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One important takeaway for me about storyboarding is that it serves as a planning tool that helps organize ideas before creating a final digital product. Storyboarding allows creators to map out the sequence of events, visuals, interactions, and content in advance, making the development process more efficient. I can see how storyboarding would be especially valuable in educational settings because it encourages intentional design and helps ensure that learning goals remain the focus throughout the creation process. It also provides an opportunity to identify potential gaps, make revisions, and gather feedback before investing significant time into developing the final project.

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Storyboarding and prototyping are fairly new concepts to me (aside from basic storyboarding in public schools). That said, I found many aspects of it familiar. The process of storyboarding and prototyping reminds me of Backward Design models for educational design, such as the ADDIE and  Design Thinking models. All those models put the learners and desired outcomes at the forefront of the design process.  At times, I find these design processes time-consuming, but as I near the end, I can appreciate that they meet the learners' needs.

Jill Dundas

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The interesting part of the storyboard is that I found it familiar. I remember the movie "What Women Want?" or "13 Going on 30". The characters show storyboarding for a magazine, with photographs, images, writing, and videos. Though the storyboard was not the point of the movie, I already had a visual representation of what it was. Going through Articulate, it just deepened my shallow understanding of what a storyboard is. I've learned components and the different kinds. I don't have questions just yet. I do want to go through the process of creating it with my group. I'm curious to know what works, what doesn't work.

Diana Stamper

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One important idea I learned from Week 5 is that storyboarding and prototyping are both important steps in creating an effective digital learning tool. Storyboarding helps designers plan the learning experience before building it. It shows the order of lessons, activities, visuals, interactions, and feedback. I learned that a storyboard is useful because it helps organize ideas clearly and makes sure the digital tool has a logical flow for learners.

Another concept that stood out to me is the difference between low-fidelity and high-fidelity prototypes. Low-fidelity prototypes are simple, quick, and inexpensive to create. They are useful in the early design stage because they help designers test ideas and gather feedback before spending too much time on details. High-fidelity prototypes are more detailed and realistic. They include refined visuals, realistic content, and interactive features that are closer to the final product.

This week helped me understand that creating a digital tool is not just about making something look nice. It is also about planning, testing, receiving feedback, and making improvements. For my own digital tool, I can use storyboarding to plan the steps of the lesson and then create a prototype to test whether the tool is clear, engaging, and easy for students to use. This will help make the final product stronger and more learner-centred.

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Zoe Themelis

I learned about prototyping, which encompasses several key strategies such as ideation, low-fidelity, high-fidelity, and testing, which play a crucial role in developing digital tools in educational content. Key takeaways from storyboards that I learned from this week's overview are that storyboards are a visual planning method and are used as an e-learning tool. Some learning resources that are relevant to this topic are Canva and Google Slides. You can create a storyboard template with these resources.

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Something I found interesting and never really thought about before was the different types of storyboards. I can see how helpful they can be during the design stages. There are different types like linear, branching, visual, and text-based storyboards. Each type is useful depending on what you’re trying to show. I really like the idea of branching storyboards because they can show different user experiences. It’s also nice to know that you don’t have to be good at drawing to make one.

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Storyboarding - Crystal Harper

Crystal was a teacher and now focuses her attention on instructional design. This is one video from a series of videos Crystal has created. The content is balanced between visuals and verbal instruction. The checklist is a great tool!

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eLearning & Instructional Design for Beginners

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Step-by-Step Guide in Creating Storyboards | eLearning and ID for Beginners

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One of the questions I had going into this week was how to teach storyboarding or prototyping with younger children. After reading the article and watching the video, I realized that what my students are already doing at our classroom “Creation Station” is actually a form of prototyping! It was really exciting to recognize that through their building, sketching, and revising, they’re naturally engaging in the design process. This helped me see that prototyping doesn’t have to be formal or complicated; it can be playful, hands-on, and developmentally appropriate. I found that pretty fascinating!

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Have you ever noticed your child create an object with a piece of paper or cardboard? How about the look on their face when they finally get the object to look or cooperate in the way they envisioned? This is your child starting to prototype ideas, and it's certainly a process that we as parents must celebrate and encourage to promote creativity at home.

A prototype is an early sample of a product that is used to test a new concept or idea. Its process is one of the fundamental principals of design-based thinking, and engages a variety of creative thinking skills along the way. As adults we might lack the creative confidence to bring our ideas to fruition, but as parents we are lucky enough to have our little bundles of joy to help lead the way.

To get started on a design-based activity, I suggest observing any elements of prototyping that already exist in your child's play. For example, my four year old enjoys prototyping objects that he's seen on television, like the Tricorder type device in Disney's Miles of Tomorrow Land, or Princess Sophia's emulate.

I noticed that paper, crayons, scissors and glue, usually featured highly in his process, and decided that it would be best to incorporate these elements into our activity. Now any parent looking to introduce the concepts of prototyping to a young child should do so subtly, and avoid forcing any unwanted structure to their play. Instead we should encourage the child to observe each design, and then facilitate questions on how to make improvements. Once the activity is finished we can investigate which design was the best - but keep the focus on the iterations that were made throughout the process (how did we improve this design the second time around). From my first experience I would suggest no more than two to three prototypes, and it's essential that problems are kept ill-defined - in other words, avoid following instructions and any 'this is the correct way' approach to the activity (this quickly defeats the objective of introducing young children to prototyping). If you want to expand the activity in a classroom environment (or with older kids) you might want to snap a few pictures along the way and challenge the child to reflect on the process and create a set of instructions afterwards.

Below is a list of products that I think make for fun design-based activities that can introduce prototyping to young children. Try and avoid the ones that you already know, so that you can increase the opportunity to fail*.

4 Activities to introduce young children to prototyping

1. Thaumatrope (see video below) - an old fashioned device that demonstrates the theory of Persistence of Vision. Simple to make, and you only need card, crayons, scissors and elastic bands.

2. Kite (can you design a flying kite beyond the triangular one?) - If you're a fan of Mary Poppins, be sure you listen to 'Lets Go Fly a Kite' as you make.

3. Sailboat (take a drinks carton and go from there) - Introduce concept of wind power at the same time. This would certainly require water to test each prototype, but has certainly peeked my curiosity.

4. Paper Plane (which design flies the furtherest?) - Lots of different prototyping opportunities. Might allow for more detailed/advanced tweaking.

* NO PICTURES - JUST GET MAKING. It kind of limits the opportunity to prototype if you look up how to make them. Enjoy the process of discovering from failing!
If you liked this article you might want to read 'The Role of Trail and Error in Creativity'
This weekend I started off with the Thumatroupe, which I plan to share in another article, but the video below shows our four prototypes.

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4 Activities to introduce young children to prototyping

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problems must be ill-defined, in other words - no following instructions... (this defeats the objective of introducing young children to prototyping)

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It is helpful to know more about the different types of storyboards and prototypes and what they are all used for. In the videos, stakeholders were mentioned many times and I thought of these people more as the administration of the schools that I would like to work for in the future. Being an educator, I won't have stakeholders, but I will have to provide lesson plans and ideas, and using storyboards or prototypes could help with this. The storyboard is really just your starting off point, but I think it is important and helps to brainstorm ideas, giving you a road map of where you want to go. Being a visual learner, visual storyboards and visual or MVP prototypes would be what I would need to create before diving into the development of a course. However, I think I would have a hard time making a prototype and not just turning my storyboard into my finished product. So that is a question that I have. Do we need to do both a storyboard and a prototype when creating an e-Learning course? Also, which ones do school administrations usually ask for? If it is a prototype, do they look for the MVP type? Also, in the MVP prototype, is there a certain percentage of content you should make up in context with what your actual course will offer? I am looking forward to the opportunity to create content within Canvas. It will be something that I can add to my resume as I pursue instructing in higher education.

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Robin Delaney

Here's a resource if you plan to create from scratch. Some tips and a downloadable template. The video also links to more videos on storyboarding. Enjoy!

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How to Create a Storyboard Template for Instructional Design

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This is a 14 minute overview that gives the differences between a storyboard and a prototype. A storyboard is an outline, whereas an early or mini-model of the end product that is prepared for user-feedback. This video goes into more depth and gives helpful explanations. BONUS - it is wayyyy shorter that the videos featured in the Week 7 async. module.

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What's Better for eLearning? Storyboard or Prototype?

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A prototype can be a miniature village like this, OR an eLearning project in the early stages!

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I learned that a prototype can be low-fidelity, which is sort of like a draft or early version, or high-fidelity, which is more a refined version that has undergone user testing and iteration (or updating with feedback)! I also learned that prototyping can be included as part of the backwards design process.