I have watched a few webinars recently where the presenter discussed using image-based presentations to improve learner interest. During some recent course conversion work, I had the revelation that future proofing courseware also requires the minimal use of text for distribution reasons.

In the last few days I have been converting a few courses from Adobe Captivate 4 to Video and evaluating the slide quality that was being output. It suddenly occurred to me that developing courseware for use across multiple learning platforms (including mobile learning), requires the use of more image-based presentations and minimal use of text.

This idea might seem obvious, but it is not something I have thought about until now, and is going to completely change the way I develop courseware in the future.

I am the sort of person who likes to design a course once and be able to scale it up and down for the different platforms, without having to modify the courseware for each individual platform. This also means that any updates or modifications need only be made to the master file, and can be redistributed easily down the track.

Example 1 – Text Based Slides

My past courses were designed for 720×540 pixels, with some text-based slides for displaying lists of information.

The text can be easily seen when viewed on large formats.

However when you scale this down to mobile screens, text becomes difficult to read, and the screen space is effectively wasted.

Example 2  – Animated Slides

Animated slides and those using larger text fonts are still viewable down to mobile screen sizes.

Conclusion

When developing courseware that can be easily converted to various learning platforms, it is best to use image-based layouts with large fonts, rather than text-based layouts.

This allows for:-

• Easy resizing for multiple learning platforms, without any modifications for each individual platform.
• Easy update redistribution, with modifications only needed to the master file.

RELATED POSTS

1. Converting Captivate Courses to Video