Creators need to know how to create a storyboard for eLearning content. You want your eLearning content to feel like a premium and high-quality lesson. This means that you need to plan effectively before creating your content. One way to go about this is to adopt the storyboard method. Never start working on your elearning lessons without mapping out a clear path. In this case, you need to plan very effectively. A storyboard can be very important when planning out your eLearning content.
What is a storyboard?
A storyboard is like a plan or a blueprint that presents the full outline of your elearning course. The word “storyboard” originates from the movie production industry. Creators usually sketch out a full movie using a series of static images. In the same way, your elearning storyboard is the blueprint of your lesson or course plan. A storyboard is a tool that helps you to plan the content flow of your course. This plan uses texts and sketched images to outline the arrangement and patterns of courses, graphics, animations, or videos in the content.
Benefits of storyboards
Storyboards are very important to elearning content creators due to the following benefits:
Helps to visualize the final course content: With storyboarding, you can easily preview the look and feel of your final course content. This helps you to change the images, interfaces, and texts that you will be using for the content.
Helps team collaboration: With storyboarding, you can easily communicate your content plans and goals with your team or an external party.
Detect weaknesses in the content: Storyboarding can be used to visualize the full outlook of the course content, and possible audience reactions, and detect any weak points in the design of the lessons.
Helps to save time: With storyboarding, you can visualize your eLearning content before you begin development. Doing this saves you a lot of time as you can detect costly mistakes before they become major problems for your elearning course.
How to create a storyboard for elearning content
- Assess the needs: The first step to storyboarding is assessing the particular needs of the course. This is part of the process where you identify who you are creating the course for. You will also need to create the learning objectives of the course in this step. For example, you could choose your target audience as “All new university graduates.” A great example of a learning objective we be “On completion of this course, trainees will be able to access the right loans to start their Blockchain businesses.”
- Choose the right design approach: In this step, you should think of the right way to present your content to the students or learners. You can use any available instructional technique or design approach. Common options include using narrated infographics scenario-based approaches, or storytelling. Alternatively, you may want to combine the different types of content. In addition, this is the part where you disintegrate the course into topics, sections, and modules. When you are done with this stage, you should have an elaborate course outline.
- Gather your content and keep it organized: With this stage, you want to bring all your resources together. Know the learning material or reference that you will be needing. Estimate and gather all the charts, graphics, photos, and videos that you will be needing. They should be organized and kept in a well-labelled folder. In addition, you should also choose the components needed for you to narrate this course.
- Choose the right storyboard template: After completing the first three stages, you need to pick the right template for your storyboard. Choosing the right template for your storyboard means that your content has a cohesive flow and contains all the necessary elements.
- sequentially add content: At this stage, the actual work begins! You should start adding the required content and arranging them in the right sequence. The content must be added in such a way that it agrees with your chosen type of storyboard. You should consider the sequence of the chosen content as well as the logical arrangement of the topics. Next, you may have to include the design details, branching, navigation, progressions, scripts, and interactions. For example, if a student leaves a lesson slide, where will they navigate to? This is where branching comes in. You should add all the possible branching options to your storyboard. This helps to present possible branches and navigation involved in each lesson.
- Choose your authoring tool: At this stage of the storyboard development, the blueprint of your course should be complete. This means that you can determine the interaction level and the visual look of the course. At this point, you may want to choose your authoring tool. The authoring tool is the software that you have chosen. It will help give life to your blueprints and lesson plans. Therefore, you must conduct your research and choose the right authoring tool(s) for this activity. The authoring tool that you choose will help you quickly create your storyboard.
Tips for creating effective storyboard in elearning
- Pick a consistent style and theme for your storyboard: This is where your branding skills come into play. If your online business has a preferred branding style, feel, or look for its course materials, the storyboard will indicate any possible provisions for this in the elearning courses or slides.
- Visualize the course: One best way to visualize your elearning course is to insert visual elements. With these elements, you will be able to convey the full look and feel of the course with just one slide or picture.
- Conduct reviews with experts: With storyboarding, you can easily review the final look and feel of your course lessons. This means that the subject matter experts can easily contribute to your course development process. With storyboarding, you can easily get feedback from experts before you begin the course development.
- Cater to different learner demographics: People have different ways of learning. This is why your storyboarding should incorporate different learning modalities to cater to different learning preferences.