Design And Branding In eLearning
Ever wondered what has taken over classroom training? Well, eLearning has! Classroom training is out of fashion with the COVID-19 pandemic. Due to the lockdown imposed as part of the measures to curb the spread of the virus, the education industry has embraced this new technology with an eLearning platform. eLearning is simply a digital interpretation of a physical classroom. If you would love to create content that engages learners on an eLearning platform, making sure your learners have the best eLearning experience is paramount. When paired with great design, the right contexts make the message clear and facilitate speedy learning. In this article, we will share top tips for eLearning content development with you.
eLearning Course Design
Some of the best practices for designing meaningful and effective eLearning courses include the following:
- Visual design
This is a crucial aspect of online learning and shouldn't be neglected. eLearning virtual course design keeps the learner engaged. eLearning should be engineered in such a way that teachable moments surface as often as possible. There are several general design points to keep in mind when creating a design for eLearning, but first, you must understand that graphic design is vital to making your eLearning course more engaging. - eLearning objectives
These should be specified in the design. For every topic you teach, ensure details are provided. However, do not present these in a way that makes them ambiguous, thereby making your learners overwhelmed.
During the planning stage, you need to ensure that the objective of your eLearning course is well-structured. Doing this has a way of distilling the lesson, helping even the novice learner understand what the class is all about with an introductory slide.
- Make the objective more mystic to the learner. It would help the learner explore more. Consider this scenario: Jason is giving an eLearning course to his learners on the topic "safety." However, instead of Jason providing objectives such as "you will be able to identify seven safety violations," he posed the question to his learners this way: "What safety violations do you see on this virtual shop floor?" Be like Jason when creating a specific objective; it helps make your course more intriguing, mystic and blows the minds of your learners away.
- Focus the learners' eyes on the important part of the content. If the content is packed with too much information, it might be somewhat confusing. When you fail to focus the learners' attention on the vital part of the content, it slows down the whole eLearning process. With the learners' eyes focused on the vital parts of a course, they can have a perfect understanding of what the course is really all about, even if they are going through it for the first time. With this level of understanding, if the reader goes through the course a second time, they will have a mastery of what it is really all about.
- Furthermore, readability for very technical concepts can be a challenge. This is common knowledge. However, with design, this can be solved very easily. A good number of eLearning course designers struggle when preparing seemingly complex lessons in a way that the average person can understand easily. Although this challenge has been existing for a long time and will always exist, it has a solution. Elements such as white space, layout, and fonts can go a long way in improving readability. Also, with an improvement in readability comes better understanding. When white space is used in the right way, the course has a very clean appearance. Additionally, to help people understand technical topics, different ideas should be put on different pages. This way, the issue of learners being overwhelmed can be taken care of easily.
That's not all. Concepts of utmost importance should be made to stand out through the use of different colors and font sizes. When this is done, they become more prominent and thus easily remembered. To do this:
- Use layers of graphics to provide depth and movement to the design. Design is paramount in eLearning. When you design the right way, it adds depth and context to your course, thereby creating huge success. Layered graphics allow you to play around with your design.
- Navigation for learners could be challenging when going through eLearning modules. As a lesson progresses, a learner only follows it in one direction as they move from page to page. If this is all that learners do, they might not be properly mentally stimulated. Also, they just might not grasp the lessons in the ways they should.
Well, after a series of texts, the appearance of an image can help stimulate learners properly, and this could help them better appreciate a concept. With the design, learners will not only navigate through lessons easily. They get to review how much progress they have made without the interference of a tutor.
Designs can help link up the various topics discussed in the eLearning course. This might not seem like much if you have never struggled to learn. However, it could make a difference for people that have had one form of struggle or another while going through a course. When reading from a screen, there is a high tendency that you could get lost and not have a great understanding of what you are learning. This challenge can be fixed by eLearning designs.
How Possible Is This
With designs, colors and patterns are made an integral part of a course. The presence of patterns can help readers know how different concepts link to each other. Ultimately, this can help learners understand a course a lot better. Consider using a combination of graphics style and stock imagery. It is paramount to make sure that you have a broad range of poses to suit your design content. When using characters in your eLearning, make sure you focus your attention on the brand you are working for.
How To Make Use Of Design To Get The Best Out Of eLearning
It's great to know the importance of design in eLearning. However, beyond simply knowing the importance of design in eLearning, you should also know how to make use of a design to get the best out of eLearning.
- Take advantage of animation to achieve dynamic impact
eLearning is generally effective. However, beyond being effective, when used in the corporate world, it could be considered boring by some people. Well, the fact is eLearning really shouldn't be boring. So, to ensure that eLearning never gets boring, the right design could involve making use of animation effects. This way, the dynamic impact gets achieved, and the issue of boredom can be solved easily. - You do not need a graphics team on board
The idea of having custom-made images is great. However, this might not be possible for every eLearning team. Custom graphics have to be created by a design team that is attached to the eLearning team. Unfortunately, not every eLearning team can afford a design team. So, in situations like this, custom-made graphics might be difficult to come by. If an eLearning team is unable to come up with custom graphics, all hope is not lost. You can always get stock imagery online and carry out a bit of editing to drive home your point. - Consider what the brand stands for
There are several successful brands all around the world, and these brands have unique identities. Some of these identities are expressed in visuals, while others are not. For the purpose of eLearning, the visual uniqueness of a brand has to be considered, since a lot of brands come with an identity. When preparing visuals for eLearning courses, you will need to start with the visuals that seem natural for these organizations. For example, if you are preparing an eLearning course for the Red Cross society, you already know the colors to make use of—red and white. Any color apart from these two is like going off track. That's not all. Christmas is already strongly associated with red, white, and green. So, when preparing any eLearning course with Christmas in mind, you do not have to struggle to create fresh visuals. You already know what is required of you because of an existing identity. - Use the same custom graphics throughout an entire course
For an eLearning team that has the right graphic designer on board, custom graphics will never be a challenge. However, if the design is not handled properly, things could get messed up. Due to the freedom to achieve whatever design they like, an eLearning team could end up putting in more effort than necessary, and this could make things really complex. A lot of times, eLearning courses don't stand alone. They are a series. If you are dealing with an eLearning course that is a series, it is expedient that you maintain the same graphic style throughout the course of the series. If you decide to use one graphic style for one course and another graphic style for the next one, the lack of consistency in appearance might make the course seem disorganized. - Take advantage of custom graphics
Imagery is a major part of eLearning. While this will not be a challenge with several subjects, sometimes, imagery can be difficult. When dealing with subjects such as training involving the aviation industry or safety training in general, there could be a lot of challenges with imagery. In situations like this, custom graphics can come into the picture. With the right custom graphics, the reader will not struggle to understand the points that are being made. Why is this so? The reason for this is that every image can be custom-made to buttress each point.
Conclusion
Do you want to stay on top of the game when it comes to eLearning course creation? If yes, then you must bear a few things in mind. Make sure to use eLearning content that leverages immersion and interactivity to increase engagement. Have you ever wondered how you can achieve this? It is quite simple! By simply carrying your graphics style through all of your learning sessions. An eLearning course with eye-catching designs leads the learner along an optimal course, helping rapidly assimilate new eLearning.
Originally published at www.thelearning-lab.com.
