Effective eLearning courses don't happen by magic. They come out of purposeful, thoughtful and learner-focused design.
If you’re an eLearning professional looking to improve your skills, these free resources are perfect for you. They’re all popular content (created by different companies) that offers hundreds of tips, tricks, and ideas on how to not go crazy while creating your eLearning courses. They'll show you how you really don't need a degree in instructional or graphic design to follow some basic principles.
There are many other free resources out there that you should be aware of. But this a good list to start with if you want to make your courses more effective.
1) Free Guide: 10 Ways to Yawn-proof Your eLearning
If you find yourself in need of inspiration to keep your learners awake and focused in your courses, this free guide gives you 10 easy ways to get learners sitting up. Go over your course and give it an overall treatment to improve its quality or make it more effective. It may demand a bit more time, but it’s definitely worth your effort.
2) Free ebook: 62 Tips on Graphic Design, UI/UX Design, and Visualization for eLearning
Truth is effective eLearning courses require more than just text and few random graphics. Good graphic design, user interface (UI) design, and user experience (UX) design aren’t optional – they’re necessary to maximize the quality of your eLearning projects.
Learn how you can create engaging courses through some advice from 12 different experts, focusing on topics such as what is best illustrated by a still image vs. an animation and why navigation should be at the bottom of a page.
The 62 tips are organized into three categories: Highlighting Learning, Aesthetic Considerations, and Tricks and Tools. It's definitely worth a look!
3) Free Instructional Design Storyboard Template
This free template is made for instructional designers to streamline all of their instructional design processes. This storyboard template will simplify your eLeaning design process by helping you create clean storyboards and keep track of your instructional design and development project needs.
You may also find very useful this list of more than 72 storyboards. All of them are free and are in word or powerpoint format.
4) The Ultimate DIY Guide to eLearning Design
If you don't consider yourself a design expert, but you do treat design as a crucial aspect of eLearning and understand its importance... this eBook is for you! It will teach you the basic elements of successful eLearning design and many useful design secrets to help you engage learners like never before.
Truth is great results come from learning the basics. Even though these tips won't earn you a living as a professional designer, they will definitely help you create great looking eLearning courses so that students will be more motivated to learn.
5) Free ebook: 5 eLearning Myths and How To Avoid Them
This eBook debunks the five most common eLearning myths from “eLearning is boring” to the perceived expense and time-commitment involved with creating courses. Each chapter covers the reality of each eLearning myth, as well as easy and quick tips on how to avoid becoming a victim of these myths.
What other resources help you create awesome eLearning courses? Share them here!
