Storyboards & eLearning (Pt. 1)

What are eLearning Storyboards?

Storyboarding is a common technique used by instructional designers to visually represent each screen of an eLearning product, such as courseware or web instruction. According to Kruse (n.d.), it is a screen-by-screen example of what the learners will see, hear, and do during their interaction with the computer-mediated instruction.

The creator (usually the instructional designer or eLearning manager) uses a storyboard to facilitate communication between team members of an instructional design project (Leonard, 2004; Alessi & Trollip, 2001).

Why should a storyboard not include transitions, hyperlinks or animations?

A storyboard should not include these elements for two main reasons:

1. Including these elements can lead to unnecessary crowding, and
2. Some of these elements are created by those team members (i.e. graphic artists, programmers, animators, etc.) who need to have viewed the storyboard before any multimedia elements can be developed.

Crowding: If the purpose of a storyboard is to give a screen-by-screen account of the instructional layout, then transitions, hyperlinks and animations will only crowd an already detailed presentation. Although they are informative and detailed, storyboards should not be over-saturated with information (Alessi & Trollip, 2001). In fact, the Notes Section of a storyboard is best for brief multimedia details.

Need for viewing the storyboard before designing: As for the second reason, an instructional designer is typically not the person who creates such interactive elements. These roles are assigned to team members such as the animator (or graphics artist) and programmer respectively. Until such members view the storyboard, interactive elements can not be created.

***Additional Storyboard Resources

• Alessi, S.M. & Trollip, S.R. (2001). Multimedia for learning: methods and development (3^rd ed.). Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon.

• Kruse, K. (n.d.). Creating scripts and storyboards for e-learning. http://www.e-Learningguru.com/articles/art2_5.htm

• Leonard, T. (2004, November 15). Creating and using storyboards. http://www.devshed.com/c/a/Practices/Creating-and-Using-Storyboards/1/

De Anna L Fench
eduTech gEEk writer