How eLearning Images Help You and Your Learners
Online courses can have the most detailed material, but they can’t be invaluable if learners memorize text. They need complementary photos: images in eLearning courses that help explain concepts, accompany the presented texts, and allow learners to grasp what they’re studying.
eLearning images aren’t just for decorating online courses. Instead, they enhance the learning experience by making the course more engaging. Well-placed images can turn large blocks of complex content into easily digestible topics that boost retention and understanding. More importantly, images make online courses more dynamic. Too much text often overwhelms learners or makes topics feel monotonous, while photos illustrate these topics, keeping learners engaged and more likely to recall them.
In short, using the right photos helps educators make online courses less cognitively demanding and provide a more efficient learning experience.
6 Best Practices To Choose Images In eLearning
Every picture hides a story behind it. As eLearning professionals, we use storytelling all the time; we try to find ways to share the stories behind our eLearning content in order to engage and captivate our audiences. Images do exactly that; they tell stories, often in milliseconds. The more impressive, detailed, and lively an image is, the more effective it gets. This is why pictures can be very powerful tools in the right hands, and this is why it takes time to find the right images for any eLearning deliverable. But what does "right" mean? In this article, we share 6 best practices to choose images in eLearning so that you can make sure that the pictures you select for your eLearning courses support your online content, engage your learners, and, indeed, tell the right story every time.
1. Think Relevance
Starting an image search looking for inspiration is rarely effective; most of the time, it is confusing and highly time-consuming. Before you begin your search, you need to have a specific idea about what you’re looking for. Your goal is to find an image that is relevant both to your topic and your audience. For example, let’s say that you need to illustrate low performance in the sales department; a picture showing a grocer sleeping behind his bench wouldn’t be relevant, would it? On the contrary, it would distract your audience, in this case, sales professionals. Knowing who your learners are is extremely important for choosing images in eLearning, especially when content localization is involved. Before you begin your image search, make sure you have analyzed your audience and gathered all necessary information about them, such as their educational and professional backgrounds, ages, cultural characteristics, and so on.
2. Check Whether Your Images Reinforce Your Message
An irrelevant picture distracts, confuses, and even annoys your audience, and so does a “weak” image. Remember that you are not looking for stock images just to fill space. Images need to support your text and convey the message you are trying to get across; they are there to help learners grasp a concept when they read the eLearning content and cannot understand it. Ideally, even learners who don't read the content should be able to easily get the idea by looking at the supporting images. In other words, if the images you select don't transmit the right message, it's best not to include them. Ask yourself whether the picture that grabbed your attention during your search not only makes sense to your learners but also conveys the right impression. If the answer is "yes", go ahead. If the answer is "no" or "I'm not sure", keep looking.
3. Look For Images That Evoke Emotions
Compelling visuals tap into people’s emotions and invoke excitement. If you want your learners to remember the image you picked, get them interested or make them laugh! Your main goal is to connect with your audience, to engage them. Evoking their emotions is one of the best ways to do that, and the right image is the perfect tool. To ensure that you choose the right “emotionally-charged” picture, that is, to avoid being over the top, melodramatic, or, in some cases, even offensive, use the data from analyzing your audience: What are their learning preferences and needs? The more you know about your learners, the more able you will be to choose effective images and evoke the right kind of emotions.
4. Use Your Images Consistently
A professional-looking eLearning course has a consistent look and feel, which means that all visuals must be consistent throughout the course. For instance, mixing clip art, vector images, and photographs is not a good idea; try to focus on one style of images. Consistency helps learners focus and makes connecting with your online content easier, whereas a random combination of different visual styles distracts the learning process.
5. Know That Size Matters
And by “size,” we mean “resolution.” Think of image resolution as image quality: the lower the resolution, the lower the image quality. High resolution means the picture is clear, sharp, and all its details are visible. You don’t want to select a great-looking image and have no one appreciate it, do you? On the other hand, you cannot include very high-resolution pictures in your eLearning course, as they become too heavy to open quickly. This is why you need to always ensure that the size of your images is correct. Resize them before you add them to your eLearning course to make sure they are big enough to draw attention and build an immediate connection with the viewers, but not so big as to frustrate learners by slowing down the loading process.
6. Beware Of Copyright Issues
Last but certainly not least, make sure you respect copyright law. If the pictures you use are not from an authorized source, you break the policies and guidelines of the marketplace, which may lead to legal conflicts. Almost every picture out there is an original work, and there are different kinds of rights attached to them; consider choosing royalty-free images, which come with the least amount of restrictions, and for which you will need to pay only once to use them as many times as you want. Otherwise, you are only allowed to use the image for a limited time and renew the license after a specified period of time. Ensure you have purchased the images you use before sending your eLearning product to your client, to avoid unpleasant surprises.
Final Thoughts
As educators, you have the power to shape a learner’s future. Creating engaging online courses is foundational, as it delivers the materials your learners need to gain knowledge and tackle real-world problems. With these best practices, you can be better prepared to craft eLearning courses that bridge the gap in understanding, offer a better learning experience, and enhance learner memory.
With strategically placed visuals throughout the content, your courses will be more appealing and portray key topics, tone, and lesson modules more consistently and attractively.
Finding the right eLearning photos can often feel overwhelming. But it doesn’t have to be that way; use these best practices to source images that make your content more straightforward and relay concepts seamlessly.
Now that you know how to choose images in eLearning, you may be interested in learning more about visual design. Read the article Top 5 Tips For Visual Design In eLearning and find out how to create an eye-catching, powerful, and immersive eLearning course for your audience, even if you are not familiar with graphic design principles.
