Sometimes it feels like your eLearning courses haven't been updated since the 90s. Often, your courses look remarkably similar to the ones you made five years ago. This sense of timelessness can easily bore your learners and actually take away from the impact of the course content.
How can you make your eLearning courses more innovative? How can you adapt them to modern learners' needs and spice them up? Most importantly, how can you redesign them and create transformative experiences that actually engage your learners?
Continue reading!
1) Adopt The Learner Experience Design (LXD) Mindset
There’s a difference between instructional design and design thinking: instructional design often focuses just on the instructional material being developed and not the details of how it is being implemented. Design thinking, on the other hand, studies and improves the entire end-user experience.
A design thinking mindset considers:
- How the learner hears about the course
- How the learner decides whether they would benefit from the course
- How the learner enrolls in the course
- How the learner finds out about pre-requisites and preparation for the course
- How the learner accesses the course
- How the learner navigates the course
- How the learner provides feedback
- The follow-up communication after the course
- What other resources are provided and how they are accessed
- How the impact of the training gets measured
- How the learner can discuss the course material with peers
These details all contribute to the learner experience or LX. The term LX Design refers to the entire user experience, from start to finish, and the design thinking that comes with a scope like that.
Instructional designers have to consider specific learning goals set out by executives or managers. These might include mastery of certain skills or fluency with certain areas of knowledge. LX Design takes into account how people learn and how they apply their new knowledge and skills.
Even when the learner objectives stay the same, an increased focus on the learner might require more flexibility in format and method. LX Design acknowledges that not all learners are the same and that their existing knowledge is unique. They might also have different environments or be using different technology-- and it matters!
Taking the broad variety of learners into consideration might lead to innovations like plus-one thinking, universal design, offering learners more than one method of access, curating content, and allowing learners to have greater control over what they learn.
2) Iterate & Prototype More Often!
Many developers build their courses almost to completion before they ask for feedback. By that time, they’ve invested a lot of wasted resources, making it harder to implement significant changes.
Instead, try quickly prototyping the course, getting feedback, and then making adjustments. This is a software development concept that will help you improve your process, get better results, and reduce how much time you spend on development.
Read more: The Ins and Outs of Rapid Prototyping for eLearning
3) Focus On Engagement and Motivation
Games applied to online learning environments are one of the main tasks that learning leaders are incorporating into their eLearning programs to boost motivation.
But how to implement gamification, not for the sake of following a trend, but to really make an impact and engage your workforce?
As an instructional designer, it’s your job to make learning content more engaging while also improving performance. When incorporating game elements, ask yourself “What do I want the learner to be able to do as a result of this game/experience?” Then, design backward from that action towards the starting point of the instruction. This will streamline and focus the process.
If your goal is to increase engagement, gamification can definitely do that. If your focus is on skill acquisition and enhancing performance, you can go beyond gamification and implement cognitive science methodologies too. Create virtual environments that mirror real-life challenges and provide microlearning experiences to support continuous learning.
Here are additional ideas for your inspiration:
- Give your eLearning course a "marathon" theme and offer a series of small, achievable challenges to reach the finish line.
- Start with a question or quiz to spark the learner's curiosity from the beginning.
- Add a timer to a specific task: Putting students under time pressure not only makes the experience more challenging but forces your learner to focus on taking action and solving the problem.
Read more:
4) Use Responsive Design
If you are concerned about the real benefits of staying current with technology advances and modern learner expectations, using responsive design is a great way to do so as your workers are now using multiple devices in the workplace.
Responsive eLearning design (content that works seamlessly on any device) will help a broader population access your courses whenever and wherever they want, increasing engagement as well as letting them truly achieve self-directed learning.
The single most important benefit of responsive design is the ability to deliver performance support to employees on multiple devices at different moments of need. When a learner needs information the most, they are able to access the right information, wherever they are. This flexibility is priceless!
By arming your employees with responsive courses and the right materials at the point of need, you are empowering them, thus increasing their productivity.
5) Maximize Video-based Learning
Video engages and motivates employees in a way that text-based or static graphics communication can’t. Not only are videos easy to access via any device at any time, but video also provides that human element and makes learners feel as though they are being personally mentored.
According to the findings of Brandon Hall’s poll of more than 300 L&D professionals, video is an effective instructional medium because learners report increased engagement with this learning format. Video continues to rank among the most preferred formats for delivering educational content to mobile devices.
However, when developing effective mobile videos you need to have a crystal clear strategy and a drafted plan. You have to understand in advance exactly what you want to present to your learners. Keep in mind the flow of the video, the duration (ideally 3-5 minutes videos), and make sure that each video focuses on the key points that form the foundation of your script.
Also read: 9 Ways to Use Video in Your Online Training Courses
6) Design for Emotions
When it comes to modern Instructional Design, we can’t neglect emotion. We are in the emotion business!
Great learning content that targets the right learners can produce a powerful emotional response, which leads to greater engagement and results for L&D departments. But in today's age of distraction, creating an emotional connection is easier said than done.
Stop thinking about what you want to tell learners and start thinking about how you would feel in the learner’s shoes. Design around your learners’ needs and the rest will fall into place. Creating learner personas will help you do this.
Recommended read: Instructional Designers: Understand The Role of Emotions in Learning
What are you implementing today to bring your outdated eLearning course designs to life? Let us know in the comments below!
