Begin your drawing journey

A hands-on training to help you further your practice

AUDIENCE

Target 1 : adults who enjoy drawing as a pastime

Target 2 : adults who wish to learn the basics before engaging in advanced art studies

ROLE

E-learning Design

Subject Matter Expert

Visual Design

Scriptwriting

E-learning development

TOOLS

Artriculate Storyline

Rise 360

Camtasia

Genially

Adobe Photoshop

Overview and challenge

This project was a real challenge. I purposely chose a subject that did not come to mind when designing online courses.

Most of the drawing classes I joined as a student were taught in a traditional classroom. They required an extensive commitment and could be quite expensive at times. If you happened to come from a low-income background, you'd better be sure of your career plan before enrolling. If you had to take a full time job to pay your rent, needless to say that your chances to succeed in this competitive setting were considerably reduced.
I wondered if I could find another option to teach these demanding artistic skills while offering more flexibility to potential students.

My solution

I developed a 4-module online program to cover the main skills which are usually taught in foundation year drawing courses.

Module

Learning objective

Estimated duration

1/ Fundamentals of anatomy

Sketch practical guidelines to draw realistic character proportions

3 hours

2/Fundamentals of Perspective

Use one, two or three-point perspective drawing techniques to create depth

2 hours

3/Color theory and application

Discover the basic principles of colorimetry and apply them to your color choices.

2 hours

4/Unlocking your graphic creativity

Enhance your graphic creativity by embracing and highlighting imperfection in your drawings

1 hour

This program was targeted at adults with very busy schedules. I ensured that users could access the training when they wanted and complete it at their own pace.

My Process

I aimed at being as exhaustive as possible without taking the risk of discouraging future learners. I first took time to design learning objectives with Bloom's taxonomy. It helped me determine the type of effort that the learners would have to focus on and the type of learning activities I'd have to create to help them reach these learning objectives.

I created personas to foresee the users' needs and provide them with a seamless online experience. This step allowed me to double-check that their needs were to be met at the end of the Development Phase.

The ADDIE framework happened to be a great tool to oversee the steps I had to go through to create the course.

However, it turned out to be quite challenging when I needed to make some changes during the Design Phase. I wanted to draw inspiration from SAM model to be able to test and adjust the course as well.

Takeaways and results

Working on this flagship project has been truly beneficial to question my approach as an E-learning Designer. I took on several roles pertaining to E-learning Design and content production and I've become even more conscious of the challenges that each professional faced on a daily basis.

As a result, I've jotted down the following roadmap that I wish to keep in mind for future projects:

understand and empathize with the learners' needs first
get hands-on with the LMS and focus on user experience
double-check that the learning objectives are aligned with both the learners' needs and the course format.
design varied learning activities to enhance engagement.
create regular formative assessments to guide learners in their journey.
use LMS data to adjust the content if needed and improve learner satisfaction.

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