Over 800 E-Learning Examples To Inspire Your Course Design

One of the best ways to learn is by looking at the work others have done. We can see different ideas in action which causes us to think about how they were built and explore what we might do different with the same content.

Here’s an example from a recent community challenge. The challenge was to create an interactive slider for elearning. Melissa Milloway created a demo where you dragged a scuba diver down to explore the ocean.

Click here to view the elearning example.

Melissa’s demo had me wondering what I’d do to make the diver look like he was changing position as he was dragged. I also wanted to include some air bubbles for effect. So I took her idea and then played around for a few minutes and created this.

Click here to view the elearning example.

To me, this is the value of routinely looking at elearning examples. Melissa shared her idea and I was able to iterate from it which allowed me to try something new and in turn practice using the elearning software.

One of the challenges is finding good examples because many of the good ones are locked behind corporate firewalls. However. rere are a couple I’ve seen recently.

This one from SpongeUK is a proof-of-concept demo to show a gamified course in Storyline. I like the light graphics and course structure. And to tell you the truth, if I wasn’t told this was created in Storyline, I don’t know if I would have guessed it.

Click here to view the elearning example.

Here’s another one on choosing the appropriate safety attire from 42 Design Square.

Click here to view the elearning example.

I’m also fond of the weekly challenges because they are designed to be mini examples and not big courses. They’re like appetizers, just enough food for thought without being overwhelming. And with new ones every week, there’s plenty of inspiration to be had. I love seeing what the community Plus, there are new ones every week. So there’s always something new to see and inspire ideas.

Did you know that last year there were over 750 elearning examples submitted to the weekly challenge? You can stay on top of the elearning challenges and the recaps here.

In addition, the community has a growing list of different elearning examples. We add to them regularly.

Between some of the examples on this blog, the elearning examples in the community, and the examples posted in the weekly challenge, there’s close to a thousand elearning examples that cover a diverse range of subject matter and interactivity. That should be more than enough to help fuel your imagination.

The key is to replicate the ones you like and then challenge yourself to add something new to it.

Hope you all have a happy holiday and happy new year!

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How to Build Better E-Learning

Are you tired of building the same courses over and over again? Sure you may get to build a hundred courses, but they’re essentially the same course built a hundred times. The result is that many of the courses look the same and they don’t provide the opportunity to expand your course design skills.

Today I’d like to offer a few tips on how you can get out of the hundred course rut.

Many organizations allow their employees to have some free time to hack together ideas or work on other types of projects. I spoke to one elearning manager that lets his employees spend a few days each month on personal projects. His rationale is that it gives them “time to unwind and play around with ideas.”

Most organizations probably won’t make time for you to “mess around with ideas” so you need to find ways to get the time. We often used the team meeting time to brainstorm ideas. For example, one challenge was how to navigate a course if all you could do was drag and drop objects and couldn’t click anywhere on the screen. Another was to come up with 100 analogies we could apply to our training programs: climbing stairs, climbing mountains, going down a road, entering a building’s lobby, etc. We then used some of the ideas as models for our course designs.

The main point in the activity was to think about things in a different way and to prototype ideas. They may not always be used, but they will help develop your skills.

As you know, I am a big fan of the weekly elearning challenges because they do exactly what I’m talking about above. They’re a springboard to playing with ideas. We present simple challenges to help nudge you a bit. They’re not intended to be big courses or even all that elaborate. Some people put together complete ideas and some just build quick prototypes. The main goal is to get you to try something different than what you normally do at work. Through that process you find new ideas and production techniques.

Even if you don’t participate in the weekly challenges, I still encourage you to look at what’s being done. They’re a great source of inspiration. You may pick up some neat ideas that can be applied in your own elearning courses. All of the participants get the same instructions but the results are always different. It’s nice to see the diverse ideas.

All of the Articulate community managers do a great job building courses. However, if I were to look at the demos they build without knowing who built them, odds are that I’d be able to match the course author to the course. And the reason is because we all tend to have our own style.

That means our course screens tend to look similar. The layouts, colors, fonts, and object sizes all tend to be the same. That’s not a bad thing. But build the same type of course a hundred times exactly the same way can cause some creative fatigue.

By stepping away from our own style and attempting to mimic the work of others we become better course designers. I recommend collecting elearning courses, multimedia examples, or visual design ideas that you find inspiring and then setting some time to practice recreating them.

Step 1: Try to replicate what the content creator did. This helps you figure out what they did and how you’d do the same thing with your authoring tools. Don’t worry about copyright or anything like that. This isn’t for public consumption. Instead it’s for your personal development. Step 2: Once you have decent replication, start to iterate. Pretend that a client told you they wanted this project redone. What would you do? From there you’ll be able to transform the idea that inspired you to something that’s uniquely yours. And most likely it’ll look a lot different than what you would have done on your own. I usually look for color themes, font pairings, and visual design ideas like how shapes and lines are used. I’ll create a few different layouts based on the original design.

Here are some of the places I go to find inspiration:

E-Learning Examples: a good collection of all sorts of elearning and interactive multimedia examples that could inspire course design ideas. Articulate demos: the elearning challenges have produced over 1000 different examples. You can find a complete list here. But we also feature a few of the more popular ones and other demos in our examples section. News multimedia: with every major news event there’s usually some multimedia composed to explain it. USA Today and NY Times (links to examples) usually have some good demos. Museums: many of the large museums have interactive tours and demos. Here’s one from the Smithsonian on how to build a sod house and an interactive tour of the Louvre. Design sites: I’m not a graphic artist but I can glean ideas from those who are. I like to look at some of the portfolios on sites like Dribbble and Loviv. I often get ideas on layouts, colors, and UI.

If you don’t want to get stuck building the same course over and over again, challenge yourself to find inspiration in the work of your peers. Make some time to connect with others and if you have time, join one of the weekly challenges. I’d love to see what you do.

How do you find inspiration for your elearning projects? Share your thoughts by clicking on the comments link.

Vancouver & Toronto Workshops: We’re planning a couple of workshops in Toronto & Vancouver. If you’re interested, let us know. Click here for more details. February 10 & 11 (Omaha, NE). Sign up for one day or both:
Day 1: How to Build Interactive E-Learning 
Day 2: Use Articulate Storyline to Build Interactive E-Learning March 25-27 (Orlando, FL). Learning Solutions. Swing by the Articulate booth to say “Hello.” April 15 & 16 (Chicago, IL). Registration page coming soon. 
Day 1: How to Build Interactive E-Learning 
Day 2: Use Articulate Storyline to Build Interactive E-LearningMay 17-20 (Orlando, FL). ATD International Conference & Expo. Swing by the Articulate booth to say “Hello.” June 3 & 4 (San Francisco, CA). Registration page coming soon.
Day 1: Learn to Create Your Own E-Learning Assets
Day 2: Use Storyline to Build Interactive E-Learning Other locations include: Philadelphia, Portland, Atlanta, Vancouver, and Toronto.

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Why Building Interactive E-Learning is a Two-step Process

How do you define interactive elearning?

It’s a question I ask clients when they tell me they want an interactive elearning course. Usually they define interactive elearning with what we normally consider the “bells and whistles.” Often they mention things like fancy buttons that change colors and rollover effects.

Sometimes we laugh those off as superfluous or unnecessary interactions. But they do play an important role in interactive elearning. But they’re only part of the interactive elearning process.

One goal of interactive elearning is to craft an immersive experience. The course’s visual design needs to be contextual. It’s something we’ve reviewed before. For example, if you’re doing a course on operating room technology, you want to bring the learner into the operating room. You can do part of this by tapping into your visual voice and crafting a visually immersive screen.

Another way to create an immersive experience is to have the users interact with onscreen elements or “touch the screen.” We discussed this earlier in a blog post on how to touch the screen.

Touching the screen is key. It’s also NOT an either/or option. Regardless of how you design your course’s interactions, the learner is going to interact with it. You’ll either offer options to click, hover, or drag. And since that’s the case, you need to make sure that those onscreen interactions contribute to a high value, interactive experience that pulls the learner into the course.

Interacting with onscreen elements is an important part of elearning course design. However, the ultimate goal of your course is to meet specific learning objectives. So in that sense, I define interactive elearning as getting the learner to interact with the content. This is more than visual and tactile interactions. It includes them processing what they learn and demonstrating understanding.

Here are a few keys to crafting the right interactive experience:

Develop clear learning objectives. Why are they taking the course and what do you expect of them when they’re done? Here’s a good starting point to learn more about creating good learning objectives. Have the learners prove their understanding. With clear objectives you can develop a means for the learner to demonstrate what they’ve learned and their current level of understanding. This is more than a simple multiple choice quiz. Instead it’s the course’s activities and decision-making scenarios that prove what they know. Place their learning in a relevant context. Many elearning courses rely too much on information and not enough on performance. One way to avoid this trap is to frame the content in a context that is real to the learners. And then present the learning experience in a way that mirrors the way they work and the types of decisions they need to make. Here’s a post on how to switch from information to performance-based learning.

Interactive elearning engages the learner. You can engage their senses to craft an immersive experience—make it look great and provide lots of onscreen interactivity. But you can’t stop there. You also need to get them to process the information. Place them in a relevant context and get them to make the types of decisions they’d make in real life.

Combine “touch the screen” interactivity with great decision-making and you’re on your way to building great elearning courses. What do you think?

2015 coming soon. I’m working on the calendar for next year. Some planned stops below. If you’d like to see me or one of the E-Learning Heroes Roadshows in your area, let me know.

New York

Omaha

Philadelphia

Austin

Seattle

Atlanta

Chicago

Phoenix

Also looking at some international trips.

* Touch screen graphic made with snipicons

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Free E-Learning & PowerPoint Template

A few weeks ago I shared an elearning example I created for an elearning workshop. Many of you requested a template based on the example so here it is. There’s a PowerPoint version and one for Articulate Storyline 2 that offers a lot more interactivity.

Click here to view the elearning example.

One of the challenges when using a pre-defined template is that it tends to look good with real content. And then when you get the blank template it doesn’t seem to feel the same. That’s OK. Just add your own content. And don’t be afraid to move things around to make them work for your needs.

You’ll also notice that there’s a big difference between a PowerPoint-based template and one created in Articulate Storyline. PowerPoint is generally a linear presentation product. You can add hyperlinks to create some interactions but you do a hit a ceiling with what you can create.

For example, generally there are three types of interactions: click, hover, and drag. In PowerPoint you’re mostly limited to click interactions. You can still create a lot of interactive content, but you do have that constraint. And each interactive element potentially increases your file size significantly.

In Storyline, I can create one slide with hovers for each module. In PowerPoint to create a similar effect would require a slide for each module. As I add more interactive slides, the slide content increases dramatically in PowerPoint. However in Storyline, I’m still able to use the same slide.

In the Storyline version of the template, I can leverage variables to track what the user does. That lets me mark courses complete and modify where the learner goes after all courses are complete. That’s something not possible in PowerPoint.

Here’s an example of the free PowerPoint template. I added some placeholder content.

Click here to view the elearning example.

In this template, I created a master slide for each module; and each module contains seven layouts. The reason I created seven different masters is so that each layout would have the selected state for the particular module.

You need to go into the master layouts and create hyperlinks to the appropriate slides.

Switching layouts is pretty simple. Just select a new layout. Also, for the quick knowledge check slides, you’ll need to add hyperlinks at the slide level.

Here’s an example of the free elearning template created in Articulate Storyline. This one was created in Storyline 2.

Click here to view the example.

The Storyline template only uses three layouts. As you can see that’s a big difference compared to PowerPoint. It also gets to leverage the slide layers and I used variables to track the learner’s progress and navigation. This lets me mark modules complete and also change the button to represent the appropriate module being visited. That’s why I don’t need to create all of the same layouts that I need in PowerPoint.

Download the free elearning templates here:

If you have any questions about using them let me know. In an upcoming post, I’ll do a couple of quick tutorials to show how to get the templates working.

Vancouver & Toronto Workshops: We’re planning a couple of workshops in Toronto & Vancouver. If you’re interested, let us know. Click here for more details. March 25-27 (Orlando, FL). Learning Solutions. Swing by the Articulate booth to say “Hello.” April 15 & 16 (Chicago, IL). Updated! Register for one or both days. 
Day 1: How to Build Interactive E-Learning 
Day 2: Use Articulate Storyline to Build Interactive E-Learning May 17-20 (Orlando, FL). ATD International Conference & Expo. Swing by the Articulate booth to say “Hello.” June 3 & 4 (San Francisco, CA). Registration info coming soon. 
Day 1: Learn to Create Your Own E-Learning Assets
Day 2: Use Storyline to Build Interactive E-Learning Other locations include: Philadelphia, Memphis, Atlanta, Vancouver, and Toronto.

View the original article here

How to Practice Visual Thinking Skills & Apply Them to E-Learning

In a previous post, we discussed visual thinking concepts and where they fit with elearning design. Now, let’s look at ways to practice sketching your ideas so that you’re able to move past understanding the concepts and actually applying them to your course.

The first step is to get a handle on the basics:

Practice using the basic shapes to create specific objects. The more you practice the better you’ll become at seeing the shapes and sketching something that looks like what it’s supposed to be.

Some people have innate skills and sketching isn’t too hard to start. But many don’t have those skills and feel like they can’t do it. But they can. A key point is to feel comfortable sketching.

Remember, this isn’t about becoming a graphics design professional. You want to get a feel for the flow of drawing with your pen, especially if you’re using a computer or tablet. Then develop some fluency and clarity. And that will take a little practice.

Here are some practice activities.

Activity 1: Create basic shapes over and over again.

Work on getting lines straight and completing the desired shape in less strokes. Can you create the shape in one movement and still have it look like it’s supposed to? For example, I notice that if I create a triangle really fast, then the sides start to bow in. However, if I am more deliberate my lines remain straight. The goal is to get straighter lines at a faster speed. A circle should like a circle and not a blob.

Activity 2: Creating common objects.

Look around your office and identify 10 random objects. Break them down by the basic shapes and then create them a few times. For example, here’s a quick sketch of my desk. It’s mostly rectangles and a few circles.

Another thing is to recognize what makes the shape unique and identifiable. For example, an elephant stands out because of the trunk and large ears. By focusing on the essential shapes you can convey the idea of an elephant without having to create the entire thing.

Activity 3: Convey concepts with your objects.

Start to practice sketching whole ideas. Identify three TED videos and capture the core concepts as sketches. It may be easier to just start with three main ideas from each video. Or if that is too much, just focus on a single point. The good thing about video is that you can pause it and rewind. Here are three to help you get started:

Activity 4: Improve your penmanship.

Sunni Brown has some good advice in her book Doodle Revolution where she says to trace over letters. Find a font type you like and type out the ABCs and save as an image. Then load the image into your drawing app and practice tracing over the letters. Eventually you’ll develop the muscle memory to create nice legible handwriting for your sketches.

When I was a Finance Specialist in the Army we were taught to use block letters so that our writing was more legible. To this day, I still do a lot of printing with block letters and it helps when I write, especially smaller text.

Here are a three examples of people who do a great job sketching their ideas and are part of our industry. They also offer tips via twitter and their blogs.

John Curran of Designed for Learning. I love John’s sketches. Again, they’re not overly complicated to create, but they convey good information and the hand drawn style creates enough contrast to engage people visually.

The key in all of this isn’t to become a pro graphic designer. Instead it’s learning to think visually. Elearning is a mostly visual medium and anything we can do to better communicate our ideas will only serve to make the courses we create better.

Note: I usually only post on Tuesdays. However, I’ve been getting a lot of request for more tutorials. So I’m thinking of doing a Thursday post. Let me know what you think in the comments.

Vancouver & Toronto Workshops: We’re planning a couple of workshops in Toronto & Vancouver. If you’re interested, let us know. Click here for more details. March 25-27 (Orlando, FL). Learning Solutions. Swing by the Articulate booth to say “Hello.” April 15 & 16 (Chicago, IL). Updated! Register for one or both days. 
Day 1: How to Build Interactive E-Learning 
Day 2: Use Articulate Storyline to Build Interactive E-Learning May 17-20 (Orlando, FL). ATD International Conference & Expo. Swing by the Articulate booth to say “Hello.” June 3 & 4 (San Francisco, CA). Updated! Register for one or both days. 
Day 1: Learn to Create Your Own E-Learning Assets
Day 2: Use Storyline to Build Interactive E-Learning June 12 (Austin, TX). Use Storyline to Build Interactive E-Learning. Registration page coming soon. Other locations include: Philadelphia, Memphis, Atlanta, Vancouver, and Toronto.

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Here’s a Free E-Learning Template Made with Free Icons

One of the challenges I pose in our workshops is to create an elearning template using free resources like some of the free images and free icons you find online.

Here are three four good resources for free icons:

The first step is to find an icon style you like. Try to use icons from the same pack. Also, look for icons you can use for commercial use. And of course, give attribution to the creator. Here are a few ideas if you’re not sure how to give attribution in your courses. Create a few screen layouts. The screen is a blank space. And there are only so many things you can put on the screen: text, shapes, media files, etc. Create assets that work with the icons you’ve chosen. For example, if it’s an icon that is made of think black lines, than it makes sense to match the color and lines in the shapes you create for the slide. Use the color picker to pick colors from the icons. This way your other assets are using the same colors. You can also create a custom color scheme based on the colors.

I chose the ballicon icons. There are 20 free icons via Nick Frost. He also sells a more complete pack for $19.

Since the icons are a bit informal, light, and flat, I decided to go with a simple layout with a light wood background. To tie the icons and the other assets together I decided on a thicker white border on the assets.

I created all of the graphics in PowerPoint. Some of the graphics were easy because they are just simple rounded squares with the icons in them. However, others are combined shapes (something you can do starting with PowerPoint 2010).

I also decided on using the diamond icon to represent course progress by awarding a diamond upon completion of each module. The map icon links to my progress screen which you can see in one of the screens above. I then saved the graphics I created as image files so I can use them in Storyline.

I also played around with a few ideas to add some interactive elements. For example, in the demo below you’ll see a simple click and reveal question/answer interaction.

Click here to view the demo using free icons (Storyline).

Here are some free templates for your practice:

Here’s a PowerPoint version of the template to show you what’s in there.

Click here to view the PowerPoint version of the template.

If you need to learn to create a template or build off of the one provided, be sure to check out this blog post on the four essential tips. It includes some tutorials on creating a notebook and the process is the same.

If you’re limited to using free icons and other assets, then practice using them to create cohesive templates. Create your own shapes, layouts, and color schemes.

For those on holiday this week, I hope you all have a great Thanksgiving.

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Podcast #7: What does good elearning look like?

Craig chats with Fiona Leteney on the subject of the new Media City e-learning showcase that she has implemented. The aim of the showcase is the pursuit of excellence, and the desire to inspire and share best practice so that e-learning can always be viewed in a positive light.

Download podcast in mp3 format: What does good elearning look like?

Subscribe to the podcast in iTunes.

Shownotes

Music Source.

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6 Free Audio Editors for Your E-Learning Courses

Even though many elearning applications have their own audio tools, I usually don’t use them. I may for quick projects, but generally, I like to keep my audio production separate from my elearning course production. It provides more control over the audio files and dedicated audio editing software tends to have more features.

Here’s a list of some free audio editors that are more than sufficient for what you may need for most of your elearning course production. And the price is right.

Of course, working with audio isn’t necessarily as easy as plugging in a microphone and recording narration. So I included links to the free software’s learning community to help you if you have detailed questions.

Audacity is probably the most popular of the free audio editors. It’s open source with lots of users so that means there’s a lot of help available online. You can do quick basic recording or use the more advanced features for better audio editing.

The interface for this is familiar and pretty easy to use to get started. As they say, it’s “easy to use, fast and functional audio editor. It is the ideal software for people who need to edit and analyze audio files without complications.”

 

There’s a free and pro version. This is a nice application and probably a bit more sophisticated than what most of us are used to using. However, once you learn to use it you’ll have a lot you can do.

This is an online tool. The start page is a bit different than you might expect. To create a recording you click “new document.” This opens up an easy to use recording window. It is online and you can save to Google Drive.

I do like the ability to download and edit audio from Soundcloud.

I just took a quick look at the free audio editor so I can’t speak to how easy it is to use. However, I know that there are a few blog readers who use it. Here’s how Wavosaur describes the tool: “a cool free sound editor, audio editor, wav editor software for editing, processing and recording sounds, wav and mp3 files. The program has no installer and doesn’t write in the registry. Use it as a free mp3 editor, for mastering, sound design.”

This is another application I haven’t used yet, but was told about at a recent conference. It does bit perfect editing which apparently is important if you don’t want a corrupted dither; and who wants that?

There are a lot more free audio editors out there, but these are the ones I’ve personally used hear the most about from blog readers. And they’re not tied to non-commercial or freemium business models. That means you’re free to use them for the courses you produce at work.

Do you use a different free audio editor than the ones listed above? Feel free to share in the comments below.

*image via commons.wikimedia.org

Vancouver & Toronto Workshops: We’re planning a couple of workshops in Toronto & Vancouver. If you’re interested, let us know. Click here for more details. January 28-29 (London, UK). I’ll be at Learning Technologies, swing by the Articulate booth #42 to say “Hi.” January 30 (London, UK). Doing a couple of seminars on building interactive elearning. Click here to register. February 10 & 11 (Omaha, NE). Sign up for one day or both:
Day 1: How to Build Interactive E-Learning 
Day 2: Use Articulate Storyline to Build Interactive E-Learning March 10 & 11 (Phoenix, AZ). Registration page coming soon.
Day 1: How to Build Interactive E-Learning with Articulate Storyline
Day 2: Articulate Storyline Brainteasers March 25-27 (Orlando, FL). Learning Solutions. Swing by the Articulate booth to say “Hello.”April 15 & 16 (Chicago, IL). Details coming soon. May 17-20 (Orlando, FL). ATD International Conference & Expo. Swing by the Articulate booth to say “Hello.” June 3 & 4 (San Francisco, CA). Registration page coming soon.
Day 1: Learn to Create Your Own E-Learning Assets
Day 2: Use Storyline to Build Interactive E-LearningOther locations include: Philadelphia, Portland, Atlanta, Vancouver, and Toronto.

View the original article here