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.
Tom Kuhkmann - my hero in course design and development - recently posted this in his blog. His blog is excellent and I highly recommend anyone who develops courses to subscribe to it: http://www.articulate.com/rapid-elearning/a-roadmap-for-building-an-e-learning-course/
The two images below come from a recent CrunchGear article. Don’t worry about what the products do or the merits of one product over another. If you only had five minutes to play with one device, which one would it be?
If you’re like me, you’d choose the one on the left. It’s colorful and inviting. I want to pick it up and start playing with it. The other one just doesn’t look as inviting. Think about your course design. Is it inviting from the start?
Design matters. It conveys to the learner that what they’re doing is important and worth their time. Consider yourself a set designer for a Broadway play. You are given a limited amount of space, and in it you need to create an immersive experience. Your goal is pull the learner into the course first by capturing their attention and then by creating a learning environment that is both relevant to the content and engaging to the senses. I like this quote about set design:
"The scenographer visually liberates the text and the story behind it, by creating a world in which the eyes see what the ears do not hear." This doesn’t have to be complicated. We’re not all professional graphic artists. But there is room for us to place more emphasis on the visual design of our elearning courses.
"The scenographer visually liberates the text and the story behind it, by creating a world in which the eyes see what the ears do not hear."
This doesn’t have to be complicated. We’re not all professional graphic artists. But there is room for us to place more emphasis on the visual design of our elearning courses.