RavingLEARNatics

The Art of Storyboarding

Walt Disney began using storyboards in the 1920's as part of the process for developing animations. In the film and animation world, storyboards are used as a blueprint of the movie before going into production. In e-learning, storyboards are used in the same way. They help the designers and developers visualize the flow of the content, imagery, animations and interactions, and are a great way to see what is working and what is not. Storyboards allow subject matter experts and clients to see your vision for presenting the content and save production costs by cutting out a lot of unnecessary work.

The 13 minute video clip below is a great explanation of the storyboard process from the Disney animation perspective.

Show, don't tell . . . oh, and make them laugh!

We all know that "a picture paints a thousand words." In movies, the dialogue supports the image. Images are more meaningful when easily recognized, allowing the audience to use their imagination and  recall a common experience. Used appropriately in learning, it can ratchet up the engagement factor.

From comic book legend Stan Lee (chairman emeritus of Marvel Enterprises and chief creative officer of POW! Entertainment) . . . "When I was in the Army I wrote training films and I wrote training manuals. One of my jobs was to take subjects that the troops were having trouble learning and rewrite the manuals so they could absorb that knowledge faster. And what I did was I used more illustrations. I came as close to the comic strip format as I could. I also added a bit of humor, which helps tremendously. And we were able to speed up the training processes in a lot of areas."

e-learning, Socrates and the Internet

How would Socrates use the Internet and intranets to teach? The same way he taught over 2000 years ago – share bits of important information, ask the students questions, propose problems, let them explore, guide and mentor them through the learning experience. In the book A Whole New Mind, Dan Pink mentions that “With facts so widely available and instantly accessible, each one becomes less valuable. What begins to matter more is the ability to place these facts in context and to deliver them with emotional impact.”

With so much information available on the Internet and corporate intranets it’s a great time and opportunity to incorporate some techniques used by Socrates and cut out extraneous content in e-learning. Instead of expecting the audience to remember everything, leverage the Internet and corporate intranets (loaded with information and job aids) and the ease of searching with tools like Google. Make the learning experience brief and powerful by giving the audience small bits of important information that reinforces key content elements. Use enterRETAINment to present the content in an entertaining/engaging fashion so it can be more easily retained. Point to resources, let the learner explore for more detail, allow them to ask questions and then mentor them through the learning experience.

Attention Deficit

People are blasted with an enormous amount of information and messages daily. Because of this barrage, our attention span becomes more and more narrow. Life in our attention deficit society means sharing information quickly and in an engaging fashion. Media industry research has determined that 30 seconds is the attention span of the average viewer. Wrapping information into groups of 30 second segments is how televison newscasts disperse information and keep viewer attention.