What are the most effective tips for Successful Custom eLearning Content Development?

Imagine if you were to open a restaurant. You pick the perfect location and the best interior designer who helps you build a fully equipped kitchen and a beautiful seating area. You have just built your dream restaurant. But wait a minute, it’s close to opening night and you don’t have a chef. You settle for someone who may not be your ideal choice and that reflects in the taste of the food. If the food is not a hit, your restaurant will not be successful.

Similarly, a learner will not be helped by an off-the-shelf learning solution, no matter how good it may be, unless it caters to an existing learning need. A custom eLearning solution is the answer in such situations. In order for the solution to be successful, there are three areas that should be considered.

1. What Is The Goal Of The Custom eLearning Solution?

Identify who the target audience is and why they need this learning. This is extremely important as it identifies the road map for the entire development process. The target audience analysis helps discover any limitations or existing prior knowledge that could be used. The needs analysis helps identify the gap that the eLearning solution intends to fill.

2. What Does The "Priority Triangle", Timeline, Level Of Learning, And Client Budget, Look Like?

Ask the client by when they need the eLearning module, analyze the level of learning that the module should include and get a sense of the client budget. It is important to have a well-defined timeline at the start of development. It should be realistic, leaving some room for changes. The level of learning is dependent on the target audience and the client budget.

Since all these are dependent on one another, it’s good to understand if the client has identified any of these. The course can be designed and developed keeping these three factors in mind.

3. What Defines The eLearning Solution?

 a. Instructional Design Strategy

Select an Instructional Design strategy that will work with the target audience. Learners should be able to recognize why they are going through the course and how it affects them directly.

• Plan brainstorming sessions. They bring ideas and creativity to help design a solution that meets all requirements.
• Identify the learning objectives and present them to the user. Learning objectives define what is to be learned and how well it is to be performed. You could align each learning objective with a level of Bloom’s Taxonomy. This helps assess the learner by creating knowledge checks.
• Have an interesting start. Grab the user’s attention using a technique that would best suit the target audience. For example, include storytelling, presenting a problem, doing something the incorrect way etc.
• Use real world examples. Take it a step further by creating custom scenarios that the target audience would encounter, for relating it to a learning objective and for initiating prior knowledge.
• Include informal assessments of understanding, such as thinking questions, simple prompts to provide frequent checks for understanding and ensure that the learners do not become too passive.
• Include a summative assessment to determine the level of learning that has taken place. Present the learner’s progress with the help of easy to understand reports and make provision for additional practice, if required.

b. Content

If raw content has been shared by the client, then it’s best to sort through it and organize it, by chunking out the content, or creating a content outline; whatever works. This will help keep the focus on the useful content and also guide you if you need to consult the SME for any clarification or additional content. The Instructional Designer can use this content to create the storyboard using the selected Instructional Design strategy.

If no raw content is provided, a SME can work together with the Instructional Designer to create the content material.

c. UX And UI Design

A great user experience, UX design, delivers the best learning experience and can make the solution stand out among others. Lack of an immersive UX design can even make a content-rich solution unsuccessful. Use the best design principles to select a design that is intuitive, simplifies the content presentation and improves the learning outcomes. Design the solution to be responsive to support multiple devices, if that is a requirement.

The user interface, UI design, specifies the look and feel of each screen. Make sure that it is consistent across all screens and gives the user a sense of where they are.

d. Storyboarding

A complete storyboard should include text, placeholder multimedia, content layout, the navigational flow of the course and detailed notes describing the functionality. Don’t spend too much time trying to make the storyboard look aesthetically good. Remember that a storyboard is successful if it aligns with the selected Instructional Design strategy and meets the defined learning objectives. Also, the notes should help the development team understand the functionality clearly.

Once a storyboard is authored, it should be reviewed by a peer, SME, and a language editor before going into development.

e. Development And QA

The development process uses technology that helps build an effective solution and is device agnostic, if required. The entire development process can be optimized by using reusable templates, if any.

Testing is not just a phase but a process that should be followed throughout. Testing may be divided into three levels: Module Testing, Specification Testing and Application Testing. Each of these should be performed at every stage of delivery, alpha, beta, and gold.

f. Evaluation

Before the market-release, it may be helpful to include a focus group feedback phase. This feedback will help understand the effectiveness of the course and find gaps, if any. This evaluation can help put the finishing touches and make the solution more successful for the target audience.