Did you hear the news? Pantone just announced its 2014 color of the year: Radiant Orchid. Described as an “expressive, creative, and embracing purple—one that draws you in with its beguiling charm,” this color is probably not in most e-learning palettes. The color of the year is a big deal because it will influence design, fashion, home interior, and, if we’re successful, e-learning trends in the upcoming year. And that’s why it’s going to make a great challenge this week! This week you

Have you ever noticed how often drag-drop interactions are used for assessments? It makes sense because sorting and decision-making activities are popular quiz formats. Sorting activities are good activities, but there’s plenty more we can do with drag-drop interactions. Take a look at the following example: This drag-drop interaction lets learners practice real-world tasks without the tired “Correct” or “Incorrect” feedback found in most online courses. Using a toggle button, you can still g

In a recent , I shared a quick tip for leveraging infographics to give your quiz results more impact. It was a simple tip and you guys produced some great examples of results slide makeovers. In the example project, I used a feedback meter graphic that dynamically changed based on the learner’s current score. Quite a few readers asked how I built the dynamic feedback meter, so I thought I’d share the process from start to finish. Gauges are a great way to visually communicate a learner’s progr

Looking for a simple yet effective way to help learners digest content in slide-heavy training courses? Try chunking related content into folder tabs interactions. Tabs interactions are a great way to group related content or resources into a single slide so learners remain focused in the moment, without having to branch to new slides for each piece of content. In this video workshop, you’ll see how to design and build your own folder tabs interaction. You’ll learn to use the shape tools in St

One of the best ways to support your learners—before, during, and after training—is with effective job aids. Job aids come in many forms: checklists, summaries, reference material, student and teacher guides, worksheets, glossaries, FAQs, and more. The challenge for many designers is knowing when and how to include job aids. One of my favorite examples of how job aids can be used with asynchronous courses is the project. The linear course format will be familiar to most course designers. What

One of the most active topics in our community is around using characters in online courses. Whether they’re photographic, illustrated, or animated, and whether you call them avatars, talking heads, on-screen coaches, or pedagogical agents, instructional characters can help connect your learners to the content. A popular way to use characters in courses is as a virtual host or presenter that guides your learners through the e-learning course. Video characters can be used to demonstrate convers

A couple years ago, Mashable posted this really great article about . That really resonated with me, and here’s why: Articulate launched Screenr the year before, and since that time I’d seen some of our community members post screencasts showcasing their expertise which led to great freelance gigs. So it’s highly likely that I’ve shared this article with you if you've ever posted a note asking how to build expertise or find side work.

I want to share a neat tip with you for creating custom color tints and shades using PowerPoint. Typically, a color palette begins with a single base color. Then, you broaden the range of that color with tints and shades to create your color palette. This template will help you quickly create those tints and shades. For the most part, tints are made by adding white to the base color. The more white you add, the lighter you make your base. Shades, on the other hand, are created by adding black

If there's one area in course design that gets abused more than others, it's the Next button. Whether you’re locking, hiding, disabling, or disguising it, the next button is the gatekeeper to course content. Learners click the Next button repeatedly to move from one slide to the next. That’s a lot of repetition that could be applied to learning rather than navigating. Course designers know how important repetition is to learning. So do advertisers. That’s why advertisers are redesigning CAPTCH

In this week’s blog post, Tom shared great tips for . That post must have ignited a lot of ideas because we were delightfully inundated with drag-and-drop questions this week at . One of the hot questions was how to create drag-and-drop interactions for non-quizzing activities. Here are a few examples we shared about this at the conference: This fun example demonstrates a novel way to use drag-and-drop to reveal hidden objects or messages. Modeled after a scratch-and-win lottery ticket, this

Happy Friday, e-learning Olympians! With the opening ceremonies of the 2014 Winter Olympics today, we’re jumping into the spirit of the games with our own e-learning challenge. You’ve trained so long for this moment—now, it’s your turn go for gold. This week your challenge is to design an e-learning template for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. You can design a general template for the Winter Olympics, or focus your template around a specific country or event. Your goal should be to build ou