Once we know what a course needs to achieve, the temptation can be to jump straight into building it. We resist that temptation. Between exploration and creation sits Architect. This is the stage of our eXACT methodology where a course takes shape on paper before it takes shape on screen.
This is where the real instructional design happens. It is also, in our experience, the stage that saves the most time and effort later in a project, because problems are easier to fix at planning than in a developed course.
What a storyboard actually does
A storyboard maps out the full structure of a course. It sets out the sequence of topics, the content for each screen, the interactions learners will use, and how knowledge will be assessed. Done well, it provides a full blueprint. The storyboard is detailed enough that anyone could pick it up and understand exactly what the finished course will look like.
Building this out in full forces us to think through pacing and sequencing properly. Does one idea build logically on the last? Is there too much content crammed into one section and too little in another? These are much easier questions to answer early on than after weeks of development work.
Why client review matters here
The storyboard is also where clients get their first real look at how the course will come together. Rather than waiting until a build is well underway, we share the storyboard for review and sign off before any development begins.
This step often gets skipped or rushed in less structured approaches to eLearning development, usually in the name of saving time. In practice it tends to have the opposite effect. Changes requested at storyboard stage take minutes to make. The same changes requested once a course has been built can mean reworking animations, re-recording audio or restructuring entire modules.
Getting the foundations right
A good storyboard covers more than just content. It should account for the following.
- How the course is structured and how learners move through it
- What each screen needs to say and show
- Where interactivity adds value rather than just adding decoration
- How learning outcomes from the eXplore stage will be assessed
Getting all of this agreed before development starts means the Create stage becomes about craft and execution, not about working out what the course should actually contain.
To some people Architect might not the most exciting stage, but it is often the one that makes the biggest difference to how smoothly everything else runs. A well built storyboard is the difference between a project that flows and one that stalls halfway through with a list of changes nobody budgeted for.
