Effective Rapid eLearning Development Tips
Rapid eLearning development may require less of an investment of both time and money. However, rapid eLearning is not about developing eLearning courses that are haphazardly put together and just as haphazardly completed by your learners. To provide your audience with an eLearning experience that is both powerful and effective, a carefully crafted rapid eLearning development strategy must be in place. Here are some tips that will help you to design rapid eLearning courses that have minimum turnaround times and budgets but maximum results for your learners.
- Develop a list of goals and expectations in advance.
The primary objective of any eLearning course is to achieve specific goals. Whether it's to boost on-the-job performance or to fine tune a particular skill that will benefit learners in their personal lives, you must always stay focused on the goals that need to be achieved. You can determine these goals by getting invaluable feedback from your learners via surveys, focus groups, and interviews, or if you're developing a rapid eLearning course for an organization, meet with management to get a clear idea of the goals they have set. In addition, you should be aware of the learners’ expectations from the overall eLearning experience. For example, do they already have some basic understanding of the subject matter? What is their cultural, professional, and educational background? These are all key questions that you need to ask in order to gain insight into their expectations. - eLearning Templates offer a perfect blend of quality and efficiency.
Rapid eLearning is all about fast turnaround times, but that doesn't mean that the quality of your rapid eLearning course design has to suffer, as a result. By using eLearning templates, you can significantly cut down on your development time and still produce a visually striking, attention grabbing rapid eLearning course. If you're using an eLearning authoring tool, check out its template library and see if there are any templates that you can slightly modify to accommodate your layout and subject matter. There are also a variety of free templates that you can find online, as well as free authoring tools that will give you access to image, graphic, and multimedia databases. - Know how to use every tool at your disposal.
Being an eLearning professional in today's tech-savvy world, means that you have a wide range of tools at your disposal. However, if you don't know how to use these tools to your full advantage, then you are missing out on an invaluable resource. So, before you begin designing your rapid eLearning course, assess each tool that you currently have and see how it can help you to produce a high quality eLearning deliverable quickly and cost effectively. If you aren't familiar with all of the features and functions of one tool, then do your research or speak with members of your eLearning team to see if they have experience with it. While learning as much as possible about the tools you have on-hand may seem counter-productive, given that you are devoting precious time to the task, it will actually save you a great deal of time as you move forward and, more importantly, it will help you create successful eLearning experiences. - Keep learning activities brief, but interactive.
When developing the learning activities for your rapid eLearning course, you should keep in mind that they should be brief and quick, primarily because your learners won't have much time to complete them if they are on-the-go. Quick and convenient completion is one of the key characteristics of rapid eLearning courses. As such, you'll want to keep your activities and learning materials bite-sized, concise, and immersive. eLearning Scenarios, brief simulations, real world examples, and information-packed multimedia presentations are just a few of the learning activities that you can include to achieve this. - Present the real world benefits.
One of the most effective motivators that you can include in your rapid eLearning course is real world benefits. Let your learners know what they will receive by completing the rapid eLearning course, and integrate learning activities that encourage them to make choices that show them the real world consequences of their decisions. This will turn even the most distracted learner into an active participant who understands the importance of absorbing the information you are offering. - Keep visual design simple, but stunning.
The visuals you use should always tie into the subject matter and be relatable for your audience. Integrating an abundance of irrelevant graphics will not only be a waste of valuable resources, but it will prevent your learners from effectively acquiring information, as these will be a distraction instead of a learning aid. When choosing your graphics and images, opt for those that are eye catching and memorable. Don't be afraid of white space, as this will draw the learners’ attention to what truly matters, which are the key ideas they need to take away from the overall eLearning experience.
Keep this list of effective rapid eLearning development tips on hand to insure that you offer the most value to your learners, without having to compromise quality for cost efficiency.
If you're considering a rapid eLearning approach for your next eLearning course or deliverable, read the article Rapid eLearning Advantages and Disadvantages to learn the basics of rapid eLearning, as well as some of its benefits and drawbacks that you may want to keep in mind prior making any decision.
In addition, if you would be interested to know how rapid eLearning development provides additional value to an eLearning project read the article How Rapid eLearning Development Provides Additional Value to an eLearning Project to find out, and to also explore the 3 important reasons to choose Rapid eLearning Development vs Traditional eLearning Development.