When creating an online course, you really have to factor in the key eLearning content features, a ton of concepts, goals, and considerations. If time-to-market is a definitive criterion or you need to focus on the content rather than the form, eLearning templates come in handy as a soft option.
With the best eLearning templates, you can save a lot of time and money on design and implementation, accommodate your branding requirements, and link your layouts with major authoring tools.
Perhaps most importantly, though, templates can help to create a more engaging and effective learning experience. As a result, courses that are built using eLearning course templates tend to be more organized and cohesive, making them easier for students to follow.
In addition, by providing a visual guide, eLearning templates can also help to make your course more visually appealing, which can go a long way towards holding students’ attention.
Simply put, you should focus on the major stuff, not on how your button or arrow looks! Trained graphic designers have invested their time into making standard templates look professional and usable with minimal or no customization.
Another winning point for your eLearning content is consistency and standards compliance across your personal course library.
Long story short, the perks of using pre-built themed slide layouts are abundant!
To that end, here’s a brief overview of online services that provide ready-made eLearning templates for a certain fee or free of charge.
| Solutions | Number of templates | Supported authoring tools | Price/license options |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. eLearning Brothers | 1,000,000+ | Captivate, Storyline, Camtasia, Lectora, iSpring, PowerPoint | The eLearning pack costs $499/year |
| 2. Articulate Community Templates | 600+ | Storyline, Presenter, Quizmaker, Engage, Replay, PowerPoint | Free with an Articulate ID |
| 3. FasterCourse | 600+ | Storyline, Captivate, Lectora | $299 a year and up for subscriptions |
| 4. eLearning Chips | 400+ | Storyline, Lectora | Starting at $199 per year |
| 5. eLearning Art | 353 | Storyline, Articulate Presenter, Articulate Quizmaker, Adobe Captivate, Adobe Presenter, PowerPoint | $14.95/month – 1 user, $39.95 – 3 users, unlimited license available at $200. |
| 6. eLearning Locker | 450+ | Storyline | Limited downloads come for free. Paid plans: from $40 (1 user, 6 downloads per month) onwards. Unlimited downloads for $444. |
| 7. Free PowerPoint Templates | 600+ | PowerPoint | Free eLearning templates |
| 8. Graphicriver.net | 3,821 | PowerPoint | $4 to $83 per template |
| 9. SlideModel | 10,000+ | PowerPoint | $25 for 1 time, 5 downloads; annual unlimited fee – $199 |
1. eLearning Brothers
The eLearning Brothers templates library includes a wide selection. Part of the Brothers’ library comes embedded into the most popular authoring tools. The choice is ample – games, interactions, scenarios, and anything you could think of. When sweating over branched eLearning courses, you may get some neat ideas from ready-made layouts before digging into scenario tools.
Here are some facts and figures about this collection.
Paid layouts
- Over 1,000,000+ samples
- Unlimited downloads and free updates
- Multiple categories: games, scenarios, course starter templates, layouts, navigation players, interactions, and more
- Support for most popular courseware and video authoring tools: Adobe Captivate, Articulate Storyline, Lectora, Camtasia, PowerPoint, Articulate Presenter.
Free eLearning course templates
- Complimentary access to over 75 eLearning layouts
- Content works with Storyline, Captivate, Lectora, PowerPoint, Presenter, and more!
- No credit card required.
Pricing ranges from $117 and up per user/month. The tailored eLearning template library is included into packages starting at $499.
2. Articulate Community
Articulate templates are available through their friendly user community. Naturally, they are locked in for Articulate products. Once you have a product ID, you can download, use and re-use all you want.
What’s in there?
- About 600 eLearning course templates in top-pick categories
- Support for Storyline, Presenter, Quizmaker, Engage, Replay, and PowerPoint eLearning course templates
It’s surely not eLearning Brothers, but it’s a great free option for Articulate fans.
3. FasterCourse
FasterCourse is another library that offers off-the-shelf eLearning design templates. Works with key authoring tools, helps to deliver your course to the audience before you can say Jack Robinson.
Features:
- Storyline templates as well as content for Captivate and Lectora; versatile categories
- Lots of paid and free eLearning design templates in the pool
- HTML5-ready, looks good on mobile devices
- Support for SCORM and xAPI
FasterCourse packages start at $299 a year.
4. eLearning Chips
eLearning Chips is a collection that leverages original Storyline and Lectora templates to craft an engaging eLearning course. You can also create proprietary templates with interactions, rich media, timelines, grids, etc. within the Chips framework.
The service includes:
- Content for Lectora (165 pieces), Storyline templates (268 pieces)
- Categories: Accordions, course players, dialogs and scenarios, flip cards, gamified interactions, grids, markers, timelines, and more.
- Tools for creating custom eLearning design templates.
eLearning Chips template subscriptions start at $299 a year and higher.
5. eLearning Art
With eLearning Art you don’t have to develop online courses from scratch. All templates are compatible with native programs, so there is no need for XML or Flash. Ample collection, nice images.
In a nutshell:
- 353 templates
- Supported tools: PowerPoint, Articulate Storyline, Articulate Presenter, Articulate Quizmaker, Adobe Captivate, Adobe Presenter
- Filters and categories: Avatar, communication, conversation, display board, interaction, layout, objective, quiz, scenario, etc.
Subscription plans start at $24.99/month billed annually and go up from there.
6. eLearning Locker
eLearning Locker is a collection of skins for all walks of life. Another wealthy library replenished on a regular basis.
Key features:
- Over 450 eLearning course templates, designs, and layouts
- Storyline templates only – Articulate folk should keep this website on their radar.
- Assessments, Content Holders, Introductions, Layouts, Motion, People, Process, Timelines, and a bunch of other categories.
Pricing varies for access to their eLearning templates.
7. Free PowerPoint Templates
Using PowerPoint’s free eLearning templates is a win-win-win scenario.
Why?
First off, they are free.
Secondly, if your authoring tool is a PowerPoint-based application (and many of them really are), you can just pick the style and design elements from this ample collection and transform them into a course. AllPPT.com offers a nice stock of PowerPoint templates, diagrams, and charts – all available free of charge.
Key features:
- Over 600 free eLearning templates
- Slides sized for widescreen (16:9) and standard view (4:3)
- Categories: abstract, business, computers, education, medical, nature, finance, food, real estate, religion, industry, sports, recreation, military, travel, all diagrams, cycle, relationship, flow-pro, stair-step, timeline, charts, etc.
- All designs can be downloaded as .pptx files (compatible with any recent version of Microsoft PowerPoint: 2007, 2010 and 2013).
Everything is free of charge. As a sign of gratitude, you can share your feedback via Google+1, Twitter, or Facebook.
8. Graphicriver
Graphicriver by Envato is another PowerPoint template collection. Once again, you may re-use downloaded templates in any PowerPoint-like authoring software for further elaboration or as-is. The service is paid, though.
What’s good about Graphicriver?
- About 4K PowerPoint eLearning templates
- Filters by ratings and price range
- A wealth of categories: agency, animated, blue, business, chart, corporate, creative, diagram, elegant, enterprise, green, infographic, maps, marketing, minimal, modern, multipurpose, portfolio, professional, simple, social media – and more!
At Graphic River, you pay per downloaded skin. Costs vary between $4 and $80+.
9. SlideModel
Pre-baked designs at SlideModel.com are yet another way to go, should you like to transition ready-made templates into PowerPoint or its third-party offspring. Catchy templates and diagrams for eLearning, business, sales and marketing, engineering, etc.
Key features:
- 10,000+ PowerPoint templates and slide layouts
- All sides are editable – feel free to change color, size and effects.
- Theme and types: business, data and charts, diagrams, maps, pictures, shapes, text and tables, timelines, etc.
Plans start at $24.90 and up.
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A Final Word on eLearning Templates
When it comes to creating an online course, templates can be a helpful starting point.
With a well-designed eLearning template, you can quickly put together the basic structure of your course and save yourself a lot of time in the process.
In addition, the best interactive eLearning templates can help to ensure that your course content is well organized and easy for students to follow.
By using an eLearning template, you can focus on creating quality content without worrying about the overall design of your course. As a result, templates can be an extremely valuable tool for anyone who wants to build an effective online learning experience.
That said, before you start looking at these tools, I’d like to sum up their individual benefits in a few words.
Professional instructional designers making courses on a regular basis should probably opt for bigger libraries like eLearning Brothers (on the high end) or SlideModel (a free lunch is a thing in this case).
Obviously, Articulate aficionados are likely to stick to the community’s library or eLearning Chips – it doesn’t make much sense to go seek your Storyline inspiration elsewhere.
PowerPoint fans who make the utmost of this powerful authoring and eLearning tool have quite a choice of free templates – I have just listed three services, no doubt there is more, so you can always find something that fits your aesthetic requirements.
For those on the experimental track, I’d recommend eLearning Art, FasterCourse or Graphicriver, which offer good value eLearning templates for a small fee. They are rather ad-hoc, so if you need scale, contract a more expensive plan from a site like eLearning Locker.
Last but not least, here’s a piece of advice for later implementation and quality control. Always test how third-party templates play along with your LMS. In fact, this should be on top of your checklist. Make sure you know a few tricks about how to export your content to SCORM and make it look nice on the output. Don’t get carried away with the variety of free and paid templates before you test them out in a real eLearning environment.
Have any questions about finding interactive eLearning templates online? Share your thoughts by commenting below.
good article! thanks a lot
Thank you for this article, a lot of good resources! Some of the information seems a little dated, but other than that it’s a good combination of all available e-learning templates. Thanks!