The 9 Steps Of Elearning Content Development Process
With the growing popularity of eLearning platforms, it’s no surprise that companies are looking to take advantage of its many benefits, and learning through eLearning has become an essential part of today’s corporate culture.
As more and more businesses look to integrate eLearning into their corporate culture, however, the need to develop eLearning content quickly has become increasingly important.
In order to meet this need, the development process must be easy and streamlined to ensure that you can develop your eLearning content quickly without sacrificing quality in any way. Take a look at the ten steps
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The 9 Steps Of Elearning Content Development Process.
1) Define the Goal of Your Elearning Content
An eLearning developer should be involved in defining goals for both internal and external factors. Internal factors are those that are focused on learning development itself, while external factors are those that are linked to business needs.
Defining these goals is a vital part of any effective eLearning content development process. If you don’t have a clear idea of what you’re trying to achieve, then your content will likely suffer as a result.
Review what works and what doesn’t in your current training approaches, ensuring to identify strengths and weaknesses along with which processes work best for each situation.
Use your research findings to outline some specific steps for developing new eLearning content, ensuring that everyone involved in your organization understands why it's so important to learn from prior mistakes.
Your newly developed goals will outline requirements needed from individuals working on new content, meaning everyone is heading down a similar path during their creation stage.
2) Collect Data for your eLearning content development
The next step in eLearning content development is to collect data. This means you need to figure out what your users want, how they learn, and their job role.
For example, if you were developing a training course for an HR department, it might make sense to get someone from that department to speak with learners and ask questions about how they would like things delivered (short videos or slideshows) and what they are struggling within their jobs.
You should also analyze performance metrics to assess which areas most require training. This will ensure your target audience is well represented throughout your content development process.
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3) Create Storyboard for your eLearning content development
You need to start with a storyboard that contains all of your multimedia pieces. You should have already developed most of these for your learning objective, but it’s important to review them and confirm which ones you will use.
Ensure you include graphics, video and audio clips, animation, and more as appropriate for each step in your eLearning content development process.
A good rule of thumb is to ensure that every screenshot or image has at least one form of multimedia paired with it (and make sure those are readily accessible).
It can be tempting to add more media than is necessary, but don’t forget about flow and impact — you want learners to get through your course as quickly as possible.
4) Add Sound Effects & Music To Your eLearning Content Development
Sound effects and music are important for a more engaging experience for learners. Think about watching a movie without sound effects or background music. It would be quite boring, right?
Adding sound effects and music to your eLearning course can help it become more entertaining, leading to better results. However, be careful not to overdo it! No one wants their ears bombarded with loud noises from every direction.
Just like visual content (i.e., images), you want to use these elements in moderation so that they enhance your overall message instead of distracting your audience from it.
If there is no reason to add sound effects or music, don’t add them. Simple as that. And don’t worry if you aren’t very good at creating audio/visuals yet—there are plenty of great tools out there that can help you.
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5) Add Animations To Your Elearning Content
More than just a way to amuse your audience, animations are powerful tools for creating a more interactive experience. They're also an excellent way to engage learners and keep them focused on relevant topics.
For example, if you're discussing the negative effects of exercise, show someone with a cramp or strain. If you want to discuss the benefits of certain vitamins, include animations showing those vitamins positively affect healthy cells or systems in our bodies.
Have fun with it, and don't be afraid to get creative! You may find that you'll see better results from even relatively short animations—rather than one longer video—simply because they draw learners in and make them want to keep watching.
6) Add Interactivity And Action To Your Elearning Content
The best way to make your eLearning content more interesting is to add interactivity. This makes sure that learners are not bored while they go through your course.
One easy way to do so is by making a quiz or game after a certain section. This way, they are made to review what they have learned and improved their skills at the same time.
You can also ask them how they would deal with certain situations which might come up in real life, which forces them to think and learn more than just following instructions given out in text format.
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7) Validate Your Elearning Courses Through Testing
Before you start making an e-learning course, you’ll want to do some basic testing on your idea. You might ask some colleagues or customers if they would be interested in a course on a topic similar to what you’re planning. If they are, great! Get ready to move into content development.
But if not, take your idea back to step one and come up with a new approach before continuing. It’s far more expensive and time-consuming to build out a course and find out no one wants it than it is to do some validation first.
Plus, even if people aren’t that interested right now, they may become more so as you develop your courses—but only if you can get them to notice it in their inboxes or online dashboards.
Your job is to help them find value in whatever small amount of information you choose to share at each stage of content development. Once you validate that there’s value here, then go ahead and build out your prototype.
8) Polish and Publish Your Elearning Content
Before publishing anything for eLearning content development process; ask yourself if it’s truly useful if it has some entertainment value, or can you provide users with clear and actionable steps for completing their goals.
If you can answer yes to at least one of these questions, then make sure everything is concise, easy-to-read, and actually worth reading. Anything less than that is an exercise in wasted time and effort.
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9) Evaluate Results And Improve On Your Elearning Content
A great deal of time and money goes into creating content. To maximize your return on investment, you need to continually evaluate and improve what you’re doing. What are people actually using? Where are they struggling? How is it being used (and not used)? What does success look like here? The answers to these questions will help guide your future efforts.
It doesn’t make sense to keep pumping out eLearning content that people aren’t taking action on or don’t enjoy using—instead, invest in creating more effective elearning experiences for learners.
In short, don't just create content; create a learning experience that drives results.
How can TheLearning LAB elearning platform help?
eLearning content development process is one of TheLearning LAB’s specialties. From design and concept to integration, we are experienced and committed to delivering outstanding eLearning content.
Our instructional designers and project managers use industry best practices in developing effective and relevant eLearning courses that meet your business goals.