Save Elearning Development Time with a Styles Slide

Save elearning development time by creating a “Styles” slide with models of slide elements that you can copy to slides.

Bryan Jones from eLearningArt has done several past articles with collections of tips from L&D professionals. This time, he asked us for time saving tips for eLearning development. My tip to save elearning development time is to create a “Styles” slide with models of slide elements that you can copy to slides instead of manually formatting each object.

Bryan took my tip and suggestions from 40 other experts to create an article of the eLearning development tips. The tips are part of a larger guide to eLearning development that includes how-tos and free downloadable templates for planning, managing, storyboarding, and more. 

Create a "Styles" slide with models of slide elements that you can copy to slides instead of manually formatting each object

Styles slide tip

Here’s my full tip:

“During development, create a “Styles” slide with model examples of slide elements. Include buttons, headings, specialized content blocks, arrows, or anything else you use repeatedly. Set the animation for each object, especially if you will reuse specific timing or types. Copy and paste those elements (or just copy and paste the formatting) as you build slides. This helps keep the look and feel consistent without having to manually set properties for each object to match your style guide.”

I learned this trick from Tom Calpin of Matrix Animation years ago, and it has saved me a lot of effort by making it easier to keep the visuals consistent in Storyline.

In Captivate, a style slide isn’t necessary. It’s better to create Object Styles, which can be automatically updated throughout a project if you need to change the style later. Storyline now has text styles, which is a good start, but nothing comparable to Captivate’s Object Styles feature. Therefore, I use a styles slide to save time.

Example styles slides

These are styles slides from some of my past projects. I always include buttons and text; I often include headings, accent text, overlays, and reused elements. The elements aren’t necessarily in the right places (so they don’t always align to the grids, and sometimes objects overlap).

As you can see, they’re not fancy. But, they’re easy to use: select the object you want, copy it, and paste it on the slide you’re working on.

More tips

Check out the article for more time-saving development tips.

You may also be interested in the previous collection of scenario development tips.

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