Save Time with These 3 Rapid E-Learning Tips

The other day I was reviewing an old PowerPoint file that I used for the blog post on how to build simple interactive scenarios in PowerPoint-based elearning.  I wanted to make some tweaks to it for an upcoming presentation.

However, when I opened the file, I realized that in my haste to build the demo for the blog post, I took quite a few short cuts.  At the time, it was fine because it’s a simple demo for the blog.  But going back to make changes has forced me to break and rebuild much of the PowerPoint.  If it was a real elearning course, it could have cost me quite a bit of time.

This experience is a good reminder of many of the production tips and tricks I share in the blog.  There are things we can do during the initial course development that not only save time, but make maintaining the course easier down the road.

Today, I want to revisit some of those tips and show how they can help you on your next elearning course.  Here’s a quick rundown of what I ran into when I opened the original file.

Publishing time was slower.

If you look at the image below, you can see that there’s nothing on the master slides because I didn’t use any master slides.  Instead all of the persistent objects on the screen are copied over all of the slides.  This means that each slide takes a little longer to publish.  This simple demo only had thirteen slides which took about 2 minutes to publish.

Solution: Put as much redundant content on the slide master.  This decreases the publish time.  In this case, the publish time went from about 2 minutes to less than 30 seconds.  Saving 90 seconds for the blog demo’s not that big of a deal.  But a real elearning course with a lot more slides would see a significant improvement in the time to publish.

Didn’t take advantage of the master slides.

The scenario demo has three main scenes.  In the original, I took a shortcut and just created a new slide by copying the previous one (which is what many people do).  That means I didn’t use any slide masters.  I already showed how that slows down publishing time.  In addition, it makes editing much more challenging.  It’s easier to edit a single master once, than it is to make the same edits to each slide individually.

Solution: I created a layout in the slide master for each scene.  Place all of the persistent objects on master slides.  Don’t be afraid of multiple masters.  You can have as many masters as you like.  I usually recommend that if you have more than 2 slides with the same information, use a master.

Clip art and PowerPoint objects are less flexible.

Working with image files is easier than working with vector shapes in PowerPoint.  For example, the characters are clip art images.  If I want to re-use the slide and swap out characters, I can’t do that using the clip art without having to delete and rebuild the animations.  I also don’t get the same image editing capabilities with clip art and PowerPoint shapes that I get with bitmap images.

Solution: For each course, create two PowerPoint files.  One is for building graphics and the other is for building the course.   It’s an extra step, but doesn’t require a lot of extra work.  The tradeoff is that managing your courses will be easier, your publish time will be faster, and you’ll build a library of reusable elearning art.

Most of us are used to working with PowerPoint where some of these tips aren’t as intuitive.  Some of these tips require a change in behavior.  However, if you can make changes in how you work with PowerPoint when building elearning courses, you’ll save time and find that maintaining and editing the projects is a lot easier.

Here are a few quick tutorials that walk through some of these tips and production techniques.

Click here to view the tutorials.

You can also view each via Screenr:

• Leverage your master slides to save time building your PowerPoint elearning courses.
• Create two PowerPoint files: one for graphics and the other for the course.
• Use the selection pane to manage the slide’s layered objects.

What do you do to save time when working with PowerPoint?  Share your tips by clicking on the comments link.

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