instead I like to use desktop microphones because I can move them around. I generally use two Samson mics. They sound good and they’re generally low cost.

• Samson C03U: let’s you switch between pickup patterns.
• Samson Go Mic: I love my Go Mic. It’s portable and has a really good build quality. It also sounds as good as the larger mic.

These are mics that friends have recommended:

• Samson Meteor Mic: portable and good sound quality
• Blue Mics: everyone I know who has one of the Blue mics is happy with them. They have the Yeti, Snowball, and Snowflake (which is comparable to the Go Mic).
• I just read about these two mics (Apogee MiC and Blue’s Spark) that let you record with the iPad or USB. Haven’t tried either, but the reviews sound good.

Just to be fair, I’m no audio engineer and there are lots of options and considerations when it comes to recording. If you want a low cost and simple recording process then the mics above are great solutions. But if you need more, jump into the elearning community and ask what others are doing.

How do I get my client to make courses more interactive?

This is a common challenge. Here are a few quick thoughts:

• Focus the content on action. If the course is only information, then it’s hard to make it interactive. But if it’s about performance, then interactivity makes sense.
• It’s easier to show than to explain. Create some treatments to show before and after examples of interactive elearning. When they see the difference, it’ll make sense to them and they’ll be more open to moving past the familiar click-and-read approach.
• Some courses don’t need to be interactive. Don’t make them interactive because you want to. If it’s only an information-based course, or if the client only cares about marking the course complete, then it may be easier to do a simple linear course than waste the learner’s time navigating an interactive module.

I want to get a degree. What schools do you recommend?

There are a lot of re
ally good programs. I went to Pepperdine. I have some friends who really enjoyed the programs at Boise State and San Diego State. I’ve also had some contact with UMBC and Bloomsburg. Those are all fine programs.

You may also want to consider an elearning certificate rather than a full program. I know some who’ve gone through the University of Washington’s certificate program and really like it. Many of the programs that offer degrees also offer some sort of certification.

One of the people in the elearning community compiled a list of programs in case you’re interested. Your best bet is to ask for recommendations from the community and then contact some of the programs to see what they offer. If I were going to start one I’d look for the ones that balance theory with practical application. I’d also look at the projects created by formers students. If I’m going to spend the money I want to make sure that I’ll walk away with some good skills that I can apply right away.

There’s also a good list of book recommendations in the community. Sometimes it’s easier to go through a book and apply what you learn to a simple module then it is to spend a couple of years in an elearning program.

I found a bunch of business card images online. Any ideas how I can use them?

Great question. Sometimes a simple approach to information-based elearning is to create a quick FAQ module. Collect the most common questions or issues and then build your module on answering the questions. Business cards are great content holders and they offer an easy way show the FAQs.

In a similar sense, those types of images could be replacements for bullet points. As an example, instead of a slide with three bullet points create three slides where the bullet point is on the business card. This is an easy way to create screens that are visually interesting at a very low cost.

Here are a couple of previous posts where I answered similar FAQs.

• 7 Simple Rapid E-Learning Tips
• Answers to Frequently Asked Rapid E-Learning Questions

Hopefully this is a start for those just getting started. Be sure to take advantage of the free resources and connecting with your peers in the elearning community.

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Free E-Learning Resources

Want to learn more? Check out these articles and free resources in the community.	Here’s a great job board for e-learning, instructional design, and training jobs	Participate in the weekly e-learning challenges to sharpen your skills
Get your free PowerPoint templates and free graphics & stock images.	Lots of cool e-learning examples to check out and find inspiration.	Getting Started? This e-learning 101 series and the free e-books will help.

In a recent post, I built a drag and drop video player where you can select and drag a video title to load a video tutorial. I got lots of questions about how I built the player. Most of the questions were about how I built the drag-and-drop player. So I put together some tutorials and made the file available for download.

• Tutorial 1: create the framework
• Tutorial 2: add layers and links
• Tutorial 3: create the drag and drop
• Tutorial 4: design tips
• Downloads: file and free font

One reason why the post generated so many questions is because of the novelty of dragging the choice button to load a tutorial video. This makes sense. In most cases this type of demo would have been a click and reveal interaction; but the drag and drop choice added some novel interactivity.

However, was using a drag and drop button the best way to do it? That’s what we’ll explore today.

Core Interactivity

Essentially you have three types of onscreen interactions: click, hover, and drag. We discussed that in the previous post on interactive building blocks.

Often the interactive elements are interchangeable. But that doesn’t mean that they work equally the same in your interaction design.

In the original interaction, the user reviewed a list of videos and then dragged the choice to a box. This loaded information about the video. Then the user clicked a play button. It was a novel way to play videos, but was it the best way?

In today’s post we’re going to revisit the drag and drop player to look at a few other options we had in the design.

Drag & Click: Novel Interaction Can Engage Users

One of the reasons the player generated so much interest is because it was a novel way to design a tutorial module.

Normally, this type of demo would be a simple “click the button” type tutorial. But instead the user could drag the choice to another location. And this novelty is kind of fun because it’s different.

Click here to view the drag & click demo.

Novelty is a great way to engage people and draw their interest. But, novelty wears off really fast. If there were only 2-3 choices, this type of novelty is probably fine. In the case of the demo, it’s probably a little too much because there are a lot of buttons to choose and the dragging interaction is tedious.

Click & Click: How Many Clicks Does It Take?

Click and reveal interactions tend to be the most frequently used. The most often we see them is when we click “next” buttons.

In the second example below, the user clicks the tutorial button to load the description of the videos. And then she can choose to click the play button to view the video.

This is a typical type of interaction. The value in clicking to load the information is that unlike the dragging, you don’t have to move the mouse. It’s a little more efficient and it locks the information on the screen until another user action.

Click here to view the click & click demo.

The downside is that it requires a lot more clicking and since the play button is across the screen, it requires a lot more mouse movement. Again, if there were fewer buttons that would probably be OK. But in this case, it’s too many clicks and mouse movement.

Hover & Click: Efficient & Intuitive Movement is Key

Hover (or mouseover) interactions are nice because they allow access to additional information with very little mouse movement.

In the third example below, the user hovers the mouse over the tutorial button which exposes the video description. At that point, she can choose to click and watch the video or hover the mouse over a different button.

Click here to view the hover & click demo.

This is a much more efficient way to navigate because everything’s in one place with minimal movement. One negative though is that with the hover interaction you can quickly lose information. Unlike a click interaction which freezes the screen until another click, the hover loses it as soon as you move to something new.

As you can see there are pros and cons to each interactive building block and much of it is subjective. The main point is to make it as efficient and intuitive for your users as possible. If you have to spend a lot of time explaining what to do, you should revisit your design.

Also keep in mind that novelty is great to engage them, but it’s important to not exhaust and frustrate the users with excessive novelty.

I mentioned this before. If you’re building interactive elearning it’s important to learn more about usability and designing user experiences. Here’s a link to some resources and book recommendations.

I also just started reading Undercover User Experience Design. I like its practical approach to UX and the book’s not too long (a plus for me).

What are your thoughts? Feel free to share them by clicking on the comments link.

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.

PowerPoint is hot. This makes sense because it’s the most popular elearning tool out there. It’s easy to learn. And once you understand how to use it to build rapid elearning courses, the sky’s the limit.

In an earlier post I listed all of the ones that dealt with PowerPoint.  It’s a good one to bookmark. Because it was so popular I decided to make another post that highlights all the ones that include free PowerPoint templates or other free assets.

Be sure to take advantage of the free templates & assets in the elearning community, too. As always, you can use these templates as you wish.

• The Secret to Creating Your Own PowerPoint Templates for E-Learning
• Your 10 Most Popular Posts of 2007
• Here’s How I Built That PowerPoint E-Learning Template
• Here’s a Free PowerPoint Template & How I Made It
• Get Creative and Build Better E-Learning Courses
• How To Design Custom PowerPoint Templates for E-Learning (Plus 8 Free Templates)
• Your Favorite Rapid E-Learning Posts of 2009
• Here’s a Quick Way to Create Your Next E-Learning Template in PowerPoint
• Inspiring Designs to Keep Your E-Learning Courses Looking Fresh
• How to Design the Visual Elements for Interactive Elearning Courses
• Here’s a Free PowerPoint E-Learning Template
• Create E-Learning Templates With a Consistent Clip Art Style
• Here’s Another Free PowerPoint E-Learning Template
• A Dozen Handpicked E-Learning Resources
• 7 Simple Rapid E-Learning Tips & Free PowerPoint Template
• Free PowerPoint Template & Simple Way to Share Files
• Over 75 Free Rapid E-Learning Resources
• Celebrate Thanksgiving with This Free PowerPoint Template
• Rapid E-Learning Workshop: How to Create a Tabbed Notebook
• Here’s a Boatload of Free Hand-Drawn Graphics
• Create a Chalkboard Template with These Simple Tips & More Than 40 Free Graphics
• More Than 100 PowerPoint Tutorials & a Free Template
• Your Favorite Rapid E-Learning Posts of 2010
• How to Design An Elearning Course on a Budget
• A Free Tool & Free Graphics to Simplify Your E-Learning Course Design
• Over 45 Free Speech Bubbles to Make Your E-Learning Courses Talk
• 5 Time-saving Tips from the E-learning Community
• Over 150 Free Fonts to Use in Your E-Learning Courses
• 5 Free PowerPoint E-Learning Templates
• Use This Free E-Learning Template to Inspire Your Next M-Learning Course
• Here’s a Noteworthy PowerPoint Template (and It’s Free!)
• Here’s a Free PowerPoint Template & Laptop Illustration
• 15 Free Display Graphics to Use with Your E-Learning Courses
• 25 More Free Display Graphics for Your E-Learning Courses
• Here’s a Free PowerPoint Template & Font
• Check Out This Free PowerPoint Template & Tutorial
• A Year’s Worth of Free E-Learning Assets
• 5 PowerPoint E-Learning Tips & A Free Template
• 5 Free PowerPoint E-Learning Templates
• Here’s a Bucketful of Free Office Themed E-Learning Templates & Media Assets
• Celebrate the End of Summer with This Free PowerPoint E-Learning Template
• How to Create an Interactive PowerPoint Elearning Module

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.

A few years back, I was at a workshop where the PowerPoint team was showing some of the new features in the soon-to-be-released PowerPoint 2010. As they were talking about the features, one of them mentioned the ability to combine shapes to create your own.

I thought it was a pretty cool feature so I asked in what tab it was, and the reply was that it wasn’t in a tab.

Huh? Why create a cool feature and bury it where it can’t be found?

No need to fret, though. The PowerPoint developer demonstrated how to customize the ribbon toolbar in PowerPoint. And that’s a pretty powerful feature, especially for rapid elearning developers.

Why Would You Need to Customize the Ribbon?

Before we look at how to customize the ribbon, let’s explore why it makes sense.

There are a number of features I use quite a bit when it comes to building elearning courses. As it is now, I have to click on a number of tabs. For instance, I change the font from one tab, then go to another to crop an image, and then another to add an animation.

• Add frequently used features to a single tab. Why not put some of the more common features in a single tab? It doesn’t matter if you can find them in other tabs. But it sure comes in handy if they’re all in a single tab.

• Add those oddball, hard to remember features to a tab. Creating custom shapes is buried in PowerPoint and not easy to find. It makes sense to add those features to a single tab. This way when you do need one, you’re not scratching your head trying to remember where it is.

It doesn’t really matter which features you add and why. The main thing is that you can! Select the features you like and then group them based on your needs. Having a custom tab will save you time and a bunch of extra clicking around.

How to Customize the Ribbon in PowerPoint 2010

Customizing the ribbon in PowerPoint 2010 is really easy. Right click on the ribbon and select Customize the Ribbon.

Then you’re able to select a range of features on the left side, and add them to the right side.

• First create a custom tab.
• Then create groups.
• Add the features you want to the groups in your new tab.

Finding Hidden Features

There are all sorts of features in PowerPoint. The most common are already featured in the ribbon. But there are some features that aren’t.

For example, the ability to combine shapes is a feature not in the ribbon by default. That means you’d have to add it to the ribbon. But where do you find the hidden features? Glad you asked.

• Select All Commands from the drop-down menu. That exposes all of the commands available to you.
• Add the ones you want. If you’re not quite sure what a feature does, add it to the ribbon and do some tests. Or do a search online.

Once you have a custom ribbon, you can export the file and then import it to your other computers so that they all are the same.

My Favorite Rapid E-Learning Features

There are all sorts of features that you could add to a custom ribbon. I look for the ones I use most often and like to have them available with the fewest clicks. I don’t really care if they’re in the other tabs.

Here are some of the features I like to have in a single tab:

• Add a new slide/layout
• Slide master
• Insert pictures & clipart
• Paste as PNG
• Access clipart online
• Insert shapes
• Cropping
• Edit points
• Custom shapes: subtract, intersect, combine, and union
• Arrange objects
• Guides
• Selection pane
• Animation pane
• Animation styles
• Format painter
• Pens (for hand-drawn markups)
• Office clipboard

Customizing the ribbon is a convenient way to have all of your favorite features within reach. This is especially true if you build rapid elearning courses. Which of your most frequently used features would you add to the customized ribbon? Share your favorites by clicking on the comments link.

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.