Tutorial overview

How to storyboard when developing e-learning

This tutorial is rated as -

You'll need the following software - None

You'll need the following hardware - None

The other factors might help - An idea of the e-learning you'd like to develop

You'll need to work through the following steps:-

Storyboarding is important because developing interactive materials can be extremely time consuming, and mistakes can therefore be extremely costly. Re-shooting video, having graphics re-worked or interactivity re-programmed could easily cost a great deal of time and money, so it is important to try and identify any problems or concerns before they happen, and to muster the views and opinions of those who have a stake in the materials being produced. The storyboard acts as a prototype of the material, with information useful to the developers that will work on the project: typically this might include an overview of the target audience, the learning objectives, detailed information about the activities the student would undertake, how the learning is to be assessed and so forth. You cannot really have too much information in a storyboard. It should act as a blueprint for the course.

The storyboard is a useful document for people to discuss, with the aim of improving / optimising the design and avoiding anything that might be difficult to achieve. It is very useful for a developer to sit with the designer and go through the storyboard before ANY development takes place, and the storyboard should certainly have input from all the members of the project team, and other stakeholders in the content. When a storyboard or detailed design specification has been produced, projects are much easier. Problems are spotted sooner and avoided. Everyone is happier and it all takes less time and money to do.

Storyboarding is iterative. A storyboard will probably go through several revisions and be discussed with people with different perspectives, and different skills. Eventually a fairly definitive document exists from which the course can be developed. It answers all the questions that the designers and developers will have as the material is pieced together.

There is no right or wrong way to produce a storyboard – the important thing is to remember what the storyboard is trying to achieve. The first storyboards might consist of quite simple pencil and paper sketches - new versions can be produced quickly, especially in the early stages of design when ideas are still quite fluid and changing rapidly. A group session can help get the early designs together quite quickly.

Some information that a storyboard might include is:

• Overall structure and instructional strategy, and any underlying pedagogical ideas.
• An overview of the target audience.
• A list of well written learning objectives the material addresses.
• Any pre-requisite material.
• A short passage on how the objectives will be met – i.e. what will the learner actually do with the material you produce and how will learning take place?
• How the learning will be assessed.
• How feedback will be provided to the learner.
• The navigation system to use.
• Overall layout of the pages.
• Outlines of the different page types used.
• Comments on the overall graphical style.
• Details of graphics / sounds / video required for each page, details of any interactivity and so forth.