E-Learning Principles and Storyboarding

As I work on my Master's Degree, one of the courses I am taking is on e-learning, something that has become more and more popular as technology continues to improve.

Our big project for the class has been a storyboard, which is basically the laying out and planning of a presentation. The big thing that we have been discussing is the principles of e-learning, principles that we have been encouraged to apply to our storyboard. These principles come from a book called E-Learning and the Science of Instruction, 3rd Edition, by Ruth Colvin Clark and Richard E. Mayer. It is a book that I strongly recommend for anyone designing an e-learning course.

Since I am an English teacher, and MLA is the format for the English field, this is what I chose to do my storyboard on. I've integrated several of the e-learning principles into it. The first is the segmentation principle. This is seen throughout the storyboard, and it breaks the lesson into smaller chunks, making it easier for the learner to understand.

On the first slide, I have integrated the pretraining principle. This means giving the learner an overview of the topic before entering the subject itself, kind of like testing the water with your feet before immersing yourself completely when you're getting ready to take a bath or go swimming. This slide gives a brief overview of the MLA format. Many teachers might also recognize the pretraining principle as frontloading.

Throughout the storyboard, I use both words and graphics, utilizing the multimedia principle. Most of the graphics are static, but the second slide is meant to have a movie on it. I also use the modality principle on several slides, using a combination of images and spoken text rather than written text. I also use the redundancy principle because most of my slides do not use both audio narration and on-screen text.

I have completely eliminated unnecessary text, speech, and graphics, thus integrating the coherence principle. I have also utilized the personalization principle because I have used less formal language, allowing the learner to better connect with the lesson.

Overall, working on the storyboard has definitely been interesting. I am a little unsure as to my exact feelings about the storyboard. I probably wouldn't do it if I were going to create the PowerPoint myself, but if I need someone else to do the PowerPoint for me, it is definitely something that will come in handy.