When you’re in the early stages of designing and developing an eLearning course, you may wonder whether or not you should spend the time drafting an eLearning storyboard. After all, when you’re strapped for time, you may wonder whether the benefits of drafting an eLearning storyboard outweighs the time required.
A storyboard is like a blueprint for your eLearning course.
While there are some instances when you may consider jumping straight into development, I’ve always found the process of drafting a storyboard to be beneficial. In this post, I’ll share three benefits of drafting an eLearning storyboard.
An eLearning Storyboard Can Help You Organize Your Content
After you’ve collected your learning content, it can seem like a tall order to transform it into a complete, learner-ready eLearning course. In my experience, taking the time to draft an eLearning storyboard is a great way to help you organize your content.
When drafting a storyboard, you have to think about how each piece of content will be visualized and structured on each slide. And of course, if you’re using audio narration, you need to script each word that will be spoken. Going through this process forces you to consider the value of each piece of content, which allows you to remove nice-to-know information.
It's Easy to Make Edits to an eLearning Storyboard
I’ve always believed that designing and developing an eLearning course is a lot like building a house. And just like an architect starts by drafting a blueprint to plan the layout of the house, an eLearning storyboard lets you plan the layout of your course.
One of the most inherent benefits of drafting an eLearning storyboard (or a blueprint for a house) is the ease at which you can make edits. For example, if an architect is drafting a blueprint for a house and their client decides to move the kitchen, it’s just a matter of resketching it on paper. The same concept applies when drafting an eLearning storyboard—if you or your stakeholders decide they want to change, remove, or add content, it’s much easier to do it in a storyboard, rather than when you’ve developed the course.
An eLearning Storyboard Helps Your SMEs Focus on the Content
When you’re designing and developing an eLearning course, you need your stakeholders and subject matter experts to provide regular feedback along the way. One of the challenges of doing this is that it’s easy for your reviewers to get distracted, providing feedback on the things you don’t need them worrying about at that moment (i.e., the colors of buttons, choice of images, etc.).
When you’re in the early stages of designing your eLearning course, you need your stakeholders to validate whether or not your content is accurate. One of the benefits of drafting an eLearning storyboard is that it helps your SMEs and other reviewers focus solely on the content, rather than the look and feel of your course.
The Bottom Line
Regardless of which type of eLearning storyboard you choose to use, starting with a storyboard can help you organize your content, quickly make edits, and focus your SMEs on the content first.
If you’re new to storyboard, I recommend checking out The eLearning Storyboard Notebook, which can help you to start drafting a storyboard for your next eLearning course.
What are some other benefits of drafting an eLearning storyboard? Share them by commenting below!
