Designing an online course can be an overwhelming task at times. How do you engage the learner? Here are 3 tips you can start using immediately to create engaging course design and improve your eLearning.

There some simple ways you can improve the design of your course and change it from tedious to pleasurable for your learners.

Variety Ensures Engaging Course Design

Too often we will fall back into our personal comfort zone when building screens. It’s quick and easy to use a favourite template, because you know that all your content is laid out clearly on the screen for the learner to read.

Udutu’s pre-designed templates were created with this in mind. To break up any monotony, you can make a few simple changes, such as:

• Place images in different locations on the screen to draw the learner’s eye to different areas.
• Avoid large blocks of text that can cause learner fatigue. You can almost hear the frustrated “sigh” of a learner presented with large blocks of text to read. One trick to avoid text overload, is to make use of multiple screens and smaller paragraphs. If the information must be on one screen, you can use the “More Info” template that provides links to additional information. If you’re comfortable with javascript and HTML, you can also create custom rollovers and pop-ups using the HTML section in a Rich Text template.
• Test your learners’ knowledge by sprinkling some single slide self-assessment questions throughout the content. It will help with retention and you can use the feedback and remediation as an additional learning opportunity.

Scenarios

Scenarios can provide relevance to a learner. Create a story or use a real-life situation they can relate to. It can be a complex “choose your own adventure” type of scenario with many decisions and steps, or merely a simple anecdote to remind the learner how this training affects them and may help them in the future.

Interaction

Interaction is a catch-all phrase that people often use in the context of learner engagement. What does it mean though? Very simply, you want your learner to be involved, such as having to make a decision before progressing. You can do this by adding a flip card “memory” game, having an image with hotspots that your learner can roll their mouse over to reveal additional content, or add a scenario as mentioned in #2. Cause your learner to stop and decide about what to do next. Branch them to different outcomes and further learning opportunities based on their choices. Courses don’t have to be linear.

Get Feedback

Take a step back and look at your course as a learner, or better yet, have someone else look at your course with fresh eyes. What do you see? What is their feedback? Even the most creative course developer can benefit from this.

Implementing any of these design tips can take your course from boring to interesting.

I hope this helps and good luck!

Questions About Online Learning? Contact Udutu for Answers!

Udutu’s free course authoring software lends itself to teams who must collaborate to create training, or to groups who are scattered and to Subject Matter Experts who don’t have the time or inclination to become technologists.

As always, if you have any questions about course authoring and creating effective elearning content, don’t hesitate to contact the team at Udutu.