One of the most exciting things about having your own Learning Management System is the ability to create and distribute custom training content to your learners. Sure, Essential Learning provides the highest quality library of online courses available in our industry, but there are always courses that are unique to your environment. Instructional Design Technology has come a long way in the last few years and there is quite a bit of science to the art of creating quality online courses. Our Content design experts will help guide you on the path to creating your own content while giving you and your peers a place to share your own experiences and perhaps even your own content.
Over the next 5 weeks I will go over the 5 steps you will take to write an online course. Below I will briefly mention each of the steps and then go into detail about each of them in the ensuing weeks.
1. Plan: When planning for you course you need to know what the objectives are for the course. Ask yourself: “What will the learner will be able to achieve as a result of completing the course?”
2. Organize Your Content: How can you best organize the content into manageable topics and then separate main ideas into manageable chunks of information (sub-topics)? Organizing main ideas into appropriate chunks will help students focus on one idea at a time and not become overwhelmed with too much information.
3. Edit/Write the Content: How can you deliver the material in a way that will ensure learning actually happens?
4. Decide on Instructional Methods You Will Use: What are the most effective ways to present the material including showing the learners how to do something and providing them with opportunities along the way to demonstrate their grasp of the knowledge you have provided. Will you have practice questions and case studies/vignettes with questions and feedback? The more interactive the course is, the better the learning outcomes will be for the end users.
5. Create the Test: How will you assess the student’s performance?