Navigation in eLearning
Navigation is one of the most important things when it comes to designing and developing eLearning. Having good navigation can be the difference between a course that provides a good User Experience for learners and a course that creates frustration for learners.
Below are some things to consider when adding navigation to your eLearning course.
1. Consistently Place
When deciding where to place navigation in your course it is important to ensure that it is consistently in the same place for every slide. For example, if you place navigation elements such as Next & Previous buttons in the bottom right of the screen try to ensure that it is in the same place for all the slides in the course. Once the learner becomes familiar with how to navigate the course, they will be expecting the navigation elements to be in the same place, if you move the navigation elements around it could cause confusion for the learner.
2. Clearly Labelled
When designing your slides try to make sure that it is obvious what the learner needs to click on to go to the next slide. One way you can do this is by using the built-in navigation elements in authoring tools such as Articulate Storyline, these tools have navigation elements built into the player (e.g. Menu, Next, Previous buttons) so you don’t need to worry about adding these navigation elements to every slide. However, if you decide to use your own custom navigation make sure that it is on an obvious place on the screen and is clearly labelled.
3. Activity Screens
In some cases you might have screens where the learner needs to complete an activity before they are able to proceed. For example, you might have a screen where the learner needs to click on several areas of the screen and view all the content before they are able to click Next. In this case just make sure that it is very clear what the learner has to do as it may not be obvious for the learner and result in them becoming frustrated that they are not able to continue.
