Helen is a content developer and editor at Video Caddy. In this post, she shares more about how e-learning storyboards can help you improve your content creation processes.
What are e-learning storyboards?
A storyboard for e-learning is a document describing the layout of the different components used in the course. This can include the overall flow, interactions and other forms of navigation. They are comparable to storyboards used in other types of creative projects and are usually one of the first steps in the design process before any technical design work starts.
Storyboarding is a tool commonly used in film and animation.
A storyboard’s objective is to provide your stakeholders and subject-matter experts with a peek into the structure and presentation of the course. The storyboard can also help improve the course’s quality by identifying problems at a glance and improving storytelling, course structure, and content organization. Additionally, they assist you in focusing on how you are teaching the course’s material to students and guarantee a better learning environment.
How to use e-learning storyboards?
Before you begin, you need to have a clear understanding of the goals for your storyboard. As you develop your storyboard, keep track of these goals and be sure not to stray from them. This will help you improve the flow of your content.
Additionally, you should understand your audience’s learning requirements and preferences. For this, you should conduct extensive audience research.
Now that you are clear on your goals and what your users want, you can choose to start your storyboard from scratch or use an existing template. Then, organize your content into these storyboards and integrate multimedia components. With this, you can look at your content from a macro point of view. Feel free to reorganize what you have to make the user experience as seamless as possible. Once you are happy with what you have in your storyboards, you can work on developing your content.
There is no right way to storyboard. Find what suits you best, as long as it gives you a clear view of your project!
What makes E-learning storyboards a powerful digital learning tool?
1. Makes development efficient
Content creators often spend a lot of time developing a course only to have it restructured or majorly changed after reviews. This wastes time spent in creating the course in the first place. Storyboards help you establish an agreed-upon course framework before you begin the production process, saving the much-needed time, effort, and money to make changes later. Additionally, most mistakes are found during the storyboarding stage, which again reduces the time and costs associated with fixing these mistakes.
2. Saves money
Comprehensive storyboards can help you visualize the finished product, especially in the event of sophisticated animations where creating the product requires a lot of time and money. Having a storyboard allows you to make modifications when you wish before you begin on the actual product as such, allowing you to alter the course of production without compromising the overall budget. Storyboards also aid with budget planning by allowing you to break down how much each component will cost. By doing this, everyone is kept in the loop on what is feasible and whether additional funding is required to produce a more extraordinary final result.
3. Enhances collaboration
Storyboarding allows all parties engaged in the e-learning project to see the course long before it is complete. It is a simple way to help numerous stakeholders understand the process, and storyboards also provide a way to discuss their thoughts. With everyone on the same page, a larger team may work together to achieve the same goals later on without confusion. You also save time scouring through planning materials to determine the next step.
4. Improves the quality of the course
Storyboarding makes it easier to spot issues and flaws when they are still quick and simple to fix, which helps to improve the accuracy and quality of your e-learning courses. It also allows you to think through the organization and structure of your course from several angles, which may lead to the discovery of subtle mistakes and oversights earlier in the process.
5. Keeps the focus on learning objectives
With any design project, it is easy to get caught up with the appearance and functionality of the product. However, it is crucial to keep your attention on the learning objectives for the course to be successful. An overview of the project lets you see which segments distract from your goals and which areas need to be enhanced. A developer can also use storyboarding to emphasize interactions and branching situations, which are essential to contemporary e-learning methods.
It is important to see how your content branches out and links to each other to achieve your learning goals.
The experience should be as intuitive as possible.
Storyboarding is a tool you should use to organise your content and make it more engaging for your users. Get in touch with us if you want us to help you make your content more engaging!
