eLearning Design and Development: 5 Tips for Getting Started Now With Virtual Training

Whatever your reason for joining the digital learning era, you are here and you need to get started fast. As a virtual learning professional with almost two decades of experience, I would never recommend skipping the good books (see list at the end of this article), networking with experienced instructional designers, or obtaining a formal education. All the same, I understand your need to get going right now with your first learning project. Here are some basic tips for creating effective learning programs.

Don't Skip the Assessment It might seem like you can shave off some project time by skipping the assessment phase, but I guarantee you will learn the hard way how much time you'll waste not doing it. The important considerations, such as audience, technology and learning goals, are part of the assessment phase of any learning project. Without defining who your audience is, what experiences they bring, their current job and technical skill levels, and what technology they have available to access your learning, you will fall short of your goals. Define the main learning objectives and stick to them. In the end, you want to know and be able to align your learner, goals and content.

Don't Skip the Design Phase Good design provides intuitive access to the information you want your learners to have. It includes branding, user interaction and content flow. Think about the last website you visited. What caught your eye? How easy was it to find what you were looking for? If your design doesn't focus them on the Start line and guide them through the content, you can fall short of your training goals.

During the design phase, you should define all elements that should be on the computer screen and what happens when the learner interacts with those elements. Create wireframes to specify each type of page or interface in your course. For example, you may have a tabbed learning site that provides access to a syllabus, weekly video and document resources, a forum for student-led discussions and an form for submitting assignments. Also, storyboard your multimedia presentations, including mock-ups of key scenes.

Give It a Personal Touch In order for your elearning to succeed, you need to connect with your learners on an emotional level. You'll want to personalize your content to draw learners in and connect them to the content. This is where your assessments come into play. After all, you need to know what makes your learners tick before you can emotionally connect them to your content. By understanding your learners' past experiences and existing knowledge, you can use the best analogies, anecdotes and other tools to aid in message retention.

Keep It Simple In all respects, simplify; this includes your design and content. A page with too many videos, documents, and external links may overwhelm learners. Likewise, presentations with too much information can result in cognitive overload, which means your learners won't be able to process and store the information into long-term memory. As a general rule, keep interfaces and design concepts to three or fewer colors and fonts. Too many formatting changes are distracting and make it difficult for learners to distinguish important elements such as headers, graphic captions and key points.

Chunk It Up
Keep your presentations brief. Most educators agree that the adult attention span averages only about 15-20 minutes (read here, here and here ). Ideally, keep your presentations to no more than 5-10 minutes covering no more than three important main points. Also, give the learner an opportunity to pause every 2-3 minutes, either through manual navigation, a quiz questions or another interactivity. This gives the learner time to digest and reinforce the information you provide before moving on. By chunking larger presentations into multiple smaller modules also makes it easier for the learner to relocate important information should they need to revisit a topic.
Good luck with your new elearning project. Be sure to read the following texts for more detailed information about instructional design and virtual learning development.

Reading Recommendations to Get You Started

• "e-Learning and the Science of Instructions: Proven Guidelines or Consumers and Designers of Multimedia Learning" by Ruth C. Clark and Richard Mayer
  
• "Rapid Instructional Design: Learning ID Fast and Right" by George M. Piskurich
  
• Any of the ASTD books, including "Training Design Basics," "Needs Assessment Basics" and "Virtual Training Basics."
  
• "e-Learning by Design" by William Horton