You’ve gotten your team on-board; you’ve selected your learning management system platform and you’re ready start designing exciting and relevant employee training.
So what’s the next step?
Most e-Learning professionals would say the next step is creating a storyboard.
What is a Storyboard?
Think back to the first days of animated movies, where creators would lay out a series of drawings or images that would outline the structure and concept of a film.
A storyboard is similar. It’s a way to map out your e-Learning training and show the sequence of information and how it’s going to be presented to employees.
A storyboard is also the blueprint for your training course. The benefits of using a storyboard in the training development process are that it not only allows you to have a clearer picture of training, but it also lets you present a visual representation to other stakeholders. It’s an excellent planning tool so that multiple people or groups can come together and offer feedback on training courses while it’s still possible to make alterations.
Creating a Storyboard
When you’re creating your first storyboard for corporate training, it can be a daunting task but one of the first things to consider is the use of a storyboarding template.
There are great resources on the Internet that offer a wide variety of storyboard template.
A template provides you with a starting point and structure that will guide the development of training content.
After you decide whether or not you’ll use a template, the following are the steps applied in storyboard creation:
Step #1 Outline Goals:
Before you begin creating a storyboard, whether it’s for a module or an entire course, define and outline your goals.
Taking the time to first understand your training goals is going to give a definitive place to begin and allow you to build everything on your storyboard around these objectives.
Ensure your goals are measurable and also take this initial planning period as a time to decide how those goals will be measured and what metrics should achieved as a result of training. All of these elements will serve as the framework for your storyboard.
Step #2 Outline Your Audience:
Knowing and understanding your audience is a key consideration in the creation of a storyboard. Is this training geared toward technology proficient employees, new hires, senior staff members, etc.? Your audience is a guiding point in terms of content, delivery and what multimedia features and technology elements will be included in a course.
Step #3 Determine the Order of Content:
Before you write content, begin by creating a general overview of how content will flow, and how you’ll organize ideas and concepts. Show how these will logically lead from one to the next. You can then fill in this sequential flow of events with specific content.
Step #4 Write Content:
Once you have a generalized overview of how content will progress, you can start the actual writing of a course. You may be working with subject matter experts, outsourcing the writing or doing it yourself. You don’t have to write complete content at this point—just using some bullet points and main ideas will suffice.
Step #5 Determine Where Multimedia Features Will Be Used:
One of the tremendous advantages of e-Learning as a corporate training tool is that it’s easy to incorporate various multimedia elements like videos, scenarios and animations. Plan where to best use these features during the storyboarding process. Other design elements that should be considered include quizzes and collaborative features.
Step #6 Account for Assessment:
One of the features of a good storyboard is one that includes means of assessment. Look at how to best assess learners on the content being presented in the course.
Outline not only how but where and why these will be part of the content.
Step #7 Ask for Feedback:
One you have the overall outline and storyboard in place it’s time to ask for input. The storyboard is really like one big brainstorming process, so while you may feel it’s perfect, your other managers or training stakeholders may have other ideas or input to share. Use it as a roadmap for creating an e-Learning course, but one that’s fluid and flexible.
We’d like to hear from you—what are your steps and tips that have allowed you to create a great e-Learning storyboard for your employee training?