The
Greatest eLearning Tips & Tricks
AUTHOR PAGE: The 24 Greatest eLearning Tips & Tricks By: Karla Gutiérrez Karla Gutiérrez is the Head of Inbound Marketing and Online Management at Aura Interactiva, creators of SHIFT eLearning. She’s focused on blogging and social media communications in the eLearning industry.
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Connect with her in LinkedIn here.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Introduction // 5 The 24 Greatest eLearning Tips & Tricks // 6 Chapter 1: Before you start // 6 Chapter 2: Gaining Attention // 10 Chapter 3: Inform the learner of the objectives// 16 Chapter 4: Stimulate Recall of Prior Learning // 21 Chapter 5: Presenting Content // 23 Chapter 6: Elicit performance and provide feedback // 34 Chapter 7: Asses performance // 38 Chapter 8: Enhance performance and job transfer // 40
In this e-book Engaging learners and creating a motivating learning experience is an eLearning developer’s most important objective. However, few trainers feel their eLearning courseware is truly engaging. What gives? There can be a lot of moving parts in any eLearning strategy and often times it’s difficult to know which parts need fine tuning. In this guide, we will expose the top 24 techniques you should utilize to increase engagement at every level of the course. These tactics have been tested over our more than 10 years of experience. So what goes into a best-of-class eLearning course? Read the rest of this ebook! Robert Gagne’s Nine Events of Instruction are the basis for what a lot of people refer to as “sound instructional design”. Therefore, we have undertaken the task of resuming these steps and their application to create eLearning courses that truly motivate your audience. The chapters of this ebook are inspired in some of these steps.
Chapter 1
Before You Start
#1
Get to know your students– it’s all about them! Do you know who your students are? It might seem like a basic step, but getting to know and understand your audience is the first thing you should do before doing anything else… If you don’t touch on the things that interest your audience in your eLearning courses, how are you going to engage them? How can you possibly teach your learners if you have no idea who they are in first place? Before you publish the course, ask yourself if it's something you think your learners will want to read and complete. Is a course worthy of taking? If so, it's probably remarkable. Keep in mind the following questions about your audience: •What are their needs? And their wants? Motivations? •When will learning occur? •What is their level of education? Their academic and computer skills? •Does your audience already know something? Check out their prior knowledge. •What will the audience be able to do with the content that you transmit through the course? The only way you can WOW your learners: get to know them!
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#2
Develop a simple style guide Before starting… setting standards is key! This doesn ’ t mean all courses will look the same…however, when you build a course, you should develop a style guide to go with the course. This will help you build a consistent look and feel, making the course much attractive and organized.
The style guide can be used to give direction of tone, personality, design, colors, image size, layout and what type of fonts should be used in your eLearning project. Definitely, having a style guide saves you time!
Templates are a great option for this. They provide consistency and uniformity, and this helps learners know how to navigate and use the course. We encourage you to start using SHIFT’s awesome templates to guide the look and feel of your courses. Click here to view a How-to Guide for writing a visual style guide for eLearning .
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#3
Promote the eLearning initiative If you build eLearning courses and expect people to just take them, will they do? Studies show that they generally won't. If you want eLearning to work in your company, marketing your project internally is fundamental. It doesn’t matter how awesome your eLearning courses are, if they aren’t promoted to the right people, and these people don’t complete them, it’s basically a waste of time and resources. Follow these steps to market eLearning internally: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
6. 7. 8. 9.
Set your goals: (following the SMART methodology) Consider your audience Branding: (following the BAIDA methodology) Attention : How are you going to capture their attention? Interest: Define the message you want to convey. Desire: Define a “plan of attack” to get to their deepest inspirations. Action: How are you going to make information accessible and easy to find for them? Run the campaign Be constant
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Click here to view an in depth explanation of the 9 steps. SHARE THESE TIPS
Chapter 2
Gaining Attention When developing eLearning, even though it’s necessary to keep the learners' attention throughout the entire course, engaging them at the beginning is essential.
In this chapter you’ll learn how to get people interested in what you have to offer. Always remember: do not just get the learners’ attention, but get them curious and motivated to learn about the topic your course addresses.
#4
The 3 Attention Keepers We’re sure you’re aware of the rule “keep it simple, stupid.” The same applies to eLearning. A cluttered screen means a distracted or confused learner . If you can present information to your audience considering the Three Attention Keepers (Short, Simple, Moving) content will be appealing to them. Some great examples of ways you can present information to ensure that more of the content is remembered is: •Offer bite size chunks •Bullet lists and numbering to convey the main points. •Organize content into steps. •Use short and easy sentences.
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Keep it moving by including more than just text.
Keep it simple by only including what it’s necessary.
Keep it short by breaking content up or chunking it.
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#5
Stimulate curiosity An effective way to get students on board during any course is to stimulate their curiosity. When people are curious they exhibit a higher desire to know more about a topic. As a result, students will be more naturally motivated to learn new material when they are curious about how it can affect their duties on the job. Don’t give away everything at first! Through the entire course (but especially at the beginning) you should seek to build curiosity and sustain active engagement.
• • • •
There are a variety of approaches you can use to achieve this, for example: Including animated sequences with audio, video streaming, or any kind of event that introduces incongruity or conflict. Make learners want to find out more by starting out with a suspenseful scenario that learners need to solve. Introduce thought-provoking questions, knowledge checks or surprising statements. Encourage students to learn through active exploration. The key relies on creating courses where the learner doesn’t just passively receive information.
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#6
Go relevant or go home! In eLearning, creating relevant and memorable experiences for your target audience has always been the best way to capture learners. Before your learners click on that first button, they want to know if the course has any value or benefit. When time is premium –which always is- the best eLearning courses make sure the instruction that follows is directly applicable to subsequent tasks. A careful learner analysis at the beginning is necessary to determine the right content for the right audience. Everything included in the course, from instruction, graphics, activities, references etc. should be relevant to the learner. Here are 4 elements that you might consider including to create relevant and memorable eLearning courses: 1.Always focus on creating clear course objectives (this is like a finish-line to a runner.) 2.Make your content actionable: give them a sense how to use information. 3.Respect the audience: honor them, treat them as adults! 4.Simple and appealing design creates meaning: everything you include should add meaning to the course. www.shiftelearning.com
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#7
Get them into action! Ideally, an eLearning course is less about the information and more about how the students use the content. The Big Question: What will the learner do with the content? How can you design the course so the learner has to use the content? You definitely want them to interact with the course right? The more the learner interacts with the course content rather than just clicking to navigate to next screens, the higher their attention level is. Your focus should be on getting the learner to use the course content. This can be done through: •Exercises and Knowledge Checks •Simulations and Scenarios •Case studies •Providing learner control in making certain choices while learning in the courses. •Games www.shiftelearning.com
Click here to view more examples.
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#8
Simplify navigation A good eLearning course starts with navigation. eLearning courses are supposed to be easy to navigate – yet far too many are confusing and tedious. If it’s not clear and intuitive within the first slides – students are lost. Instead of trying to find their way out of the maze – when it comes to your course – they’ll just go away…and never return.
How you decide to instruct the user on the course’s navigation can vary, there are different approaches...but your main concern should be that the navigation process is intuitive and doesn’t interfere with the learning process. You want people to learn, and hopefully enjoy the course and not remember of how frustrating it was to navigate it.
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Create a course that has a friendly direction.
The eLearning course should include the intuitive navigation people look for, and it should be immediately clear to the learner what topics and content items are featured within a course. SHARE THESE TIPS
Chapter 3 Inform the learner of the objectives Create levels of expectation for learning.
“A well built and defined learning objective becomes a motivation and guidance tool for the learner.�
#9
It all starts with clear objectives A key part of successful eLearning is knowing what you want to get out of it and how to get there. A well built and clear learning objective becomes a motivation and guidance tool for the employee. Objectives are a big deal… they will ultimately determine your course content.
Under what circumstances will the learning occur?
Degree
What they need to do?
Condition
Who needs to learn it?
Behavior
Audience
To build these objectives, we recommend considering the ABCD Model : How will you measure to determine completion?
Main pointers: •Objectives should be given early in the course. •Content must include all information necessary to fulfill the objectives. •Exercises should respond directly to goals. Tip: Include characters in your courses and let them tell the learners what they will learn and what to expect. www.shiftelearning.com
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Once you have your objectives, you can begin to collect and sort your content to meet them‌.
#10
Tell them “What’s in it for me?” Successful eLearning courses provide a reason for the behaviors they are trying to impart. In two minutes or less, present “what’s in it for them.” Provide a compelling statement about how they will become more productive, reduce error, or increase sales, etc., by taking the eLearning course. The explanation should show how a new computer program makes the learner's job easier, or why a new procedure will make his work more efficient or successful. It’s proven that adult learners always want to know why they are learning something and how it’s going to help them at work. It’s very simple: they want to know "What's in it for me?" So, tell it loud and clear.
Beware: If you don't , no amount of fireworks and giveaways matter. In order to engage learners and prevent them to get bored since the beginning, the course should have meaning and implications to their jobs.
Remember 3 main things:
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Learners must be aware of why they need the course.
They need to Know what will they learn.
They want to be clear of what will they be able to do afterwards.
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Assisting students to build upon a framework of prior knowledge or to bridge any possible gaps between where they have been and where they are now (and potentially will be moving in the future after the course).
Chapter 4
Stimulate Recall of Prior Learning
#11
Context is all! More important than content itself… it’s context. When creating your eLearning courses it’s all about delivering the right content, to the right audience, at the right moment. Why context is so important? Context helps learners to be in sync with your company, and it makes it easier for people to think, converse and learn. Context can be very powerful in completely changing one’s inclination toward learning. Remember: the learner ’ s context is their workplace, therefore we need to give them the information in that context. What you can do: 1. Quiz learners on related knowledge they already have. Have an exercise that will help learners associate the subject with concepts they already know or link the exercise to prior experience or knowledge. 2. Consider a short video case study, demo, or podcast to help learners gain context and integrate prior experience. Case studies, short simulations, and practice exercises are good when they combine old and new information to build on the learner’s knowledge. www.shiftelearning.com
It becomes critical to stimulate prior knowledge at the beginning of an eLearning course because it helps learners retain newly learned information by building on existing knowledge. As well, it can serve as a brief review of recently learned information that the subsequent content is intended to build upon.
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Chapter 5 Presenting content and providing guidance
This is the content part. Share the information or concepts, present the idea. Do it in an interesting way, please! How will you display the content with distinctive features to keep it interactive? Think about how do you wish to present your content: text, audio, video, case studies, simulations, games, etc.?
#12
Use the right amount of interactivity Interaction has always been seen as a key component of an eLearning course to get learners involved. Because of this, meaningful interactivity should be at the top of your list ALWAYS. However, an excessive use of interactive means can become a distraction for the student and reduce the effectiveness of the course. Moreover, studies reveal that when talking about interaction in online courses, more is NOT always better. Find different ways to liven up the course with the right measure of interactivity and to have learners do more than just read. Interaction is all about getting them feeling, acting and connecting. Don’t add interactivity just for the sake of it, but use as much resources as possible to make the course engaging enough. www.shiftelearning.com
Some examples of interactive means: •Storytelling •Videos •Avatars or learning agents. •Simulations, put learners in real-life scenarios where they can try on their skills, or encourage interactive discovery and exploration in your course with case studies or success stories. Do you want a real time demo to see all the possible interactions you can do with SHIFT? Click here.
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#13
The pull approach The pull approach is all about what the learner wants. It recognizes that some learners don’t need to take the entire eLearning course to learn about a topic. Content needs to be designed in a way that learners are not forced to review all content that they already know, instead they can just access or pull what they need in order to complete the course. Instead of dumping a bunch of information on them, get them interacting with the content and making real-world decisions. When they don’t know something, provide ways for them to collect information by using different pull mechanisms. From now on… Let them collect and pull information rather than just pushing it out. Learners should be able to choose the content they actually need and as a consequence, they will be more motivated to continue learning. www.shiftelearning.com
Photo Source: Tom Kuhlmann
Here are a few simple ways to pull information in: •Link to additional web resources. •Include documentation and resources. •Present learners with a real-life activity they would typically encounter in their daily life, and allow them to choose which modules they want to take to be able to complete that task. •They can be simple documents, podcasts, web pages, simple videos, and short interactive objects that all contribute helping a learner solve a task.
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#14
A little fun never hurts anyone! Games are a great way to approach material that may seem almost insultingly elementary, yet which is not being retained. Without games your courseware wouldn’t be so engaging…They are fun, competitive, rewarding, interactive, and attentiongrabbing. Because the design of your game has a direct impact on the learning experience, it's absolutely critical that you approach it wisely. When games are created with the learner in mind, students don’t even realize they’re in a training session.
The five critical components of outstanding learning games:
Goals
Outcomes and Feedback
Rules and Instructions
Games
Conflict
Interaction
Get to know SHIFT’s games here.
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#15
Think in smaller bits! The truth is learners tend to scan content...they don’t ready 100% of what is on the screen. You have an opportunity to guide them by structuring your content by how our brains process information. So remember: start with basic and broad concepts and build upon them. If a screen seems to have a lot of text, strategically cut it into 2 different slides. Some tips for keeping your courses light: •Place suitable amount of information (Short paragraphs of no more than 3 to 4 sentences) •Use white space appropriately to increase the screen’s visual appeal. •The transition from one ‘chunk’ to another should be smooth. •Use bullets and numbering to convey the main points. •Break content into steps if possible. •Rewrite, reorganize and synthesize your content when moving classroom based content online. •Prioritize information. Place the main point at the very top of the page, where even readers who typically give up after a few lines will see it. Place any other important information above the fold, to minimize the risk of users losing their place after scrolling. •Focus on what matters. Think 80/20 and zone in on the key topic areas that will make the biggest difference. www.shiftelearning.com
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#16 Good design principles
Don’t be afraid of empty space.
Use good quality media not clip art
Always: be consistent in type and graphic design.
Don’t just dump media on a page
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Avoid long lines of text
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#17
Elements of effective eLearning Understanding how the mind works during learning is basic. More than anything, building eLearning courses requires the ability to be effective, generating courses that engages your audiences and motivates them to take action.
4
Keep the human side.
2 Align text near relevant graphics
1
5
3
Avoid distraction visuals, Audio and text.
Explain graphics with Audio.
Add graphics to words to improve learning. www.shiftelearning.com
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#18
Avoid content-centered design Many eLearning programs make the mistake of focusing primarily on their content. This may seem like a bizarre statement; what else is the course supposed to focus on, if not the content it's trying to impart? But that is exactly the problem: the program isn't trying to impart information – it's trying to alter the learner's behavior, by teaching them to do something, or not do it, or do it differently. The content is only a means to that end. Place the learner in realistic situations so that they can more easily relate to the content, and so that they are more likely to recall mistakes and avoid them in real-life cases. Don’t: approach the topic as though it were a book – or a book report! – in electronic form. Do: focus less on how you can showcase your content, and more on how you can shape your audience's behavior.
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#19
Focus on Quality, Not Quantity Including lots of eLearning resources but very little quality? If you’re presenting great amounts of content but the quality is lacking, you won’t have learners coming back. Quality content will engage your audience, therefore it’s your key to success. The challenge is usually figuring out what to get rid off. Truth is, you can create relevant courses without too much extra information. Be concise in your screens. If you take too long to get to your point, you’ll lose interest rapidly. Learners will feel they are wasting their time. So, just tell them what they need to go, and let them go! Truth is, these students just want to learn the “must know” and get back to their work. Some action steps you can take to get quality over quantity: •Create focused courses: avoid including too much information, where learners will just get frustrated. Cut out the unnecessary data. Follow this basic rule: if it doesn't help meet the initial learning objectives, take it out of the course! •Chunking technique: Break up your content into segments of no more than ten minutes length. That is the average amount of time most people are use to listening to information being presented. www.shiftelearning.com
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#20
Use High Value Content Different types of content can be delivered through eLearning, including facts and concepts, principles, processes and procedures. However, each of this is appropriate for different situations. Below are the type of strategies that generate the most engaging learning experience: – Scenarios – Games – Case Studies – Animations – System Simulations – Success stories and examples – Images and graphics – Video – Thought Leader Interviews – Quizzes and Knowledge Checks It’s important to test different types of content with your audience to determine what creates a better reaction and engagement levels .
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Chapter 6
Elicit performance and provide feedback
This is an opportunity for the learner to apply the learned knowledge, but with guidance. We generally call this practice. Allow the learners to practice the new skill.
#21
Cherish mistakes eLearning lets students fails in a secure and private environment. This means, they aren't’t making mistakes publicly. That’s why you should exploit this opportunity: create an environment where they can safely fail and you’ll challenge them and keep them engaged.
We actually learn better if we make more errors because we get a first-hand experience of moving into an incorrect way and then we walk that extra mile to correct our wrong move. Why mistakes will achieve engagement and learning : •Allowing mistakes can increase confidence and problem solving skills. •Mistakes are the basis of application. They allow for experimentation. •If learners aren’t able to fail during the course, they set up to fail in the real-world. •Mistakes get students to move to deeper levels of understanding.
What you can do? •Include games and simulations: implementing learning games and software simulations are two great strategies that encourage students to learn through their mistakes. www.shiftelearning.com
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#22
Give relevant feedback While everyone likes a few pats on the back, it doesn't have a lot of value when it isn't specific or relevant. You job is to connect with your audience, help them and make them feel good.
You don’t feel good about something if you can’t figure out what when wrong, right? Letting people know how well they are learning the content acts as an incentive for greater effort. 3 Rules: •Explain why: give feedback by providing the reasoning behind the error. When giving feedback, it works best when you actually show what happens when you make a mistake, don't just tell them they are wrong! •It should be continuous through the course, not just at the end, when the accumulative evaluation is made. •Feedback should always be specific and relevant.
Moreover, trainers should give them feedback that applies directly to the job they do. Think of hints that you can provide or reference materials learners can be directed to for helping them solve a problem correctly.
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Chapter 7:
Assess performance
#23
Don’t evaluate only at the end of the course Sometimes it can be a (bad) habit to include a test at the end of your course, just because your stakeholder wants to know that people learnt something after completing the course. However, you shouldn’t asses for the sake of it. Assessments in eLearning must respond to specific learning objectives and learners should be able to get something out of them. Including these just at the end of the course is not enough. It’s a win-win: An assessment at the end of every module for example can really help learners: •Constantly makes them think and reinforces what they´ve just learned. •Increases retention levels. •Keeps them awake and interested. •Assessing throughout the course will allow you to measure the level of understanding and assimilation of new knowledge at different levels. •The key is asking thought-provoking questions and offer challenging problems.
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Chapter 8 Enhancing retention and transfer to the job
How can you ensure transfer to the workplace? Spaced learning events, continued support, ongoing check-ins with a manager are just a few ideas. • The aftermath
#24
Provide helpful support Support ongoing learning! One of the most important key motivational factors in eLearning is to provide the students with material to use once the course is over. Most times people take a great eLearning course, but they don’t have a place to practice or review what they learned. Some possible actions you can take: 1. Provide handy cheat sheets: It might take the form of helpful handouts to refer to as they apply new information and techniques to daily tasks. 2. Instructors can provide a list of online references or helpful web sites or even make their selves available for questioning via email or phone. 3. Direct them to a shared practice community where they can comment on what the course taught. 4. Have them upload assignments for review. 5. Make contact through surveys or polls after the course.
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Engage more learners with SHIFT We love having engaged learners. So we built the SHIFT eLearning to make course creation easy, interactive and fast. You can use: • Scenario Engine. • Software Simulations. • Built-in learning agents. • +250 pre-built, ready-to-go templates • Game Engine • and much more…
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