The Crucial Elements For Building A Perfect eLearning Course
A lot has been said and written about eLearning, as is evident by the multitude of pages on the internet referring to the topic. However, even the plethora of information available freely on the internet is of no use if Instructional Designers and amateur eLearning designers don’t research carefully before actually creating such courses. Corporate organizations particularly, bet on eLearning to revive their corporate training program but soon are disappointed when eLearning, touted as the future of learning, fails to provide results. The reason for this is simple, they take building eLearning courses for granted and hire amateurs with less to no experience to build eLearning courses that are expected to be engaging, educational and well-rounded. Not to say that building eLearning courses is exceptionally hard, but it isn’t easy either. In order to create the perfect eLearning course, there are 4 elements every Instructional Designer or eLearning professional needs to master. In this article, we’ll discuss those 4 elements.
1. Right Visuals
The visual faculty of your learners is one through which you can incite maximum engagement, and your eLearning design should take full advantage of this fact. An Instructional or Graphic Designer building the course must know how to use right colors, space, forms, images as well as content in a way that is visually soothing and aesthetically pleasing. According to a report, almost 90% of the first impressions of a course are design-related, and that’s what should be improved. The employee of today lives in the age of advertising, and therefore, is used to seeing vibrant graphics and stimulating animations. If your courses can’t compete with that, they’ll likely not succeed.
2. Right Interactivity
Learners learn better when they can actually interact with content, rather than reading something off of a screen. It’s very easy to lose attention and become distracted when all of you have in front of you is a wall of text accompanied by images. Interactivity ensures that the learner has to “do” something frequently, and pay attention to what they’re doing. This sort of engagement boosts retention. Also make sure that interactivities are not limited to clicking ‘Next’, flipping cards and opening and closing tabs. This is something learners outgrew in the 90s, and it fails to engage them. The eLearning courses must ask for thoughtful input, and each interaction should be complemented by visually stunning animations.
3. Right Content
The importance of content in an eLearning course cannot be overstated. As mentioned before, it is very easy to get distracted when you have a wall of text in front of you. As it is the attention span of your average modern learner has been reduced dramatically by constantly scrolling through short content limited to max 120 characters. This is what you should replicate in your eLearning course. At no point of time during the course should there be an excess of text on the learner’s screen. Keep the text engaging and concise, and any additional details or resources for further reading should be tucked away somewhere in the corner, but in some place, learners can see and have access to it.
4. Right Navigation
This is the big one. Ideally, the trick is that it shouldn’t take the learners more than three clicks to get from one place to any other in the eLearning course. Give this a long and hard though, because this is a fact most UI and UX developers swear by. Navigating through the course should be smooth as silk, and a visual treat for the learner. Also, make sure you do not use arrows, icons or buttons in excess, as it can confuse the learner. Too many elements make the course look shabby anyway. Lastly, choose your navigation style carefully, allowing users to access the completed part of the course, the part their attempting, and the remaining course with single-clicks. Make the user feel like they have complete control.
These 4 elements are the essence of eLearning, and any individual who masters them can easily create amazing eLearning courses that wow learners and increase retention. This is doubly true for corporate eLearning, as engaging employees is an even harder task than your average person.
Originally published at cblpro.com.
