A common frustration for many rapid elearning developers is wanting to build elearning courses that look good but not having the graphic design expertise or resources to make it happen.

Today, we’ll look at a simple way to solve that problem. I call it the “quick template” technique. It’s a trick I share in many of my workshops.

In a previous post we reviewed how to design an elearning course on a budget. It’s a good overview of what we’ll look at today. In that post, we explored:

• Where to locate existing course assets
• How to leverage the company website
• Ways to modify the assets you find

E-Learning Courses Compared to Websites

Websites and elearning courses are very similar in how they’re built. They’re both screens on a computer. So what they have on the screens is very similar. And when you think about it, there’s really only so much you can put on the screen.

The screen usually has text, colors, and some other design elements like shapes and images.

You may not have a graphic designer at your disposal, but odds are that your organization hired one to build its website. And since a website and course design is very similar, there’s probably a lot you can glean from your company’s site.

Another advantage is that the website also alleviates some of the branding issues that you may face in the organization because they’re typically branded to meet the organization’s needs and comply with the organization’s branding guidelines.

How to Create an E-Learning Template

Here are the key elements I look for when pulling ideas from the company website:

• Colors and how they’re used. What’s the main color? How are accents used? What color is the text?
• Treatment of images. Do they use photos or illustrations? What type of photos are they using? How do they work the logo or branded images into the template?
• Typography. Does the company have a designated font? What fonts are used for title and body? What colors are they? How are they used?
• Design elements. Are the lines straight or curved? Squares or circles? Pointed corners or rounded rectangles?
• Content containers. This is the main thing for me. How is the content on the site framed? Can I use some of the design elements for specific types of content like call out boxes or media holders?

Once I review the site and make notes on what I can use, I assemble the template. Most of the times it requires a few different layouts. Keep in mind the template you create doesn’t need to be an exact duplicate of the website. You’re merely looking for design ideas that will help you develop a clean and nice looking elearning course design.

For example, I may take some of the design elements that I like from the demo website above and then modify them to be different types of content containers. This allows me to create an assortment of layouts that I can use throughout the course.

Here’s a quick tutorial on how to find course design ideas from your company website. One video goes through the site and looks for inspiration. And the other shows how to transform the ideas into an actual template design.

Click here to view the tutorial.

You may not have the graphic design skills or resources to build your elearning course design, but you may find that those things already exist in some format for you to use. Make friends with your IT staff, web design team, and any other group that produces designed materials. This will put you on the road to a clean and consistent design for your next course.

Where do you find ideas within your organization? Leave a comment by clicking on the comments link.

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In a previous post we reviewed how to avoid the Frankencourse. These are courses that look like a bunch of modules that are cobbled together rather a single course. They’re also courses where the design of the course is all over the place and inconsistent.

One way to avoid the Frankencourse is to come up with a consistent design that is used throughout the course. For example, title fonts are all the same and the colors used in the course are defined. When you use a box, it looks the same on all the screens and it is used the same way.

I was helping someone the other day clean up a PowerPoint-based elearning course. She got it from her subject matter expert and the file was a mess. The subject matter expert used all sorts of fonts and none of the boxes on the screen were consistent. One time the box had rounded corners and then next time it was straight. Some boxes were yellow with drop shadows. And then some were gray with no shadows.

This file demonstrated common issues with many PowerPoint slides:

• Inconsistent use of design elements. The subject matter expert created boxes on the slides. None of them were designed the same way. There needs to be a reason why the boxes look different. Contrast is a design principle. When elements contrast with each other it implies that there’s a difference between them. The same with repetition. When you repeat elements, then it implies similarity. None of this was a factor in the original slides.
• None of the content was created using the slide master. That means that anything that needs to be changed has to be edited at the slide level. When you have 100+ slides that’s a lot of repetitive editing. When you can, build your content formatting in the slide master. It comes in handy when you need to make universal changes.

However you design your elearning courses, it’s important that your intentional about what goes on the screen and how those objects are used. This makes your course look more polished and it lets you leverage the advantages of good graphic design and visual communication.

In this post, we’ll create a design slide that you can use to quickly apply design formats to the content on your slides.

Step 1: Determine Common Content

Determine what is common to most slides and then what those elements will look like. For example, slides usually have a title, body text, and then an assortment of common design elements like boxes, buttons, and callouts.

Step 2: Create a Design Slide

Once you know what common content you have, add them to a single slide. Then apply the appropriate format to each element.

I call this my floating design slide. I move it along the course as I work on slides so I can quickly access a formatted object and paste it to the real slide when needed.

Step 3: Copy & Paste Formatted Objects

The design slide has all of the common elements you will use in your course. When you need to format something on your real slide, locate the formatted object on your design slide and then copy & paste it to the real slide.

Once it’s pasted to the real slide, use the format painter to apply the design to the appropriate content.

• Here’s a tutorial that walks through the process of creating a design slide.

This is a simple technique. But it will help you quickly convert existing slides that may be a bit sloppy and inconsistent into something that looks better and is intentional in its design. The main point in all of this is that you’re consistent in your design and in how you’re using the elements in your course.

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A while back I got an email from a blog reader who was excited about her first elearning project. She said that she had used every single tip I ever shared on the blog. Sure enough, she did. In fact, her product was less elearning course more Rapid E-Learning Blog museum.

I mention this because something she did in her course was common to many of the courses I see. It’s what I like to call the Frankencourse. And it’s something that’s easy enough to fix.

On the surface Frankenstein looked like a person, albeit partially decomposed. But he really was a bunch of people cobbled together—an arm here, a leg there. And in a similar sense instead of looking like a single course, many elearning courses look like a bunch of courses cobbled together.

Tools within Tools

Most rapid elearning tools are like Articulate Presenter and convert PowerPoint slides to Flash (and soon HTML5). And they can be augmented using a series of form-based tools like Quizmaker and Engage. Or if you’re using other products you’ll add the Flash output to the PowerPoint slide.

 

On one hand this is really cool and convenient and is what makes rapid elearning so popular, especially the form-based authoring. On the other hand it introduces some design challenges that you’ll need to consider when building your courses.

Each tool you import also exists as a standalone product. That means it has its own player and distinct look. This is especially true of form-based tools where you have less control over the look and layout because the software creates it for you.

Because of this, it’s important to be intentional about the design of the course. If not, you run the risk of having that cobbled look instead of a cohesive product that looks like everything belongs together.

Be Consistent with Intentional Design

In a previous post we looked at how to be intentional in the course design. This is probably the single biggest way to avoid the Frankencourse. Be intentional about what goes on the screen. Nothing’s there by accident.

There are only so many things you can put on the screen. Which fonts are you going to use? How many? Which colors are in your course? Will all of your shapes be the same? Are you going with vector objects like clip art and shapes or you going to use photographs?

The screen is going to have some content and that content is going to have a look, whether you plan it or not. To avoid the Frankencourse, be intentional about what goes on the screen and why.

Understand the Authoring Tools

The more you know about the tools, the more you’ll be able to do to avoid the discordant look of the course. Many of the rapid elearning applications are form-based so they come with a specific look.

Often people go with the default settings. However the default settings aren’t necessarily aligned to your course’s look. In the example below, you can see that the default quiz that’s inserted in the course doesn’t have a layout or color scheme that matches the course image above.

• Make your templates match. When adding content from other applications match the color schemes and design elements used in the course. This way they’ll look like they belong together.
• Blend the different applications. Create a transparent player for the application you insert. This way you get the functionality of the inserted application and it pulls in the background from the course screen.

In the example below, I used the same quiz as above. But instead of going with the default, I made the quiz player transparent and matched the color scheme and design elements so it looks like it’s part of the course design. It’s the same quiz, but I think you’ll agree that it looks much better in the course.

Many form-based tools, especially quizzes have that blocky form look. One of my favorite features in Articulate Quizmaker is being able to switch to slide view. This provides a freeform screen to compose your own look.

Compare the two before and after images below. The first image is the default quiz form and the second is the exact same question composed in slide view. As you can see slide view gives you freedom to create the look and feel you need and still offers the easy authoring of rapid elearning.

Of course when you use a tool like Storyline much of this changes because everything’s part of a single application. But if you do combine PowerPoint-to-Flash with other applications, you’ll need to examine the tools. And then see where you can make edits so that the content you pull together all looks like it belongs together.

In either case, whether you use rapid elearning tools or a more custom approach there are things you can do to avoid the Frankencourse. The main point is to be intentional about what you want and then to make sure that the design decisions you make are applied consistently throughout the course.

*Frankenstein icon via yootheme

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Comic book layouts are pretty popular. And they work well for elearning courses. For one, they look different. It’s that type of contrast that can hook your learners who might be bored with the standard-looking corporate elearning.

On top of that a comic-like layout breaks the content into panels which allows you to control the pacing and flow of information as each panel progressively reveals more. It’s a great way to still have the simplicity of a linear course, but make it seem more engaging.

A while back I shared how to be inspired by others and included links to two comic-style elearning courses. Based on the feedback, the examples were a hit. I got quite a few emails asking how to build a similar type of course.

In today’s post I’m going to show three ways to build a comic-style layout for your courses. To keep it simple we’ll use PowerPoint, but the ideas should work regardless of the tool you use.

Choose a Layout

Layouts are the key distinguishing feature for the comic book look. Typically they follow some sort of grid. The good thing is that there’s really no right or wrong way to create the grid. Some comics use straight lines and even sized panels. And some use an assortment of panel sizes.

If you’re looking for layout ideas, the first place to look is at comic books. You could attend a comic book convention, but you’ll probably have to wear a goofy costume. A better solution is to go to one of those comic creation sites and see what types of layouts they offer. Here are a couple of good sites:

• Create Your Own Super Hero Comic
• Make Your Own Graphix.

You can also create your own layouts with existing clip art. Here’s an example I shared in this blog post on using Clip Art to create your elearning template. This also lets you build a layout that has that hand-drawn look.

For this demo, we’ll use a few simple layouts. I created them as shapes in PowerPoint. As you can see below, creating the layout’s pretty simple. Feel free to create as many layouts as you want.

Keep in mind that too many choices can be overwhelming. Instead of building 200 possible layouts, stick with 5-10 common layouts.

Another consideration with layouts is determining how you’ll present the content. Review the two elearning examples above and notice how the layouts follow a consistent pattern. For example, you may have one type of layout for information, another for decision-making, and another for feedback.

Deciding how to use the layouts will help you best determine which types of layouts you need.

One last point, the more panels you add to the layouts, the less space you get. If you have too many panels the content make look cluttered and seem confusing. I’d err on the side of fewer panels.

Option 1: Create Master Slide Panels & Layouts

Use PowerPoint’s master slides to create the layouts. You can have as many masters as you like so the best bet is to create all of the possible layouts that you’d use in a single file. And then when you’re ready to go, select a layout for the slide and add your content.

Two ways to work with the master layouts:

• Create the entire panel look on the slide master. Then apply it to a slide and add content within the panel.
• Create watermarked panels on the master slide and use them as guides to control placement of your content. The benefit to this is that you have the general layout mapped, but you’re not confined by the panels if your content doesn’t fit perfectly.

A few tips when working with these types of layouts:

• Use thick lines and determine how colorful you want the panels to be. Think loud and in your face.
• Not all of your content will fit perfectly in the panels. That’s OK. Build your content on the panel and get it to fit the best you can. Then copy and paste it as an image. Use the crop feature to perfectly crop it to the panel.
• Tutorial: this tutorial walks through the template and shows a few production tips.

Option 2: Create Custom-Sized Slides for Each Panel

Instead of building the layouts on the master template, build them on the slides. This gives you more control over the panels because you have direct access to them since they’re not buried in the masters.

Build a master PowerPoint file that has all of the layouts you’d use. Then start with that file when you want to build a comic-inspired course. Make sure to save it with a different name. Duplicate the layouts you want and then add your content.

How to add content to the panels:

• Instead of creating your panel shapes on the master slide, create them on the slide. This lets you manipulate the shape at the slide level. Add content on top of the panel shape.
• Create panel shapes with thick lines and no fill color. Then place them on top of the content. The thick lines will cover up anything that doesn’t fit perfectly.
• Fill the panel shapes with an image. I like this approach because the panels and content will always align perfectly. The only thing that changes is the fill image for the shape.

Bonus tips:

• PowerPoint lets you create slides of any size. Create template files where the slides have the same aspect ratio as the various panels. This way you always know that the inserted fill image fits perfectly inside the PowerPoint shape. You can download some examples in the file below.
• Tutorial: How to work with comic-panel#.ppt and create images to fill the comic panel shapes.

Option 3: Create a Master Panel Image

This is probably the easiest way to create a comic layout. Instead of messing with a bunch of images and trying to get everything laid out perfectly, just create a series of layout images that you place on top of your content.

Essentially, you have one image of the entire page. Then you cut a hole out of the page for each panel. All of the content sits underneath the page image and can only peak through the holes. This guarantees that everything is perfectly aligned inside the panel.

I like this approach because you can move each object in the panel and the overlaid master image masks any overflow to create the illusion of panels.

Extra tips:

• Add your page images to the master slides so that you have a layout. This will act as a general guide. Your slide for each layout you provide should consist of a master slide with the same page layout and the page layout image on the actual slide that acts as the cover.
• Be sure to use the selection pane in PowerPoint (starting with PowerPoint 2007). Hide the page image and add your content using the master as a guide. Then unhide the page layout on the slide when you’re ready to publish. Make sure the cover image is always on top in the selection pane.
• Tutorial: How to create layout mask images to use as panel covers.

To help you out, I created a starter PowerPoint template pack. You can download it in the elearning community. It includes folders for each type of template. You can use them as they are or build your own.

Comic strip layouts are popular and a nice way to make your courses look a bit different. The trick is to determine the type of layout you want and how to get the content into the panels with the least amount of work.

There are many ways to layout the comic panels. Once you decide the type of layout you want, then you need to determine how you will get the content into the panels.

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I have mixed feelings about templates. On one hand templates are great because they help guide the production process and maintain consistency. This is good for the beginner or the organization that desires a defined look and experience.

On the other hand, it’s easy to become too reliant on templates. Often this forces us to use templates that don’t fit the context of the course content. And then many organizations force draconian template rules on all elearning courses, regardless of their purpose. I worked for a multi-billion dollar company that had one official PowerPoint template that had to be used for all things PowerPoint regardless of what was being built. Of course this was disastrous when it came to some of our elearning courses.

I tend to see templates less as rules for course structure and more as guiding principles. When you first start building courses they help with developing a consistent design and course structure. A good template can fill in the gaps for the novice elearning developer.

But as you gain experience, you really should start to lean less on templates. At some point your expertise should kick in and override your reliance on templates. Ideally, each course that you build dictates a unique design.

But of course, that’s not the reality for many of you and templates are part of the production process. In that case, it’s good to know what to look for and where to find templates that you can use.

Microsoft’s Online Office site is a great resource for free PowerPoint templates. They have thousands. But there are some challenges. The first is that there may be a thousand templates, but that’s not the same as a thousand good templates.

And then the other challenge is weeding through thousands of templates. Even if they were all great templates, it takes a lot of time to get through them all.

What I Look for in Free Templates

I want a template free to use for commercial use. Personally, when I share a template I make it available for you to use as you wish. I can’t stand to find a free resource only to find it’s free for personal use only. I’m not sure about you, but I don’t do too many family PowerPoint presentations.

Since many of you are using PowerPoint and the resources on the Microsoft site here’s a link to the Microsoft EULA. I’m no lawyer so it’s up to you to read and interpret the EULA. However here are two things I’ll point out when it comes to using the:

• On resources shared: “…When you give others access to your content on the service, you grant them free, nonexclusive permission to use, reproduce, distribute, display, transmit, and communicate to the public the content solely in connection with the service and other products and services made available by Microsoft. If you don’t want others to have those rights, don’t use the service to share your content.”
• On media elements & templates: “…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…”

My first inclination is to look for a clean design with lots of open space so I have room to add my own content. I also like variations on the slide layouts.

I prefer designs that use the default color schemes in PowerPoint so that I can quickly add my own color schemes. It doesn’t help to find a slick PowerPoint template and then realize that I can’t make it work with my organization’s colors.

Think like a crow. I was sitting outside a Starbucks once watching some crows pick through a garbage dumpster. It made me think that in some ways we need to be like that when it comes to elearning assets.

If you’re a rapid elearning developer with a limited budget, then it’s time to train your eyes to look for the jewels mixed with the junk. We looked at this previously in the post on finding resources for your elearning courses.

Learn to look for the assets that make up the template. While you may not be able to use the template, you may be able to use some of the assets in it.

5 Free PowerPoint Templates to Get You Started

To save you some time, I dug through the PowerPoint templates on the Microsoft site. I think that they could be the starting point for some nice elearning templates.

• Chalkboard: you can’t go wrong with a chalkboard template especially when it has a bunch of layouts.

• Theme Gallery: simple, yet clean layout with a few different slides from which to choose. Good way to learn to use the PowerPoint shapes to create templates. This also works great when you want to apply your own color scheming.

• Interactive Progress Meter: the template is designed to measure fund raising progress but could easily be adapted to some sort of course progress meter or as a simple game-like measure.

• Retro TV: the retro television is a great asset. Put your own pictures or videos behind the image of the television set.

• Bull’s Eye: nothing real fancy about this template, but I like the bright colors. Plus, there are so many applications for bull’s eye targets in elearning it doesn’t hurt to have at least one stand by template, even if it is real simple.

• 10 Question Pop Quiz: comes with a classroom background slide and the pop quiz structure’s a good way to learn to use the selection pane and click and reveal triggers in PowerPoint. Probably works better for PowerPoint than rapid elearning, though.

Obviously these are simple templates and they won’t work with every course. But for those of you looking for some free assets these templates may help. Each one is a bit different. So even if you don’t use the template, look at how it’s designed so that you can learn more about using PowerPoint. The quiz and progress meter templates are good examples of how to use the selection pane and interactive elements in PowerPoint.

Also, don’t forget to take advantage of the free PowerPoint and Storyline templates in the Elearning Heroes community.

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I always joke about how many times I’ve had to take a course on how not to receive bribes, yet I’ve never been in a job where I was important enough to be bribed. The reason I had to take the course was because somewhere in the organization it was determined that everyone had to learn how not to get bribed whether or not it was relevant.

Most likely you’ve also had to take similar types of compliance courses. You know the drill. In November you get an email reminding you to take a list of courses before the end of the year. The subject matter may be important, but when it comes to what you do it’s usually not very relevant.

In an ideal world all elearning would be completely relevant to your job and compliance courses like this wouldn’t exist. But they do; and that’s not going to change any time soon.

So if they’re not going away, what are some things we can do to make the courses better and add more value to you and the organization?

Recognize that a compliance course isn’t usually a performance-based course.

Typically compliance courses are more like certification programs. They’re not interested in changed performance as much as they are in certifying a specific level of understanding. In that case, the process to certify can be a lot simpler than the process to teach new skills.

Do you need an elaborate role playing scenario if you just need to be reminded where to locate the fire extinguisher and emergency exits?

Don’t create a course.

Many times the compliance courses share information that is already available in other formats in the organization. If that’s the case, do you need a full multimedia product to share that information? Perhaps all you need to do is distribute a .PDF or other type of document to remind people.

If you need to do some tracking, build a simple quiz. Make the .PDF available to the elearners and then let them go online to take the quiz. The production process is a lot simpler and my guess is those who take the courses will appreciate a simpler approach.

What does the law really say?

Most compliance courses come with all sorts of constraints that aren’t conducive to good learning. For example, the course navigation is locked or there’s way too much information. When you challenge that approach to the course design, usually someone will whip out “the law says…” card.

True, there are some legal or regulatory guidelines that dictate how to build the courses for certain subject matter. But I’d spend some time to really look at what the requirements are, especially if the alternative is to build a boring and cumbersome elearning product.

In the end, you’ll still have to do what the law says. But from my experience the requirements aren’t always as draconian as first believed. And if they are, then that’s good to know.

Keep it simple.

Let’s face it; for many people compliance training is a waste of time. In those cases, make the course structure as simple as possible. Making an elearning course interactive doesn’t make it more meaningful, but it does make it more time-consuming. Sometimes all you need is five bullet points.

Interactivity is good when it fits the learner context and needs. But interactivity at the expensive of a simpler linear solution is a waste of time for the learner and the organization. So build a course that’s appropriate to the objective. If the objective is merely to have checked completion on December 31, then a linear course probably suffices and you can commit your resources to more meaningful elearning courses.

Let them test out.

I delivered an annual safety program once that had over 20 modules. Each module took 10-15 minutes. That’s up to 300 minutes of information. Multiply that by 15,000 people who had to take the course and you have over 75,000 hours of training. What does that cost the organization in lost productivity?

If you want to certify that they know the information, create a way for them to test out. Put an assessment up front to determine their level of understanding. If they can demonstrate that they know the information, why force them through the course?

Most likely you’ll still meet your compliance requirement and you’ll save the organization valuable time and resources.

Don’t lock the navigation?

The most frustrating experience in an elearning course is when the navigation is locked. I equate it to gluing all of the pages of a book together. Usually the reason we lock navigation is because we’re worried that they “won’t get all of the information.”

If you need to make sure they “got the information” then build in a mechanism so they can prove their understanding of the it. The only thing you can make sure of with locked navigation is that they visited a screen and clicked the next button when allowed to.

Reframe it so it is relevant.

While there are many compliance courses that aren’t relevant, most likely the information in the course is relevant in some way to the learner. The key is to find out how and then frame the content in a perspective that makes sense to the learner.

If you’re not quite sure how to do that, go talk to a few of them and ask how they’d use the information or where it applies to what they do. Then use their feedback as a way to reframe the content. Move it away from general compliance information and into a product that is meaningful and pertinent.

We don’t want to be cynical about compliance courses because in most cases the information is important to the organization. In an ideal world, you’ll be able to build targeted courses that are meaningful and meet the organization’s goals.

But the reality is that often the goal is an end-of-year record of completion. In those cases, it may make more sense to do a simple course to meet that goal. It’ll free up your resources and the time of the people who have to take the courses.

By the way if you do want to bribe me, I’ve been known to enjoy the Haribo Happy Colas.

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In a recent post I made this comment about rapid elearning tools:

Rapid elearning played a role in the evolution of elearning mostly because it took course creation out of the hands of a few programmers and placed it into the hands of anyone who wanted to create a course.

Someone asked if that’s a good thing to place the tools in the hands of anyone who wanted to create a course. It’s a good question. But is it the right question?

Technology Should Be Easy to Use

It’s a good thing when technology gets easier to use. It empowers people to do more and it creates opportunity for the ones using the tools.

A few years ago only a programmer could build even simple drag & drop interactions. If you didn’t have the skills you couldn’t use them in your courses. So that level of interactivity wasn’t even a consideration in course design. Today, a drag & drop interaction can be built in seconds.

Does it mean that I am a better instructional designer? No. Does it mean that having a drag & drop interaction is going to make my course better? Not necessarily. But it does mean that I am able to do something I couldn’t do before. And that only creates more opportunity for my course design. And that’s good.

When is a Course Not a Course?

We may say “elearning course” but it’s a term used loosely. The rapid elearning tools create all sorts of interactive multimedia that are not exclusively “elearning courses.” I see the tools used in various industries for more than course design.

Here are some examples created in Articulate Storyline:

• Formal elearning courses like this role playing scenario
• Quick just-in-time tutorials like this one on cropping images in PowerPoint
• iPad-based performance support like this demo to assist customer service agents (view on the iPad)
• Interactive marketing material such as this laptop example
• Games and other fun interactive media

As you can see, each example is a bit different and not all are what we’d call “elearning.” Thus the qualifications to use the tool aren’t always about instructional design.

A Tool’s Just a Tool

Whenever this topic of elearning tools comes up someone pulls out a tool metaphor (pick your tool, but it’s usually a hammer, saw or wrench).

• Because you have a hammer/saw doesn’t make you a carpenter.
• When you have a hammer everything looks like a nail.
• I keep pounding nails with my [insert tool] because it’s the only tool I have.

You get the idea. They’re fun metaphors and do illustrate some truth; but they fall apart quickly.

I have a hammer and I use it even though I’m not a licensed carpenter. Sometimes I just need to hang a photo or do some light carpentry. I don’t need to wait until I have to build a house to use a hammer. The one tool can meet the needs of people at many levels. The same goes for elearning. There are all sorts of reasons why people use rapid elearning applications.

I’d hate to think that there’s some elitist blocking my entry into Home Depot because she’s deciding if I’m qualified or not to use a hammer. Do you know who’ll decide my qualifications? The person that sends me a paycheck, not someone standing on her soapbox.

Operating at the Speed of Business

Just today I was talking to a friend of mine who’s an executive recruiter and teaches interviewing skills. He’s a great subject matter expert and has some really good content that he’d like to turn into elearning courses. The problem is that some of the bids he’s gotten are outlandish.

Years ago getting his product to market wouldn’t happen. But today he has the option to build his own course or hire part of it out. He may not build a course that rivals what a pro shop would do, but he can build a course that will find an audience.

Here are some other examples I’ve seen where organizations benefit from having the rapid elearning applications available to more than just “qualified” people:

• A dentist who creates his own videos on tooth care and then uses Articulate Engage to offer some information to his patients. He can do that all on his own. In the past, that would have cost him thousands of dollars.
• A car dealership creates simple tutorials on car maintenance and makes them available to their customers. This helps educate the customer on what happens when the car’s being repaired. The tutorials are created by the staff mechanics.
• An organization had a couple of workplace deaths. To understand what happened, a team flew to the location to investigate. All of the accidents involved people taking safety shortcuts. So they shot some video, did interviews, and created a quick refresher course on safety. It was assembled and delivered in just a few hours. This was unheard of a few years ago.

Those are some simple examples of how organizations are able to use the rapid elearning tools to create the products they needed when they needed them. They worked at the speed of business and within the constraints that existed and delivered viable solutions.

Should Everyone Build Courses?

To be fair the essence of the question really isn’t about the tools. It’s more about the courses that are being created and who should be creating them. It’s fair to say that just because you have the tools doesn’t mean you’re going to build good courses.

At the same time, just because you don’t have any formal qualifications doesn’t mean you can’t build good courses. I’ve been around this industry long enough to see plenty of bad courses created by “qualified” people and good courses create by the layman.

I prefer to focus on helping people get better. So if you’re one of those unqualified souls and want to learn more about building elearning courses, here are five recent posts that move in the right direction:

• 3 Ways to Avoid Common Roadblocks When Building E-Learning Courses

• Are You Asking These Questions to Build Effective E-Learning?

• Here’s a Way to Make Your E-Learning Course Objectives Interesting

• How to Create Interactive E-Learning

• Do You Have the Skills to Succeed?

On top of that connect with your peers in the elearning community and read some good books. And of course you can always go to school to get more formal education and then volunteer to gain more experience.

The argument about the tools and who should use them will continue. Personally I lean on the side of empowering people and prefer to leave the debates to conference panel discussions. Sure some people won’t build good courses. That’s OK. It creates an opportunity for trainers, consultants, freelancers, and anyone else that can fill the gaps.

What do you think? Feel free to share your thoughts using the comments link.

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Rapid elearning played a role in the evolution of elearning mostly because it took course creation out of the hands of a few programmers and placed it into the hands of anyone who wanted to create a course.

I see this as the democratization of elearning. And it runs parallel to how digital media’s empowered people all over the world to create and deliver content using a host of online tools and social media applications.

Some people lament this democratization. They think that only they should be able to create and deliver courses because they apparently have some sort of special training. But that’s all just nonsense.

It’s a good thing when people are empowered. In fact, the industry used to spend a lot of time talking about the programming part of elearning. But now we’re spending that time discussing instructional design and effectiveness of elearning. And that’s good. What people lack in terms of instructional design skills they can surely learn just as well as any of the lamenters did.

Speaking of evolution, last week was a hallmark week for me. It was my fifth year working at Articulate and we also released Articulate Storyline. I’ve been blessed to work with a great group of people and have spent the past five years getting to meet so many passionate elearning developers.

I am really excited about Storyline because it falls right into the evolution of our industry. The tool is easy to use and at the same time it’s empowering because it offers a level of capability that didn’t exist years ago without requiring some programming know-how.

My Favorite Features

In today’s post I want to show off a few of my favorite features. While I’ve been in this industry for a while, I’m still like many of you. For the most part I work by myself, I’m not a programmer, and I have to make do with the tools I have…and I have no budget. So when our developers gave me a copy of Storyline I was giddy with excitement. Finally, I could create a lot of the interactivity that I wanted to do but couldn’t because I didn’t have the Flash programming skills.

Build Drag & Drop Interactions in Seconds

Who doesn’t want to use drag & drop interactions? The challenge for many of us is knowing how to build them. Storyline makes it super easy.

Any slide you create in Storyline (or import from PowerPoint) can be quickly converted to a drag & drop interaction. It literally only takes seconds to do the conversion. That’s pretty powerful.

Click here to view a drag & drop interaction.

Now instead of spending time on programming, you can spend your time determining the best way to use drag & drop interactions in your elearning courses.

Tutorial: How to build drag & drop interactions. Learn how easy it is to convert any slide to a drag & drop interaction.

Use Interactive Characters to Enhance Feedback

The challenge for many people is having the assets to build elearning courses. Storyline comes with 40 illustrated and photographic characters so that you’ll always have a consistent set of characters to use in your courses.

The illustrated characters are tied to Storyline’s triggers so you can change the character’s expressions based on user actions. This is great for giving feedback to the learners.

Here’s a demo that Jeanette and her daughter created on how to make a Green Monster drink. It’s fun and shows an effective use of the character set.

Click here to view the Green Monster demo.

Tutorial: Create interactive feedback with Storyline characters. Watch how I build a quick call center scenario in just a few minutes.

Easily Customize the Course Player

Rapid elearning is great because it simplifies a lot of the production process. But with that simplification you give up some customization. This is really evident in the course player. It reminds me of the old Henry Ford line, “You can have any color you want as long as it’s black.”

Storyline makes player customization super simple. Take a look at some of the demos from the showcase. As you can see they all look a little different. That’s because you have more control over the player.

You’re not tied to a specific look or size of the course player. You can easily move things around, turn them on or off, and change the dimensions of your elearning course to meet your needs. And you’re always free to create your own controls within the slide. That’s what DFLearning did in this example.

Tutorial: How to customize the elearning course player. I walk through the player customization. Check out the lightbox feature for the player.

Easily Edit Screencasts & Software Simulations

At a previous company I had to build a lot of interactive software simulations. I really didn’t enjoy it because the editing process was always so cumbersome. I hated having to edit screens or do multiple takes of the recording, especially when it required resetting all of the screens and activities.

Click here to view screencast demo.

One of the things I truly enjoy about Storyline’s software simulation is the way editing works. First, you record your software demo. Then you decide if you want to insert just the video or an interactive simulation. And here’s the best part. At any time you can go back and change it.

For example: you insert a video, but the client wants to convert that to a simulated software interaction. In the past, you’d have to recapture everything. Now, you just go to the video and switch modes. It’s
as easy as that.

Same with editing. If I get an artifact or something on the screen I don’t want, I just right-click to access the fine tuning feature and select a frame without the issue. Editing only takes a few seconds. That sure beats all of the time I spent doing recaptures in the past.

Tutorial: Quickly make edits to software simulations. Learn to make quick edits and change modes without having to recapture the video.

Create Courses that Look Great on the iPad

I really love the way the content looks on the iPad. I’ve probably showed it off to all of my friends and neighbors. It just looks good. And it works great, too.

All of the demos and showcase examples work on the iPad. Download the free mobile player and you’ll see that you get a really rich experience. Much better than what you get with HTML5 which has some limitations when it comes to interactive content.

You’ll notice that with the mobile player all of the interactivity works the way it was designed to work. I like to pinch the slides out so they play full screen. The content just looks like it belongs there. It doesn’t look like a clunky web page.

Easy Sharing of Storyline Files

My focus is always on how to give away assets and content to help people build their courses. One of the best things about Storyline is the ability to share slides and templates with other Storyline authors. It’s about as easy as sharing slides in PowerPoint.

We’ve already added some content to the downloads section that are free for you to use. I’ve even converted a few of the free PowerPoint templates to Storyline templates.

You may recognize these two:

• Business Circles
• Air Mail

Over time there will be all sorts of free interactive content that will save you money and time.

There’s really a lot more to Articulate Storyline, but those are some of my favorite features. As I said earlier, like many of you I’m not a programmer so I’m really excited about the tool and all of the stuff I’ll be able to do with it.

If you want to learn more, checkout these videos. And feel free to download the trial and use the free templates to test it out.  I look forward to your feedback.

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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.

I get a lot of questions about interactivity from those who are just getting started. Typically they begin with a lot of subject matter content and they’re not quite sure how to make the course interactive.

There’s a lot to consider when it comes to building interactive elearning. But if someone’s just getting started here are the three tips that I usually share:

Make it Relevant

The first step to interactivity is relevance. The worst thing is having to take an elearning course that is completely meaningless. I’ve never had a job where I’m in a position to be bribed. Yet in many of the organizations I’ve worked, I’ve had to take courses on how not to receive bribes. What a waste of time!

And many of us experience this type of irrelevant elearning. We’ll get an email in November reminding us to complete a bunch of courses by the end of the year. When that happens, I contact the HR person to see if I can get around those requirements. But unfortunately the person’s already taken the course on how not to get bribed. So I’m usually out of luck.

While relevance doesn’t equate to interactivity, it does equate to an engaged learner. And an engaged learner is more apt to learn and not be dependent on interactive gimmicks (which is what we usually start with when we try to make the course interactive). So before you look to build interactive elements in your course, determine how to make the content relevant to the learner.

Tips:

• Talk to your potential audience and let them share ideas on how they’d use the content. Their ideas are a good resource for scenarios.
• Interview new people who may have recently experienced the training to get feedback on what worked and what didn’t and how they feel the course relates to the real world.

Let the Learner Explore

A large part of learning is about forming a hypothesis and then testing it out. Often we fail, but the process of reflecting on an idea and then testing it is how we learn, whether we’re right or not.

There’s a lot of opportunity in elearning to let the person explore the course content and provide places for them to reflect and test ideas—“What happens if I make this choice and click here?”

Another value in exploration is that it allows the learner to determine what information is relevant or not. For example, if I know how to do something I can skip over that content and get to the content that I’m not sure about.

Unfortunately most of the elearning courses I see are linear and not very interactive. Linear isn’t bad on its own. Sometimes it’s preferable to get the information in a simple linear process. But what tends to make the linear course unbearable is when the course navigation is locked. And we tend to lock it because we’re worried that the “learner will not get all of the information.”

That’s faulty thinking which we’ll cover in the next section. For now, look at your content and determine how you can craft an environment where the learner can explore and get to the information she needs.

Tips:

• Instead of creating a linear path of information, look for ways to let the learner find information or access it in different ways. At a minimum, give them some control over how they choose to get the information.
• Get the learner to “touch the screen.” It’s interactive because it engages a different sense and it forces YOU to find new ways to present information.

Here are a couple of simple examples:

In this first example, we could just create four screens and have the learner go through them in order. But instead we give them the freedom to select a tab. This does two things: it lets them touch the screen and they get to choose what they want to review. It’s simple, but it’s an easy way to convert your click-and-read content to something more interactive.

Click here to view the demo.

In the next example, you’re required to view three tutorial videos. Like the example above, I could have had the learners click on each video link and go through it in linear order.

But instead I freed up the navigation by letting the learners choose a video and then drag it to be played. By having them drag the video I get them to touch the screen. And I also give them the freedom to choose the video they want to watch. If this were a real software course, the learners may not need all of the tutorials. So why would I want to lock them into a linear path?

Click here to view the demo.

The two examples above are simple, but if you couple this type of interactivity with relevant content, you’ll be on your way to building an interactive elearning course.

Get the Learner to Pull Content

Relevant content is good and mixing it with screens that allows people to click and explore helps. But probably the single biggest thing you can do to transition from non-interactive to interactive elearning is craft an environment where the learner has to pull information in rather than us push information out.

The easiest way to do this is to craft decision points in the course. Force the learner to make decisions and then give them a way to collect the resources they need.

Some people won’t collect anything. They’ll jump in and make some educated guesses. Sometimes they’ll be right and sometimes not. That’s OK. They’re fine getting feedback and making adjustments. Others will not make any decisions until they’ve done an exhaustive search of every piece of information. That’s OK, too. In both cases you’re engaging the learner and giving them the freedom to make decisions and learn in a way that engages them.

The key to this approach is in how you structure access to the content. There are a number of ways you can get the information to the learner (which addresses the argument for locking slides).

• Set the stage by providing some contextual information.
• Create decision points where the learner is challenged to demonstrate their understanding. We don’t want them just reading or listening. We want them to reflect and process. Getting them to make decisions is a good way to get them there.
• Provide a means for them to collect information (this is where exploration comes in handy).
• Give them feedback based on the decisions they make.

As you can see, in all four instances you have an opportunity to provide the information that would normally be part
of your linear click-and-read content. They get information when you set the stage. They can get more information as you force them to a decision. They get even more information as they explore and try to fill in the gaps prior to making a decision. And then of course you can provide information in the feedback process.

Normally we push content out, but if we think about how to get the learner to pull the content in it forces us to craft relevant scenarios and decisions. And we have to move our course design away from linear and towards more open exploration and interactivity.

And at that point you’ll have a much more engaging and interactive elearning experience.

Countering the Locked Navigation Argument

To those who have to deal with the locked navigation argument, you can still lock the course. The ultimate goal isn’t locking navigation and making sure people look at slides. The goal is that they’re able to do or understand something.

So you counter the argument by showing that a course that has decision points allows the learner to demonstrate their understanding of the content more so than forcing them to view a slide. Plus, you can still lock the course at the decision points. The learner is free to move around within the decision, but can’t advance until he’s demonstrated his understanding.

These three tips will help you move your content away from linear, click-and-read content and towards something more interactive and engaging. The next time you get some course content, ask how you can create a pull situation rather than pushing it out. And you’ll find that gives you a lot of ideas on making the course interactive.

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I’ve been on the road a lot lately doing elearning workshops and Articulate jam sessions. After the sessions I usually get some really good questions that are probably common to many of us. Today, we’ll look at how to manage the images used in elearning courses.

Essentially there’s no right or wrong way to manage your images. Do what works best for you and your team. Here are a few ideas:

Be Consistent in How You Manage Course Files & Assets

We can waste a lot of time looking for images and assets that are spread across multiple computers and network drives. To help alleviate that, I start each elearning course with a generic folder. It already has a predefined project structure so I’ll always know where my image files are located regardless of the project I access.

When I start the project, I duplicate the generic folder and title it with the project name. After that all of my assets and project content go into the proper folders. This helps make the process consistent which comes in handy if you share files with others

You can get more detail in this blog post on organizing your elearning project files. There’s even a quick workshop tutorial that explains it in a bit more detail.

Click here to view the tutorial.

Use a Photo Management Application

Picasa or Windows Live Photo Gallery (both free) will scan your hard drive and locate images. They create a nice panel of thumbnails.

I like these programs because the thumbnails give me a quick visual reference of the images and then simple access to folder. And I can tag the images so they’re easier to search and locate later.

It takes a little time to get the images tagged, but once done, you’ll save a lot of time looking for what you need.

I usually start by tagging based on the project name. This keeps it simple. I find I don’t access the images that frequently after the project’s done so no need to go overboard initially. Over time I add more details to the images as I get to them.

Another bonus to these products is that they do some simple image editing. Check out the Photo Fuse feature in Windows Live Photo Gallery (could the name be a little longer please). It’s pretty slick and could come in handy if shooting your own stock photos.

Microsoft’s Clip Organizer Does Everything You Need

Almost everyone has access to Microsoft’s Clip Organizer, but we rarely use it. However, it lets you easily organize and manage your elearning assets. And it’s free.

I like that the Clip Organizer already does a lot of the tagging because it pulls from the project folder and file name. If you get in the habit of adding descriptive titles and folder names, you will make tagging and locating your images super easy.

Here’s a previous post where I discuss how to save time when working with elearning graphics. There are also three tutorials that show how to get more out of the Clip Organizer. For quick access to the Clip Organizer, I added a shortcut to my desktop.

One of the things I like about the Clip Organizer is that it’s not limited to Microsoft applications either. I can drag and drop the images to any other application that uses them.

Manage Your Image Files After the Fact

Most of the times when I look for photos that I’ve used in the past, it’s always based on a previous project. For example it’s less, “I need a guy in a business suit” and more “I used a guy in a suit in that finance course. We can use that image.”

The problem is that I have to dig through the previous course assets to find the image. Sometimes the image folder contains a lot more images than the ones I used. It would be great to just have a folder with ONLY the images used in the final course.

That’s possible! In PowerPoint 2007+ you can unzip the .pptx file; and inside the PowerPoint file folder you’ll locate a media folder. This media folder has all of the images used in your PowerPoint file.

Pull the media folder out and save it with the course name. Now you have a single media folder with the course media assets. So you’ll always have quick access to only the images you used in your rapid elearning course.

I use 7-Zip which is a free application that lets me extract the contents of the PowerPoint file. You can learn more in this blog post on unleashing your elearning graphics in PowerPoint 2007.

Here’s a simple tutorial where I walk through the process in more detail.

Click here to view the tutorial.

I’ll have to be honest. When I work by myself, I don’t always follow my own advice. And it always comes back to haunt me because somewhere down the road I have to share the files with others. So getting in the habit of managing your files is a good thing that will save time and frustration.

There are all sorts of ways to manage your files. Regardless of how you do it, the key is consistency and agreeing on a process that works for you and your team. The less it intrudes on how you work, the more success you’ll have.

How do
you manage the graphics you use in your courses? Feel free to share your thoughts by clicking on the comments link.

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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.

One of the topics we cover in the elearning workshops is how to quickly create templates to help move the elearning courses out of that PowerPoint look.

At a previous workshop someone wanted to see how this was done so we created one quickly in class. I like to do these templates because they help bring out a few ideas.

Ideas to Inspire Your Creativity

Most of us aren’t graphic designers and we struggle to come up with a nice looking design. One way to work around that is to be inspired by those who have graphic design skills.

As a habit, I like to review website designs for ideas. I learn a lot about layouts and how the designer is using color. I can apply these ideas to my elearning courses because when it comes down to it, a web pages and elearning screens are going to have the same visual elements like text, objects, colors, and pictures.

Develop Technical Proficiency

I’ve shared many templates and illustration ideas over the past few years. While the actual templates work for some of your projects, the main point is less about the actual output and more about developing technical proficiency with the tools you have. In this case, I mostly use PowerPoint.

With each template I try to reinforce some design ideas and techniques that you can use in PowerPoint to create your own templates or illustrations. If you can use the ones I give away, that’s cool. But hopefully you’ll take the time to practice some of the techniques so that you develop more proficient skills in PowerPoint.

Here’s a template we built in the workshop. The inspiration came from a template we quickly found on the template monster website.

I liked the circular layout and the dark background. I also liked that the background is patterned because that lets me show a few extra design tips when using PowerPoint.

Above are the layouts we quickly developed in the workshop. As you can see, they look similar, but they’re not verbatim. I try to keep as much space open for content as I can so I didn’t use the larger circle layout from the template monster template.

• Quick overview of what’s in the free PowerPoint template.

PowerPoint Production Tips

Here’s an example of the template in action. If you want to use it, you can download it here.

Click here to view the demo.

After previewing the template, check out the production tips below. They’ll help you save time the next time you build a rapid elearning course.

Create textured backgrounds by layering transparent images. Create shapes and fill them with gradients, colors, or patterns. Then vary their transparency. Sit them on top of each other and you can create all sorts of effects.

• Click here to view tutorial.

Use the selection pane to control layers and name objects. Starting with PowerPoint 2007 there’s a selection pane that allows you to see the layered objects. You can show/hide them for quick access.

It’s a good habit to name them so that you can easily locate the objects. This is especially true if you leave the project for a while and come back in. Sometimes it’s hard to know what’s what. By naming the objects you’ll save time and get back up to speed quickly.

• Click here to view the tutorial.

Add hyperlinks as objects and not on the object. If I use a hyperlink, I try to create a rectangle for the link rather than put the link on the object itself. The reason I do this is because I can identify the links on the slide.

For example, if I put a link on a circle shape. How do I know the link is there without looking for it? But if I create a shape just for the link, then I know that there’s a link on the slide. Going to the point above, I also title the link in the selection pane so it’s easy to find.

• Click here to view tutorial.

In PowerPoint 2010, you can create custom shapes by combining shapes or using one to punch out a shape from the other.

In the example from the template, I created a circle that extended way past the borders of the slide. So I used a rectangle and the shape subtract feature to cut off all of the shapes that were hanging over the slide edge.

• Click here to view the tutorial.

Customize the ribbon for quick access to common PowerPoint features. Again starting in PowerPoint 2010 you can customize the ribbon toolbar to create your own shortcuts.

For example, the shape editing features that I mentioned above are not readily available. So you need to find them and add them to your toolbar. If you find that you use the same features quite a bit, create your own tab so that all of the common features are in one location. It probably is a good idea to create a “Rapid Elearning” tab with all of your favorite features.

• Click here to view the tutorial.

There are a lot more PowerPoint tips and tricks that will help you build better elearning courses. Hope you enjoy the template. What’s your favorite PowerPoint tip? Feel free to share it by clicking on the comments link. Or better yet, create a quick Screenr so we always have access to your tip.

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Get your free PowerPoint templates and free graphics & stock images.	Lots of cool e-learning examples to check out and find inspiration.	Getting Started? This e-learning 101 series and the free e-books will help.

I get a lot of requests for software demos and quick tutorials. I also do quite a few webinars. Because of this, I am always figuring out just the perfect screen resolution for my software applications.

Another challenge is that most screencasts are recorded at a higher resolution than used in the elearning courses. You may record a full screen demo and then have to squeeze it down to something like 1024×768. And any time you scale a screencast down you’ll run into some image degradation.

The good news is that as monitors get bigger scaling down won’t be as much an issue. As you can see in this post, 85% of the monitors have a screen size larger than 1024×768.

Ideally we can scale the software down to the desired recording resolution. But that’s not always possible. Some software has restrictions on how much you can scale the window down. They do this because if you scale too much the user interface gets messed up and makes it difficult to use.

Above is an example of a PowerPoint screen scaled down to fit in a small recording window. As you can see, the user interface is trashed. While the software is functional it is not what the end user sees when they open up the application.

I have similar concerns when I do webinars and share application screens. During those I have to determine the best size to share the software. I like to keep the size of the applications the same. This way when I am switching between applications it’s as seamless as possible and the person watching the webinar doesn’t have to resize the viewing window.

Following is a simple trick that I use to quickly get my various software applications to the right size whether I’m doing a screencast or webinar.

Create an image file that represents the screen resolution you need. When you want to record a quick screencast or share an application, set the image as your desktop image. After that, place the application on top of the image and scale it to fit. Then draw the recording window around the application.

I have all sorts of preset images that I can switch depending on the software I need to share.

Here’s an example of what I do:

Let’s suppose I am recording some PowerPoint tutorials. I’ve played around with some settings and realize that I can get the best looking UI if the window is 1096 pixels wide. I also want the window to be 4:3 aspect ratio.

So I need to figure out what the proper dimensions are for a 4:3 aspect ratio that is 1096 pixels wide.

Calculate the 4:3 aspect ratio using the 1096 width. I use the aspect ratio calculator. A 4:3 aspect ratio starting with 1096 is going to be 1096×822.

Create a graphic that is 1096×822. I prefer a solid white graphic. You can make it a few pixels bigger if you like so there’s a margin when you record.

Save the image as 1096×822.png or powerpoint.png. I like to save by application name so it’s easier to locate.

Set the image as your desktop image when you’re ready to record. And then make sure it’s centered.

Place application over desktop image. Anytime you want to record an application, select its matching display image and then you can quickly align to the box. I find this really helps when I record with Screenr or when I do webinars.

That’s basically it. You create an image of a certain size and then anytime you want to do a screencast, switch your desktop background to the image and center it. Place your application over the image and you’re all set.

I’m always switching between applications and screencasting products like Screenr and Storyline. So I find this works well for me.

Bonus Screencasting Tips

• Add a branded image. If you want to add a branded look for your Screenr (or screencast) videos, put your logo or tag line on the desktop image. Here’s a quick screencast I created to show what it looks like. I did a quick PowerPoint tutorial &  added the community logo and link to the image. You could also do this for your webinar software demos. Here’s a tutorial that explains how to add the logo.

• Create an image that’s off to the side. This works great for webinars or screensharing where you can select an area of the desktop to show. Select the image area and then slide the applications in and out without having to worry about resizing the applications. Here’s a tutorial that explains how.

These tips should help if you want a simple way to quickly set up your desktop applications for sharing whether through a screencast or webinar.

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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
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