An e-learning course involves many factors, from technical concerns to content production. If you divide your “Mission Impossible” into doable pieces, you could discover it is possible. Creating an eLearning course often takes a lot of work. And you still need help figuring out how to create a top-notch, successful e-learning course?
If you’re making an eLearning course for the first time, you may feel anxious and unclear about what to do next. You can create an eLearning course specifically catering to your business’s training needs. After reading this tutorial, you will have a good understanding of the foundations and be able to create your own eLearning courses.
Understand Your Market
It would be inappropriate to teach a complete course in Japanese to a class of pupils just beginning to learn the language. A widely spoken language, such as English, must be included. Consider how comparable it is to presenting a beginner’s Python course that uses sophisticated phrases without offering context. This is an extreme example of an eLearning designer’s failure to comprehend their audience.
Designers sometimes treat their audience like a homogeneous group when working on a project. This, however, should include your target audience’s basic demographics, as well as their technical skills, prior knowledge, and plans for using your material.
Content Analysis
Once the necessity for training has been established and your target audience has been determined, you can review the actual content. No matter how well you plan your course, it will only matter if the material is helpful to the people taking it. This makes it a critical phase.
You must seek out information that is specific to your requirements. To do this, we analyze the content and group it into the following categories:
Categories
Placement, Operations, and Declarations.
Types
There are various classifications of things, including facts, ideas, concepts, methodologies, processes, principles, social skills, and worldviews.
Structure
We can identify the interconnection and significance of each piece of information, the most crucial category, information gaps, and the best way to deliver information by defining these categories and kinds.
Learning Objectives
Starting an eLearning course without defining the skills and knowledge you want your students to gain is like setting out on a journey without a destination. Not the best for eLearning, but it would work for a short film about four friends trying to figure out who they are.
Before beginning this complex process, attainable, meaningful, and time-bound (SMART) learning objectives must be set.
Specific
Understand the responses to questions like “Who are my learners?” So what do we hope to accomplish?
Measurable
Ability to follow or keep an eye on results. It is only a perfect objective if it does.
Achievable
Make sure your goals are realistic and measurable. This requires careful planning for the financial and time constraints.
Relevant
Ensuring your objective makes sense to the audience you are aiming to attract is essential to its success. Ensure the goals are worthwhile by understanding their significance and the impact they will have.
Time-sensitive
Will they be able to do this by the end of the semester? If not, it is neither realistic nor even worth considering.
Select the appropriate authoring tool for you
The authoring tools you use could significantly impact the success or failure of your eLearning course. Because of this, it’s essential to pick an eLearning authoring tool that offers both the features and functionalities you need and the convenience of use you want. To make the best decisions, assessing your eLearning staff’s level of knowledge is critical. It would be ideal to look for eLearning authoring tools that strike a balance between the arduous manual effort and extensive customization.
Selecting the proper platform
We suggest using WordPress with an LMS system and an eLearning theme to streamline the process. For the best results, use a theme compatible with multiple eLearning plugins and modules.
The eLearning theme should offer you layouts, designs, fonts, color schemes, and more. It should also support the plugins and add-ons that make your website’s UI user-friendly, speedy, and responsive. The theme should also offer a wide selection of templates and resources.
Features of an eLearning WordPress theme
- You can quickly and easily design the entire website by importing and downloading the demo. The theme’s feature-rich page builder should let you freely express your ideas.
- Several course styles are available to make studying more interesting and pleasant. The appearance of your store’s web pages can be altered in many ways to offer customers a genuine buying experience.
- The eLearning theme should offer dark and distraction-free reading modes to help students focus on the material. The flexibility of their grid and listing options, as well as their numerous header styles, single-course layout options, fonts, and skins.
- The ease with which WooCommerce, Stripe, bbPress, BuddyPress, and many other plugins can be easily integrated.
Top 5 eLearning WordPress Themes for 2023
- Divi
- eLumine
- Astra
- Masterstudy
- Eduma
Pick a cloud-based learning management system (LMS)
The wealth of resources at your disposal makes it amazing to be an expert in eLearning in the present technology era. You can start from scratch using a cloud-based LMS to develop an eLearning course. You can easily incorporate your unique content as well as a variety of graphics and multimedia elements into an eLearning course by registering for one of these fantastic platforms, like LearnDash, LifterLMS, LearnPress, SenseiLMS, or Tutor LMS, without any prior experience with instructional design.
You can create a study plan for your students using these cloud-based LMSs, detailing when assignments are due and when classes are scheduled. Investigate a couple of available options to choose the cloud-based LMS that satisfies your requirements and, more importantly, your target audience. Additionally, you should be aware that many cloud-based LMSs have ongoing expenses. After that, you may assess whether the features and functionalities are worth the price you will charge.
Story brand your Content
A storyboard is a visual layout for arranging elements such as text, graphics, and other content on a page. Create a mockup to get an idea of how your page will look before spending hours polishing the design.
Before beginning the design process, make sure your material has been approved. It should only be planned if the client or team managers can accept the content.
Prototyping
Build a working model of a course module to test its viability. A course’s prototype can capture the general vibe and functionality of the course. Additionally, it is used to evaluate technological prowess. eLearning developers can quickly test multiple course versions and discard those that need fixing, avoiding the time and money wasted on a poorly performing course design.
Build the Course
Once your prototype has been approved, the whole course must be developed as the next phase. The final product will handle these issues more effectively if it focuses on the initial course objectives and challenges.
One last item to consider when planning the course is how to meet your pupils’ needs effectively. The finest eLearning designers mix up their strategies. ADDIE/SAM, Gagne’s 9 Principles, and action mapping are standard methodologies.
Embedding media and additional resources
If you lack the funds or experience to create multimedia assets, you can directly include links to presentations, movies, and other online resources in an eLearning course. Doing this may save your students the time-consuming task of searching the web for relevant media and give them quick access to it. An eLearning course can be played instantly with many videos and online presentations, such as those on YouTube, giving it a more polished, professional image.
Keep the video, audio, and graphic aspects simple.
When using multimedia in your eLearning course, it’s simple to overdo it. You could be tempted to engulf your students in excessive images or media, such as movies or podcasts. Don’t give in to it, please. Keep things straightforward. Please feel free to build and deliver complicated eLearning simulations and scenarios.
Even so, it would be beneficial if you didn’t view it as a requirement. The design and production process is easier to manage when an eLearning course has fewer moving parts (videos, audio, and graphics). It guarantees that the topic stays front and center. Please read the information carefully and ensure that whatever you add aligns with the instruction’s primary goals. Use bullet points or bolded titles instead of lengthy text passages to avoid cognitive overload.
Conclusion
One of the more challenging aspects of developing an eLearning course is creating the actual course materials. However, you’ve never been one to back out of a challenge! Use this straightforward guide to create an online course, integrate various types of material, and see your eLearning activities succeed.