Do you know how to create an effective diagram? Can you create a graph that tells a story? Because visualizing abstractions can improve comprehension and facilitate learning, an important skill in L&D is the ability to convey abstract concepts and statistics in a meaningful way. But if you don’t know how to design the best type of graphic to meet your learning goal, how will your explanation be a success?

Education and training departments work under tight budgets and deadlines. In this environment, the temptation to use images and media from the web increases, especially in light of the plethora of social spaces that are used to share such objects. But what can you use? Under what circumstances? And how do we give credit where credit is due?

Finding ways to make learning “stick” with technology is always a challenge. Augmented reality (AR) is one of those “make it stick” technology options available for education and training. However, AR can seem overwhelming, expensive, time-consuming, and difficult to use in everyday learning development. These assumptions cause developers to overlook the potential this technology holds for their learners.

Searching for new and innovative ways to present content is an ongoing challenge for most instructional designers. If you’re stuggling with this yourself, you may want to consider using an inconventional option—comics and comic-style art. Comics are a great way to share content in an engaging and effective way, and their growing popularity has helped them grow in acceptance within L&D. That said, if you’ve never created comic-style content, it’s hard to know where to begin—particularly if you need assistance acquiring or creating your visuals.

You asked your voice-over artist for a natural, conversational recording, but what you got back is stiff and formal. You waste time going back and forth with voice-over talent about pronunciation or rewording. Too often, you need to re-record voice-over due to errors or confusion. You need a process to make your script writing more efficient and effective.

You’ve put hours and hours into analyzing content, spent days painstakingly storyboarding your product and drafting the scripts, carefully thought about the navigation choices—and yet you’re still met with “Great, but can you make it look nicer/better/modern/pretty?” when you show it to your client or stakeholders. What more can you do when you’ve utilized sound learning theory and development strategies, but you’re still expected to be a graphic designer on top of it all?

Support for Flash continues to erode. Mobile browsers stopped playing Flash years ago, and reports suggest the end of full support for Flash in Google’s Chrome browser is imminent. More and more, it’s becoming obvious that Flash is not a long-term solution. But if you have Flash content in your online training materials, what can you do about it other than completely rebuild?

You need images for your eLessons, and you can’t find exactly what you want. Or if you do find the right one, it costs money that you don’t have in the budget. Or you want to create the images yourself but don’t think you have the artistic talent to do so.

It is every company’s goal to have an onboarding experience that gets new employees up to speed quickly and helps them truly understand the company’s brand. When a team at Coca-Cola Beverages Florida looked at what they could do to innovate their onboarding and make it more effective, one new technology came to mind: augmented reality (AR). AR can create immersive experiences and let people add new layers of content to the world around them. Could it also work to help new hires become contributing team members as quickly as possible?

Are you looking for ways to improve your visuals but lacking the resources to splurge on expensive software? Have you tried Snagit? While many people have heard of this budget-friendly tool and know its basic functions for capturing screenshots, they often don’t know that Snagit also has powerful editing features that can allow you to easily create eye-catching visuals.

Virtual reality (VR) is a hot topic in technology that offers potential for increased immersion, interactivity, and engagement for your learners.

While human narration can add warmth and help connect the learner to your eLearning course, hiring a professional can be costly and time-consuming. Recording yourself can be a more budget-friendly option; but have you tried to record yourself only to find that you sound more robotic than the text-to-speech software? Great voice-over work takes strong delivery and assistance from recording software—and thankfully, it’s actually quite easy to learn the basics of both.

It’s a common problem: You’ve been handed the same old content, but you just can’t bear the idea of creating the same old learning experience with it. But even if you’re limited in the changes you can make to the content, you do have two great tools for enhancing it: storytelling and visuals. By applying powerful storytelling and graphic design techniques, you can transform that tired content into engaging eLearning and leave your audience amazed at how much more entertaining and useful their learning experience has become.