How to design Engaging eLearning Courses?
To design an engaging online learning course, you need to take into account certain factors that will help you engage your learners.
These include using relatable stories, Branding, video content and creating a clear e-learning course structure.
You also need to incorporate meaningful interactions and industry eLearning lingo.
Read on to find out some of the most effective methods to engage your learners.
Creating a relatable story
Creating a relatable story for eLearning content is a vital component of creating an engaging learning course.
The storyline should be exciting, realistic, and have characters that the learner can relate to. In addition, the story should have a sense of risk, so that the learner feels involved and is motivated to act like the protagonist. Also lead to a problem solving. 90% of elearning courses need to fixe a problem!
A story can be short, but it should provide real value to learners. It should also be complex enough for the learner to feel invested, without being too complicated.
This requires an uneasy balance between creativity and brevity. It's often best to limit elements of the story to avoid cognitive overload, but still feature well-developed elements that engage the learners.
Stories are an excellent tool for teaching any content.
They are a great way to tie content to context, and they can even be used to elaborate on the details of real situations.
In addition, stories can provide context without naming names, and they can provide ample opportunity for learners to explore and apply the scenarios that are being discussed.
Creating a clear e-learning course structure
As the name implies, e-learning course structure refers to the choice of topics and the way in which content is organized.
The structure should support the learning objectives of the e-learning course. Without it, the learning journey may not have a clear path or it may be too difficult for the learner to follow.
When designing an online course, it is vital to know your audience and their needs. You can do this by establishing a customer avatar. Design the e-learning course for this target group, and be sure to include examples of how to deal with objections and close sales.
Finally, clearly state the benefits of your course.
Creating a clear e-learning course structure allows instructors to use a standard framework for their future e-Learning courses. It also allows students to easily transition from one course to the next. It also frees instructors to focus on exploring new teaching methods.
In addition, instructors can focus on providing additional resources (documents, videos, webinars, graphs, audios…) and tasks to enhance the learning experience. The clear e-learning course structure also gives the students direction and allows them to track their progress.
Creating a clear e-learning course structure helps educators make their online courses more effective. It also benefits the students and makes the teaching experience more effective and comprehensive. To learn more about the benefits of creating an online course structure, visit this resource.
It contains step-by-step guidelines to guide you in creating a successful online course.
Once you've developed the goals for your learning program, you'll be ready to begin creating your e-learning course.
The next step is to plan the content and structure. Once you've set the course structure, your content development strategy will fall into place. A clear course structure ensures that learners retain your learning material and achieve clear educational outcomes.
Creating meaningful interactions
Designing meaningful interactions is an essential component of an effective elearning course. A good eLearning course will provide opportunities for the learner to be active and engaged in the learning process.
It will also move beyond the typical page-turner presentation to give them problem-solving opportunities and practice in a simulated environment.
Creating meaningful interactions is critical to eLearning course design because it can increase learning transfer.
Clicking to reveal information may be necessary to fill screen real estate, but it does not promote learning.
Interactions should be meaningful and interesting.
The more interesting the interactions, the more the receiver will be interested in the content. However, when using too many interactions, the user may become distracted and lose interest.
Here are tips to ensure a positive student experience by using meaningful interactions in your eLearning course:
Make your content relevant to the learner's world.
Real life interactions involve making choices and experiencing consequences.
Learning courses must make this content relevant to the learner's environment. For example, they may need to interact with machines, peers, or management.
In addition, learners may need to interact with customers.
Knowing these triggers is crucial to creating meaningful interactions.
Students can create meaningful interactions by participating in discussion forums and sharing their ideas with each other.
In addition, online courses allow students to work in small groups.
Creating a discussion forum with a clear focus and well-defined parameters can encourage student engagement.
If a student gets too passionate and agitated, the discussion can quickly devolve into disrespect.
Furthermore, a passionate disagreement can compromise the learner's ability to develop an argument.
Using industry lingo
For business owners, executives, and managers, it can be difficult to understand the nuances of industry-specific jargon, terms, and concepts.
While most eLearning professionals are not trained in this area, the knowledge of common industry lingo is an important part of designing engaging learning courses.
It can help you understand your audience and make the content more relatable and effective.
Creating a script
If you want your learning courses to be more effective, you need to create a script that will be appealing to your learners. A script should be written in a conversational tone, and the language should be accessible to the learners.
In addition, it should appeal to your core learning group. For example, if you are creating a leadership course for high-powered executives, you should not use condescending language. The more you consider the audience and the subject matter of your elearning course, the more effective your script will be.
When you're writing a script for eLearning, it's important to remember that you're writing for an online audience, so you need to ensure that your learners understand every word. If you're using technical terms or jargon, make sure to add definitions.
You should also consider your audience's experience and knowledge level when choosing what jargon to use.
The script you create for e-learning courses should enhance the video or animation. It should add further information, more detailed explanations, and examples. However, a script shouldn't be too long. Most people read scripts out loud at 100 words per minute, so make sure your script fits with this pace.
The script you create should follow a 3-phase process.
The first phase is planning. This is where you create the concept and plan of your learning course. In this phase, you need to brainstorm your ideas and find a way to implement them in the script. The second phase is execution, where you put the plan into action.
Finally, Select the right Creative eLearning Platform with an authoring tool to design and manage your content!
