The world of training has experienced many changes thanks to advances in technology. Most companies prefer e-learning programs as a way to train their workforce, which is often distributed globally across several regions.
However, it is often not possible to have writers and designers available together in the same room in order to create content. It is therefore imperative to develop strategies to scale instructional design that allow elearning courses to be created and delivered rapidly.
Let’s look at 5 tips that will help you to make elearning more efficient and engaging.
Make Use of Significant Images
Even if you are not a designer, you know that images work as integral elements to generate impact in the learning content. Therefore you should use photos, icons or drawings that support your content. This will help your viewers to retain information six times more likely than they would with plain text.
• Use a series of images to present list-type content instead of simple bullet points.
• Avoid using Clip Art images. You can use photos to add professionalism and experience to your course.
• Choose images that bring an expected emotion or sensation as an alternative to random images.
Design Distraction-Free Templates
Here designing does not simply mean beautification. It means to develop in a way that encourages your beginners to concentrate on the content, not decoration. According to researchers, 90% of elearning developers build ineffective templates. Therefore, while creating a model, you must focus on elements of course design. Evade illogical interruptions that may confuse or distract your learner.
Leave Enough White Space
White space plays a vital role in the content of eLearning programs. There is no need to fill a white gap; it should stand alone in its own right. White space helps learners to pause mentally and have a proper understanding of the main content. Moreover, it also covers the course of presentation and knowledge of facts and is an important part of effective learning design.
Use an Appropriate Color Scheme
In visual design, graphics play a significant role to induce the right response from the target audience. So it is best to use soft and subdued colors for your elearning course. Use dark colors for text, and avoid using multiple shades. Use a maximum of three colors to retain simplicity and make your course eye-catching to viewers.
There are many applications that you can use to create a color scheme for your course.
Continue Uniformity
Individuals who do not have design skills often create different color themes or patterns. This often makes it difficult for learners to concentrate and focus on the material. As such, it is imperative to maintain uniformity with the use of a single color palette. This will guide learners towards the main points of the course without getting distracted from incoherent design elements. Apart from these, consider using other design elements like fonts and backgrounds properly.
Scaling instructional design is an achievable goal. Simply focus on these tips to give your e-learning program the impact it ought to have.
If you are an eLearning designer, you should consider using agile instructional design for your learning initiatives. Unlike the traditional methods of course creation, the agile method offers some significant benefits that will ensure that your results are outstanding yet also efficient. Below, we look at some of the top benefits of the agile design method.
Highly Interactive
Agile instructional design is heavily focused on the learners and how they will interact with the course material. At every step of course development, the needs of the learner and the manner in which they will participate and engage with the course will be taken into consideration. As a result, course developers are able to develop training materials in exactly the way a learner would find it easy to understand. This is one of the reasons why many instructional designers are switching over to agile design. After all, if you can produce high-quality, engaging content using agile, why bother wasting time on other, inefficient instructional design methods?
Rapidly Produce Content
A big challenge faced by most course developers is the time required for developing training material. This is mostly because developers usually tend to focus on creating the entire content of the course all at once. Obviously, this is normally a massive undertaking fraught with so many issues that the project will end up taking a lot of time. But with agile design processes, designers can now develop courses faster, using less time and fewer resources. This is because agile methods look at the course development process as consisting of little chunks of content that need to be developed sequentially. Only when one section is finished can the development team move on to the next section. This process of course development ensures that the training material is created within a short period of time.
Better Collaboration
A huge benefit of the agile design process is that it facilitates easier collaboration among multiple individuals. Everyone involved in the course, right from the organization that invested in its development to the actual learners, can collaborate with each other and offer suggestions to improve the course. As a course developer, this gives you the chance to hear the feedback and understand which aspect of the course needs to be developed and what new, potential features should be implemented. This can go a long way in helping you fine-tune your next course.
No Last Moment Revisions Necessary
In the traditional course development scenario, developers often tend to make numerous changes and revisions to the content. This mostly happens because the course is developed all at once, and then largely revised later on at the end of development. As a consequence, designers often need to correct a lot of errors to ensure that the training material complies with expectations. However, since agile development involves completing the course in portions, all errors and changes are addressed along the way. As such, last-minute, large-scale revisions become unnecessary.