Best practices for elearning slide layouts
In general, an elearning slide is a fairly simple thing. It should contain a few points of information and/or interactions, may or may not have some imagery to go with the text, and be legible, appealing and professional to look at.
However, there are some things to avoid when building a slide that will interfere with learner engagement and retention.
1. Don’t have pop-up content partially cover text on the main screen
Although giving the illusion of depth is a great effect, layering objects or text boxes over the base layer text is generally a bad idea for elearning. The partial words behind the content your learner should be reading is distracting, and also doesn’t help them connect the pop-up content to the main content.
2. Keep quiz questions on screen when giving feedback
In any quiz type interaction, the question(s) should be visible along with feedback so the learner can compare their answer, the correct answer and any feedback regarding the answers.
3. Avoid using scrolling text boxes
Scrolling text boxes can appear in one of two ways – with a line of text cut off at the bottom, or without. The cut off line of text at the bottom is unsightly, but if the text ends without any indication that there is more they must scroll to, you may confuse your learner or they may miss out on more content. This probably means you have too much content on that slide and should find some way to cut it down or break it up into more slides.
For more on how to create great looking elearning either at the storyboarding or programming phase, check out the rest of our blog or contact us!
