Top eLearning Tips Straight From the Experts [INFOGRAPHIC]
To help you master eLearning course development, we gathered some of the top quotes by different experts in the industry and clearly explain you how to deal with eLearning content. These experts come from various companies, and all have a vested interest in the art of engaging eLearning experiences. Check out their expert tips in this infographic, and then navigate below for a quick explanation of what these tips mean for your eLearning strategy.
eLearning Tips From the Experts
“The e-Learning program must be easy to access and navigate or you will lose the learner before they can even start”. Don Eppert, Sara Lee. (Tweet This Quote!)
What This Means for eLearning professionals: Try not confusing the learner. Think about what your target audience is searching for when entering your eLearning course. Being unable to proceed to the next section or having difficulties finding where to go next can create a frustrating experience and can lead to them abandoning the course. It’s very simple: learners want user-friendly and intuitive courses. This means you should ensure the course can be navigated and accessed easily ‘cause no matter how engaging the content or innovative the design, if the it isn’t this way, you’ll de-motivate your learners so much that they will just leave and never come back.
“Avoid corporate-ese…speak the language of your audience and use the least amount of words possible to make the point”. Nancy Heiser, Kimberly-Clark (Tweet This Quote!)
What This Means for eLearning professionals: That means creating compelling content that speaks directly to your target audience. As famous online expert Bryan Eisenberg said:”Speak to the dog, in the language of the dog, about what matters to the heart of the dog.” If you talk to them with too much formality, it won't mean much. Too much formality can bore learners very fast. This doesn't mean you will be unprofessional, you can just write in a conversational and casual way. You can choose a friendly and informal tone, however transmitting content professionally. Not only write to inform, but also engage and challenge your learners constantly.
“Don’t Just PowerPoint! Do not transform your existing PowerPoint slide into e-Learning content”. Mustafa Bartin, Hewlett-Packard (Tweet This Quote!)
What This Means for eLearning professionals: The first and most important of the key success factors for eLearning is to move away from the practice of taking traditional curriculum and moving it online. What works well in person and in traditional classroom situations does not translate to the eLearning environment. Take the Power Point, for example. In traditional training sessions, instructors can stop and discuss each slide more deeply, answer questions and encourage discussion. If you want learner engagement to improve, your content has to improve first. Plain and simple: if you want to convert traditional training sessions into eLearning courses you must transform and adapt the content, not just change its format.
"Keep it simple stupid. Too many bells and whistles may cloud the message you are trying to convey, not to mention lengthen the development and testing timeline”. Brian Lauer, Freddie Mac (Tweet This Quote!)
What This Means for eLearning professionals: eLearning content, like most things in life, can be broken down in simple steps and then your goal really is to just keep it that way. Or as people say "Keep it Simple and Stupid". The secret is to kiss eLearning content, keep it simple and stupid. Use a clean design, reasonable font size and leave a decent amount of white space on the screen to make it simpler and easier to digest. Too often, eLearning courses include page after page of unnecessary information. If the content doesn’t contribute to the objective, then it can be left out. Make it as simple as you can, but no simpler. The extra detail won't be remembered so why include it. Think like a learner and keep it simple.
“Don't Be Seduced By Aesthetic. Use visual elements wisely to enhance the student's learning experience”. Ikuko Kawasaki, Randstad North America (Tweet This Quote!)
What This Means for eLearning professionals: We’ve all heard the phrase, a picture is worth a thousand words. But, if graphics are distracting rather than illustrative and colors are jarring rather than neutral, learners will lose their attention. That’s why any visual element in a course should be informative, other than decorative. Using visuals simply for the sake of using it isn’t right. Make sure it applies to the training in a logical manner and reinforces the information .If you are not able to explain why the graphic/photo is used for a certain screen, reconsider using it. It’s true that learners love to see more than just text, but use visuals elements wisely, find a way to use them that add value to the learning.
“Don't Bite Off More Than You Can Chew. Ensure learning is in "bite size pieces" so it can be easily consumed when needed”. Danielle Colton, MICROS Systems, Inc. (Tweet This Quote!)
What This Means for eLearning professionals: Nowadays, it’s extremely important to understand how your student’s brain digests the eLearning content. To sum it up for you: chunking or breaking-up content is useful for our brains since our working memory (which is where we manipulate or process information) holds a limited amount of data at the same time. The key is to feed the learners a little bit at a time by chunking content, using bullet points or breaking information into steps. The method of trying to cram as much information as possible almost never works!
