Content Building Procedures

[JasonFane]

Hi Articulate community, I was wondering how you typically build your content. I know that doing things a certain ways can lead to glitches, most of which have been resolved with newer updates.

So my question is, what order do you build your content, to save time and reduce errors?

Currently my procedure is:

• Consider the Audience
• Add PowerPoint Content
• Animate the PowerPoint
• Script the PowerPoint
• Narrate the PowerPoint
• Publish the PowerPoint

[DavidAnderson]

HI Jason - Welcome to the forums!

Quick question on your current procedure.

Why do you animate PowerPoint before you script? By script do you mean write the course?

My workflow is something like:

Analysis
Write the course
Narrate the course
Visually storyboard the course
Assemble the visual elements in the course (development)
Build Engage and Quizmaker (I'll usually do all assessments together. Just more about getting into a groove with one aspect of the course dev)
Animate and sync animations
Publish

[JasonFane]

My style of presenting is more like story telling. So I like to build the storyboard (adding the images to the slides) first and then talk about it. Its kind of feels like I'm giving the presentation to a live audiance, which seems more natural for me.

Another reason, I'm better at illistrating processes with images, and once I see it visually its easier to come up with a script.

[DavidAnderson]

Very cool Jason. Do you have any examples of your storytelling projects you can share?

For me, the biggest timesaver is to group my development by type of content. I'll build the quizzes together, the scenario screens together, Engage and so on. I find this really helps maintain development momentum.

[JasonFane]

Here's a link to an early prototype Teaching Online (I'll release the finished product later for the community, and whoever would like to use it)

I also try to organize and group my work load. I even create separate folders for:

• Images
• Audio
• Video
• Quizzes
• Engage Activities

[Jeanette]

Hi Jason, glad to see you here in the forums! On the subject of file management, here's how I typically organize mine:
Screenr - @jeanettebrooks: Here's a way to manage & organize your files when creating a course with #Articulate Presenter

[JasonFane]

Awesome, that makes sense as well. I keep my project management files and output files in the same folder as well (for quick reference).

Getting back onto the forum topic a little bit: What is the order you go about in the creation of an Articulate Presentation?

[Jenise_RidgeViewMedia.com]

Originally Posted by JasonFane

I also like to produce by content, I even try to keep the "raw materials" separated into folders within the main project. For instance:

• Images
• Video
• Audio
• Engage
• Quizmaker

Here's an early prototype I'm working on, I will include slide titles when finished.
Teaching Online

Good practice, Jason.

I use a mixture of yours and David's approaches, depending on the project and the client.

Managing Image Files
I learned after several projects that image files can really "pile up", and before I know it, I have not only MBs but GBs of images, and not all that went into the finished course. Like you, I found that a "RAW" or "Library" file helped me control the original images. I also like to use either PSD or PNG files. Their layers help me to organize the images I need in a course.

When I'm done with a project, I back up those image files (and Articulate project files) to make space on my HD.

I think you've given me an idea for a blog post!

@jenisecook

[Jeanette]

I guess it's partially about personal preference... when I was developing corporate e-learning, everything always of course started with the learning objectives. Once those were set, I'd draft a project plan where I broke out the learning objectives and identified what kind of content would best serve each one (narrated info slides, Engage interactions, quizzes, scenarios, other forms of drill-and-practice exercises, etc.).

In the project plan I also liked to identify any other contextual things I'd supply to the learner along with the course - i.e., things that aren't necessarily part of the elearning experience, but which are important or at least helpful to the learner - such as attachments, links to other resources, supplemental detail that might be needed in the Slide Notes (if I wasn't already using the slide notes feature for a narration transcript), etc.

From there I could generally estimate the number of slides I'd need to develop, and could come up with an estimate of how long the project would take. All this front-end work is pretty important, I think, because both you and the project sponsor (or your customer, if you're dealing with a contractual job) will want to know going in, what kind of resources are necessary to pull off the whole thing.

Then for the real work. For me the flow generally goes like this:

• Storyboard the content and do some wireframes of at least some of the slides.
• Draft the script, along with scene/slide descriptions.
• Get approval from SMEs/sponsors on the script & scene/slide descriptions.
• Build slides. Simultaneously, work with narrator on narration. Usually this worked okay, as the script was (in theory) solid at this point. Occasionally after development of the slides there'd be some minor rework needed on the narration, but obviously that's costly so we tried really hard to avoid that.
• Animate, and sync animations with narration.
• For quizzes & interactions, I'd usually do those separately from the course, and then add them in later. Just because it was common to farm out some of this work to other developers and it just felt easier to keep those elements separate till closer to the end of the project.
• Assemble the course with interactions/quizzes.
• Publish.
• Typically I did one SME/sponsor review of the course and would sometimes end up republishing if there were any little modifications needed.

Does that help? It's really interesting, isn't it, to learn how others are managing this process. I think we can learn a lot from each other. Thanks for starting the thread! (In fact I'm now almost ready to forgive you for the Sarah Palin comment earlier, LOL. I said almost. )

[JasonFane]

Wow that was helpful, I'm working in an educational environment, and since most of the PowerPoints are created by indviduals there is alot less hoops to go through.

It would be nice to have better narration than my own though.