Although it might seem absurd to design training without the end user in mind, an audience analysis is an extremely important yet often overlooked element of instructional design. Before creating an eLearning course, you should find out as much as possible about your learners. This information should directly impact your design and content choices. For example, the experience levels of the audience will affect the types of activities incorporated in the course. During the eLearning audience analysis stage of design, it is important to think of your learners as a group of individuals with specific goals. Remember, demographic profiles of your target audience do not always paint the complete picture. You have to look beyond statistics like age, educational qualification, and occupation to understand the learner. Your learner is a sum of his or her past experiences, desires, aspirations, and expectations. Their learning styles and media preferences are shaped by their familiarity with and access to technology. Their cultural upbringing influences their perception of symbols, images, words, or analogies. Learners are a complex and multi-dimensional human beings; just a few numbers do not define them.  Here are five ways you can get to know your eLearning course target audience:

If your eLearning course isn’t meeting your expectations, your development team can, with the right knowledge, improve it without starting from scratch. Here are four elements you should focus on to “stir up” more interest in your course and get more successful results.

Remember how you learned math? You went through four stages. You learned what adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing mean (tell). Then your teacher taught you how to add, subtract, multiply, and divide (show). You practiced sums (do), and then came the dreaded exams (apply). This is how all learning takes place, and it is no different with eLearning.

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.

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. 

What do you remember more vividly? The steps of installing a piece of new software on your computer or the episodes from your favorite TV drama? Human beings are more swayed by emotions than by a bunch of hard facts and cold statistics. Our favorite stories keep us hooked because they tug at our heart strings. We remember scenes from our favorite movies because as a rule, human beings remember emotionally-charged events better than the ones that just aim to appeal to our sense of logic. Understanding the science of emotions is the key to influencing learners' thoughts and actions. As an instructional designer, you need to wrap your wits around this science to create courses that resonate with your audience and stir their emotions. Robert Plutchik's Wheel of Emotions holds the clues.

Remember those whodunits or the comic books from your school days that you stayed up late to finish? Or those old movies that stirred you so much that you still can't stifle a sob or resist a chuckle when you think about them? Was that an autobiography, a piece of news item, or a meeting that inspired you to ditch a bad habit or take up a cause for life? We all have memories of such stories that touched our hearts and changed our lives. Don't you wish your eLearning courses would touch people's lives in the same way? Blame it on tight deadlines, stringent budgets, boring (read: technical) content, or dictatorial managers, but most amongst us have created ho-hum courses that have managed to put many learners to sleep. We ourselves cringe when we remember these courses! So how can you create eLearning courses that wow  learners even when the constraints remain in place? How do you create courses that change minds? Here are four proven ways: