Albert Einstein famously said, “If you can’t explain it to a six-year-old, you don’t understand it yourself.” This quote is at the heart of teaching: whether your concept is theoretical physics or how to sell more products, breaking it down into simple, understandable components makes all the difference for engagement and retention. And how do you engage a six-year-old? What about a 60-year-old?
One of the best tools (for all ages) in our engagement arsenal is animation. Animation, when used thoughtfully and strategically, is a powerful tool for teaching complex concepts in deceptively simple, engaging ways. When building eLearning courses, animation is one of the first things we brainstorm—because we know it works.
When you picture your next eLearning project, picture animation. Not sure where to start or how animation enhances instructional design? We’re here to break it all down for you, complete with some of our favorite examples of the benefits of animated eLearning. Consider this Animation in eLearning 101: We’re here to prove that it’s one of the best ways to help learners (of any age) connect with your training.
Why Animation Works for eLearning
The history of animation in learning surprisingly dates back over 2000 years, most notably with Chinese and Indonesian shadow puppets used to entertain and instruct through parables, fables, and cautionary tales. Animation has always been used as a method of showing, rather than telling.
Of course, those shadow puppet artists could never have predicted how animation in eLearning would evolve. Now we have multitudes of cloud-based, free, or subscription-based applications like Motion, Adobe After Effects, GoAnimate, Prezi, VideoScribe, and ToonBoom to help you get your point across (even if we’d secretly love to see a shadow puppet compliance training video).
Animated videos in eLearning are used to explain a concept, market or sell a product by engaging and convincing, or demonstrate a method in technical training. And, thanks to an ever-evolving world of graphic design, animations are easier than ever to create and deploy as part of your eLearning content.
Here are some of the reasons why we at ELM make use of video animation in most of our eLearning courses.
- It’s Smart + Beautiful. We strive to create training modules and experiences that adhere to our ethos that eLearning should be both smart and beautiful. For us, that means capturing learners’ attention by combining what we know about neurolearning with instructional design models like ADDIE or SAM. In doing so, we know that learners will sit up, take notice, and engage with the eLearning content.
- It Reduces Cognitive Load. Have you ever been part of a training session where it feels like you simply can’t follow the instructor or module? Maybe your mind wanders or, despite your best efforts to understand, it’s simply too much information? That’s a sign of cognitive overload, where your brain is trying to process too much information or you’re disengaged because of the way it’s being presented. Animation combines both audio and visual learning to reduce cognitive load and digest, process, and store information more effectively.
- It Explains Abstract Concepts. Not all learning is as simple as step one and step two. Sometimes, abstract concepts (think communication or leadership skills) aren’t a linear process. We love using animation as a way to demonstrate different behaviors and outcomes so learners can follow them in a safe and engaging space before testing the waters in real life.
- It Enhances Storytelling. Don’t make the mistake of thinking animation is child’s play: All brains love stories as a way to share and store information. Animation helps us enhance eLearning storytelling by allowing us to show rather than just tell stories, creating an engaging narrative with characters and settings that learners recognize and connect with.
- It’s Inclusive. Learners need to be able to picture themselves in the training journey. When eLearning is presented with only one “type” of learner, it can be disengaging at best or offensive at worst. Whether learners get to choose their own avatars for the training or we animate characters with creative or familiar traits, animation gives us the artistic opportunity to create a diverse and inclusive array of characters and learners.
Types of Animation Used in eLearning
At ELM Learning, we use our unique animation style to bring your eLearning content to life. In our opinion, animation works best for almost all types of learning and delivery methods. Creating custom animations means we’re able to design smart, beautiful eLearning courses that engage and inspire. We’ve used animation in just about every application imaginable, but here are some of our favorite ways to use it for eLearning.
- Motion graphics: Sometimes, a barrage of information is simply unavoidable when creating training, particularly in the compliance space. Motion graphics can help you highlight important words and topics, break up long periods of text or narration, and break down complex topics into more digestible content. It’s one of the most simple types of animation, but also one of the most effective ways to combine audio and visual cues for more engaging eLearning.
- Whiteboard animations: Whenever you need to explain something, showing is always superior to telling. For training that has a step-by-step flow, we create beautifully animated, branded whiteboard videos for our clients, which are ideal for reducing cognitive load when launching new courses and strategies.
- Marketing videos: We call these “hearts and minds” videos, as they are designed to inspire internal and external stakeholders. We use animations to create a bond between the user and the content. It creates trust and appeals to their emotions, so they bond with the content. We create animated videos to help different departments convey new ideas to employees, communicate tough messages that speak to their hearts and minds (particularly as a change-management tool), and as intros to new products, processes, and training.
- 2D and 3D animations: Most of the animation that you see in eLearning modules is 2D: Flat but vibrant images that can be hand drawn or computer generated that move on the screen. 2D works amazingly well for tighter budgets and tighter timelines, since they’re easier for us to create. If, however, you need the ability to show and manipulate images in your training, 3D animation is ideal for a more immersive, interactive experience. We love using 3D animation for things like product training, since it gives the learner the chance to see a 360-degree view in a realistic way.
- Interactive training. In technical training, it’s often necessary to control and stage the environment in order to create specific scenarios. An animation is the ideal visual representation for a technical process or methodology. With animated tech-training videos, you can lead your audience through any type of scenario and precisely demonstrate objective outcomes in a safe, controlled, and hyper-relevant environment.
- Infographics. Need to share complex data with your learning audience? Animating eye-catching and engaging infographics help you highlight the most important information, helping learners comprehensively understand and remember data without being confronted with a wall of numbers and text.
When (and When Not) to Use Animation
It should be pretty clear how we feel about animation as an eLearning tool: We love it. And, while we think it works in a wide variety of scenarios, there are some times that animation isn’t your best bet.
Animation works well when you’re trying to engage learners’ attention and demonstrate concepts, which is why we love animation for compliance training, product simulations, and step-by-step practice for new concepts.
A PowerPoint presentation or training handbook won’t give you the same engagement that an animated training experience will, but when you’re working with a smaller budget or need a quick turnaround, you might find that static graphics work better for your project. We also shy away from using animation if we think it’ll distract from a more serious topic (think sexual harassment training).
Using animation may also pose an accessibility risk: Will people of all abilities be able to see and experience the animated components, and will everyone be able to access the module on whatever devices they’re using?
In many cases, we can troubleshoot the module so that animation makes sense and is accessible to all learners, but it’s something to consider before outlining your objectives. We never put form over function and make sure that any animation enhances training without distracting from the content.
What’s Next for Animation: AI
There’s an elephant in the room when we’re discussing animation in eLearning, and that’s the rise of AI in the design process. What does it mean for instructional design and utilizing animation as a learning tool?
We recently created a training module for a national pet supply retailer. They needed a module for their nonprofit foundation to educate associates so they’d be more effective in promoting pet care, adoptions, and donations. Animation was a natural fit to capture hearts and minds and call learners to action, but there was an issue with both budget and timeline.
We used AI to generate the backgrounds for the characters we designed, which helped streamline the process and create a seamless, branded experience. By using AI as a tool in a custom design process, we were able to keep animation costs lower and deliver the project on a tight schedule. Artificial intelligence is here to stay and shouldn’t replace custom animation components; we see it as a way to work with a wider range of budgets and timelines for our clients.
Final Thoughts
We like to think we’re doing Einstein proud: creating animations that appeal and explain to anyone, regardless of their age, background, or roles. Our animation style is heavily customized based on the project, but it’s always a team effort that rejuvenates our clients’ eLearning strategy and content. Whether it’s informing about a new product or training learners on a new piece of software, animation helps us all picture learning experience design in a fresh way.
Guest Contributor
