Things to avoid when creating eLearning
When designing and developing eLearning there are a number of things you can do to avoid creating a course that is static and not engaging for the learner. Often at times it is a balancing act between the time it takes to develop an eLearning course and including enough interactivity in the course to make it an enjoyable experience for the learner.
Below are some things to avoid when developing eLearning.
1. Poor Navigation
Navigation is one of the key things when designing and developing eLearning. When it comes to navigation it is vital that you make it as clear and as intuitive for learners as possible. When a learner takes a course the ability to navigate can be the difference between the learner having an enjoyable experience and giving up in frustration. When deciding on where to place navigation elements try to ensure they are always in the same place and try to make it obvious which buttons go backwards, forwards to the menu etc. A thing to note is that learners will most likely have different levels of technical capabilities, something that is intuitive for one learner might be hard for another.
2. Too much text
Text is one of the most common ways to explain a subject or topic to learners, it is a quick and effective way for subject experts to capture learning content on a screen. Due to its ease of use it can be tempting to use text throughout the course, however this can easily become static and not enjoyable for the learner if they have to read through large amounts of text. If you have large amount of text one way you can make it easier to read is if you can split it out is through interactions such as click and reveals e.g when a learner clicks on an image then related text appears. Another thing you can do is adding additional media elements e.g have audio play and have related text shown on screen.
3. Course Length
Course length can become an issue if it becomes too long, when designing your eLearning course try to think how it can be split up into smaller parts. The concept of Microlearning is a new trend in eLearning development and is something you could apply. Microlearning involves splitting up content into smaller bite sized chunks the learner can take, the benefit of this is that it helps learners to better digest what they have learned. If a course is too long it make be difficult to maintain the learners attention for the entire time, breaking up content into separate courses or chapters makes the learner feel like they are progressing more and helps to separate subjects.
