Most of us are scrambling to find free assets to use in our presentations and elearning courses. The good news is that there are more than enough free stock images available, such as these three earlier posts where I shared 80 free stock photos, 45 free stock photos, and 60 more free stock photos.

The challenge with all of these free stock photos is that it’s not always easy using them for your presentations or elearning courses as they are. The characters are easy enough to figure out. But whatr about the various background images? Here are some tips to help customize free stock photos to work with your courses.

If you’re not inclined to use the free images, 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.

7 Ways to Overlay Text & Customize Free Stock Photos

One of the biggest issues is that while the image looks great, it’s too busy for your content. So you need to find some ways to add contrast. Nicole shared some good tips on how to overlay text on images. These should come in handy for many of your presentations and courses.

Apply a Blur to Customize Free Stock Photos

An easy fix is to blur the image (or add other effects). This gives you some texture and visual interest without the image being too distracting. Also, our eyes are naturally drawn to the text (and other objects) that are in focus. So that’s a great way to direct the viewer’s eyes to the content.

Most graphics editing applications have blur filters. Even PowerPoint has a blur feature. So that should be easy to accomplish.

Make a Content Area as You Customize Free Stock Photos

Sometimes the image is great and you don’t want to add a blur or overlay text. But what you do need is room for your text and other objects. Here’s an example from a presentation I recently delivered on interactive video.

As you can see in the image below, the original photo I used was too narrow for the slide since the image was 4:3 and the slide was 16:9. And the image is so busy that there’s no room to place any content over it. I liked the image but need some free space.

Usually what I try to do is crop the image in a way where I end up with space for the content. In this particular case cropping the image wasn’t a viable solution.

• So I cropped the image to show what I wanted (the three boxes).
• And then to fill in the blank area, I duplicated the image and cropped a sliver from one end and stretched it across the slide. This only works if the sliver is mostly solid. It wouldn’t have worked if I had used the other side of the image (which has a blur of colors). The colors would cause streaking.
• To cover any artifacts from stretching (stretch marks?) I applied a blur to the sliver image. This softens it and lets in blend in.

As you can see, the end result worked well. And all of this was done right in PowerPoint so I didn’t need to use an image editor. If you want to learn more, I created a quick PowerPoint tutorial.

Click here to view the PowerPoint tutorial.

If you need to customize the free stock photos then this tip should come in handy. While it doesn’t work for every image, it does work for quite a few. Give it a try and see what you can do to customize the free stock photos you get online.

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This post gives you a two-fer: that’s two freebies for one. I found a free desktop image made available by Anastasia Kolisnichenko. I used the free image to create an interactive course prototype for an upcoming workshop activity. The template is free for you to download and use as you wish.

Below is an example of the template in action. It’s embedded on the blog page. Click here to view the template if the embedded version isn’t visible in the email.

The example above was created in Storyline and uses the zoom region feature and triggers to pause the timeline. Here’s a PowerPoint (no zoom). I like the push transition.

How to Create an Interactive Course Using a Single Image

If you had access to a graphics designer, you could create anything you want. But for many of you, that’s not an option. This means you’re limited to searching the Internet for free downloads and then using those for your courses. The challenge with this is that it can be difficult to modify or customize the free downloads that you find.

However, here’s a simple technique that doesn’t require a lot of extra work. It just requires an image that has clear potential content buckets. Then you add links to those buckets and add your content. It’s a straightforward way to create an exploratory interactive course.

• Locate an image that has multiple components. The free desktop download is a good example. It has areas that can be made clickable with links to additional content. Another example could be a collage style image or a comic book layout image.

• Create a separate slide for each distinct area. In the example above I made slides for the computer, picture frame, bookshelf, microphone, and calendar. Those are all exciting potential content buckets.

• Link from the main image to a slide of the isolated element. Also add a link back.
• Apply a transition. In Storyline, the zoom feature is a wonderful way to transition in and out. In PowerPoint, it’s a bit more challenging to create a zoom that’s easy to edit. In that case, I used a push transition.

In this demo I used the free desktop image to create the interactive course design. However, this production technique works great with other images. The key is that you start with a single image, so you need to do minimal editing and customization.

Download the Free Templates to Create an Interactive Course

Here are the download links to the free template. I also included the original graphic in case the link breaks somewhere down the road. Be sure to give props to Anastasia Kolisnichenko who made it available to use.

• Storyline: contains the Storyline 1 and 2 versions of the file.
• PowerPoint

Enjoy!

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Here’s another free PowerPoint template that you’re free to use in your online training courses. The free template is structure to slide up and down as you navigate. I designed the files for a workshop on building some interactive timelines, however it can be used for anything. Essentially they’re just slides with numbered circles. They’d work great as a process interaction. If you need additional slides, just duplicate them.

See the Free PowerPoint Template in Action

Below is an example of the free PowerPoint template without any content in it. As you can see the slides push up as you advance.

Click here to view the basic template.

And here’s the free template mocked up with some generic content and characters. The first example is the PowerPoint version of the template and the second example is the Storyline version of the template.

• Click here to view the PowerPoint demo.
• Click here to view the Storyline version.

As you can see, modifying the template is pretty easy. In one template I added photo characters and in the other I added some of the free people icons I featured in a previous blog post.

Download the Free Template

• Here’s a link to download the free PowerPoint template.
• Here’s a link to download the free Storyline template.

How to Customize the Free PowerPoint Template

• The template has four core slides: a start and end slide and then a left and right circle slide.
• The template uses the color design theme. Change your theme and the template changes, too.
• You’ll notice that in the mock up I created, I added a color side panel for more contrast.
• Add some interactivity by making the number circles clickable to reveal the slide’s content.
• Here’s a screenshot of the template using pictures rather than shapes and vector icons.

Enjoy!

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Here’s a free PowerPoint template I built for a recent workshop. I used it to show how to create interactive conversations in PowerPoint using hyperlinks. In this example it’s a simple back and forth conversation.

This free template could be used as a way to share manager/employee information or perhaps as an FAQ interaction. In either case it’s free for you to use as you wish.

Below is an example of the template in action. I mocked up a FAQ interaction on copyright laws. Click the character on the left to trigger the question. And click the character on the right to answer it.

Click here to see the free template demo.

How to Edit the Free PowerPoint Template

Here are a few production tips:

• These tutorials give you a very good overview of how to work with this free PowerPoint template.
• The template is made of two simple layouts which you can edit in the master slides.
• The characters have transparent boxes that link to the next slide. Edit these on the master slide. You can locate them using the selection pane.
• The progress indicator base is on the master slide. Those are the light gray circles. The darker and colored progress indicators are at the slide level to indicate progress on that slide.

Download the free PowerPoint template here. I also created a version of the template in Storyline, which you can download here. It’s a single slide and designed to easily update the question/answer text using variables. You can see it in action here.

Also, there are all sorts of free PowerPoint templates available in the community. They can be used for your online training courses.

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

Now that Microsoft’s quit providing free clip art and free stock images many of you are scrambling to get hold of free resources to use for your elearning and training development.

Download Free Stock Images

In a previous post I shared 45 free stock images via the Unsplash site. In today’s post I’m going to share how to get 68 free stock images via Creative Tail. They’re free for commercial use which means you can use them for your online training courses.

Since the images are free to distribute based on the CC 4.0 license, I saved a few steps by putting them in a single folder for you to download.

You can download the free stock images here.

However, since Creative Tail made the images available for free, here’s a courtesy link to their 500 image pack you can purchase.

If you’re not inclined to use the free stock images, you can always find inexpensive stock photo subscriptions.

Editing Free Stock Images

Sometimes the stock images may not appear usable. However, one way to get more use out of them is to isolate people from the original image. This gives you more usable assets because a single image can become multiple distinct assets. And even if the stock images don’t work as a main image, with a blur filter applied, they become useful ambient background images.

In either case, it never hurts to take advantage of the free assets like these free stock images while they’re available. Hopefully they’ll come in handy.

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Free people icons are great when they’re truly free to use for commercial courses. And who doesn’t like them, especially now that Microsoft no longer offers free clip art?

Here’s a list of some free icons. I only link to the ones that are free for commercial use. That means you can use them for your work and not spend time looking at free icons that you can’t use.

Kameleon Free People Icons

Nice flat people icons. Free for commercial use and the site also includes additional icons. Download them individually from iconfinder as .PNG files.

Customizable Free People Icons

Trina Rimmer shares some free icons that can be easily customized because she built them in PowerPoint. Click here to get the free PowerPoint template.

Large Boss Free People Icons

Good mix of characters. Also includes the elusive Satan avatar which is critical for totally serious feedback in compliance training. Free for commercial use; attribution required.

Flatflow Free People Icons

Nice flat icons with actual faces (not sure why there are so many blank-faced icons). Free for commercial use; attribution not required but appreciated. Here’s a direct link to the designer’s site.

Vista Free People Icons

Good assortment of occupations. Free for commercial use, attribution required.

Creative Tail Free People Icons

Another nice collection of flat people icons. Free for commercial user via CC 4.0

Kids Set Free People Icons

These are informal, cartoony icons. Free for commercial use under GPL license.

Need ideas on how to use the free icons? Here’s an example from a presentation I did a few years ago where I used the Kids Set icons above.

And here’s an example from a recent blog post where I gave away a free elearning template made with free icons. You can download the free Storyline or PowerPoint template files.

Click here to view the free template in action.

As you can see, there are all sorts of ways to use the people icons. They can be used as avatars, buttons, or characters in your courses.

Some of the free icons do require attribution. If so, here’s a post that shows how to properly attribute the free people icons and give their creators proper recognition. Even if they don’t require attribution, it’s a good practice to still give them credit.

As you can see there are quite a few ways you can leverage the free people icons. Which icon set do you like best? Any ideas on how you’d use them?

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What is interactive elearning?

In previous posts we discussed different ways to interact with onscreen elements. Generally, interactions are limited to click, mouse over, or dragging interactions.

Then we explored two key points when building interactive elearning. The first point is to get the users to “touch” the screen. Find ways to have them interact with onscreen elements. The second point is to have them interact with the content to create a great learning experience.

Now let’s look at common reasons why people interact with the elearning courses and then we can use that to build better interactive elearning. To keep things simple, we’ll look at three common reasons why people interact with their courses.

Interactive E-Learning: Course Navigation

The most obvious reason why people interact with the elearning course is to navigate from one point to the next. The “next” button is the most common form of interaction. We click it to navigate from one screen to another.

Of course, there are all sorts of others ways to navigate content. It could be an onscreen button, like a gate screen that we click to advance. Or perhaps it’s something like the example below that uses a slider instead of next buttons to navigate from one screen to the next.

What I like about the slider interaction is that we are able to replace a clickable button with a draggable slider. This novelty helps engage those viewing the course and gives them better control of the navigation.

Click here to view the slider navigation.

When building your next interactive elearning course, think about ways that the user navigates the content. Play around with ideas that move beyond clicking and the next button. Perhaps there’s a way to include more mouseovers and dragging.

Interactive E-Learning: Exploration

Another common reason why people interact with the onscreen content is to explore and collect information. Most courses are linear and they require that a person click in a specific sequence. However, by allowing for non-linear interactivity, the user gets a bit more control and can access the content they need, when they need it—or at least start with the content that seems the most interesting to them.

Here are a few common types of exploratory interactions to give you some ideas:

• Tabs Interaction: this first example is standard. This second example has additional layers of content which shows that tab interactions don’t need to be limited to a single click and reveal.
• Interactive labels: interactive labels are a great way to add additional content to the screen without adding a lot of clutter. They’re great for letting the learner explore and collect content. Here is a form-based example created using pre-built labels for faster production. And this second example is a custom label interaction that includes similar looking labels, but they’re used to explore and learn more about the team. And here’s an example of an interactive screenshot (great idea for software training).
• Interactive Sliders: sliders are great because the user can scrub through content quickly. This lets them collect information in a novel way, scrub back and forth to see cause and effect relationships, and jump back and forth between procedural steps.

Couple exploratory interactions with decision-making and you have the foundation for solid interactive elearning and dynamic branched scenarios. They let users explore and collect information to make the decisions required to demonstrate their understanding of the course content.

Interactive E-Learning: Make Decisions

Outside of navigation, the most common reason we interact in our online courses is to make decisions. Usually, it’s a simple quiz question with a submit button. But interactive elearning could also include decision-making scenarios or other non-standard assessments.

Ideally, it’s designed to make decisions and then get feedback based on our decisions. Sometimes the feedback is immediate and sometimes it’s delayed and compounded.

Here are a few simple decision-making interactions:

• Interactive assessment: check out this interactive quiz with progress bar. It’s a good combination of a process, assessment, and progress interaction. Created by Montse Anderson at E-Learning Designer.com.
• Branched, decision-making scenario: this example scenario features branched feedback and a progress meter. Created by Nicole Legault.
• Novel interactive elearning: the Broken Co-Worker scenario created by Ryan and Anna at Elearner Engaged.
• Drag & drop decision-making interaction: determine the healthiest food choices by dragging food items to the plate. Created by David Anderson.

As you can see, assessments and decision-making interactions don’t have to rely on the out-of-the-box quiz questions. There are all sorts of ways to make the decision-making interactive to create a better learning experience. As you plan your next assessment, see if there’s a way to add some novelty or different ways to interact during the decision-making.

Interactive elearning means the learner interacts with the screen and course content. There are only a few ways to interact with the screen. In addition, there are specific reasons why they’re interacting. Do you want them to go from one piece of information to another? Are you giving them opportunities to explore? Or do you want them to collect some information and make decisions?

Understanding why they’re interacting with the course content will help you better determine how you want them to interact. And in turn, you’ll build better interactive elearning courses.

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[UPDATE: This tutorial is specific to Storyline2. Storyline 360/3 both have closed captioning as a feature.]

In a previous post we learned how to create closed captions text for your online courses. Now we’ll learn to use that text in Articulate Storyline.

Before we get started, let’s do a quick review of your closed captions source file. Regardless of the application you used to create the closed captions file, you’ll end up with the timing and the text for the captions. It should look similar to the image below.

Display Closed Captions in Storyline

Displaying the closed captions in Storyline 2 is a very straightforward process. All we need is a single text variable that is triggered to change to new text based on the timeline.

Here’s a video where I explain how easy it is to create the closed captions in Storyline 2.

Click here to view the closed captions YouTube tutorial.

Here are the basic steps to create the captions in Storyline 2:

• Create a text variable titled “Caption.”

• Insert a text reference of the “Caption” variable so that the caption is visible on the slide. The caption displays the variable which will change at different points on the timeline.

• Add a trigger to the slide that changes the value of the “Caption” variable at a specific time. The value and specific time come from the SRT file. The value is the text and the time is the starting time for each line. Storyline 1 doesn’t have the timeline trigger. The workaround is to add simple shapes (and move them offscreen) to represent the timing. And then trigger to the start of those shapes on the timeline).

• Copy and paste the trigger and then add the new values and timing by copying the text from the .SRT files.

As you can see, adding closed captions and syncing them to the timeline is pretty easy. Here are a few general tips when working with closed captions:

• Show or hide the closed captions by adding a button that sets a variable to turn captions on and off.
• Use a legible text, none of those fancy curly ones. A clean san serif font like Open Sans works well.
• Come up with a format that is consistent. Because the screen content is constantly changing you want to ensure enough contrast so that people can read the captions. I prefer a semi-transparent black box with white or yellow text.
• Create a uniform size. The text box that contains the closed captions is dynamic and will change based on the characters (that’s the nature of text variables). That means the font size may increase or decrease based on the character count. Do a test and create a box that accommodates the most text you’ll have at any given time. Then set the font size to that and it should look right as the character count changes.

That’s about it. With a single variable and one trigger you can quickly create as many captions as you need when using Articulate Storyline to build your online training.

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A few months ago I wrote a post on Microsoft getting rid of free clip art. For those with a budget that probably wasn’t that big of a deal. But there are many who relied on the free assets that Microsoft provided, especially since they didn’t include just clip art.

Losing free clip art isn’t all bad news. There is some good news in all of this. A lot of the clip art was lame and negatively impacted many online courses and presentations. Not having it means we’ll need to get better at our design and learn a few new skills.

How to Find Free Clip Art

Most online searches for “free clip art” produces very limited results and most of them are worse quality than the stuff Microsoft dumped. However, you may find some things you need. Here are a couple of free clip art sites:

• OpenClipArt.org
• ClassroomClipArt.com

Another option that I’ve mentioned before is to scavenge clip art images from older graphics programs. For example, often bookstores, office supply stores or computer stores will have discount bins where they sell out-of-date software. I look for multimedia creation software like greeting card makers. They usually have all sorts of assets. Be sure to read the EULA, though.

Switch from Free Clip Art to Free Vector Illustrations

If you change your search term from “free clip art” to “free vector images or illustrations” things change for the better. There are a lot more free images available and they’re more up-to-date in terms of visual style.

The challenge with free vector illustrations is how to edit them. Free clip art was easy because in PowerPoint you could always right-click and ungroup them for easy editing. That’s not the case with most of the free vector illustrations. You’ll need to use a software application to edit them.

Customizing Free Vector Illustrations

Most of the free vector illustrations include a bitmap output such as .png. That’s great for inserting them in your courses, but they’re not vector files and can only be edited like regular images. In that case you’ll need to learn to use an image editing program. If you don’t already own one, Paint.net is free and Photoshop Elements is inexpensive and more than enough to handle basic editing tasks.

The vector file formats are usually .AI or .EPS. Those need to be edited in a more complex application than PowerPoint. There are a few options out there, but for the most part it’s going to be Adobe Illustrator (which costs money) or Inkskape (a free opensource alternative).  The challenge is that they’re not necessarily intuitive applications so you’ll need to make an investment in learning how to use them.

I know very little about Illustrator, but I was able to fumble around and open an .EPS file and save the individual elements as .PNG graphics that I used for this free elearning template I shared a few weeks ago. With a little practice, basic editing is possible.

Inexpensive Alternatives to Free Clip Art & Vector Illustrations

Since I no longer have access to free clip art I had to make an investment in an image library. There are a plenty of options out there like iStock and ShutterStock, and most of them are fine.

But this does mean, I’ll have to learn more about working with vector images and get a bit faster editing regular images, as well. It’s on my schedule.

Create Your Own Images

There’s no reason you can’t create your own images. Here are a few ideas from previous posts:

• Learn to create images and illustrations in PowerPoint.
• Shoot your own stock photos.
• Create hand-drawn graphics.

If you’re interested, I’ll be in San Francisco presenting a workshop on how to create your own assets for your elearning courses. In it you’ll learn all sorts of practical tips and tricks.

Your Next Steps

• Locate a good source for course images, whether free or not.
• Learn to edit the images and illustrations.
• Ask for a graphics budget to either create the images or hire someone more skilled to do it.
• Take advantage of the free assets in the elearning community.

Elearning was a lot easier when everything was wrapped in the PowerPoint blanket. But that world is changing and we’ll need to change with it.

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I’m not sure you noticed but we just updated the Insider’s Guide to Becoming a Rapid E-Learning Pro. The first edition of the free e-book was released in 2007, and as you can imagine a lot has changed in our industry. This new addition addresses some of those changes and offers more practical tips and tricks.

How Has E-Learning Changed?

In 2007, most of the options for creating interactive elearning required Flash. If you wanted to build courses, you were required to either learn Flash or hire a Flash programmer. That meant a lot of organizations were shut out of building their own elearning courses.

But along came the PowerPoint-to-Flash products. They enabled people to create their content in PowerPoint and convert it to the Flash. Essentially, each slide was converted to a Flash movie. Thus the non-programmer was empowered to create Flash-based courses at a fraction of the cost. They weren’t perfect, but they definitely were viable. I imagine that many of you seasoned elearning developers cut your teeth in a PowerPoint-based product.

These tools didn’t get their start in 2007. Articulate Presenter was around well before eHelp (one of the leading companies) was purchased by Macromedia that was purchased by Adobe. In fact, eHelp licensed Articulate Presenter for their own RoboPresenter product. So while all of this happened in the early 2000’s, rapid elearning and PowerPoint-based authoring didn’t really start to take off until around 2008 or so.

Today things are different. PowerPoint’s not as important to elearning because there are more advanced elearning applications like Storyline that let you do all sorts of things with PowerPoint ease and a host of form-based tools (like Engage) that only require copy and paste editing.

And we won’t even get started on the state of Flash. While it’s still viable, I don’t know many people working with it anymore and I think it’s been almost four years since someone’s asked me a Flash question.

As you can see, the industry has changed over the past seven years and the free e-book, Insider’s Guide to Becoming a Rapid E-Learning Pro, has been updated to reflect that change.

What’s New in the Free E-Book?

When I wrote the first e-book I wanted to help people who were just transitioning to the elearning industry. Many of them had limited experience and were mostly working by themselves (or on small teams) and with limited resources. Today, things are a bit different.

The industry continues to grow. That means there’s an ongoing influx of new elearning developers mixed with the first generation of rapid elearning pros, who’ve mostly moved past PowerPoint-based authoring. The free e-book reflects this transition. Here are some of the key topics I’ve updated:

• Tips and tricks on managing your success. Building a course is one thing, being successful doing it is another.
• Learn to be a proactive partner to the organization. Don’t be an order-taker; learn to understand the organization’s needs and help them meet their objectives.
• Understand the types of tools on the market. Many organizations make the mistake of creating a checklist of features to compare tools. But they disregard the types of tools on the market. The e-book discusses the pros and cons of the different types of products without looking at any one specific vendor.
• Create interactive elearning courses. In 2007, if you were working with PowerPoint, your options were limited. Today, that’s not the case.
• Save time and money by creating reusable content. One of my favorite features in Storyline is being able to build an interaction and then saving it as a template. This speeds up my production time and after a few projects, I end up with a tool chest of reusable content. You’ll learn a bit more on creating reusable content.

How Do You Get the Free E-Book?

Getting the free e-book is super easy. If you’re a current blog subscriber, the e-book is linked at the bottom of each post. That means all you need to do is scroll down and click on the download link. If you’re not a blog subscriber, you can get the free e-book here.

Download the free e-book and let me know what you think.

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I’m working on some practice content for an upcoming workshop and decided to share the template that is part of the workshop activities. It starts with a main image that has five distinct sections. Each section links to a series of slides with a few different layouts.

Because the main image looks like an organizational overview, I think the template works great for a new hire orientation module. But you’re free to do with it as you wish.

In the template you’ll also find some extra slides with the people images and some props that I gleaned from the main image. Feel free to copy and paste them to create your own slides and scenarios.

Here’s a quick mock-up I created using the new hire orientation template so you can see some of the layouts and perhaps get some ideas of how to add interactive elements to make the modules more interactive and engaging.

See the New Hire Orientation Template in Action

Click here to view the elearning example.

Download the Free New Hire Orientation Template

Click here to download the new hire orientation template.

• Free Storyline template
• Free PowerPoint template

If you use the template let me know. I’d love to see what you create.

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 a previous post I shared some free stock images via Unsplash. They’re free for commercial use. Unsplash has a lot more images, but the download I featured was curated to help save some time and preserve the images.

Today, I’ve done the same thing only this time the curated images are from Startup Stock Photos. Just like Unsplash, they’re free to use and distribute via a public domain license.

You can download them individually from their site. However, to make things easy I downloaded them all and put them in a single folder. I resized the images to make the download smaller, but they’re still around 2700×1800—more than enough for your elearning courses.

You can download entire folder of free stock images here.

Don’t stop there. Take advantage of all of the other free downloads in the community:

• Callouts to use for scenarios
• Background images
• Buttons
• Icons & markers
• Miscellaneous graphics

If you’re in need of free resources and stock images these should help. Enjoy!

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.