Script writing, Storyboarding & Interactions

You might have seen from my previous post I had the idea of an e-Learning story captivate project and that is what I have been working on for the past week and a half...

It took a lot of research to find exactly how to write a perfect e-Learning story, I scoured the internet and many of the leaflets I got from the event to get ideas on storyboarding. To come up with the 'plot' for the story I had to take into account what subject this is for (hair & beauty), and what the topic was on (Styling and finishing hair). Well obviously I'm not a hair & beauty expert but from the worksheets I was given I knew that the basics were health and safety as well as a few styling techniques, I'd have loved to create a type of game from this however that may have been a bit too complex for me. The idea I finalised with was a guy named Mark starting his new job in a local hair salon with his manager Samantha, so she would be asking him questions about the job and the learners will be assisting him with his tasks.

This is Samantha (the manager)

This is Mark (the new guy)

To be honest I have never really written a script before so it was all new to me, I knew what content needed to be in-putted so I had to work around that. After storyboarding the first few pages I think I got the hang of script writing, I knew exactly what I wanted to say and how I wanted the learning package to be set out. I've stuck with the same layout and design throughout the whole e-Learning story, so there is a section where Samantha and Mark are talking then a question for the learners to get involved with. This process repeats all the way through with different learning interactions every time, so for some pages there's a drag and drop, and others where there is a simple question.

This is the part where Samantha and Mark have a conversation.

 The image above shows the design for my e-Learning story, I created the basic salon in Adobe Illustrator, as that meant I could get the animation effect instead of it looking realistic as I felt this worked best with the story. On this page Samantha is asking Mark 'how much do you know about risk assessments' which would then lead onto more conversation until Samantha asks him to take part in a question or interaction.

This is an example of an interaction page.

I chose Mark to be on the interaction pages as it felt like it involves the learners in the learning package with the use of a rhetorical question. The salon background is continued for the duration of the story as then it still feels like Mark is in the salon actually in his first day at work, I believe it works more effectively than just changing backgrounds and not keeping it consistent.

Creating this e-Learning package has shown me that I can create different types of packages without them all being similar, it's been so interesting seeing how to write scripts and how to put stories together. From the feedback from my colleagues it seems they agree at how it is more engaging to have a story like this, one said that they felt they learnt a lot more as it was more fun for them to take part in. I still have a lot to work on for this however it is coming along nicely and I'm sure I'll be creating a lot more e-Learning packages like this in the future.

“People expect to be bored by e-Learning let’s show them it doesn't have to be like that!” Cammy Bean

Sarah x