Storyboarding for branching elearning
One of the ways to make your elearning more engaging for your learner is to add branching scenarios – giving them options to make decisions that produce different results, and encouraging your learner to discover the content in their own way. However, storyboarding these elearning scenarios in a organized and readable way for client review can be challenging.
When writing a branching elearning scenario, the important part is to map out which decisions go to which parts of the course. This could be as simple as a single fork with only two choices, or many nested multiple choices that each have a different result!
The problem with the usual storyboarding tools such as Microsoft Word and Powerpoint is that it can be difficult to follow the flow of different paths to various other parts of the documents.
The best solution would be to make use of a flowchart tool to keep track of your elearning scenario branches and where they lead. There are free flowchart programs such as draw.io, Gliffy, yEd, and even Google Drive. The limitation of most flowchart programs is that the shapes are generally formatted for smaller amounts of text, and some only export in image formats, so your image files may end up being very large.
There is also Twine, another free online tool designed for “telling interactive, nonlinear stories”, as the description on the website says. It is geared towards game makers, and is the perfect tool to create your interactive, nonlinear elearning. It can be exported as a HTML file that can be opened in any web browser for your client to review, and also exported as a Word version to mark up with changes while still being able to follow each of your story branches.
Keep reading this blog for more elearning programming tips, and contact us today if you need help building a true branching scenario for your learners!
