eLearning is becoming an increasingly important tool for global firms to train their geographically distributed workforce. The design and production of an eLearning course, however, is a sizable undertaking that requires careful planning and administration while adhering to all formal procedures that are an aspect of the project management lifecycle.
A step-by-step guide for creating an online course is provided below. You might discover some helpful advice here, regardless of whether you’re an investor or a business needing to efficiently train a workforce.
1. Research Your Audience
Age, financial level, prior knowledge, technical aptitude, expectations, time availability, the intended application of the new knowledge and skills, and even interests and pastimes of the learners are all important. For instance, their preferred online learning resources will offer suggestions and motivation. Surveys, social media polls, interviews, etc. can all provide you with useful information.
Additionally, you must research your niche market to determine what products are in demand, how they are making money, and whether you can provide anything special to students.
You may create useful, applicable, and interesting educational content with the help of all this information. Knowing when and where your audience will be learning also affects how the course will be designed in the future. For instance, a shorter course will be more convenient if they are doing it on the go.
2. Develop The Plan For Your eLearning Course
The strategy ought to be based on the project’s specifications, learning goals, and particular subjects. Create a step-by-step learning experience by grouping the learning modules. Learners will watch video lessons, the study recommended books, respond to questions, and do other activities for each idea they hope to understand. They would next complete a final exam to demonstrate their mastery and, if necessary, obtain a certificate of completion.
Have your content writer or SME draft the lesson plan while taking the following into account:
- The kind of information that best satisfies the learners’ particular needs and the learning purpose
- What is the most effective technique to give each lesson a purpose and relevance?
- How can we ensure that every learner understands the objectives?
Describe how the educational material will be delivered in further detail. Maintaining the learners’ interest and enthusiasm from one module to the next is essential. Users should be able to suspend a course anywhere and resume it at any moment without losing their place in it.
3. Make An Outline
The course developers and the learners both use the outline as a mental road map. A course outline gives a thorough overview of the material. It contains all of an eLearning course’s modules, chapters, subjects, and subtopics. When the initial outline is complete, create a full content outline where you study the content in-depth, arrange it logically, and determine the presentation patterns for each slide. Choose a location for the summative and formative tests as well.
4. Use An eLearning Template
The use of eLearning templates saves time and money. However, they also provide a crucial additional advantage, namely the maintenance of eLearning course continuity. With the use of eLearning templates, you may design a master template layout with branding components, color palettes, and navigational icons. By doing this, you can guarantee that every time a user accesses your eLearning course, they will get the same user-friendly experience.
5. Make Your eLearning Course More Interesting By Incorporating Images And Interactive Features.
Competent eLearning designers include visuals and interactive components in their projects to make eLearning courses entertaining. Today’s learners seek engagement as soon as feasible. You must, therefore, design a seamless experience for them from beginning to end.
With your first slide, you must quickly capture their interest and maintain it all through your e-learning course.
Effective eLearning design is essential since it can increase completion rates by engrossing even a passive learner.
Use bright colors and bold fonts to give the impression that they are reading an engaging book rather than studying for a test or working on a project.
6. Utilize eLearning Authoring Tools To Their Best Potential
eLearning professionals today have a wide range of eLearning authoring tools at their disposal because of the constantly developing eLearning technologies. Utilize all of the resources at your disposal to give your learners engaging learning opportunities. Before creating your eLearning course, gather all of your eLearning authoring tools and any other design resources you have on hand and consider how to make the most of them. Also, look into other eLearning authoring tools like Easygenerator that might be able to help you save time and money while working on the project.
7. Create A Prototype And Deploy The Course
It is highly recommended that you build a prototype of one learning module before putting your online course together. A prototype outlines the overall course’s typical appearance and feels and enables testing of its technological capabilities. Before the best version is chosen, course designers can swiftly create and discard numerous iterations using sophisticated eLearning tools.
You must distribute your online learning modules to your stakeholders, SMEs, and clients if any after they have been developed and assembled into a course. Let them evaluate it, offer any corrections, and then give their final approval. After that, you can transfer the course to a learning management system or one of the cloud-based eLearning platforms.
8. Collect Feedback
This is the final step. After you have deployed the eLearning course and online learners have finished the eLearning course, surveys and polls should be conducted to get their honest opinions. You may also use this to pinpoint your strengths and weaknesses.
For instance, navigation controls for online learning could degrade the user experience in general. Additionally, you can assess your user-friendliness using LMS reports. Cluttered or disorganized layouts may be to blame if online learners take longer than anticipated to finish the eLearning course.
Conclusion
Elearning has benefits that make it an appealing form of training for businesses. But to make sure that an eLearning course offers the most value and advantages, you must adhere to the above-stated guidelines.
