What is a Storyboard for eLearning?
An Introduction to the Visual Guide of Creative Process to Design eLearning Courses.
An eLearning Storyboard is a visual representation of your e-learning course. It acts as an outline of the activities, scenarion, and quiz throughout your e-learning courses.
Think of it as the road map for your e-learning course and learning path. Every good scenario and even story has a beginning, middle, and end.
For eLearning we list:
We identify the problem
We fixe the goal
We know the audience / personas
We plan multi-media
Video, Audio, hotspot, webinar, screen recording…
We create activities
We design test and quiz
We Test and improve
That’s where you come in. As the instructional design of your training courses, your job is to figure out how all those little pieces fit together to make a compelling whole. Exiting and so vital to the project!
Visual storytelling is one of the most powerful ways to get your ideas across quickly and efficiently.
If you can’t explain something in writing easily, then why try? That’s why it makes sense to create visual outlines for your scripts from the get-go instead of trying to piece things together after the fact.
E-learning Visual outlines allow not just you but also everyone involved with the project to see where every scene fits into the larger narrative at a glance while still allowing room for flexibility and improvisation later on should new opportunities arise during filming or editing.
What are the steps of eLearning Content Creation?
What are the steps of eLearning Content Creation?
What’s the Difference Between a Storyboard and a Scriptwriting for eLearning?
A storyboard for e-learning is a quick overview of your story that you give your collaborators as a guideline as to where you’re going and what your major plot points are. It is visual, illustrated and “cartoony”!
You’ll want to do the summary with Subject matter Expert in collaboration with your instructional designer. The SME has the knowledge of the industry and the Instructional designer has the knowledge of how people connect, absorbe, retain, enjoy and memorise the information!
Getting their perspectives will help you see your screenplay in a new light and see what might be missing or what might be in the way of the e-learning project moving forward.
With that out of the way, let’s talk about why you might want to start out as a story summary instead of a scriptwriting tutorial.
First, as we discussed above, you might want to draft your story summary as a way to get your bearings after you’ve written the script.
So I resume:
Scripting
Storyboarding
Design and Animation
This can be a helpful way to get the story on paper without having to worry about in-depth character arcs and the like yet.
Second, having your story summary done and in front of you can be a helpful way to determine if you really want to take the time to write a full script or if you’d rather just jump into the next phase of your e-learning project.
You can quickly draft up a summary and see if you feel like making the time to flesh out the rest of your educative scenario.
How to Write a Story Summary for Film
First and foremost, you need to understand your Audience and what needs to resolved. An elearnign course is required because there is a problem!
So, start by sitting down with a pen and paper and taking some time to brainstorm:
What your eLearning course is about?
What are the main ideas and themes you want to explore?
What is the central conflict?
What is the inciting incident?
Take those ideas, creativity and brainstorm everything that happens in your elearning course story in the context of those ideas.
Make a list of everything that happens in your storyboard from the beginning all the way to the end.
Now, look at that list and ask yourself these questions:
What are the main ideas and themes?
What is the central conflict?
What is the inciting incident?
Next, you’ll want to outline your scenario from beginning to end. Start by outlining the beginning of your course and activities and then the middle, and then the end. This will help you think about your courses in those three distinct parts of the screenplay that are often the most difficult for screenwriters.
Storyboarding in e-learning and education.
The storyboard is vital because it validates the mechanics of the learning path between the agency, the learner and the client.
It defines the conceptual and visual format as well as the quality of the activities proposed to the learner.
The storyboard in e-learning must be creative and innovative. The challenge is twofold: it is to deliver a rich learning experience for the learner, but the subject is serious because an e-learning course solves problems!
The team:
Learner
Client
Expert
Instructional Designer
Project manager
Designer
Video editor
A Creative LMS like the Lab LMS
I would like to stress once again the importance of the instructional designer
Creative Learning Management System
Creative eLearning Platform (LMS) for Instructional Designers
As it is impossible to separate strategy from technology, it is important to choose a Learning Management System (LMS) specifically designed for Instruction Designers.
An eLearning Platform (LMS) For Instructional Designers That Creatively Handles Instructional Designers' Back-End Work In the eLearning process, instructional designers work behind the scenes to create the underlying framework for the eLearning storylineboard and scenario. They are the creative people who build the why and how.
An instructional designer is the key person in any successful e-learning project. They know how to make accessible and practical e-learning content that helps learners avoid getting stuck or bewildered by what they can do with it.
That is why we used a number of instructional designers in the creation of our Learning Management System (LMS).
TheLearning LAB’s Project management eLearning Tool has a wide variety of features that allow project managers to efficiently:
Plan,
Manage,
Share,
Design,
Chat,
Validate
And track the progress of all stages of any project.
Simple and powerful!
A Final Word
Creating a story summary or visual outline for your screenplay is an essential part of the creative process.
Doing it early on allows you to get your story on paper and see where it needs to go while avoiding the temptation to change things around once they’ve been shot.
This can even help you determine how much time you need to devote to each individual scene so that the story doesn’t feel rushed.
Contact us for more information!
Learning Lab