Übersetzen

WINNING ELEARNING

COURSES

HOW TO CREATE

Contents

INTRODUCTION 3

Develop a Winning eLearning Strategy 4

How to Design Winning eLearning Courses 7

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INTRODUCTION

Whether you are a training manager, learning & talent development consultant or an

eLearning designer, you have seen it develop for quite some time now: Your learner profile is

slowly but surely changing. You now see many more members of Generation Y in the

workplace and taking your training programs. These are the Millennials or the modern

learners whose temperaments, attitudes and ways of thinking are vastly different from those

of their predecessors, the Baby Boomers.

Considering we are all short on time, it makes sense to maximize your efforts with a

winning eLearning strategy. The best strategies: will deliver compelling and

meaningful content that resonate with earners. They FASCINATE the learner from start to finish.

They appeal to learners´ unique personalities, distinct tastes, and learning preferences. Prepare these

essential ingredients to whip your winning content today.

This eBook will help you design eLearning courses that will get your learners hooked, and make them

wonder what more you have in store for them. It comes chock-full of simple tips and ideas on

turning your content from an overwhelming mass of gray text into something that engages learners.

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Develop a Winning

eLearning Strategy

Even before you design, develop, test or do anything related to the

project, you must define your vision, i.e., where you want to go. Get

everything down on paper, especially your objectives and limitations for

the project, and support them by establishing your target audience

and defining your desired outcome for the audience early on.

These are just some of the questions you have to ask yourself when

creating your eLearning strategy:

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Understand — Audience and

Organizational Readiness

3) Who is your target audience, what do they want?

Understand your audience: their current knowledge,

their abilities, job roles, and what needs they have for

your eLearning content. Research and define the ideal

target audience in terms of their expectations of

eLearning, IT literacy levels, tech-savvy, grasp of

mobile learning, and the training provisions you currently

have.

4) What is the current technical status?

eLearning relies on availability of technology for its

delivery. Hence, you must assess the IT readiness of

your organization. Ask: do you have the right IT

platforms? Is the technology for implementing a

scalable eLearning training program available? What

changes are needed in the current IT environment,

and will the current eLearning courses integrate with

the future changes?

Define — Purpose, Scope,

and Goals of eLearning

1) What do you want to achieve with eLearning?

The questions to ask include: What will your

organization accomplish with eLearning? Why is it

needed? How will it help the organization or your client

meet their business goals?

You must assess the need for the training you are

developing and prioritize your audience´s needs.

2) What are your goals?

Your eLearning must directly impact organizational

goals. To do so, you must create a list of specific and

measureable objectives that you want to achieve with

the implementation of your eLearning course.

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Plan — Access, Marketing, and

Measurement

7) How will courses be accessed?

Your interactive elements will be designed according to

the network the course will be accessed from. Will it be

an LMS, mobile devices, or the company’s intranet?

8) How would you market the program?

Marketing should be part and parcel of your rollout

plan, and clearly defined in the strategy. This makes it

easier to design programs so that they can easily be

promoted. Your end goal is to engage the target

audience, and doing that should start with the first slide

or course you intend to make.

9) How would you measure results?

A final question to ask is, which results are

important and how will they be identified and

measured? Important KPIs include performance, ROI,

and cost of owning the eLearning course.

Realize — Stakeholders, Buy-in

Process, and Limitations

5) Who would be involved?

The biggest problem with implementing an eLearning

strategy is getting stakeholders’ opinion — and these

stakeholders can be varied and dispersed throughout

the organization. Finding them and understanding their

concerns is crucial for the buy-in process.

6) What are the inhibitors and limiters to learning

implementation?

What are the risks associated with your strategy? Which

issues can sabotage the schedule and the timeline, and

perhaps the overall integrity of the eLearning strategy?

Profile the risks, individually qualify and prioritize them,

and build the right answers.

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How to Design Winning

eLearning Courses

We’ve all met them. Ask about online courses they’ve taken, and they’ll

roll their eyes. Current eLearners are bored and can’t wait for their

courses to end. Whoever put together these courses – was it you? –

They didn’t have the right recipe to design winning eLearning courses.

Now that you have your strategy in place, it’s time you follow these design

guidelines to produce the best results:

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#1 : Think Lean

Today’s learner has less time and more distractions

than ever before, making it unrealistic to assume that

employees can sit for an hour or more to complete

an e-Learning course without interruptions. They

prefer to know the gist of a story from a one-line update

than read pages about it. They demand that

information is made accessible to them on the go. This

is what’s driving the shift toward just-in-time, microlearning.

The thought is that it’s better to engage a learner for 10

minutes of truly productive learning time where

information is absorbed and retained, as opposed to

presenting them with an hour-long course that has no

impact.

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There’s undoubtedly a large amount of information that you need to convey to employees during training, but to trim it

down, keep it manageable and maximize effectiveness, it’s important to keep it short and to-the-point.

Here are 3 tips that can help you achieve this goal:

1. Say it with a Visual: If you have content that needs to be shared, but you don’t want to inundate learners with an influx

of text, often a visual will do the trick. Diagrams, graphics, infographics or videos can be ideal ways to condense what

would be a lot of long, boring text into something that feels manageable and engaging to the learner.

2. Deconstruct and Modularize: Forget the linear way of conveying content as you would do for eLearning courses of

longer durations. Microlearning demands that you let learners choose their own path according to their needs and at their

own pace and time. If you have an hour-long course, breaking it up into six 10-minute modules, or three 20-minute courses

will help you keep your learner’s attention and content is more likely to stick with them.

3. Avoid Repetitiveness: Let’s say you’ve included a text- slide in your course and this same text is included in a script

read by a narrator. You’re not only boring your learners with repetitiveness, but you’re also demonstrating the idea that

they’re not able to read it themselves. This is a big turnoff in eLearning courses.

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WHAT YOU

WANT

TO SAY

RELEVANCE

WHAT THEY’RE

INTERESTED IN

#2 : Relevant Content

Always Wins

The modern learner is not only short on time but

also gets easily distracted. Social media,

smartphone, emails, deals on the Internet, their

favorite blogs, whatever is being shown on the

television—there is no lack of “attractions” vying for

their attention. So you have to make your point right

away; beat around the bush and your learner will leave

the course.

Here’s how to keep your content relevant:

Make it learner-centered. Your course content

should be relevant to what your target audience needs.

Provide plenty of examples: Use examples to clarify

concepts or theories, and make those examples

relatable.

Keep it real: Let learners experience an authentic setting

by using realistic dialogue and fictitious yet believable

characters.

Create clear course objectives: For many students,

knowing why they are there and how it will help them,

makes the eLearning course more rewarding.

Make your content actionable: Cut to the chase. Do

away with the history, the background information, and

the theories. Deliver the “how-to” right away. Remember,

your learners are looking for just-in-time solutions.

•

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•

Improve your user experience (UX) design skills with

these tips:

This Isn’t a Novel, Don’t Write it Like One. Keep large

blocks of text to a minimum. They’re hard to digest and

even more difficult to stay focused on. Incorporate visual

cues that will help learners follow along and know when

key information is being presented.

Don’t Let Design Interfere with Function. An eLearning

course is not the time to use all the crayons in your 120-

color box. Sticking to a color scheme with good,

contrasting colors is the first step to making sure your

course looks cohesive and doesn’t force your audience to

give up due to eyestrain.

Figure Out your Navigation so Your Users Don’t

Have to. Your users should be tested on course

material, not their ability to navigate a convoluted

system. The navigation of your course should seem

almost too easy as if it requires no thought, because it

shouldn’t require any.

•

#3 : Make the Course

User-friendly

While engaging students and making sure content

is fully covered are very important parts of course

success, it is just as important to go through and make

sure your user interface (UI) ducks are in a row. Taking

the time to go through and check for user-friendliness

will help ensure that your students don’t lose out simply

because the course is difficult to navigate.

Keep in mind that taking a course isn’t often optional

for most people. They are taking it because they

have to and will have little patience for guesswork.

Make it clear what the user needs to do in order

to advance in the course. Learning is difficult enough

without the added annoyance of having to hunt for what

to click on.

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Do not focus on technology at the cost of creating

compelling content. Follow these tips:

Storyboard your eLearning course first. This

will help you include only what’s necessary rather

than including too many animations, interactions, or

other “bells and whistles”. Read this step by step guide.

Use a minimalist or uncluttered design approach to

give learners the bare minimum of information needed

to get them “up and running” on the task to be learned.

Identify the most important content and cut

the nonessential parts. Research has proven

that eliminating unnecessary text, audio, visuals,

and pictures reduces information overload for

users. Include animations and interactions only when

absolutely necessary to support specific learning

outcomes.

•

#4 : Content Before

Bells and Whistles

While quality eLearning courses can and should

include graphics, photos and charts, this is only half the

battle of making them memorable. A course that is nice

to look at but that doesn’t engage the audience is just

a pretty face without substance. However, throwing in

random interactions too often or asking the audience to

answer questions about less relevant information will

make your course seem juvenile, as if you’re just

checking up on your students as opposed to truly making

sure they understand key concepts.

“Don’t try to dazzle with technology. It doesn´t

matter if you have a plethora of tools available to

create courses that wow users. They will fall flat on its

face if the content fails to motivate or engage them”.

– Hazel Alpizar, Innovation Manager

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SUCCESS

#5 : Motivate Learners

All The Way Through

Your basic premise is that all learning depends on

motivation. No matter what we as learning professionals

do, we can’t get eLearners to commit new data or

information to their memories unless we motivate them

first.

Winning eLearning courses are desirable and

motivating by design. They offer an attractive learning

environment for learners, who find it worthwhile to click

next and stick to the course until they finish.

So, what is the key to motivating learners and

ensuring that they stay on track throughout a course?

The trick is to design the course with elements

that promote motivation before, during, and even

after course completion. You cannot make someone

learn but you can create an environment that promotes

learning.

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BEFORE

Communicate expectations and goals before the course

starts. By sharing with the learners what they can expect,

you are already motivating the students to meet

standards set forth.

DURING

Design for active participation: Create activities that

encourage exploration. People learn best from

experience, and the more authentic and participatory

the experience, the greater the learning. Present a

common problem and provide the resources for the

learners to create their own solutions. Taking control

of the learning process provides self-motivation and

deeper engagement in the content.

AFTER

Celebrate course accomplishments: people remain

motivated when they are aware of their

accomplishments. For instance, provide a certificate or a

prize when the student completes the course.

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