The most useful instruction that I  learned was to follow a systematic approach to instructional design and training created by Robert Gagne. He created a nine-step process called the “Events of Instruction”, which I still use to this day when designing video courses for our Learn Camtasia website and for my clients.

Here are the nine events that must occur in your training video in order for learning to take place

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Now let me elaborate a bit on what each of these events really mean.

1. Gain attention

In order for any learning to take place, you must first capture the attention of the student. A video tutorial that begins with an animated title screen sequence accompanied by sound effects or music startles the senses with auditory or visual stimuli. An even better way to capture students’ attention is to start each lesson with a thought-provoking question or interesting fact. Curiosity motivates students to learn.

2. Inform learners of objectives

Early in each video lesson students should encounter a list of learning objectives. This initiates the internal process of expectancy and helps motivate the learner to complete the lesson. These objectives should form the basis for assessment and possible certification as well. Typically, learning objectives are presented in the form of “Upon completing this lesson you will be able to. . . .”

3. Stimulate recall of prior learning

Associating new information with prior knowledge can facilitate the learning process. It is easier for learners to encode and store information in long-term memory when there are links to personal experience and knowledge. A simple way to stimulate recall is to ask questions about previous experiences, an understanding of previous concepts, or a body of content.

4. Present the content

This event of instruction is where the new content is actually presented to the learner. Content should be chunked and organized meaningfully, and typically is explained and then demonstrated. To appeal to different learning styles, a variety of media should be used if possible, including text, graphics, audio narration.

5. Provide “learning guidance”

To help learners encode information for long-term storage, additional guidance should be provided along with the presentation of new content. Guidance strategies include the use of examples, non-examples, case studies, graphical representations, mnemonics, and analogies.

6. Elicit performance (practice)

In this event of instruction, the learner is required to practice the new skill or behavior. Eliciting performance provides an opportunity for learners to confirm their correct understanding, and the repetition further increases the likelihood of retention.

7. Provide feedback

As learners practice new behavior it is important to provide specific and immediate feedback of their performance. Unlike questions in a post-test, exercises within tutorials should be used for comprehension and encoding purposes, not for formal scoring. Additional guidance and answers provided at this stage are called formative feedback.

8. Assess performance

Upon completing instructional modules, students should be given the opportunity to take a post-test or final assessment. This assessment should be completed without the ability to receive additional coaching, feedback, or hints. Mastery of material, or certification, is typically granted after achieving a certain score or percent correct. A commonly accepted level of mastery is 80% to 90% correct.

9. Enhance retention and transfer to the job

Determining whether or not the skills learned from a training program are ever applied back on the job often remains a mystery to training managers – and a source of consternation for senior executives. Effective training programs have a “performance” focus, incorporating design and media that facilitate retention and transfer to the job. The repetition of learned concepts is a tried and true means of aiding retention, although often disliked by students. (There was a reason for writing spelling words ten times as grade school student.) Creating electronic or online job-aids, references, templates, and wizards are other ways of aiding performance.

Applying Gagne’s nine-step model to any training program is the single best way to ensure an effective learning program. A video course that is filled with glitz or that provides unlimited access to Web-based documents is no substitute for sound instructional design.

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If you would like to learn more about how to use these 9 events of instruction to design really effective video training courses please take a look at my course Video Tutorial Profits. I’m re-launching it this week with a special Implementation webinar on May 10th to help students get their videos completed.

In that presentation, I use a PowerPoint 2010 template with nice design and some “pre-built” animation effects. What I found was:

I ended up using those particular effects over and over again in LOTS of PowerPoint videos since then!

So…I created a slide deck with my 4 favorite effects that I use as a template and I thought others might find it useful too.

I also had a bit of fun with this video by creating a little sound track for it in my recording studio!   Here ya go:

(Viewing Tip: Change the Quality Setting to 720p HD and kick it into Full Screen)

You can open or download the PowerPoint file here:

==> Quick Effects Tool Kit #1

I’d LOVE to hear your thoughts, comments, or questions.

NOTE: This template only works for PowerPoint 2010…

Hey, if you enjoy this post, could you do me a favor and Like /  Share it with others?

Thanks and have fun!

Lon Naylor

In this video I show the students the storyboard that I just sent the client and how fellow screencaster, Debbie Lapointe, went about finding some of the graphics.

Our students get to learn how I manage this process from the initial Project Plan set up to where I upload the final video to the Dropbox I set up for each client.

Below is an excerpt from one of these live weekly webinars. It  is part 3 of the case study.

Some of the links mentioned in this video are

MyBlogGuest.com

Istockphoto.com

Odesk.com

Of course, here at LearnCamtasia.com, we encourage you to learn how to use Camtasia Studio and PowerPoint to create your own screencasts but if you find that you don’t have the time  and you would prefer to have someone create your videos for you I hope you will take a look at the Screencast Video Services I provide over at my VA Demo Girl Blog.

There’s something about an “event” that happens at a predetermined time that draws all of us in with anticipation…like waiting for the next episode of American Idol to kick off at it’s scheduled time.

My top video marketing strategy is to RECORD all my webinars and create marketing ASSETS out of them. In fact, we always sell more products from a sales webinar after the event with the replay and follow-up emails…it becomes a marketing funnel!

Even better? AUTOMATE that entire funnel to deliver to new members of a list:

Check out ==> Evergreen Business System LITE

Here are real samples of evergreen webinars that are getting us new members, list sign-ups, and making us money each and every week:

And another:

The “LITE” version only let’s you run one webinar at a time and you have to host it on their server (which is free) but hey…it costs 80% LESS than the full version!

Deal of The Week ==> Evergreen Business System LITE

A great tool and and an affordable way to add this strategy to your business.

Let me know what you think!

Lon Naylor

Often we wanted the video colors to blend with a website or a logo.  Or maybe there was a color combination we had seen on the Internet that worked with the feeling or mood of the storyboard.

A few months back we discovered a free plug-in for Firefox and Chrome called Colorzilla and now we can easily copy the color scheme from anything on the Internet and use it in our PowerPoint videos.

The ten minute video below is an excerpt from our Camtasia Studio live, weekly, coaching webinars where I answer one of our student’s questions about creating her own custom color scheme.

BTW- Our “PowerPoint for Video” course is filled with these kind of tips. Check it out.

For more information on using Camtasia software, please check out our video creation products available at: http://www.learncamtasia.com/purchase-courses/

Powerpoint has a lot of great features that will help your videos stand out, such as animation, transitions, themes and design tools. This program will also help you organize your script and then turn this into slides.

You can create slides in PowerPoint and then marry them to screencasts that you have recorded in Camtasia. This way you can explain or give an overview and then show the details. The process is basically as follows:

• Record screencasts
• Create a presentation in PowerPoint
• Choose template or create your own
• Build slide outline and then slide deck
• Format your presentation, add transitions  and animations if desired
• Record presentation
• Open recording in Camtasia
• Split presentation where you want to add screecast recordings
• Drop screencasts into timeline where you want them

We have a detailed video clip from one of our weekly Q&A sessions that will show how this process works.

Try it for yourself and your screencasts will live happily ever after!

? This new course teaches you how to make great looking PowerPoint videos!

“I wanted to share some exciting news! As of yesterday I was offered a Principal position with Florida Virtual Schools….one of the fastest growing virtual school providers in the world! My pay just increased from $40,770 to $70,000 plus benefits! The reason I share this with you is because I truly feel that my knowledge and experience with Camtasia played a role in my hiring.

The interview process was rigorous with 4 interviews including a final interview with the CEO herself. I was chosen partly due to my education training, background, and experience, but also thanks to my Camtasia expertise, Twitter knowledge, and Facebook know-how. Maybe a good message for your students as this is a good lesson as to how building your Camtasia knowledge can benefit you in more ways than one! I will be diving into the Camtasia training full steam soon as it will REALLY benefit me (more than ever) in my new job! Thanks for all you do and the great content you provide!!!”

Links from this interview

http://bit.ly/lonrocks (local business landing page)

http://bit.ly/killermarketing (local business video sales page….this has three examples of videos from Lon’s Killer Camtasia Video template.

http://bit.ly/cIFuTg Kevin’s Twitter account being recognized as a top parent Twittering account. I think it is the 3rd or 4th click.

http://twitter.com/mrasworld- Kevin’s Twitter Account

Hope to see you in one of our courses too!

Generally, a storyboard for eLearning is a document that specifies the visual elements, text elements, audio elements, interactions and branching (where the system or user will go next) of every screen in an online course. Many people also add the learning objectives to the storyboard.

Storyboarding is typically part of the Development Phase. Start after you’ve done Analysis and Design. In the rapid development approach, however, you may start to storyboard as you are designing.

If you are part of a development team, the storyboard specifies what the graphic designer will create, what the illustrator will draw, what the narrator will say and the interactions that the programmer will produce. The storyboard is usually reviewed by the subject matter expert and your client. It’s the central document of eLearning development.

I prefer a visual approach to storyboarding, so I’ll describe this type of format. Some prefer storyboarding in all text, which may be quicker but may not be as informative. Off the top of my head, I can think of four main ways to go about creating a visual storyboard.

Four Ways to Create a Storyboard

1. Create a template in Word (in landscape mode) and let each page represent one screen. 

2. Create a template in PowerPoint and let each slide represent one screen.

3. Create a template in a commercial storyboarding application. There are many of these.

4. For the rapid development approach, begin writing the course directly in the authoring tool, such as PowerPoint.  In PowerPoint, you can write the script and other notes in the Notes section below the slide. This integrates storyboarding with actual development.

If you are using Word, just create an area for the storyboard title. Then create the following labeled boxes or regions in your template: 1) a box to represent the screen number in your numbering scheme, 2) a box to represent the screen itself, meaning the visual components of the course, 3) an area for the on-screen text (this can be combined with #2, 4) an area for the audio, 5) an area for the interactions and 6) an area to describe branching. Some people add an area for miscellaneous notes, learning objectives and also for reviewer comments.

Storyboard Template Fields

Fill in the template as follows: 

• Title Area: Add the unit, module, lesson or topic name.

• Screen Number Area: Enter a unique identifier for each screen. Something like “m1l2s3? for module 1, lesson 2, screen3.

• Visual Area: Describe in words, sketch or show the visual, such as the graphic, video clip, etc. You can include the text that will be on the screen or make another area for text.

• Audio Area: Write out the script, the name of a music file and the sound effects that will play on each screen. If you want to be really cool, use the acronym SFX for sound effects.

• Interaction Area: Describe the interactions that occur on each screen. Take advantage of the medium and provide lots of activities. Specifying these can be tricky and it often helps to write it out in the logic of programming. For example, “If button 1 is clicked, go to screen m1l24″ or “If choice 1 is dragged to correct target, display this response.”

• Branching Area: Define all the system branching that might occur. Branching differs from interactions, as it refers to navigating the whole system. There are standard navigation events, such as Next and Back, as well as more complex branching, such as what happens as a result of a user interaction. For example, you will need to define what happens when a user fails a self-check, clicks on a hyperlinked term or opts to retake a test.

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An essential talent for storyboarding one page per screen is squeezing in everything you need. What we really need is a three dimensional storyboard space. Scientists are working on that as we speak.

Here’s a basic storyboard template you can use and modify to include the areas above that suit your needs.

We have lots more templates you can use inside the Learn Camtasia course.