While creating a storyboard for online courses, I usually turn to templates to make my task simple. If you’ve more than a few members of your team working on the same project and you need the look and feel of the course to be consistent when done, it is ideal to use templates. 

Templates include various different elements such as buttons, icons, color schemes, images, games and much more. Tools such as PowerPoint master slide layouts allow you to have a range of pages ready to insert content. The whole idea of a template is that you can use the elements an infinite number of times for different projects. Let me tell how I benefit from using templates while developing online training course: 

• First, it saves time and effort. Re-creating buttons, icons, colors, etc, each time when I create a storyboard is time-consuming. It is nice to have a few sets of interface, layouts, icons, buttons, colors and frequently used components handy. I enjoy dragging and dropping the elements into the place and voila, I’m ready to roll out a course!
• A library of templates elements is valuable to whose (like me) do not have web or multimedia designer at their disposal. An amateur takes a long time to create a Flash movie or design a button than an expert. Besides, the quality of work may not be up to the mark. I prefer to focus on creating good learning materials for the course rather than drawing a pretty button.
• Many of the clients I have worked with prefer their courses to have a consistent look and feel – same colors, quality and more. They provide me with their readymade set of templates to use for developing of course materials.
• If a company is using LMS, there are certain requirements for proper functioning. By having custom-designed templates compatible with the LMS, life is easy for all of us. Templates mean less troubleshooting time and faster turnaround of course development.
• Not all IDs (yours truly!) have web designing or multimedia skills. It is best to have various elements of templates created by experts as it gives a touch of professionalism to the courses. I just need to edit the template and its elements to add the course content.
• As I mentioned earlier, an ID has to create good learning material and not design templates and elements. By using templates while developing courses, IDs can think of creative ways to make a course interesting and churn out more courses in a short span of time. 

These are the few benefits that I see from using templates while creating an e-learning module. 

Do share your thoughts with me on the same.

A month ago, Connie Malamed posted a discussion in LinkedIn inviting readers to donate storyboard formats to be offered as a resource to the eLearning fraternity. Many have offered the formats they were using. You can find them at the eLearning coach. I too sent a couple of them (yet to be uploaded; Connie is a terribly busy person but still finds time to maintain an extremely useful site for learning professionals like us).

That started my thinking about this fairly “low-tech” component in a high tech world of technology-based learning and corporate training. I was amazed to discover that our ubiquitous storyboard is actually an 80-year old Ancient . The humble word document that serves us in developing eLearning courseware has an interesting history. According to Wikipedia, the first storyboard was developed at the Walt Disney studio during the early 1930s for the 1933 Disney’s Three Little Pigs! I also learnt that it is used in many ways by many professions – Film, Theater, Advertising, TV, Publishing, Business, eLearning…

We at CommLab use MS Word to make our storyboards. PowerPoint is also used by some and Authoring tools by a few. But I think ‘MS Word’ is by far the most extensively used in developing online course storyboards. Connie has a very useful section, “Storyboards for eLearning” on her site for those who wish to pick up some tips.

I wonder if we can give the ol’ storyboard a ‘makeover? Can we come up with a tool that offers all the following.

• Desktop Publishing software like Ventura or PageMaker to build a tailor-made formats with ease
• PowerPoint to create some elementary animation
• Clip Art Gallery for images / photographs
• Various Assessment Components that can just be selected and populated
• Audio / Video Gallery of music, standard instructions, video clips…
• Dictionary and Thesaurus

Any more ideas?

Thank you for reading my blog. I look forward to your comments.

RK Prasad

CEO

We started Elearning Edge on June 2, 2009 (four months to date) with a purpose of making it a one-stop platform of ready-to-use resources for learning professionals.

Our experience in the elearning industry for the last 9 years has resulted in a large accumulation of useful resources like assessment components, templates, online courses, ILT courseware, PowerPoint decks, webinars, graphic components – everything and anything that will help learning professionals.

It is really gratifying to see that the membership has crossed 1000 in just four months. I am taking this opportunity to thank all the members for joining us.

I would also like to ask what resources you would want to help you succeed in your jobs and make your working life easier.

What else can we do to make this group, eLearning Edge the largest eLearning group on LinkedIn?

Share your views!

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Hello! Today we will learn about how we can use Lectora translation tool for rapid development of translations. In this blog, I will show you one page translation procedure demo using Lectora 2008.

Let’s translate one page of English course into Simplified Chinese.

First, we need to export all the content into the translation text file. This can be done easily using the inbuilt tool available in Lectora.

Click on the Tools menu item from the Menu bar, and then click on the Translation Tool menu item.

The Translation Tool dialog opens. In the dialog box, choose the ‘Export text to a translation file’ option. Next check ‘The current page only’ option; since this is a demo, we are translating only one (current page) only.

Click on the ‘Browse’ button for the location to save the exported text file. Enter the file name and click on ‘Open’ and then click the ‘OK’ button.

At the end of the procedure, you will be able to see the exported file. Let’s view the text file.

In the document, you will come across instructions like ‘Do not edit this line’ in red. The translators need to be informed about not to delete or translate these instructions. They need to translate only the text below the instruction line.

Let’s have a look at the document translated by the translator. Here is the translated file, Click to view the document. Except for the instructions line, the text is translated into Simplified Chinese language.

After we receive the translated document, we need to import it into the Lectora to replace the English content with Simplified Chinese. Let’s see how to do it.

Again click on the ‘Tools’ menu item from the ‘Menu’ options and then click on the ‘Translation Tool’ menu item.

Next, check the radio button next to ‘Import text from a translation file’. Check the ‘Increase text box size if needed’ option to adjust the text size of the translated content automatically by Lectora.

Click on the ‘The current page only’ option to import as this is a demo.

Click on ‘Browse’ button to locate the translated file and then click on ‘OK’ ‘button. The translated content will replace the text content in the original language on the page.

Check for any formatting / alignment issues. Similarly you can do it for the entire course.

If you need to localize the course you can replace the images and other objects like Flash, manually. Once you are finished with editing the text and localizing the content, the course is ready to publish.

Kolb’s learning theory introduces us to four distinct learning styles (or preferences), which are based on a four-stage learning cycle – learning by feeling, watching, thinking and doing.

In other words, we all agree that individuals learn uniquely, combining a mix of the above preferences to bring out their own unique style of learning. We also appreciate that although there are as many unique learning styles as there are individuals; we can categorize them into a finite number as shown very elegantly by David Kolbe.

My question is how practicable or feasible it is to try and accommodate various learning styles while designing a course, be it classroom or online?

In a classroom, the elements of instruction used seem to depend more on what the instructor/facilitator is good with rather than on addressing a variety of learning styles that the audience brings to the class.

As far as online courses are concerned, I agree we all make sure that there is a judicious balance of content, graphics, animation and interactivity.

But is there a more objective method to decide how much of each is recommended? I don’t remember collecting data on the learning styles of the target audience before sitting down design a course. Is there any research available that suggests a general distribution of learning styles in a given population?

If we know, even in general terms, the distribution of learning styles in a reference set of population and if we can get hold of an objective method of deciding what instructional elements we can use and in what proportion, I think our training programs will be much more effective.

I would welcome my colleagues to respond with their knowledge and experience in addressing this area.

Thank you for reading my blog.

RK Prasad

CEO