How to Design Effective E-Learning
Design Tips for eLearning Success
eLearning design can be challenging. After all, you’re trying to create a design that will be effective for your target audience and meet your company’s training needs.
As such, the eLearning design process can feel overwhelming at times. With so many factors to keep in mind, it can be easy to feel like you’re not making any progress.
To help you get started and make the most of your eLearning design efforts, we have five helpful tips to keep in mind as you work towards a successful eDesign.
The most important factors in this process are as follows and I invite you to review this checklist at each stage:
Creation of an e-learning-base scenario
Focus on the learner (without him there is no project)
Determining the objective of each lesson or module
Brand Matters
Create engaging premium content
Think Video, audio, visual, script, activities
Identify the eLearning Project Need
Every e-learning project is based on a founding concept:
What is the problem to be solved?
Cathy Moore describes it well in her book Map It, the first thing to understand is the performance issue or the problem to be fixed. There must be a response to an expectation and a need.
This step requires a lot of discussion and a workshop with not only the expert but also the learners.
Understanding your users
Before you begin to design your eLearning course, take some time to sit down and get to know your users. This will help you to better understand their needs and how your elearning course can serve as a solution for their challenges.
Identify their individual difficulties and frustrations.
Know what specific issues your target audience is trying to solve.
Get a better idea of how your elearning course can help ease their pains and improve their overall experience.
While knowing your users will help you to better understand and design for their needs, it should not be your sole focus.
It’s important not to lose track of the general knowledge that is relevant to your entire audience. By keeping these two things in mind, you will be able to design a eLearning course that is effective and relevant for a much larger audience.
Design an Action Map plan
We always talk about putting the learner at the centre of the project, i.e. knowing without any doubt or hesitation the objective of the e-learning project.
List the activities to achieve the goal. And Prioritise!
Tip: Tools like Miro are very useful...
Be aware of your company’s culture
When learning more about your users, you can also take some time to learn more about your company’s culture.
This will help you to better understand the cultural implications of your design decisions, as well as potentially avoid making any offensive design choices.
In order to avoid making any unintentional design choices that may offend your users, you should be aware of your company’s culture.
It’s important to keep the needs and wants of your users in mind when designing an effective course.
Be flexible when prototyping and building the Storyboad
When you begin eLearning design, it’s important to be flexible.
It is important to follow the storyboard where each step of the learning experience or scenario has been planned and validated.
The script should be based on real profiles and objectives rooted in the reality of the job. And what the consequences of a wrong decision are.
This will help you to cut any potential course design errors early on, as well as allow you to better prototype different design options.
One of the best ways to be flexible when prototyping is to use paper and pencil. By using paper and pencil, you’ll be able to experiment with different design options without worrying about the technicalities, such as colour and font choice.
Therefore, when you try out different design options with paper and pencil, you’ll be able to identify what works and what doesn’t, which will help you to make design decisions with more confidence.
Keep the end in mind
When prototyping and experimenting with various design options, it’s also important to keep the end in mind.
Therefore, when prototyping and experimenting with various design options, make sure that you are considering the needs of your users.
It may be helpful to write these needs down or draw them out on paper so that you have a record of what you’re trying to accomplish with each design decision.
Elearning Branding Matters
I know I always say the same thing but working with elearning design experts will make the difference because the graphic result at a glance can already determine the desire to do the course or not.
A good elearning design is an expression of quality. Form and content are needed.
A design, beyond its clarity, must also reflect the image of the company, so the importance of the exercise is double.
Don’t forget to test and validate your designs
When prototyping and experimenting with various elearning design options, it’s important to validate your design decisions.
This will help you to make sure that the design decisions you’re making are as effective and useful for your users as possible. Therefore, when prototyping and experimenting with various design options, make sure to test and validate your design decisions.
Whether testing your elearning course with sample users or testing various design choices with paper and pencil, you should be testing and validating your design decisions as you go. Doing so will help you to make design decisions that are as effective and useful as possible, while also keeping both your end users and technical know-hows in mind.
Conclusion
When designing eLearning courses, it can be easy to get overwhelmed and feel like you’re not making any progress.
With so many factors to keep in mind, it can be easy to feel like you’re not making any progress. To help you get started and make the most of your eLearning design efforts, we have five helpful tips to keep in mind as you work towards a successful eDesign.
