Best Practices in Development and Content Creation

For PowerPoint, Storyline, Lectora, and Captivate:

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• Use a font size that is large enough to read (18+ for presentations in front of a live audience so they can read the words on the screen).

• Pick 2-3 font sizes and stick to them throughout the project.

• Use relevant images, and, for presentations, rely on images more than words.

• Use proper headings.

• Be mindful that the colors you use on top of one another don't clash so you don't give the audience a headache.

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You don't need to be a graphic designer, but you should know how to use color contrast, white space, brand guidelines, style guides, and generally how to make a screen of content not look cluttered.

Starting with accessibility in mind when building courses is the best way to make sure everyone can access them.

This includes:

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• Color contrast

• Alt text

• Video captions

• Adding headings and subheadings to text

• Making sure that Storyline files have screen reading software focus on slide elements in the correct order

• Using multiple methods of communication (for example: adding labels *and* color coding for graphs, instead of relying only on red and green to designate good and bad, which would be confusing for colorblind learners)

Here's another resource with more info and practical tips for how to design for all learners, from the University of Michigan Online Teaching website: https://lnkd.in/e4PQRxfQ

• Test your equipment (camera, microphone, etc.) before you go wherever you're going to be filming. Record a video and audio clip and make sure it plays back correctly. Check the amount of space on the memory card, and the amount of life left in the battery. There's nothing worse than filming a great shot and realizing afterward that the camera ran out of battery halfway through.

• Record the background noise of the room you will be speaking in for about a minute. That way, if you end up with more video than audio when you're editing later, you will have extra audio that sounds like it fits. Plain silence in a video that usually has background noise is eerie.

• Put space between takes: Add a couple seconds of silence after you hit record but before you start speaking, and wait a couple more seconds after you're finished speaking before you hit stop. A little bit of space between audio clips makes your video a lot easier to edit later.

• If you have time, make multiple takes of shots (record the same thing twice) to make sure that at least one of them is good and you don't need to reshoot (record it again) later.

• Play back at least part of your recording before you pack up and leave to make sure that the audio and video work (and to make sure you remembered to press record).

• Creating one intro and one outro that you can quickly and minimally edit to fit a bunch of videos will save you time because you can reuse them. Canva is good for making these, they even have templates.

• Meet your company's expectations (especially if they have them written down in a style guide or brand guidelines document: this is your go-to resource for creating anything for L&D at your company).

• Use the company's colors (companies pay a lot of money for those).

• Don't use copyrighted text or photos so your company doesn't get sued. (Check licensing information before you use a photo you found online to make sure it's not under copyright. If your company has a folder of images to use, stick to that. If not, I use Pixabay for a lot of royalty-free images.)

• Have your stuff printed out ahead of time.

• Rehearse your tech things in advance to make sure they work.

• Have a backup plan in case of equipment failure.

• Proofread your work. A useful way of proofreading is to use a screen reader to read the text out loud, because it reads it exactly as it is written, with all mistakes included.

• Make sure your images are relevant and show what you're trying to teach the learners.

• Compare your work to your company's brand guidelines and style guide to make sure they match up.

• Have a teammate look over your work to catch anything you missed, and you do the same for them.