The act of creating a storyboard for an eLearning project was not a new skill for me, however, in this project, I made advanced instructional and design choices and included more project details and direction that helped form a cohesive eLearning course that met learning objectives and leveraged efficient authoring and delivery tools. This storyboard, created for EDCI 569 – Introduction to eLearning, is a foundational design piece for a professional development course on corporate communication strategies when introducing a new business initiative. This artifact displays my competency in the challenge area of “Develop materials that align with the content analyses, proposed technologies, delivery methods, and instructional strategies.”

Utilizing the appropriate delivery method and instructional strategies can make an enormous impact on learner engagement, retention, and satisfaction. These concepts are themselves affected by the features, preferences, and dimensions of the target audience. In creating this storyboard, I took into account a variety of factors to determine the delivery method, technologies, and instructional strategies that would contribute most to effective learning outcomes. The storyboard shows the intended platform, along with specific instructions regarding navigation and layout. Articulate Rise was chosen for this eLearning course for several reasons. First, Rise’s block formatting promotes efficient and consistently themed lessons and navigation. However, I also used Articulate Storyline and Google Forms to deliver more complex interactions. Not only were the technologies selected for efficiency, but also for their unique capabilities and ease of integration. An online asynchronous format was chosen for this content, as this delivery method complements the workflow and preferences of the target audience - emerging leaders in corporate environments.

The instructional strategies utilized in this eLearning module were guided by Malcolm Knowles’s adult learning theory. One of the assumptions made by Knowles about adult learners was their need for relevance and to understand the relevance of the learning content to their lives, or in this case, their work roles (Knowles et al., 2020). To address this feature of adult learners, I included utility-value interventions, which encourage the learner to make personal connections between the content and their real lives, as opposed to relying on explicit instruction to make those connections. Additionally, I was intentional when building the scenario-based interaction, focusing on achieving a realistic workplace situation.

This intentional focus on designing with scenario-based interactions and utility-value interventions could have positively impacted previous soft skills and leadership development projects. These strategies and interventions speak directly to the assumed needs of the target audience as well as directly support the learning objectives. Particularly with soft skills and leadership development, the opportunity to practice and engage with the skills being taught is crucial.

The storyboard for this eLearning module features design decisions that were based on the content and learner analyses, available technologies, preferred delivery method, and sound instructional strategies. In future projects, I would like to develop my Articulate Storyline skills further through independent study in order to support more complex branching scenarios and scenario-based interactions. Whether embedded in an Articulate Rise course or built as part of a full Storyline course, that skill is sure to promote the learners’ achievement of learning objectives.

Knowles, M. S., Holton III, E. F., Swanson, R. A., & Robinson, P. A. (2020). The adult learner: The definitive classic in adult education and human resource development (9th ed.). Routledge.