Web stories, a.k.a insta-stories are visual stories, usually published in portrait mode, that contain photos, graphics, videos, animations, audio clips, polls, call to actions, and quiz questions. They are all over your news feeds and social media channels, just begging to be clicked. So why not use them for learning?
Here’s a quick one that I built for my theoretical coffee shop. The content is missing, but you get the picture.
Use cases
Here are some use cases where web stories might come in handy for a learning experience:
- Training marketing teasers
- Pre-work
- Critical updates
- Change communications
- Step by step guides
- Quick upskills
All of these examples fall under the heading of microlearning and can be an excellent supplement to your training program. There are several products on the market that can build web stories for you. Among the paid products are 7taps and edApp. You can also build it yourself for free using the Google AMP framework.
What you’ll need
- A code editor: Visual Studio Code is free and works with both Mac and Windows computers
- Amp.dev – This site has all the documentation and code snippets you’ll need. Download the example story for a starting point
- Media – Unsplash.com and Pexels.com have beautiful free photos and videos to use in your page backgrounds. Try filtering on “portrait orientation”.
- A web server to host it on. I use SiteGround for most of my projects.
- Enough HTML/CSS to be dangerous. Try a LinkedIn Learning course on each.