Inevitably you have to provide instructions on how to do something in the course. The question is when to provide them and at what level of detail. In this post we’ll explore three ways to guide the instruction process.

Provide Instructions Upfront

The most common way to provide instructions is to do it all up front. This is what I see in most of the courses I review. Generally you share what needs to happen and when. Depending on the complexity, you may provide some details and screen shots. The point though is that all of the instructions come up front and then the person continues through the course.

• Pros: this is probably the easiest thing to do; the gate screen concept works for this approach. Some people add instructions and help reminders to the player for quick access.
• Cons: they’re all up front and sometimes people aren’t quite clear on expectations until they’ve had some experience with the course or have made a few mistakes. They probably need more context before they even know what to do with the instructions.

Provide Instructions at the Point of Need

Get what you need as you need it. Why burden them with instructions at the front end of the course when they will most likely forget them anyway? It makes sense to delay instructions until the person needs them.

For example, you provide some context upfront and then have them go through the procedure. Walk them through it. You can also delay the instructions and if no action is taken, then provide instructions after it’s determined they’ve not acted (or possibly done something incorrectly).

• Pros: you’re not overwhelming them with content, let them build context, and get what they need at time of need
• Cons: it takes a little more work to build the mechanism to evaluate and time instructions; may be intrusive to the process for someone who gets it. Make sure to not lock the process.

Provide Instructions as Practice Activites

I like the Wii-type instructions where new tasks are presented with practice activities. This builds off of the progressive instructions in option two where the instructions are provided at time of need. However it does introduce the practice element. This allows a person to practice to a level of competence.

Here’s an example: “Address customer issues and input them into the system. Before you begin the scenarios you can practice and learn the proper input procedures. Do you want to practice? Yes or No?”

“Yes” moves them to a practice scenario with step-by-step guidance. “No” moves them into the challenge activity where they are timed and will get feedback later.

Essentially you say: “Here’s what you need to do. Do you want to practice before we get started? OK. Here is a practice opportunity. No? OK. Let’s proceed with the activity.”

• Pros: instructions are just-in-time and in context with the course; disarms new learners and provides confidence; frees tenured learners to ignore.
• Cons: the major con to this approach is the time it takes to build instructions that are effective and relevant. Probably requires working knowledge of variables to create an adaptive path.

So there you have it, three ways to guide your learners through the course. Which way do you prefer? What other options do you recommend?

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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 have an older Sega Master System. I recall spending hours and hours playing on that thing. It was cool 25 years ago. Then it was lame. But now it’s cool again. I took it out of storage to show my kids.

What struck me were the instruction booklets that came with the games. They seem so archaic especially when I look at how my son learns the games. He downloads them and just starts playing. What’s changed?

Back Then

• The expectation was to have instructions. How else would you learn?
• Video game consoles were still relatively new, so it made sense to have booklets to help new customers learn.
• The Internet didn’t exist (or at least not for me) so getting access to information wasn’t easy. Thus an instruction book made sense. I also didn’t have any friends who had the console to offer counsel.
• It was an analog age, thus having analog content was the norm. The idea of a digital instruction guide made no sense unless you were Marty McFly.
• An instructional designer on the training team convinced someone that people will never learn to play the games without clear instructions.

Today

• Expectations have changed. Game players don’t expect detailed instructions. They just jump right in.
• Instructions are provided just-in-time as you need them. I love the way it works with the Wii. Right before you do something new, they give you quick instructions and a practice option.
• Game players are often connected to other game players and learn through their community of peers. They learn how to play and they learn the nuances and cheats, as well.
• Who has time to read through manuals?
• Game instruction is often predicated on simple, intuitive steps where the challenges increase with proficiency. Typically, the learning is chunked with the option to repeat when necessary. And you tend to pick up where you left off.

How does any of this relate to how we build courses today?

Most of the elearning courses I see aren’t overly complex. Yet they’re saddled with meaningless navigation instructions and all sorts of content irrelevant to the learner’s needs or the course’s learning objectives. In fact, the other day I was talking to a young man about the elearning industry and the career opportunities it presented. I showed him how the authoring tools work and then showed him a bunch of examples.

One of the first things he noticed was all of the navigation instructions and lead up to the course. And the other thing was all of the information. He asked how to move past it and when he got to the real action. Unfortunately, all of the examples were locked down and there was no action.

Here are a few tips I’d offer for today’s course builders:

• Keep the courses short. Shorter courses are more digestible. They keep people focused.
• Break the content into single topics. This allows you to accomplish the first item above. And it provides freedom for the learner to get what they need.
• Get rid of the navigation instructions. The course navigation design should be intuitive. If you need a course on navigating the course, something’s broken.
• Provide just-in-time instructions. If you want the person to do something different or unique, then provide the instructions at the point when they’re needed. I like the way Rick added the instructions in his Hero Land module.

• Replace instructions with exploration. Of course this works in context with the course’s objectives, but there are all sorts of mechanisms you can use to get the learner to pull in content, rather than you pushing it out.
• Add activities where the person needs to collect information and then make decisions. That’s how you can leverage exploration.
• Understand the learning happens. Just because we build a course doesn’t mean people learn. They’ll learn what they need. And often I suspect what we build interferes with their learning. This is usually the case when the branding folks and the legal department get involved with your projects.

• Most of the learning happens outside of the course. Find ways to connect what you’re doing to what they do once they’ve completed the course.
• Communities of practice trumps cumbersome manuals. In today’s world, part of training should include getting the community of practice connected to share tips and tricks and offer support.

Those are a few thoughts on what we can do to move our training forward. What tips do you have for today’s course builders? Add them in the comments section.

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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.

Reviewing elearning examples is a great way to learn. You find inspiration to prompt your own ideas and by deconstructing the courses, you learn to use your elearning software to create something similar.

Here are some really nice elearning examples that I’ve seen in the community recently. Check them out and then try to figure out how they were built.

E-Learning Example: Hero Land

Click to view the elearning example.

Here’s a great module built by Richard Lee Hill. This is one of the slickest demos I’ve seen in a while and an excellent example of what you can create with the authoring tools. He combines some great gaming mechanics with learning more about Storyline.

Deconstruction questions for you:

• How to move the character freely about the screen?
• How to collect items and rewards and use those throughout the module?
• How to create just-in-time instructions?
• How are animations used? Characters? Backgrounds?

There’s a lot to learn by deconstructing this module. What I really like is that as you collect the eBits you have links to video tutorials that explain parts of how this was created. There’s also a bonus high five because he was able to work Goudy Stout into the module.

E-Learning Example: How to Drink and NOT Drive

Click to view the elearning example.

The folks are 42 Design Square always do nice work. I’ve featured them a few times in the past. This course integrates some nice animations and audio effects. I also like the way they used the variable panel to select drinks and see the impact when driving.

Deconstruction questions for you:

• How did they create the animation effects?
• How would you create a similar panel in your courses?
• How to integrate the drink dashboard with the breath analyzer meter?

Lots of good things happening in this demo. See if you can prototype some of what they’ve done.

E-Learning Example: Workplace of the Future

Click here to view the elearning example.

This example looks at the workplace of the future and was done by Learnnovators in collaboration with Clark Quinn. This style of course is a bit closer to what you might build at work and includes some good scenario-like activities.

Deconstruction questions for you:

• How did they create the custom player features?
• How did they create the resource page?
• Can I template this structure for easy re-use?

There you go, three good examples to whet your appetite. The trick is to explore the modules and consider how they were built. And then try to build quick prototypes to see if you can figure it out.

If you have any questions don’t hesitate to connect with the course creators or jump in the community and ask.

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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.

We all love free tools to help us save time and resources so that we are more efficient building our elearning courses. Here are two free multimedia applications that I use quite a bit.

Color Picking with Color Cop

If you’re using Storyline that’s already easy to do because there’s a built in color picker. However, if you need to pick colors outside of your authoring tool, Color Cop is a good one to use.

I use color pickers all the time. One way I integrate colors into my slides is by adding an image to my screen and then I pick colors from the image to create my buttons, background and accent colors. This way everything kind of look like it belongs together.

Create & Share Screenshots with ShareX

ShareX is a pretty slick application and I use it all the time to create quick screenshots and share them with team members and customers. I find it really useful to provide visual feedback when working on courses.

I use a keyboard shortcut to grab the screenshot and then it automatically uploads to my service of choice. I have use my Google Photos account, but images can be uploaded to all sorts of services, which can be seen in the image below.

ShareX isn’t limited to just screenshots. In fact, it does quite a bit more (almost too much more). For example, you can color pick, edit images, and create animated .gifs. Here’s a screenshot of some of the other applications that are part of ShareX.

You can even create QR codes like this one below. Check it out and see where it goes.

So there you have it, two free multimedia applications that will come in handy for your elearning development. And if you want even more recommendations, check out this weekly challenge when community members shared some of their favorite tools.

Are there any free applications you use? Feel free to share in the comments below.

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Free E-Learning Resources

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

At a recent conference I was on a panel that asked about how to get better at building elearning courses. I reflected on a few things that I did when I first started and some of those things carry forward to today. I discussed this a bit in this post on how to build your elearning skills.

Learning is an Iterative Process

Essentially, we learn something new, apply what we learn, look at the results, and then make adjustments.

Your first project isn’t going to be your best. I look back at some of the stuff I did worked on earlier in my career and am surprised that I wasn’t tarred and feathered by those who had to take the courses.

I recall one where I taught people how to use this new thing called the Internet. Instead of having them open Netscape and doing searches for things that interested them, I spent a bunch of time explaining the interface features, and focused on a lot of unimportant information. What could have been a fun time searching for interesting things became the world’s most boring introduction to the Internet.  How lame was that?

If I were to build that course today, it would be much different.

How to Build Better Courses

• Focus on the learner. We tend to make our courses info-centric and because of this, we focus on how to structure and present content. We should focus on the learner and how they’ll use the content. Then build activities to help them practice doing that.
• Ask for honest feedback and try to apply what you learn to the next project. This suggestion is a bit challenging because it requires some vulnerability, but it also requires access to an expert who can provide relevant feedback. This is why being connected in the community helps.
• Keep an idea folder that you can review when starting new projects. I collect ideas from all sorts of sources. When I want some inspiration, I look over the ideas. I will add that it does help to make a note about what you found inspiring at the time you saved it. Often, I’ll review an idea from the folder and can’t recall why I liked it.
• Set some time aside to practice. I usually find one or two cool multimedia interactions online each week. I try replicate them in Storyline. I don’t worry about how they look. I just focus on wiring it all together to see if I can get the multimedia interaction to work. One of the things I really like about Storyline is that I can quickly prototype my ideas. The other thing I like is that when I do build something from the idea, I can save it as a template and it becomes a reusable interaction.
• Do one new thing. You’ve collected ideas and tried to prototype them. You’ve chatted with others and solicited feedback. Now it’s time to put it all into action. Take one idea and apply it to a real course. And every time you build a new course, try something new. I know that it’s not always easy to do that in the corporate environment so at a minimum participate in an occasional weekly challenge. At least then you can work on something real and try new things.
• Keep on learning. Watch tutorials, take informal courses, get a formal degree or read some books.

What are some things you’d share with the person who wants to learn how to build their skills to build better courses? Feel free to share them in the comments section.

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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.

This instructional design tip focuses on how to simplify and chunk content in complex training courses. Essentially, instructional design is about crafting a viable learning experience. Based on our desired learning outcomes, we create a way for people to learn (and hopefully apply) the content in a relevant context.

Often we have to teach content that’s too complicated for new learners. The risk is that we dump too much on them and overwhelm them with a lot of new information. Or we over-simplify the course content (especially real-life decisions) and the result it the course is not complex enough. This can also make the courses less engaging because they’re less challenging.

Instructional Design Tip: Break Your Content into Chunks

One way to teach complex content is to break it into more manageable chunks and getting rid of a lot of extra content. Guide the learners to work through the chunks and as they acquire new skills (and comfort) they’re able to work through more complex content.

I find that one major challenge for adult learners is the unease that comes from not understanding the appropriate context and how the learning fits into the bigger picture. Because of this I like to break the content into chunks and progressively assemble the chunks to build a broader context of the course content and objectives.

Below is an example from a previous project that may inspire some ideas for your own courses.

Instructional Design Tip: Get to Know Your Learners

A few years ago I had to design training for machine operators in a complex production environment. The machine was a linchpin in the production process because the work flow boomeranged and returned to the machine twice during production. A good operator kept things moving forward, but one less experienced could hold up the entire floor’s production and cost the organization time and money. Our task was to get all of the new operators at an acceptable level of production within 90 days.

I met with managers and subject matter experts who gave me a lot of content to review. And then I spent some time on the floor. This is a key part of instructional design—get to know your learners, their work environment, and what they have to do. Don’t just review documentation or trust what the subject matter expert says. They often dismiss real world issues or present things from an ideal perspective based on years of experience.

By meeting with everyone including the learners and investigating the real world environment, I had a better understanding of how the environment impacted the learning experience for new people.

Instructional Design Tip: Identify the Discomfort

When I analyzed the workflow, one of the first things I learned was that the new operators were intimidated by the machine and the fast pace of the workflow. They had to constantly upload and unload material and then deal with machine-related issues. In addition, the work environment was really noisy so it was hard to hear instructions and get feedback. And to make matters worse, they were constantly reminded how expensive the machine was and to “not mess it up.”

These are things not covered in documentation manuals.

We designed some elearning modules around the parts of the machine. They were pulled from the production floor and took a few modules to learn about the machine, preventive maintenance, and the general workflow.

Then when they got back on the floor, all they focused on was daily maintenance of the machine. For most of the first week, they just touched the machine a lot without a lot of focus on production work. By the time they got into production, they were so familiar with the machine that they no longer were intimidated.

Instructional Design Tip: Peer Coaches Help Train

Another challenge was that all of the people were being trained by different machine operators—some better teachers than others. And most were not given an incentive to make the training stick. And they were doing the training in real time with real production in a loud facility.

A new learner benefits from having a go-to contact who provides guidance, answers questions, and provides feedback. The organization benefits from having a consistent message and a vehicle to mentor potential supervisors or managers.

We trained some of the production staff to be “peer coaches.” This gave us quality control over how the content was delivered. The peer coaches became a consistent point of contact for the new learners.  And the new learners felt more comfortable when requiring help, as they didn’t feel like they were getting in the way.

The peer coach program also provided a way to train future supervisors by giving them elevated responsibilities.

Instructional Design Tip: Learning Journals

We created a learning journal. The journal served as a dynamic operator’s manual. It contained all of the core content the new learners required, all of their notes from the conversations, day’s work, and online training was captured in the journal.

We also used it as the guide for the peer coaches to help them, especially when they were busy. They didn’t need to think through what to teach, they just had to follow the guide and review the learner’s progress.

Instructional Design Tip: Online Training Compresses Learning Time

One of the benefits of instructional design is being able to compress the time required to learn. For example, in a given work day, a person may do a specific task 2 times. Thus in the course of a week, they only get 10 repetitions of that task.

Instructional design allows us to pull that task out of the normal workflow and create a practice activity where they can repeat just that task many more times than what they’d do in the daily workflow. I also found that when a task only happens a few times, those are pushed out for more advanced learning and only experienced people get to do the task for fear that a new person messes it up.

Instructional Design Tip: Create a Working Lab

We created a working lab by slowing down the production on the training machine. Initially the organization didn’t want to slow down production. But we convinced them that slowing down production allowed the learners to get meaningful repetition and as they gained confidence we would increase the speed to match the real world.

For this training, we created individual activities. Thus they didn’t focus on getting everything through the machine. Instead they only focused on that one part. As they became more comfortable, we added more speed and combined tasks.

Breaking your content into distinct chunks helps make the learning experience more manageable and it’s easier to develop and update. In the example above we were able to separate the tasks from the real world flow and chunk them into smaller learning activities. And as their skills improved we combined tasks to add complexity.

The result for us was that we had almost all people trained within 10 days. In fact, we did so well with the training that we under reported our success because we didn’t want people to think that we were fibbing on the numbers.

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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.

Free resources always come in handy when building courses or slide presentations. At most of my workshops we take a few minutes to share different free resources people use. It’s a great way to be reminded of resources you may have already bookmarked but have forgotten. And of course, there’s always something new to learn from others when the share what they use.

At this point, I find that there’s not a lot of new free resources being added. So I compiled the resources and put them in some sense of order to make it a bit easier to parse. I can’t vouch for all of the sites but from what I can tell, they’re all legit.

Most of the resources are free. And with all things free, be sure to check on the usage terms and give proper attribution. Here’s a post on how to did this: how to use free assets in commercial projects.

Where to Get Help from the Community

• E-learning 101
• Free downloads
• Free ebooks
• Weekly challenges & examples

Where to Get Free Resources from Your Organization

• Marketing team: they usually have graphics and other collateral
• Web team: collection of online resources
• Public relations: public facing graphics

Create Your Own & Share

• Take your own pictures of people and share
• Walk around organization and get background and ambient images
• Get inspiration from stock photo sites and try to mimic them

Free Resources: Icons

• https://www.iconfinder.com/
• http://www.flaticon.com/
• https://thenounproject.com/
• https://icons8.com/
• http://icons.mysitemyway.com/

Placeholder Content

• http://dummyimage.com/
• 3 Ways to Get Placeholder Text for Your E-Learning Courses

Free Stock Photos

• Search most free sites: https://www.sitebuilderreport.com/stock-up
• Ditto above: http://librestock.com/
• http://www.1001freedownloads.com/free-photos/?order=popular
• https://unsplash.com/ or search http://www.arthurweill.fr/Unsplash/en
• http://startupstockphotos.com/
• http://www.lifeofpix.com/
• http://deathtothestockphoto.com/
• https://stocksnap.io/
• http://mmtstock.com/grid/
• http://www.publicdomainpictures.net/
• http://publicdomainarchive.com/free-stock-photos/
• http://getrefe.com/downloads/category/free/
• https://goodstock.photos/
• http://www.splitshire.com/category/technology/page/2/
• http://magdeleine.co/people/page/2/
• http://nos.twnsnd.co/
• http://www.gratisography.com/
• http://kaboompics.com/
• http://jaymantri.com/
• https://graphicleftovers.com/dashboard
• http://www.freeimages.com/
• https://pixabay.com/
• http://morguefile.com/
• htt/p://www.stockvault.net
• https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
• https://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/
• https://community.articulate.com/articles/free-stock-photo-sites-for-e-learning
• https://www.graphicstock.com This isn’t free but I switched to this when the Dollar Photo Club shut down. It’s only $99/yr.

Free Medical Images

• https://visualsonline.cancer.gov/
• http://phil.cdc.gov/phil/home.asp
• http://www.stockphotosforfree.com/

Free Illustrations

• http://www.freepik.com/
• https://www.canva.com/
• http://www.vecteezy.com/
• http://www.designcomics.com/
• https://graphicmama.com/freebies
• https://pixabay.com/
• https://thehungryjpeg.com/freebies/ (weekly)
• https://openclipart.org/
• http://www.wordle.net/
• http://opengameart.org/

Free Templates

• Articulate community
• Rapid E-Learning Blog
• E-learning community members
• http://www.duarte.com/slidedocs/

Free Audio

• https://www.speakpipe.com/voice-recorder
• Free audio for elearning
• Free audio sound effects

Free Fonts

• https://fonts.google.com/
• http://www.fontsquirrel.com/
• http://www.dafont.com/

Free Video

• Dozen free video sites
• http://www.wingclips.com
• http://www.coverr.co
• https://videos.pexels.com/
• https://pixabay.com/
• https://www.unstock.io/

Deal Sites

These sites aren’t free but they often offer great deals. For example, I’ve been able to get a lifetime membership to a graphics site for $49 and picked up a bunch of cutout people images for just a few dollars. It’s worth subscribing to these types of sites just to see what deals come your way. Most of the deals are not relevant to elearning but you can just delete those emails.

• http://www.mightydeals.com/
• https://www.inkydeals.com/
• Appsumo.com

If there’s a free resource or site you like to use, feel free to post in the comments. Spammers will be deleted.

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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.

When we started this blog in 2007, PowerPoint-based elearning was all the rage, and for good reason. It was a great entry point for people just getting started, especially when the alternative was custom Flash programming that required programming skills and resources.

Today, the elearning market is different and PowerPoint elearning isn’t as important (or relevant) as it was ten years ago. It’s something I shared in this blog post on why PowerPoint isn’t the right tool for interactive elearning. With tools like Storyline, you get PowerPoint ease-of-authoring with a lot more capability and you still don’t need to learn any programming.

But that doesn’t mean PowerPoint’s obsolete. It just means that a lot of the tutorials shared over the past ten years are not as relevant as they were when they were first published, such as working with clip art (which is now defunct).

I did look through many of the older posts and here’s an updated list of PowerPoint tutorials that still come in handy if you build elearning courses  with PowerPoint; or if you want to become a PowerPoint guru and learn things like how to use it to create graphics and illustrations.

• 7 Reasons Why PowerPoint Doesn’t Suck
• 5 Must-Know PowerPoint Tips That Will Save You Time
• Here Are Two Cool PowerPoint Tips When Building Templates
• How to Create a Rapid E-Learning Tab in PowerPoint
• Clean Up Your Client’s PowerPoint Slides with This Time-Saving Tip
• 3 PowerPoint Shortcuts I Always Have at My Finger Tips
• How to Customize Illustrations in PowerPoint
• How to Create Color Schemes in PowerPoint to Match Your Brand
• Over 30 Free PowerPoint & E-Learning Templates
• How to Edit Free Vector Images in PowerPoint
• The Hidden PowerPoint Shortcut Everyone Should Know
• How to Be More Productive When Using PowerPoint to Create E-Learning Courses
• 5 PowerPoint E-Learning Tips & A Free Template
• Top PowerPoint Tips
• Create Custom Shapes in PowerPoint
• How to Create Your Own Illustrated Graphics in PowerPoint
• How to Create Your Own Illustrated Characters in PowerPoint
• Here’s How to Create Your Own E-Learning Template in PowerPoint
• How to Use PowerPoint to Create Custom Stock Images
• Want to Become a Rapid E-Learning Pro? Then Check Out All of These PowerPoint Tips
• Does Your Client Need to Know You’re Using PowerPoint?
• How to Create an Interactive PowerPoint Elearning Module
• More Than 30 PowerPoint Tips from the PowerPoint Pros!
• More Than 100 PowerPoint Tutorials & a Free Template

There are some really good PowerPoint tips and tricks in that list. Even if you can’t go through them all, make sure to bookmark them for quick reference.

What’s your favorite PowerPoint tip learned via these blog posts over the years? Feel free to share them via the comments.

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Free E-Learning Resources

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

Adding placeholder text is one of those tasks that we do a lot when building our course screen layouts or templates. It helps us make sure things are looking right before we spent too much time building out the real content.

In today’s post I’ll share three easy ways to add placeholder text to your elearning courses.

Use the Built-in Lorem Ipsum Generator

PowerPoint, Articulate Studio, and Storyline offer built-in lorem ipsum generators so that it’s really easy to add some placeholder content. Here are the steps:

• Add a text box
• Type in =lorem() 
• Hit enter

That will create a good amount of random placeholder text. However, it may be more than you need. That’s OK because you have some flexibility.

You can add numbers inside the parenthesis to control how many paragraphs and sentences are presented. For example, =lorem(2,1) will give you two paragraphs with one sentence each.

Here’s a tutorial that shows how to create random text in PowerPoint. The process is exactly the same in Storyline, but you use lorem instead of rand.

Use an Online Lorem Ipsum Generator

There are a lot of online lorem ipsum generators. Just do a search and you’ll find more than you need. I like the ones where you can generate placeholder text in other languages, too. This is another good one because you can set word count and choose Kafka text which is perfect for bureaucratic, compliance training. It may even be possible to use nothing but Kafka for your real training and have no one notice.

If all you need is lorem ipsum text, then the built-in tools are fine. Why go to a website to find something you already get in the elearning applications? However, some people don’t like the lorem ipsum text and want real readable text. Or they don’t like the fact that the lorem ipsum text doesn’t get past the spellchecker.

That’s OK, too, because there are sites that create random text that is also legible. And some of them are funny. Here are a few:

• Bacon ipsum: lots of meat. Perfect if your subject matter expert is Ron Swanson.
• Veggie ipsum: for you vegans and vegetarians.
• Hipster ipsum: hipster paragraphs perfect for your millennial reviewers.
• Gangsta lorem ipsum: can’t go wrong with a little izzle on your ipsum lorizzle.
• Fillerati: text from classic literature for the more educated amongst us.
• Meet the Ipsums: a big long list of goofy ipsum generators.

Use a Lorem Ipsum Browser Extension

Why go to a website to get your placeholder text? Why not just grab some from right within your browser? There are a number of browser extensions that offer quick lorem ipsum text. Just click on the extension and copy and paste your placeholder text.

Here are a few that I’ve used in Chrome. I’m sure that the other browsers have something similar.

• Lorem ipsum
• Lorem ipsum generator
• Corporate ipsum
• Dummy text

As you can see, there are more than enough ways to generate fake text and with the amount you need for your slides. And of course, make sure that you let your subject matter expert know it’s fake text so that they don’t ask why you localized the course before getting final approval.

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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.

You need to stop sharing your elearning courses and portfolios using Dropbox’s public folder. Effective October 3, 2016, Dropbox is disabling the feature to render HTML pages. It’s one that many have been using to share their courses and elearning portfolios. This is similar to the action Google took last month to disable webpage sharing via the Google Docs service.

If you’re a Dropbox user you probably already received an email from Dropbox alerting you to this change. If not, I’m here to alert you today.

Why Should I Care?

Many people in the elearning community currently share their courses via Dropbox. In fact, we have close to 4,000 weekly challenge entries in our weekly elearning challenges; and at least 20% are shared via Google Drive or Dropbox. Maybe more.

It’s a bummer that the service is being discontinued. But the bigger bummer is that all of that content shared by the community will no longer work. That means if you shared a demo in previous challenges (or if you were using Dropbox as a free way to feature your portfolio of courses) all of those links will be broken.

What Are The Alternatives?

In a previous post, I shared a few alternatives. I’ll share them here again.

  Click here to view the YouTube video.

• Use Amazon S3 or a competing service. Here’s how to set up the Amazon S3 service. That’s what I use.
• Buy your own domain and manage it yourself. A domain name and hosting may cost about $50/year. That’s not expensive at all.
• Can you upload your course? A lot of people use Wix and Weebly type services for their portfolios. They are good services for websites, but sharing files isn’t easy. You need a place to host the courses files and create a link. Those website services often don’t have a file/folder upload feature. Something to keep in mind.
• Be careful of free services. Odds are they’ll be gone or remove the free part of the service and you’ll be in the same place you are today.

Personally, I think it’s worthwhile to create a custom domain and manage the demos and courses that way. It doesn’t cost that much and then you have complete control over your brand and you’re not at the whim of those free services that may or may not be available at a future date.

What do you recommend?

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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.

Social media is what you make of it. For the most part it is valuable and offers a number of ways for you to succeed. We discussed this in the previous post on the pros of social media. Today we’ll look at the cons of social media and the potential impact they have on you, your job, and our industry.

Cons of Social Media: Too Much Noise

I have this routine where I read my elearning news feeds on a tablet (usually at night). I have a goofy process. The ones I like, I tag for later reference. The ones I think are really valuable, I’ll email to myself to make sure that I can spend more time on them when I get to my desk. But I never do because I end up occupied with more important things.

Eventually my inbox fills with a lot of those “important” links so to clean up my inbox, I created a filter to put all of the emailed links in one place. The other day I looked at all of the important content I’ve saved over the past few years. I have almost 11,000 links that I still haven’t read (but found to be really valuable). That’s about 916 hours of reading.

Here’s the deal: your social media connections deliver a lot of good content, but there’s just so much of it…and it doesn’t stop. I liken it to standing on a rock in the middle of a river. At best, you can put a net in to scoop something out, but the river continues to flow. And so it is with social media content, it just keeps coming with all of its alerts and beeps and constant notifications. Throw in the additional correspondence via Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter and that’s a ton to parse.

This stream of content is not only distracting it can also cause some anxiety as you see the world slipping past you. I experience it myself. There are many days I feel like I’m out of the loop and losing touch with what’s going on in our industry. I was just getting used to SCORM and now I need to learn about TinCan xAPI. Come on!

If only WUHPF was a reality; I could use the Dog Pack today.

Turn this into a positive:

• Find a single solution to manage the content you value. There are all sorts of tools like Pocket, Feedly, Flipboard, Diigo, Evernote, OneNote, and even your browser via add-ons.
• Set a specific time to review the important content. And then leave it at that. Don’t worry about missing anything. It’s not as important as you think anyway.

What do you use to manage the content from your social media stream? Do you have a way to stay on top of what you are most interested in?

Cons of Social Media: Where’s the Social?

Sharing with your social network is valuable, but how social is it really?

It seems that for something that begins with the word social, there’s not a lot that’s social about it. Instead it’s more like we’re conduits of pushing content to our connections. And a lot of that content is manipulated by advertisers, marketing teams, and social media services.

While social media does give everyone a voice, I wonder how much real dialogue actually happens. It seems like we’re just taking turns standing on the soapbox?

Social media and the mobile devices that we use to consume it are changing how we interact with each other. Here’s an interesting article on how social media is making people less social and a thought-provoking photo essay by Eric Pinkersgill where he removed all of the mobile devices from his subjects. It really makes you think about how we connect today.

Turn this into a positive:

• In addition to pushing content, actually connect with a person. Use social media to build relationships. Ask or answer questions. Participate in one of those social media chats.
• Make time to unplug. It doesn’t hurt to step away for a bit.

Cons of Social Media: Professional Life Beware

There are all sorts of laws that protect you from discrimination during job interviews. There are things you can’t be asked and you aren’t required to disclose. However, if someone did want to learn more about you without violating the law all they need to do is an online search. Odds are they’d find more that you want to share.

Your online profile with its pictures, political memes, and comments creates a perspective on who you are and what you value. It may not be totally accurate, but people will draw conclusions based on what they see. And that may impact your professional relationships and potential business opportunities.

Which is another issue. The line between business and personal is getting a bit blurry.

Today, we’re connecting in ways that may not be appropriate or professional. Should I really be looking at your family vacation photos and what you had for Thanksgiving? Do I need to know your religious and political views?

Professional services like LinkedIn are good because they do separate your business social profile from the personal one. However, I will add that LinkedIn seems to be a source of some of the same nonsense you’ll find in less professional social networks. So I’m not sure how that will evolve.

Turn this into a positive:

• Determine how you want to frame your online presence.
• Create separate accounts for your professional and personal networks. Keep your personal accounts private (or recognize that it becomes part of your professional persona).
• Create clear guidelines on what you post and how you respond.

Generally, social media is neutral and controlled by what you consume (and share) and how you’re connected. It can be positive or negative, or both. The main thing is that you see it as a tool that helps you learn more about the industry, your job, and build a network of peers. And then of course, be careful what you share as that does partially determine how you are perceived.

How are you using social media today? And how has it changed the way you work?

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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.

The training industry is changing rapidly and technology plays a big role in that change, especially social media. However, like any change, there are positives and negatives that come with it.  Today, I’d like to discuss a few pros of social media as it relates to our industry and then I’ll follow it up with a post on some of the cons.

What is Social Media?

Wikipedia has a good detailed definition of social media. I see it as technology that allows people to connect and share information.  To be more specific, it’s about being connected to a community that shares interests and has a desire to share expertise around that interest. The social media technology just facilitates the connection.

The Growth of Social Media Technology

Most people in our industry probably see the following three services as their core social media tools: Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Many organization are also using internal social media services like Yammer and Slack .

However, everyday there seems to be a new tool and people in our industry willing to hype it up. Look at some of the recent raves about Pokemon Go by the same people who were peddling Second Life just a few years ago. New technology can be both positive and negative. New ways to connect and share are good. But if you use a service and no one’s there, what good is it? Remember Google Wave or even Google+?

Many of the new and novel social media tools will be gone soon enough or they’ll be consumed by larger organizations. Sticking with the three above is probably more than adequate for our needs today.

Does your organization use a social media service? What do you think about it? How have is it helped your job?

Pros of Social Media: Curated Content

One of the biggest values of social media is the content stream. There’s a lot of really good information being shared everyday by all sorts of people in our industry. The challenge is knowing what’s out there and then sorting it by what’s important.

• Find content curators. Some people are really good at curating and staying on top of things. They’re the curators and you’re the beneficiary. For example, David Anderson is one of the elearning people I follow on Twitter. Even though I work with him, I’m always amazed at how well he curates and posts a lot of relevant links and lots of cool elearning examples—just the sort of practical content our community needs. The same can be said for organizations. Articulate does a great job highlighting it’s customers, free downloads, templates, and cool elearning examples.

• Follow topics not people. Another way to stay on top of the good content is to track topics is via hashtag. Instead of following a person, or everyone in an industry (which can be overwhelming), follow topic-specific hashtags like #elearning or #training. You will stay on top of all posts relevant to that topic.

I use Hootsuite to manage what I do, but there are other apps out there, too. Do you use a social media application? Which one?

Pros of Social Media: Connect with Experts

Quite a few years back I wrote to a well-known author in our industry. I actually had to write a real letter, mail it, and then hope for a response (which never came). Things are different today because we have access to experts (and what they know) via a few clicks. And I find most of them to be responsive.

A good example of access to experts is something like #lrnchat where people post questions, answers, and discuss learning related topics. Not only can you share your thoughts, but you get to dialogue with well-known experts in our community. This can lead to building your professional network and often meeting them face-to-face at workshops and conferences where you can continue the dialogue.

And on the flip side, social media allows you to establish your own expertise by curating content and sharing what you know. In the past you had very few outlets to build your professional reputation. But today, you can easily connect and contribute to build your reputation and expertise.

Pros of Social Media: Get Help from Others

Social media is powerful in the connections it can foster and in turn the help those connections can provide. Just recently, I got to witness an excellent example of how broad our social media connections can be and the access we have that we didn’t a few years ago without it.

Justus is a young boy who was rushed to the hospital with a very serious medical condition. As people rallied around the family, they used social media to keep everyone up-to-date. To do so, they created #TeamJustus as a way to share what was happening but also to pass on encouragement and kind words. It was amazing to see how the network rallied to support the family. They even received encouragement from unlikely participants like former President, George Bush, and NFL quarterback, Andrew Luck.

We may not all have connections to celebrities and famous people, but you can be sure that your connections are broad; and odds are that if you need something, there’s someone in your network who can help. And if they can’t, they’re connected to someone who can.

The good news is that we are members in an overly generous industry where willfully helping other seems to be the default disposition. I see this all the time in the E-Learning Heroes community. In a sense, being connected to a community of peers is like an expansion of your cubicle and there’s all sorts of help for you. Your team of one can become a team of many. This is a point I made in this post on why the community brings real value.

There’s a lot more to say about the pros of social media. It provides practical value that will help you in your job today and in your future prospects. The key is to get connected and then to participate. If you’re not currently active in social media, perhaps these tips will help you reconsider your participation.

What do you see as some of the pros of social media?

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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.