So, you think you found your calling?

Let’s face it: sometimes we may feel as we’re subbing for the whole personnel in a circus. Day in and day out, we are faced with the challenge of juggling content, walking the tight rope of creative storytelling and making our audience gasp with amazement at sensational graphic design. As an instructional designer, we welcome all the help we can get! The good news is we have lots of it, if we look in the right place. So, without further ado, here to assist you on your one-man (or woman) eLearning show is a toolbox of small yet enormously helpful apps and websites for your everyday tasks.

They say, one rotten apple spoils the whole basket. If you are an instructional designer, you are probably nodding your head in agreement. Someone somewhere churns out a few trashy courses and manages to shoo away learners and business owners. Business owners take one look at these and decide they don't want to commission another one ever while learners doze off midway through the course and decide they won't waste their valuable time any more.

OMG! Did you just shoot the learner? What did you do? Did you misfire a bullet? Or did you pump in too many bullets? Be careful. The bullet is a powerful weapon. You must use it wisely to create the right "impact." We are talking eLearning here. And the bullets are those little black dots that instructional designers are either obsessed with or hate with a vengeance. The former breed litters their courses with bullet lists—an overkill. The latter group avoids bullets like the plague; they probably do not know how bullet lists make learning matter more comprehensible. As an instructional designer, you have to tread the middle path. Do not pay heed to what the fatalists say. Bullets are not bad. Period. On the other hand, don't be too trigger-happy either. Use bullets wisely to make your courses look good, read intelligible, and make sense to the learner. But before shooting off the tips, here's what you must remember about bullet lists: Bullet lists help to structure ideas and present them in bite-sized chunks that are easy for the learner to skim over. Bullets are like mini headlines. The ideal bullet item is a crisp phrase that presents just the essence of an idea; it is not a rambling sentence that makes the learner trail off midway.

It's no secret that colors have an enormous influence over our perceptions of daily life—consciously and subconsciously. For example, warm tones stimulate and energize our senses, while cool hues bring in freshness and calmness. This means that we as eLearning designers need to make sure we understand what it takes to make good color choices. A little color psychology may be the secret sauce to produce soothing and productive moods in your learners. In this post, we will briefly discuss how you can use cool colors to your advantage when designing your eLearning courses.

You might have often noticed how a pop of color can instantly uplift your mood. But have you ever spared a thought about how it can change the course that you are currently designing? If you are not aware yet, the color that you use in your courses can have a tremendous impact on the mood of the learner and how they ultimately absorb the information. Now you may ask how colors can impact an eLearning course. Well, 70 percent of the information that people capture in their minds is through visual clues. And this is primarily the reason why colors can have a deep impact on your learners. There are several ways in which colors can change the entire outcome of your course. Certain colors reduce the stress level while others challenge your grey cells through visual stimulation or pattern seeking. Visual stimulation encourages visual thinking and reduces impassiveness. Give a thoughtful consideration before choosing a color palette for your course. When colors are chosen correctly, you can influence how learners decipher what they see.

Captivating and engaging. These are the two visual design goals of every eLearning designer. Captivating visuals direct attention and focus on the content, engage the learner’s curiosity to discover more about the topic, and hence simplify communication of ideas. They make your content memorable. This post highlights three simple ways you can leverage your existing images, icons and shapes, as well as creating new ones to boost your course design. Happy designing!

Whether you’re an aspiring eLearning designer or a seasoned pro with years of experience, there are some key characteristics that predispose people to succeed at this industry, and we’ve listed them here.