Audio narration is part of multimedia and adds a lot of value to your elearning courses. However, there are times when it makes sense to NOT use audio in your courses.

Do Not Use Audio Narration When They Can’t Hear It

If those taking the course can’t hear the audio narration, then it makes sense not to include it. This probably seems obvious, but often we don’t get to meet those who take the courses so we’re not always aware of their audio limitations. In fact, many of the people I talk to get handed the course content with no access to the intended audience.

There are usually three main reasons why the person can’t hear the course:

• Technology. Many access the elearning courses from computers that don’t support audio. The computers may not have sound cards or speakers. This is not as common as it used to be, but it’s still a good idea to ask your client if the end users will have access to computers that support audio and if they need headsets.
• Environment. Some people access the online modules from shared computers in a production environment. Many of those systems don’t have audio output, and even if they did, the environment is too loud to hear it.
• Hearing disabilities. You may have learners with hearing disabilities. In those cases, you’ll need to make modifications so that they can learn what needs to be learned. Some organizations already require accessible content. Even if it’s not required for your course, it’s a good idea to add closed caption text or some sort of transcript for those who may need it. Here’s a free e-book that discusses best practices for 508 and accessible content.

Do Not Use Audio Narration If You’re on a Tight Budget

Producing good audio narration takes time and doing it right costs money. You need to write, rehearse, and approve scripts that sound like real people talking. Here’s typically what happens:

• Write the script.
• Review the script with subject matter experts.
• Re-write the script.
• Review again.
• Re-write the script.
• Record audio narration and realize the script doesn’t sound right.
• Re-write script.
• Record audio narration.
• Review final course and have upper-level manager tell you that they don’t like the audio and the legal team needs to make a few edits.
• Rinse and repeat.

Seriously, producing audio narration takes time and adds many variables to the production process with a lot of extra meetings. If you don’t have the resources, it’s better to skip it than doing it wrong or wasting time.

Do Not Use Audio Narration If the Narrator is Not Professional

I have mixed feelings on this next point. There’s a lot to be said about the authentic voice of a real person. And the reality is that in many cases, it makes sense to record your own audio narration. However, there is a big difference between a good speaking voice and a professional narrator.

• You want a voice actor. Someone once told me that you don’t want a professional narrator, instead you want a voice actor. And recording your subject matter expert who has a good speaking voice is not the same as the person you’d qualify as a voice actor.
• You don’t need to spend a fortune. There are a lot of ways to hire good voice talent at reasonable cost. Fiverr and services like Voice123 are worth exploring. And you can even find some freelance elearning developers that can produce their own audio.

On the flip side, if you do record your own audio narration:

• Get a good microphone. I have used the Samson C01U & C03U. Travel with the very portable GoMic, and currently use the Yeti Pro for most of my recording. They’re all good mics. You can get a decent microphone for about $75.  The links to Amazon mics may produce a slight commission.
• Learn some of the basics with these tips and tricks.

In an ideal world you have a budget to create the best course possible. And this includes inserting great audio narration. Keep in mind that bad audio is the least tolerable form of multimedia. People will tolerate less than perfect image quality before they accept bad audio narration. If you can’t do it right, perhaps it’s best to not do it at all.

Events

Free E-Learning Resources

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

The most common types of interaction we see in elearning courses are the tabs interactions and for good reason—they’re an easy way to sort and present information. Tabs can be simple content chunks or a way to explore and collect information to make decisions during an interactive scenario.

The Value of the Tabs Interactions

Let’s face it, most elearning isn’t overly interactive. In fact, a lot of it is more explainer-type content than it is interactive decision-making. Regardless of how dynamic or interactive an elearning course is, the majority of it still consists of text and presenting content. And since you’re going to present content, tabs interactions are a great way to do so. Here’s why?

• Easy way to organize content. Most elearning content follows some sort of sequential process. Tabs interactions are an easy way to organize and layout the content. Using tabs interactions also forces the course developer to better organize and label the content. The most popular type of tabs interactions are process interactions that go through procedural steps from A to Z.

• Chunk content for easier understanding. Many elearning courses have too much content that’s hard for the learner to parse. A lot of organizations are moving towards micro-learning where the content is distilled into easier chunks.  Tabs interactions are an easy way to create and organize the content into more digestible pieces. The entire course could be a single tabs interaction or the content can be chunked into slide-specific tabs.

• Open and personalized navigation. The tendency for many organizations is to lock down the course content and force the learner to go through it sequentially. One of the benefits of tabs interactions is that the navigation can be opened up and allow the person to go through the tabs in any order. And if the course needs to be locked down, it can happen with a conditional button that’s not active until all tabs are visited. Thus still providing some free navigation within the interaction.
• Initiate learner engagement. One challenge with elearning is to engage those taking the course. Obviously we want to engage them with the content and learning to apply it. But we can also engage them by getting them to “touch the screen.” This is something we discussed in this post on interactive elearning. We want to pull them in and have them do something onscreen and then couple it with good decision-making. Tabs interactions help initiate the activity.

• Lots of flexibility. As noted earlier, tabs interactions can be the entire course or the tabs interaction can be slide-specific. Tabs can be placed up, down, left or right. They can also be what I like to call in-slide interactions. The tabs are usually click-and-reveal interactions, but hover interactivity works, too.

The next time you build an elearning course, don’t neglect the simple but effective tabs interaction. To help you out, I’ve included some links to many of the free tabs interactions templates you can download from the community.

Free Tabs Interactions Templates

PowerPoint Tabs Interactions Templates

• City Themed Tabs
• Simple Tabs
• Clean Tabs
• Tablet Tabs
• Creative Team Tabs
• Power Teal Tabs
• Blue Reflection Tabs
• Punchy Tabs
• Color Tabs
• Corporate Tabs
• Accordion Tabs
• Tabtastic Tabs

Storyline Tabs Interactions Templates

• Simple Tabs
• Simple Bottom Tabs
• Simple Tabs Too
• Power Teal Tabs
• Big Circle Tabs
• Colored Tabs
• Folder Tabs
• Clean Design Tabs
• 4 Step Tabs
• Animated Tabs
• 5 Step Tabs
• Notebook Tabs

Events

Free E-Learning Resources

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

At a recent workshop I was asked to put together a post with some of my top instructional design tips. So here it is. Of course, over the past 8 years most of the posts are littered with various tips related to instructional design.

If there’s a single best tip it’s that the course content needs to be relevant to the learner’s needs. If not, why is the person taking the course?

Instructional Design Tips

Here’s a list of blog posts related to instructional design.

• E-Learning & Instructional Design 101. What do you really need to know to be a successful instructional designer?
• Instructional Design Basics for E-Learning Development. The start of a very good series on elearning 101.
• Instructional Techniques. Tell, show, do, practice, and review.
• What New Instructional Designers Should Know. An overview on the value of instructional design and how it impacts training.
• Instructional Design Challenges for Today’s Course Designer. With all of this new technology the role of the instructional designer has changed. Or has it?
• Do You Really Need An Instructional Design Degree? Our industry’s hot right now. If you can spell e-learning elearning eLearning then odds are you can get a job. But do you need an instructional design degree to get it?
• 3 Graphic Design Principles for Instructional Design Success. What role does graphic design play in instructional design?
• What Everybody Ought to Know About Instructional Design. What is the essence of instructional design?
• What We Can Learn About Instructional Design from Post-it™ Notes. What can we learn from the cheat sheets that people create to train themselves?

Instructional Design Tips from the Community

I’m a big advocate of the weekly elearning challenges because they offer a reason to step away from the daily grind of building the same types of courses and doing the same thing over again and again. We get to try out some new ideas, practice production techniques, show off our skills, and see how others approach the same challenge.

Here is a list of challenges that offer an extra bonus because they each share some tips and tricks that will help you build better courses.

• Instructional Design Tips That Really Pop. Motivation-style posters that share great instructional design tips.
• Instructional Design Learning Activities. This is a two-for: you get ideas for interactions and those interactions are all built around an instructional design concept.
• Instructional Design Quizzes. These quizzes demonstrate and test your instructional design acumen.
• 10 Things You Shouldn’t Say to Instructional Designers. Here is a list of common complaints and things instructional designers don’t like to hear.
• Using E-Learning Storyboards. Your peers share how they use storyboards to design their courses.
• E-Learning Audio and Recording Tips. Need to record your own audio narration? These tips will help.
• What’s In Your Course Design Toolkit? Course designers share the tools they use to produce their elearning courses. Links to lots of free tools.
• What Do E-Learning Designers Really Do? What do your friends think you do? What about your mother?

Do you have any instructional design tips to share?

Events

Free E-Learning Resources

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

Multimedia for elearning is something common to all of our courses. There’s only so much you can put on the screen. It’s either going to be text or some sort of multimedia like shapes, pictures, or video. In addition, you may have audio narration to complement what’s on the screen.

At some of our workshops we discuss inexpensive ways to acquire multimedia for elearning. We’ll reference some of the previous posts when we’ve discussed different ways to either get free multimedia for elearning or learn to create them yourselves:

• Free Stock Images
• Free Fonts
• Record Your Own Audio Narration
• Free PowerPoint Templates
• Free Downloads

However, sometimes you don’t have the time or skill to create your own assets. And all of those free media assets may not fit the real needs of your course design. That means you’ll have to find someone to build them for you.

Fiverr is a site that offers access to all sorts of multimedia and graphic artists for $5 a project. While the advertised costs are $5, most of the projects are limited in scope and the artists are looking for a way to market their skills and have up sells. If you plan it right, you can get multimedia for elearning at a reasonable price.

Here are a few examples I pulled together to give you some ideas. I have no affiliation with any of the artists and it’s possible they may have restrictions on what they will do. So you’ll want to connect with them personally.

Multimedia for E-Learning: Custom Illustrations

Proposed plan:

Many of the artists only do head and shoulder images. However, some do full body. They usually have a starting pay scale and range of add-ons. Even if the image goes from $5 to $50 per image, that’s a great deal for custom art work.

• Storyboard your screens so you know exactly what characters and poses you need.
• Create a shot sheet with a list of required characters.
• Find some co-workers and take photos of the expressions and poses as a reference for your artist.

Artists shown: Broomvector, Mariadesigns, Punisher357

Multimedia for E-Learning: Audio Narration on a Budget

Proposed plan:

As can be seen in the image above, you can select voiceover talent by gender, accent, age, and more. There are a lot of really good voiceover artists on Fiverr. Most of them will do 75-100 words for $5.

This is close 75 words of text:

What would the world be like if the objects that surround us became less mysterious, if not only the bits but also the bolts became something into which we could peer? What if the black boxes that occupy our desks, our homes, our skies suddenly became transparent?

We asked more than a dozen open-minded technologists to explain how applying open source principles to physical devices is shaping the way we work and play.

That means you can get each slide recorded for about $5-15 per slide.

• Write your narration script.
• Get rid of half the words. You don’t need as much as you think you do.
• Make sure it sounds like a human is reading it and not some corporate drone or lawyer (although they’ve been known to be human).
• Get the final script approved before sending it out to be recorded to avoid do overs.

Multimedia for E-Learning: Video Actors & Presenters

Proposed plan:

Adding video to your elearning courses adds a lot of texture and personality. To me this is one of the best things available on Fiverr because creating video requires video production skills, audio narration, and great on-screen talent.

Many of the producers offer green screen recording so that adding the videos to your course screen is seamless. Although unless you can do the editing, you want to request that the video has a transparent background and not the green screen.

To manage costs and production, I’d only add video to a few strategic sections like the opening, summary of sections, and closing.

• Storyboard the course to determine where you need video.
• Develop some shot sheets of required video. Also determine if the person is on left or right of screen. A recording with a transparent background is ideal because you can nudge it into position.
• Create narration script.

Artists Shown: Tamerak, Sebski22, Mjenning

Multimedia for E-Learning: Custom PowerPoint Templates

Proposed plan:

There are artists who will create infographics, templates, and presentations. Essentially any graphic file can find its way on your course screen. What’s the difference between a PowerPoint, web site, or elearning course screen? They all have the same elements.

• Storyboard your screens
• Define visual elements and content containers
• Determine color scheme  and font style

Artists shown: Mint_Ideas, Believeable Video, Danukz

There are all sorts of other services offered on Fiverr that may add value to your courses. One of the benefits of the site is that you can dip your toes in the market and see how things go. You’ll get some inexpensive multimedia assets and can test the service and responsiveness of potential multimedia developers. As I stated earlier, I have no vested interest in the site or the artists. I just want to give you some ideas on how you might use it to your advantage.

If you do use the services on Fiverr, especially video, let me know. I’d love to see how it turns out.

Events

Free E-Learning Resources

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

When designing the visuals for an elearning course there are only so many things that fit on the screen and one of the most important of those things is a character. Here’s why.

E-Learning Characters Initiate Engagement

Adding the right image initiates engagement because it draws the learner’s attention, communicates the general topic, and can generate a visceral reaction. Review the images below. What response do they elicit? What do you think the courses are about? Are they serious? Funny? Do they seem interesting?

Suppose you can only put one image on your screen, what would it be?

Many of the courses I see use bland, corporate branded templates coupled with generic stock images. The imagery is boring and does nothing to engage the initial interest. That can all change when coupling the right characters with good content.

Simple Ways to Use E-Learning Characters

Obviously this is a challenge because most of us aren’t illustrators nor have access to graphic designers who can create custom characters for us. If that’s true for you, here are a few simple solutions:

• Choose characters that map to the context of your course. You may be stuck with generic stock photos, but choose the ones that align to your course content. For example, if you’re creating a medical course, select medically-themed characters. Also, instead of cut-out characters, select a character in a contextual background. Seems obvious, but it’s the first step.

• Select a consistent visual style. You’ll notice in the first image above that the characters range from photographic to illustrated vectors. Find a style that works and use it consistently. If you use photos, select the same type with similar backgrounds. If you use vectors, use the same style. Or flip it. If you always use photos, try illustrations.  And you may be able to edit them to meet your specific needs.
• Shoot your own photos. At least two of the images above are not stock photos. Here’s a post with tips when shooting your own stock photos.
• Don’t use humans. Characters can be animals, icons, etc.
• Try some that are more dramatic or in your face images. Humor and drama go a long way to initiate engagement.

Additional resources:

• If you need some examples of how people have used characters in elearning courses, check out this weekly elearning challenge.
• These two books discuss characters/avatars in course design. Some people call them pedagogical agents. Those are the people I tend to avoid. In either case, these two books discuss how they may add value to your courses: E-Learning and the Science of Instruction and The Gamification of Learning and Instruction. 

Characters add context. Medical characters say it’s a medical course. People in suits suggest something more corporate. Someone dressed as a clown probably means executive training. See how that works? Adding the right character is a step in the right direction for your visual design.

Step away from bland, generic templates. Find ways to add characters to your screens. It’s one of the easiest ways to engage your learners visually.

Events

Free E-Learning Resources

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

The Internet is rife with free things, especially free stock image sites. However, there are usually three main issues with the free stock image sites:

• The free stock images aren’t really free. For example, free is confined to “free for personal use.” This is great when I want to build elearning courses for my family’s safety training but pretty useless when I need to do anything work-related.
• The free stock image sites are only there to point to for-pay stock image sites. You are enticed with free stock images, but when you click on the ones that look good, they turn out to be connected to a for-pay service.
• Most of the free stock image sites are irrelevant. You’re building courses and not the montages for Soylent Green’s Home Centers. Thus, all of those beautiful shots of nature are mostly useless.

In this post, we’ll look at free stock images sire that are mostly free for commercial use. As far as relevance, I sorted them based on how I value them.

Free Stock Images in the Community

Of course, the elearning community has all sorts of free stock images. Here are some that I think work well for many elearning courses:

• 36 Free Stock Images: updated from archives
• 45 Free Stock Images: generic office content
• 80 Free Stock Images: people & meetings
• 60 Cutout People & Misc Images
• Office Images
• Creative Space
• Organized Office
• Office, Apartments, and Street

Free Stock Image Sites

Keep in mind that these types of sites are starting to gain popularity; so while some may not have a lot available right now, they will probably continue to grow and have more at a later date.

Startup Stock Photos:

Unsplash

Picjumbo:

They do offer commercial services, but the images are free and I love the “test drive” option they offer for each image. Here are some searches that may help for elearning: desk, business, and workspace.

Stokpic

Gratisography

Jay Mantri

Jeshoots

Life of Pix:

Desk and construction are nice collections.

Magdeleine

Curated from other sites; do like the color filtering

New Old Stock

A great resource of old public domain images via public archives.

Public Domain Archive

Kaboom Pics

Splitshire

Skitter Photo

Good Stock Photos

Snapwire Snaps

Foodie’s Feed

Great food images. Do not view while hungry

Free Stock Image Sites with Strings Attached

Here’s a list of free stock image sites that require some sort of registration or are supported by commercial vendors.

Free for commercial use but requires registration

• Death to Stock Photo
• MMT
• RGB Stock
• GetRefe
• HiResStock
• Free Range Stock

Tied to commercial vendors

• Pixabay: they pull in a lot of the other free sites but are sponsored by a commercial vendor. You can search by user like Unsplash and StartupStockPhotos to see a thumbnail list of what those sites have.
• IM Creator: many free for commercial use; some require attribution
• Stock Vault: some free and sponsored images. Seems like most of these sites are basically the same. Another good reason why curating them makes sense and saves time.
• Morgue File: lots of free images as well as indexed commercial sites.
• Foter: database of a lot of free images; attribution requirements are in the image details.
• Compfight: database of free images with links to sponsored images
• Superfamous Studios: attribution required

Keep in mind that licensing terms may change so before you use the images, double-check to make sure you can.

While it’s technically not necessary to give many of the free stock image sites attribution, I think it’s still good to acknowledge them because they take the time to collect and curate the resources. Of course, attribution doesn’t work if you have to plaster links all over your course screens, but you could try one of the ideas we discussed in this post on how to use free assets in commercial projects.

Obviously, there are a lot more free stock image sites. With this list I tried to focus mostly on the ones that were free for commercial use and didn’t require attribution (which bumped a lot off of the list).

You can always find inexpensive stock photo subscriptions. In fact Graphic Stock (which has a good selection) regularly runs a $99/year subscription with unlimited downloads. They also have a video  and audio service that is reasonably priced.

Are there free stock sites you recommend (assuming that they are free for commercial use and don’t require attribution when used)? Feel free to add to the comments. Spammers will be deleted. 🙂

Events

Free E-Learning Resources

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

We all work at the speed of business which means that we have to find tips and tricks that save time. In today’s post I’ll show three easy ways to create templates for your elearning courses.

30 Second E-Learning Templates

I’ve featured this technique before in the post on How to Build a Template in 30 Seconds. Essentially, you want to find a viable sliver from an image or screen grab. And then stretch it to create your template. I guess this could also be called the “viable sliver technique” but it doesn’t sound as sexy.

Use this technique enough and you’ll save so much time you’ll be able to go to the movies when you should be at work. When you’re boss asks where you were, all you need to say is “30 second template.”

10 Second E-Learning Templates

Want to save even more time? Try the 10 second template technique. This is one of David’s favorite tips and he shows how it works in this post on how he built an interactive quiz. The process is very easy:

• Create a slide with a header and footer shape.
• Find a contextual image.
• Fill the header with a color picked from the top of the image.
• Fill the footer with a color picked from the bottom of the image. In the example above, I also picked a color for the content area.
• Add your content.

Pretty simple, huh? They key is that you don’t have to put a lot of thought into the template and how to get the right colors. While it’s simple and the template is basic, it’s a good starting point for beginners.

E-Learning Templates on a Budget

One challenge is creating a nice looking (and functional template) that also incorporates your organization’s branding. In a previous post I shared how to create an elearning template using your organization’s website.

Why not allow your organization’s website (or other branded collateral) inspire your next elearning template?

Websites and elearning templates are very similar. They’re screens and they display content. The types of content you put on the screens is also very similar, as well as how you design their layouts.

Let’s assume your organization has the site above. It incorporates the brand colors, type, and imagery. You’ll notice that the page also includes tabs and button styles. These are all elements that are typical of elearning courses.

Here’s a quick mock-up I created using the website for inspiration. As you can see, it’s not a verbatim copy. But it does include the colors, button styles, and type (assuming I had the same font available).

Think of it this way, whether you’re using a web site, marketing collateral, or something else, the organization’s paid a graphics person to design the look and feel of those resources. That means you already have a great design from which to work. And it matches the organization’s brand. Use that design to create your elearning template.

So there you have it, three easy ways to create your own elearning templates. Have you tried any of these techniques? If so, how’d it turn out?

Events

Free E-Learning Resources

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

When I look back at my early work, I’m surprised I’ve lasted this long. A lot of the courses I built years ago just weren’t very good. But that’s okay. I may not have built good courses to start, but I did do some things in the early years to build my elearning skills that helped me grow and learn to build better courses over time.

Here are a few of the things I did and what you can do, too.

Build Your E-Learning Skills by Debriefing Your E-Learning Projects

Get in the habit of regularly reviewing your projects. I worked on a team once where every Friday we reviewed what we built or what we were working on. We discussed what was going well, what didn’t, and how we could make improvements. Then we made adjustments and the next projects were a little better.

Remember, if you try hard and don’t succeed, it’s a great learning experience. You’ve discovered one way to not do things. 🙂

Build Your E-Learning Skills by Showing Your Work

Show you work and ask for honest feedback. I get a lot of questions about how to get started. I usually recommend participating in the weekly elearning challenges so you have something to work on and show. This lets you built what you want and not be tied down by proprietary content at work. Then ask for feedback on how what you built could be improved.

The weekly challenges are great because no one wants to review a big course. Something small and pointed is apt to generate more feedback for you.

Build Your E-Learning Skills with an Idea Folder

Keep an idea folder that you can review when starting new projects. I routinely look for multimedia examples. You can find a lot at news sites and graphic artist communities. I look for interesting interactions, animations, and visual design.

I also like to deconstruct some of the elearning examples I see and figure out how they did what they did and then noodle on how to build on it. Sometimes when I’m stuck I’ll look through the folder for inspiration.

Build Your E-Learning Skills with an Informal Learning Plan

Develop a personal informal learning process. Today there are all sorts of free resources to learn about course design and construction. The key is to create a way to collect and regularly review that information. Choose a tool like Pinterest, Diigo, or Evernote to collect and organize important content.

Stay engaged in what’s going on and what people are talking about. If possible, start a blog to document what you’re learning and reflect on what others think. In any case, don’t depend on the occasional conference or workshop. Instead, create your own plan and then act on it.

Build Your E-Learning Skills through Practice

Set some time aside to practice new ideas or techniques. Having a folder of inspirational ideas is great. But at some point you have to make some time to practice applying those ideas. You won’t get time to practice while working on a real course, so you need to find time in between.

As you do this, you’ll build the proficiency with your elearning software and you’ll get a sense of what works and what doesn’t. Then you can apply the ideas to your real projects later.

Build Your E-Learning Skills by Getting Connected

Get connected. When I started in the industry, getting connected meant going to ATD chapter meetings and subscribing to listservs. Today it’s so much easier with social media services like Twitter and LinkedIn. You can connect with all sorts of experts and learn from each other. I love those who are active participants in the Elearning Heroes Community. They share so many tips and tricks. And it’s been fun to see many of the careers of the community’s active participants take off the past few years.

There’s a lot more you can do to build your skills. The key is having a plan and then moving forward. What are some things you do to build your skills?

Events

Free E-Learning Resources

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

For many of you, this is like the start of a new year. The summer’s gone, kids are starting school, and it’s back to building some elearning courses.

I’ll keep this post quick so you can get back to the work at hand.

More Free Stock Photos

I just noticed that one of my favorite free stock photo sites, StartUp Stock Photos, released a bunch more photos. I like their photos because they can be used in a lot of elearning contexts. To save you some time, I downloaded them all and zipped them up into a single download.

• Download the free stock photos here.

You can always find inexpensive stock photo subscriptions. In fact Graphic Stock (which has a good selection) regularly runs a $99/year subscription with unlimited downloads. They also have a video  and audio service that is reasonably priced.

Don’t Share Courses in Google Drive!

Google Drive’s been a popular way to share published courses and web sites. However, that’s all changed. Effective August 31, 2015, Google Drive no longer supports this feature. If you have some shared courses on Google Drive, you’ll need to move those to another service. You have until August 2016.

Here’s a post where I shared a few alternative methods for sharing courses. I like the Amazon S3 option. That’s what I use for the blog.

Articulate Guru Award Winners

Articulate just announced the Guru Award winners. I’ll have to say this year was one of the best because we had so many diverse and creative submissions. One thing that stood out to me is how many people use the elearning applications for more than course creation.

Personally, I love all of the Guru submissions (even the ones that don’t win) because they represent so many clever ideas and production techniques. I like to deconstruct them to figure out how they were built. It’s a great way to learn and get ideas.

Here is an article that highlights the Articulate Guru winners and links to the demos.

GOLD GURU

Enter the Ninja
Phil Mayor
Elearning Laboratory

Click here to view the guru winner.

SILVER GURU

Audiometry Refresher Training
Richard Edwards
MOD

Click here to view the guru winner.

BRONZE GURU

Robot Wars
Nancy Woinoski
Pinched Head

Click here to view the guru winner.

HONORABLE MENTION GURUS

Galactic Games
Jerson Campos
Visual E-Learning

Click here to view the guru winner.

Ebola Fatality Rates
David Tait
4pt Limited

Click here to view the guru winner.

Everyday Employee Relations
Jack Quantrill
Boots

Click here to view the guru winner.

The Case of the Fraudulent Pharmacist
Kate Atkinson
The Training Room Online

Click here to view the guru winner.

Like I said, there were lots of really good entries and many covered more than elearning. As you can see they range from simple games and quizzes to interactive graphics. In either case, they show off some of the capabilities and features of the Articulate tools. There’s a lot to glean from these examples.

Now back to work and have a great week!

Events

Free E-Learning Resources

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

Things tend to slow down in the summer. A lot of people are on vacation and not a lot of work is being done. It’s also a time to prep for a new school year. Why not make it a time to prep for a new work year as you come back from your vacations fully rested?

To help you out, I compiled an assortment of free templates that you may have missed the past few weeks. There are 16 free PowerPoint templates and 15 free Storyline templates.

And if you’re on that side of the planet where summer’s long gone, you can still take advantage of the free templates.

Free PowerPoint Templates

Here are a bunch of free PowerPoint templates. There’s a really good assortment, too. Keep in mind, if you like the template, you can easily change the content and colors to match your needs.

Punchy Tab Template

• Download
• Demo

Circle Lift Template

• Download
• Demo

Creative Team Tabs Template

• Download
• Demo

A Day-in-the-Life Template

• Download
• Demo

Indigo Template

• Download
• Demo

Super Simple Circle Menu

• Download
• Demo

Interactive Office Template

• Download
• Demo

Realistic Desktop Interaction Template

• Download
• Demo

Interactive Desktop Template

• Download
• Demo

Notebook-Themed Template

• Download
• Demo

Interactive Conversation

• Download
• Demo

Tab-tastic Flat Template

• Download
• Demo

Fun Magic 8 Ball-Themed Template

• Download
• Demo

iPad-Themed User Interface

• Download
• Demo

Nested Menu Template

• Download
• Demo

Photo Gallery Template

• Download
• Demo

Industrial Zeal Template

• Download
• Demo

Free Storyline Templates

Here a few really nice free Storyline templates. They run the range of click and reveal activities to interactive quiz examples. Just like the PowerPoint templates, feel free to download them and customize them to meet your needs.

If you don’t have Storyline, download the free trial. You have 30 days. I’m sure you can use the templates and build quite a few free modules in 30 day trial period.

Text Message Style Quiz

• Download
• Demo

Timeline Interaction

• Download
• Demo

Simple Tabs Gray Interaction

• Download
• Demo

Process Drag & Drop Quiz

• Download
• Demo

Flat Office Icon Set

• Download

Circle Lift

• Download
• Demo

Zoom Office Interaction

• Download
• Demo

Tic Tac Toe Template

• Download
• Demo

Desktop Zoom Interaction

• Download
• Demo

Interactive Resume

• Download
• Demo

Interactive Conversation

• Download
• Demo

Compare & Contrast Interaction

• Download
• Demo

Multimedia Glossary

• Download
• Demo

Simple Tabs Blue Interaction

• Download
• Demo

Classic Practice Interactions from Storyline 1

• Download

Here’s a big shout out to those in the community who freely share the modules and templates they create. Hopefully you can find some use for these templates. If so, let me know. Also, which ones do you like best? I like the simple tabs interactions and the text-based quiz. How about you?

Events

Free E-Learning Resources

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

In previous posts we discussed how visual thinking helps us focus on core concepts and teaches us to communicate those with graphics and other visual elements. We also looked at ways to practice developing your visual thinking skills so that you can effectively apply them to your course design.

In today’s post we’ll look at how to create custom characters that you can use in your visual thinking activities and course design.

The Case for Hand Drawn Custom Characters

You don’t have to be an artist to create custom characters. In fact, there’s a lot of value in hand drawn characters because they add personality and stand in contrast to the more typical (and often sterile) characters used in a lot of elearning courses. It’s just a matter of learning a few production techniques and then taking some time to practice.

Here are some examples of hand drawn characters I found online. You’ll notice that they’re relatively simple and that’s the key. Unless you’re really skilled, keep them simple. I think you’ll agree that the characters below are something most of us can create.

I like the custom characters below created by Ella Zheng. They’re clean and based on a few simple shapes. And they work well with the other icons in her examples.

I could see something like these characters and icons working in an elearning course. And for you, they’re easy enough to build in PowerPoint because they’re simple combinations of some basic shapes. This is something we discussed in the post on creating your own pictograph characters.

 Step 1: Decide on a Style for Hand Drawn Custom Characters

Start with a simple stick person. There are a number of ways to create them. You can go with straight lines, thick/bent lines, filled in shapes, square or oval bodies, or just trace over pictures. Below are a few ideas I played with. I like the first one which is a head and lines for legs and arms with no body. It’s easy to create and has a distinct style.

Once you develop a style, practice creating that character over and over again so you feel comfortable creating the custom character when you need it. What makes a simple character like this work is the expression and pose. We’ll look at both below.

Step 2: Identify Some Common Facial Expressions for Your Custom Characters

Identify a few facial expressions and practice drawing them. Look at what others have done for inspiration. I like this guy’s approach below, draw some circles and practice the expressions.

Articulate’s illustrated characters have twelve common expressions. That’s probably all you need for expressions. Practice by recreating those twelve expressions with your own custom characters.

And here’s a good example from blogger, Chinie Hidalgo Diaz, who’s created a distinct look for her characters. As you can see the style of drawing isn’t overly complex. And the water color brush is an easy effect to apply using some of the mobile drawing apps or other graphics editors. These would work great in a comic-panel style course. She also offers some of her own tips on creating facial expressions.

She focuses on two key areas: the mouth and brows. Start with her expressionless face and then practice drawing mouths and brows to create simple expressions.

Here are some other examples that require a little more practice. And finally, here’s a site that has all sorts of drawing tips for those who really want to push their skills.

As far as the expressions, I’d probably build the expressions as images that I can copy and paste into faces. That means I only have to work on them once and then just pick and choose what I need later.

Step 3: Create Common Poses for Your Custom Character

Poses are a bit more challenging. The easiest way to practice is to find common poses and then apply those to your custom character style. I’d start by copying what you see so that you get a good feel for the pose and then draw your character in the poses you prefer. This is also a good reason to keep the custom character’s detail limited. It’s easier to create a pose for a stick figure than it is a character in an outfit.

Here’s a good tutorial on drawing characters with poses.  And ScrawlerMauler shows some of his practice poses.

Here are some people who sell stick figure characters if you’re inclined to buy some. You can also find inspiration in how they pose their characters and try your hand at creating the same pose with your custom characters.

• Toby Bridson via iStock or Selz
• Stickman
• Doodle Icon
• Stick Man Activity
• Oatyco

Here are some free stick figure downloads in various poses:

• Original Stick Figures
• Son of Stick Figures

What are some poses to practice? Here are a few ideas:

• Sitting
• Pointing
• Talking
• Surprised
• Angry
• Holding a paper
• Thinking
• Interacting with someone else

I quickly drew the images for this presentation on how rapid elearning is so simple that even a monkey can do it.  As you can see, nothing fancy, but they work.

If you want to learn more, Dan Roam released a great how-to workbook that shows how to create the images for visual thinking.  You may also be interested in Beyond Words: A Guide to Drawing Out Ideas.  You can learn some simple drawing techniques that can be applied to your elearning courses (and wow your peers as you doodle during those boring staff meetings).

The goal in all of this is recognize that for some of your courses and presentations you can create your own illustrated graphics. This also works well when combined with visual thinking skills. And learning to create your own may help speed up your production and lend itself to courses with more personality.

Have you ever applied hand drawn images to your courses? If so, how did they turn out?

Events

Free E-Learning Resources

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

As noted in an earlier post, an easy way to build interactive elearning modules is by choosing a single image and adding interactive elements to it. This is a great solution for those who don’t have graphic design skills or access to a graphic designer. The key is finding a single image that has a few potential content buckets.

Finding images is relatively easy today. I look for images like the ones below. They need to have some visual interest, a consistent context, and potential content areas that can be clicked on or zoomed into.

Interactive Image Example

In a previous post, I shared this interactive image demo and had lots of questions about the zoom effect I used and how it was built. To help you out, I recorded a few tutorials that go through the basics. I used a different image for the tutorials and included a new free template for you to download.

Here’s the new template in action:

Click here to view the demo.

Interactive Image Tutorials

Here are some tutorials that walk through how I created the zoom in and out effect in this elearning template.

• Tutorial 1: Lay the foundation by setting up the slides and links.
• Tutorial 2: Create the zoom in and out effect (this is the main tutorial).
• Tutorial 3: Shortcuts and production tips to save time.

Free Interactive Image Templates

I’ve included the source file for the original demo and a new template based on the image I used in the video tutorials. As a bonus, I used the same image to create a free PowerPoint template.

• Zoom Office template (Storyline 2). I fleshed out the template a bit and added variables to track completion. But you can use it anyway you wish.
• Interactive Office template (PowerPoint).
• Original source file.

• The templates also include a slide of individual characters. Create additional slides in the template and add the characters.

So now it’s up to you—find some images, watch the tutorials above, and create your own interactive image templates.

Events

Free E-Learning Resources

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