“I Don’t Have Time To Storyboard!”

This guy is really happy with his new home. He hired an architect, who designed it just as he envisioned. Apparently, this dude likes symmetry.

His neighbor is not so happy. The builders just showed up and started building. The builders have a lot of re-work to do.

When a homeowner decides to build, they hire an architect, who designs something according to their wishes. The architect passes that design on to the contractor, who hires subcontractors. The house is built according to design and the homeowner is happy.

Similarly, the stakeholder in a training intervention hires an instructional designer to design a course according to their specifications. The instructional designer passes their design to the developer and the support team to create the course accordingly. The stakeholder is happy and the learning intervention is successful.

Thanks to Kevin Thorn of Nuggethead Studioz for the house / course analogy.

What do the architect and the instructional designer have in common? The architect produces a blueprint. Likewise, the instructional designer creates a STORYBOARD!

The storyboard is like a blueprint for course-building. Without it, the stakeholder does not have a clear picture of what the final will look like and the likelihood of changes in the development phase increases.

A storyboard helps the designer spot problems before development begins and decreases the likelihood of an irate stakeholder who is asking you to rebuild their house.

Yet even with all of the benefits of storyboarding, few instructional designers actually do it. “I’m the designer and the developer.” “I don’t really know how.” And, of course, “I don’t have time.”

Storyboarding is a skill–a fairly simple one–that, if mastered, will save you a load of time. And it really doesn’t take that long to create a storyboard. Even if you are a one-person training department, resist the urge to put on your developer hat before the design is complete. It will save you countless hours of needless work.

I’ll share more on storyboarding techniques, but I’d like to hear some of your best practices, or frustrations, with storyboarding. Let me know in the comments!

 

Define: Micro learning

Touted as the learning mode for Millennials, micro learning is all the rage. It is often packaged as a series of videos, 3-10 minutes in length, that learners can consume at their discretion. Most companies who produce micro learning bill their products as the solution to the problem that humans, especially young people, have an attention span of 90 seconds.

But don’t be fooled by this limiting view.

Micro learning is learning in short segments. Plain and simple.

It’s a fantastic way of learning and it can take any form: podcast, poster (like the picture above), job aid, live interaction, virtual session, song, jingle, meme, text and, of course, video (see the video for the above poster here and brush up your parallax knowledge–you’ll really learn something–and it’s kind of funny).

Concerning our attention span, if we start seeing a mass exodus of millennials from movie cinemas after the previews, we should start worrying. Otherwise, we should be careful that our design solutions aren’t boring the audience. Rather, our designs should reflect the real needs of our learners and speak to them in a personal way, like we know them. Click here to read more on how to get to know your learners.

Set yourself free from the narrow definitions of micro learning and start using it in wonderfully creative ways that meet your learners’ needs.

 

Define: ENGAGE

ENGAGE: Possibly the most ubiquitous word in marketing, learning and development and training circles. Recently, I was speaking to the Girl Scouts Volunteer Empowerment team in Dallas on the topic of connecting stories to engagement. I wanted to bring more clarity to this often-used term.

After watching The Girl Effect video together, we identified the elements of the story that we felt were “engaging”–and there were many–watch the video for yourself and try doing the same (you’ll be writing for a long time).  Then we compared our descriptions with thesaurus synonyms:

Suddenly, the word “engage” took on a new, more powerful meaning. It’s all about strong actions now. Grip! Capture! Arrest! So, when we say that training and communications must be engaging, remember what we’re aiming for: a call to strong action!