How to Create Engaging e-learning Content

The key to the successful delivery of e-Learning is a standardized and forceful instructional design coupled with relevant content. Content that is simple, easy to assimilate, effective, has high retention power, and is relevant to the trainees and the environment they are in. Here’s a checklist to build successful e-Learning content that gives you the greatest value for the resources invested in them:

• Clearly define learning objectives and their relevance to the learner– Make sure that at the onset of training the learner is clear about what he will be learning and how it will help him in his day-to-day work. This ensures his interest in the entire process. Organizations cannot afford to waste their resources on irrelevant training.
• Develop a learner-centric custom-made curriculum that the learners can relate to. Each organization has some specific needs that have to be kept in mind while writing the content. It cannot be duplicated for one organization and the other.
• Maintain uniformly high content quality– This is the first and foremost requirement in creating good content. It should be fresh, non-repetitive, and rich in knowledge and presented in an interesting manner. This has to be followed through till the end. Some modules begin with a bang but soon fizzle out and lose the trainees interest!
• Make extensive use of interactive and multimedia elements like 2D/3D animations, audio-video, graphs, drawings etc., to keep the learner interested and hooked on.
• A good content must be flexible to accommodate the changing learning patterns of different learners; it should also be easily scalable and quickly deployable to accommodate a greater number of learners without much hassle.
• Make certain that the content is compliant with corporate, industry and government standards and norms and is not derogatory to any sect, religion or culture.
• Incorporate an on-going feedback loop in the content; provide learning support and assess the learners periodically.
• The content should be simple yet not simplistic and repetitive. It should not be filled with jargon that is difficult to understand. It should be easy to understand both for the trainer and the trainees.
• Make certain that the content is Activity-Based – Skills learned through guided practical experience are likely to be learned more thoroughly, better retained and are used in the workplace more often.
• Avoid repetition of material/activities in which the learners are already knowledgeable, use Pre-Training testing to see skill levels.
• Reward recognition and reinforcement of successful efforts to increase the likelihood of the behavior being repeated on the job.
• Adequate well constructed and varied examples from their own organization or real work environment should be used to elucidate a point.
• For more difficult information use audio, possibly with voice over as the learner moves the mouse.
• Multimedia resources are most effective when they are chosen to reflect the needs of the users and the resources available.

Although it is not an exhaustive checklist, but still it will ensure that the training content you have designed and implemented gives the maximum desired results to the organization and individuals. Also, remember that people learn best in a supportive but relaxed and informal environment. See that it is comfortable; there is trust, respect, helpfulness, freedom of expression and tolerance of errors among the classroom members and the trainers.

You may also want to read our follow up article e-Learning Design Models to get better insight into various ways of making e-Learning development process more effective.

Contact us to view some of our interactive content samples, and to discuss how you can make your e-Learning more effective and engaging.