While it can be tempting to start working in a rapid elearning development tool once you have your content defined, a well-built elearning storyboard helps organize content, streamline flow, and ensure every interaction supports the learning objective.
Why Should You Use a Storyboard Template for Elearning Design?
No two elearning projects are exactly the same, but having a structured, yet flexible, template gives us a strong foundation to start from and adapt as needed.
Storyboards have a long history of providing clarity to projects. According to D23 (the official Disney fan club), Webb Smith came up with the idea of storyboards in the early 1930s. He created images of the story because he knew that the artists would find it “much easier to visualize a story this way than to read a script.”
The Walt Disney Company knew that a storyboard was easier to read in the 1930s. Why should elearning development be any different?
Because we often receive content from subject matter experts (SMEs) who are used to delivering it in live sessions, we tend to receive it as a linear script of what they want to tell their audience. Many elearning developers take this and start to build out courses looking for good opportunities to create interactions.
Storyboards are unique in that they go deeper than an outline or a linear script and start to tell the story of the elearning and how learners will engage.
Have you ever thought that you wish your SMEs had told you that they didn’t want that interaction to be a drag-and-drop before you built it?
The Endurance Learning Elearning Storyboard Template does more than just organize content; it supports collaboration across teams, ensures consistency, and enables traceability, a concept widely embraced and refined within the field of software development.
The elearning designers and developers at Endurance Learning are the experts at helping you build the most successful elearning programs. Schedule a call with us today to learn more!
This shared structure keeps everyone aligned and focused on the learning outcomes.
What Should Be in an Elearning Storyboard Template?
A table layout is more than just a way to organize your document; it’s critical for managing your content effectively. By using rows, you can chunk content into individual units, often representing a single screen or layer.
Whenever an instructional designer adds multiple screens and layers into one row, it becomes difficult to track content, manage edits, and creates significant problems when preparing for localization and translation.
Below you’ll find a breakdown of each part of our Elearning Storyboard Template.
Title
This section is self-explanatory. What are you calling your elearning module?
Objectives
Just like effective learning program, an instructional design storyboard template begins with learner-centered Objectives. By the end of this module, what should your learners be able to do new, differently, or better?
It is easy to skip writing learning objectives, but at least once in every course design we find ourselves struggling with whether we’re on the right track. Have you ever experienced any of these situations (I have)?
The Creative but Wandering Interaction
I work with a team of people who are incredibly creative and love to create incredible interactions to support our clients. At times, we’ll be reviewing a script and realize that an interaction is straying from what we intended. We can quickly refer to the learning objectives and have a conversation about why the interaction’s purpose shifted.
We may question an interaction’s value or whether it is addressing the learner’s needs. Returning to the learning objectives to validate what we’re trying to achieve is essential. It may also reveal that our objectives are inaccurate and should be revisited.
Think of learning objectives as your project’s north star. Do you have stakeholders who would love your training to be 3 hours long instead of 30 minutes? Agreeing on the learning objectives first in your training design process will keep your learning design on track.
Creating great learning objectives is crucial for effective training, but it can also be a real challenge. To make that process easier for you, Endurance Learning created a free Learning Objectives Generator, which instantly creates well-structured objectives to save you time and help you write high quality learning objectives. Then simply add them to the beginning of your elearning storyboard template!
ID
The ID column helps keep your content organized by assigning a unique identifier to each row. This practice is an adaptation of traceability from software development, which ensures that every element of a project can be tracked from its origin. By capturing every piece of content (onscreen text, VO, developer notes) in rows, each with its own unique identifier (for example, A-1), we can consistently refer to and track each element across design, development, QA, and even localization.
The unique numbering is vital for both collaboration and asset management. You can use these identifiers as a reference in discussions with stakeholders, design conversations within the team, and in all of your project documentation. If a row is deleted, we never reuse its number; the next section would simply be A-2, maintaining a consistent and unbroken record.
If you’re updating existing elearning, I encourage you to check out the Elearning Instructional Design Checklist.
Accurate Localizations/Translations
When we design and develop elearning for L&D Pro Academy or for our clients, we almost always design as if the elearning will eventually be localized. On some projects we know in advance that we’ll be translating into 7 different languages. Over the last 10 years we’ve created localized versions of elearning courses in over 20 languages.
While not every client is a global organization, it is not uncommon for our team to find out that they have an office or customer in Quebec and need a Canadian French version of the module or they have a factory in Texas that has employees who are more comfortable in Spanish. For the training to be successful, it is critical that it be delivered in a language in which the learner is comfortable.
Because we organize our storyboards into tightly defined rows, we know when we translate a course to Spanish, French or even Arabic or Bahasa Indonesia, the onscreen text, voiceover, and closed caption files all refer to a specific, manageable block of content.
This level of organization is crucial for avoiding costly mistakes during development. A common pitfall is cramming a long script into a single row. While this might seem efficient, it becomes virtually impossible for a developer to time an onscreen action with a specific voiceover when the text is in an unfamiliar language. By breaking all onscreen text and voiceover into smaller, clearly defined chunks, we ensure the developer can easily time specific actions and assets. This clarity is essential for delivering an accurate, well-paced learning experience, and prevents us from having to rely on expensive and time-consuming reviews to get it right.
We rely on professional translators because our clients demand accuracy, but we have to use clear and repeatable processes to ensure that our team of primarily English speakers is capable of updating the elearning for the localization. By using the same identifiers for translation documents, audio file names, closed caption files and videos, we have confidence that we always have the right assets in the right places.
For instance, when we create a Vyond video for a module, we label the file in Vyond with the same screen number so that there is no confusion where that video will live. Similarly, voiceover files, closed caption files, images, and resource documents are all labeled with these exact same IDs to provide total clarity for everyone who is working on the project and to prevent anything from getting lost. We’ve tried many systems over the years, but having unique labeling of each “chunk” of content has proved to be a lifesaver.
The organizational development experts at Endurance Learning can help your organization build elearning design and development systems that lead to results. Schedule a call with us today to learn more!
Improved SME Communication
How many times have you got into an email, Teams, or Slack conversation with an SME about content only to find that you were picturing the wrong content the entire time. The SME said “I really don’t think we should have the brain graphic at the start of the lessons.” You then spend hours removing it from each lesson, only to discover later that they were talking about a completely different graphic used in a different section of the module.
We have lived this nightmare and we pride ourselves in being good stewards of our clients’ money. Many of our clients are nonprofits so we’ve adopted a stance that we must be as vigilant about every dollar spent as if it was our own charitable contribution. This extends to every client, nonprofit or not.
By identifying each row with a unique ID and training the greater team to organize communication around these identifiers, we’ve easily saved our clients tens of thousands of dollars and an incredible amount of frustration. This simple system ensures everyone is talking about the exact same piece of content or interaction.
Onscreen Text
It’s a whole lot easier and quicker to have key stakeholders comment on the Onscreen Text before you actually begin developing and programming your elearning module. Making sure that you capture the words that your stakeholders want to see during the storyboard stage can save you a lot of time, effort, headaches, and money down the road spent on editing.
Improved SME Reviews
Our team at Endurance Learning has developed hundreds of elearning modules and worked with SMEs from all professions, including salespeople, surgeons, health workers, marketing experts, educators, and plant managers. Each of these experts knows way more about their content than we do, and they usually share content that is worded in a way that reflects their field’s style and perspective.
Our job as instructional designers is to take the essence of what they’ve shared and ensure that it will lead to the results that are defined in the objectives. That may mean that the way the plant manager says something isn’t ideal when rolling this training out to multiple plants. Showing the onscreen text in the context of an interaction helps reviewers see how we’re using the text in a way that may be different from what was provided in a source slide deck or PDF.
Make the screen text as accurate as possible in the storyboard. It doesn’t mean that there won’t be changes when you and your stakeholders see text and imagery on screen, but reacting in a document can prevent major changes later.
Improved Developer Accuracy
One benefit of using this elearning storyboard template is reducing the need for extra work and revisions during development. As the instructional designer, your goal is to create a document that communicates your intentions so well that the elearning developer (even if that is also you) has the freedom to focus on creating high quality interactions and ensuring that they are bug free.
For the Onscreen Text section of the storyboard, we work to keep this as simple and straightforward as possible so that an elearning developer can copy the text into a course without having to decipher notes or remove irrelevant markups. This allows the developer to focus on the quality of the interaction they’re building and not spend time editing notes out of the text.
It may seem like a good idea to add notes to the developer about how this text should appear on screen, but it is much quicker and more accurate to be able to move this text directly into the development tool rather than having to read it closely.
Translation Accuracy
You may at times feel foolish capturing all headings, text on images, and button text in this column, but if your course is being translated, you’ll be thanking your lucky stars that you have comprehensively captured all of your onscreen text correctly here to hand off to a translator!
Remember to include alt tags in your script so it can be translated along with the rest of your content. This will save you from having to repeatedly go back to your editor to translate things you missed, which ultimately saves you time and money.
Design Notes
The Design Notes section of our Elearning Storyboard Template is where you bring your design intentions to life before anything is built. This section provides valuable information for stakeholders, developers, and your future self. Use this space to describe how the screen should function; that is, what the learner sees, what they click, how things move, and when animations or voiceover syncs happen. Think of it as the stage directions for your course.
Visual Mockups
We have talked about this document as a storyboard but we clearly don’t use as much imagery as the designers at Disney used. Whether built in Articulate Rise, Articulate Storyline, or an LMS-based rapid development tool, most elearning interactions can be simply described and probably don’t need a visual mockup.
When our team is designing something that is a non-standard approach, we use the Design Notes column to show images that we have created in PowerPoint, Balsamiq, Canva, or even drawn by hand.
These images aren’t meant to be pretty or final, but are meant to describe a concept that is clearer with a picture than it is with words. Our goal is always to make it easier on the SMEs who are reviewing. It may be trite to say that a picture is worth a thousand words, but sometimes it is true.
The Design Notes column is also the ideal place to include notes that will help the elearning developer accurately interpret your vision. This could include links to reference images, ideas for visual effects, and layouts, or reminders about timing and interaction. In most cases, if you’re handing a project to an elearning developer, that person will bring their own creativity to the project and add value, but this column is where you communicate clarity to a developer when you do have strong opinions about how a screen is designed.
Remember: Don’t skimp on the critical details! We once designed a training for early childhood educators and passed the elearning storyboard over to the developer feeling that the storyboard was accurate and the elearning ready to build. When I saw the module built for the first time I quickly discovered that the developer had interpreted the module to be for educators in preschool settings.
However, this training was meant for home-based educators (more like a daycare setting). The beautiful imagery that they had selected filled with chalkboards and classrooms was all wrong and needed to be replaced. What a headache! Had I clearly explained this detail and maybe even linked a few reference images in this column, we would have saved ourselves hours of revisions.
VO (Voiceover)/CC (Closed Captioning)
The Voiceover/CC column is where we capture exactly what the learner will hear, word for word. This column ensures everyone involved (stakeholders, developers, and reviewers) can see how the content, visuals, and narration all work together in one place. Including the full voiceover here improves accuracy and collaboration, and is also a huge time-saver when it comes to making your training accessible through closed captions and transcripts.
Since we’ve been designing and developing elearning for over a decade, you might imagine that we’ve had to adjust our process over time. On my earliest projects at Endurance Learning we would create a separate voiceover script. Our thinking was that this made things simpler for the voiceover artist and didn’t confuse reviewers who would see the onscreen and voiceover text.
We learned over time that changes to onscreen text sometimes weren’t updated in the voiceover script. This created confusion and led to inconsistencies between the visual content and the narration.
We adjusted our process to keep all content in one document for as long as possible. Once the text is approved, we generate a separate script for the voiceover artist without the Screen Text and Design Notes columns, but with the same row numbers as the project Storyboard. Because we keep accurate Screen IDs we know that we can always make adjustments if a change comes up during recording.
Should the Voiceover and Onscreen Text Match?
Sometimes our voiceover matches the onscreen text exactly. Other times, we expand on the content in narration, using the audio to go deeper while keeping the visual clean and uncluttered. This decision depends on the overall design strategy and the cognitive load we’re asking learners to manage. While stakeholders often have strong preferences about the voiceover closely mirroring onscreen text, this isn’t just a matter of style. It’s a learning design decision.
According to Richard Mayer’s Redundancy Principle, presenting the same words in both text and narration can overwhelm the visual processing channel and reduce learning. By distributing information across visual and auditory channels (what’s known as the modality effect), learners are better able to absorb and retain key content.
Showing the onscreen text and voiceover on one row of the storyboard can help SMEs and other stakeholders see that the content is being presented, even if it isn’t all spoken.
Summary
While some projects may benefit from additional columns or more detailed fields, Endurance Learning’s Elearning Storyboard Template strikes a balance between simplicity and structure. It’s easy to use, keeps everyone aligned, doesn’t slow down the process, and supports clear communication among instructional designers, developers, voiceover artists, and clients.
