eLearning Challenges

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!

Published by theirishduck

I love the ability where I can plan, prioritise, design, develop and deliver blended learning solutions for a variety of markets. I love to consult and advise about the best use of digital learning and improve design standards in line with evolving ways of working. I also enjoy to keep up to date with, understand and regularly recommend emerging technologies and practice to improve individuals, teams and organisational capabilities. With over 12 years digital learning experience and demonstrated experience in both instructional design and eLearning development, I have also a lot of experience conducting training needs analysis including how to leverage principles such as design thinking and root cause analysis to understand and address performance gaps. I also have led many facilitation workshops and even presented at iDesignX and Game Developers Conferences both here in Australia, Wales and in the United States. I bring loads of coding experience in Java, ASM, C++, HTML, JavaScript, SCORM and xAPI, as well as proven capability using Adobe Captivate, Trivantis Lectora and Articulate Storyline 360 Studio authoring programs. Of course, Adobe Creative Cloud is also part of my toolbox which I also use daily. Being taught traditional and advanced 3D animation techniques, I love hand drawing and polymer clay sculpture, but can also use the Blender, 3D Studio Max, Maya and Softimage applications. With strong multimedia, training and programming backgrounds, I understand modern learner behaviour including micro and social learning, I am very familiar with most LMSes and app-based (XCode and Android Studio), adult learning models and e-solutions. I also possess the ability to manage multiple projects simultaneously, whilst being pro-active in delivering work independently with minimal supervision, but enjoy working in teams. I've been told I am a resilient, relationship focused guy which can manage and navigate conflicting views and stakeholders/subject matter experts.

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