Humans love visuals. In fact, we are wired to respond more to visuals than to words. That is why we are so hooked on Pinterest and Instagram. This is also the reason why Facebook posts and tweets with images get liked and are retweeted the most. But as an Instructional Designer, what should interest you more is the fact that the human brain can process visuals faster than text. So if you care about creating more engaging eLearning, you MUST include powerful and engaging visuals in your courses. Visuals take away from the burden of reading through tomes of text, navigating language ambiguities, and making sense of jargon and complex sentence structures. Learn the ten most useful tools that you can incorporate into your eLearning courses to get your content to stick and resonate with your audience: 

In an age where continuous learning is widely becoming a mutual goal for both employers and employees, it is vital for a company to supply learners with a structured eLearning environment. Part of what conveys a stable structure of the learning environment is the ability to optimize the learning time and efficiency. Workers, in general, work hard and are consistently busy people leading busy lives. Taking time to learn something new, either concerning their work or for self-improvement, may also be consuming time where the worker could be actively accomplishing a key task.

In the boom of online learning, one of the top priorities for HR and L&D leaders is driving learner engagement. But, what exactly is engagement? And how can you measure it? In this blog post, we'd like to shed some light on these questions. In addition, we will provide you with a list of metrics to consider in terms of student engagement beyond the typical ones (aka course completion rates). Sound interesting? Continue reading.

Today's learner has ample avenues to seek out information. As an eLearning designer, you have competition! You have to create online courses that will keep your learners engaged and constantly coming back for more; else you will lose them, and worse, they might move away to your competitor (Instagram, email, internal messaging apps, etc.) Here are ten ideas to create engaging online courses that your learners just can’t leave:

Isn’t eLearning supposed to be a hit? If this is true, why isn’t your eLearning course working? The answer to this question might be simpler than you think. Regardless of your size or industry, there are a few common problems that continuously seem to trip up eLearning professionals.

The short answer: it depends. eLearning courses can be a valuable tool to motivate your workforce. The quality and innovative level of the courses can be the difference between keeping them engaged, coming back for more, and wasting thousands of dollars on programs that employees never complete or even learn. Your organization should be regularly analyzing data and feedback from previous courses and constantly working to optimize them so that you can maximize their effect.

You have to schedule meetings with the SME. You have to speak with the business executives to figure out the learning objectives. You have to know the target audience. It seems you have your hands full. Why should you bother to rack your brains and think of a story? Why would you need to tell a story in an eLearning course? Stories hold enormous power over our minds and hearts for a reason. They are how we think, how we make sense of information, how we define ourselves, and how we persuade others. According to an article in Psychology Today, stories continue to hold power in this digital age because the human brain hasn't evolved as fast as technology and it's only through stories that we can connect to the various digital platforms and media messages out there today.  Stories can improve your eLearning courses, not only making them more instructionally-sound but also more engaging, thus more impactful. 

Anyone seeking to create meaningful and engaging eLearning courses can benefit by remembering what it is like to be on the other side. It is bad practice to subject learners to any training that you would not participate in yourself. It’s time you stop blaming the “boring” content and commit to stop tormenting the learners who are required to take your course! Our job as eLearning designers is to FASCINATE and DELIGHT the learner from beginning to end. In the excitement of launching a new course, it’s easy to overlook details. Therefore, it can be very useful to have a checklist for last-minute touches.