Every eLearning dev dreams of creating a course that helps learners fulfill their goals. However, taking a course idea and turning it into a thoughtful, engaging experience can sometimes be more difficult than it looks. Knowing how to approach some of these problems could help you from being caught off guard.
As you know, there is heaps of content that is in a course, and it can be a tough job to always be engaging. But it’s worth it: creating engaging content that captures and holds attention can motivate learners and encourage them to stay focused, which can increase their knowledge retention and understanding.
Here are a few ways to make sure your content stays engaging:
- Tell stories. Instead of just presenting facts, write out scenarios and examples to convey a message, demonstrate a concept, and engage your audience.
- Incorporate interactive elements. Interactivity can come through forums, community, or gamification (among other things). This could be as simple as asking a question and providing an option to comment, or as complex as adding a drag and drop or similar.
- Use multimedia elements. Multimedia elements such as videos, images, and audio clips can liven up a wall of text. They can also help to break up long lessons, making them easier to read.
- Keep it brief. Chunk your lesson content in a digestible way so learners are better able to pace themselves and engage with your content. Remember the cognitive load principle.
Early in the design process, I would recommend embracing the use of templates in all that you do. Templates help optimise and standardise all that you make for eLearning. This could also factor in accessibility as well as you can develop your own style.
Of course other challenges are people, which are a major issue but will save this for another post.
So in conclusion, as the educational landscape is constantly changing and evolving and new technologies and pedagogical approaches are emerging all the time, staying informed and up to date with things like AR/VR/Gamification etc, will help you create more effective learning experiences as well as stay ahead of the competition. Don’t give up, there is always problems with creating successful eLearning, but you can do it!
Campbell Craig 