How to Create Engaging eLearning Content: 4 Steps

How to Create Engaging eLearning Content: 4 Steps

More than 1000 years of formal university learning and teaching is not easy to change. It is not easy to bring about a change in the education sector so quickly without any struggle. Nevertheless we are starting to see small shifts in tide and small changes making way for the more dynamic ones. Engaging both teachers and students to participate in the new way of education exchange did reap some positive outcomes.When we talk about change, technology is the most prominent agents to bring it about. Technological innovations can result in the entire paradigm shift. Such technological revolution poses tremendous challenges to the educators to rethink about their basic tenets. E-Learning with the integrated with the process of learning management system and collaborative learning is one such phenomenon which is causing the age old beliefs of the educators to shift and ebb.

Steps

1. Do not only create the course. This is not an advice which would be accepted wholeheartedly by the proponents of traditional system of education. But let’s face it, there is quite a bit of courses in E-Learning that is barely of any use. If any course is tied without any real performance it is not worth being created. Besides most of the course created has the information and material which is easily available on any other site on the internet. Then what is the point of creating the same content over and over again. Therefore, it is very important to tie the course with real time performance.

2. Design Course in Relevance to the Learner’s Need. Most boring courses are those which are not of any relevance to the learners. Even if you build a simple compliance training there are ways to make it relevant. For this you can talk to the learners and find out how they can use the compliance information. Thereafter design the course and place it in the context that would make sense to the learners. Also consider that all learners are not created equal. Therefore you must come up with courses catering to the different level of knowledge as per the learners. Key to create an collaborative learning and interactive course is not multimedia, rollovers or drag and drop interactions. Instead it is how the learners will interact with the content created.

3. Understand what you want to achieve. If you are designing any course do not forget to ascertain the objective or the purpose that you are trying to attain. The best bet might be to make it easy for the learners find the information, complete the course and then get back to the productive work. On the other hand if you are building a course where you desire to change the behaviors of the learner then merely dumping information on them will do no good.

4. Don’t Push Let the Learners Pull. If your course is designed in a way that will only push information on the learners then it will deem to be of any relevance to them. In order to create an engaging content you need make sure that the learners make their way through course to derive the learning. Therefore, you need to create the environment wherein the learners will pull in information. Instead of a series of click and learn about screen give something like problems for the learners to solve.

Tips

• In order to derive comprehensive advantages from the process of e learning do not forget to integrate your course with appropriate collaborative learning exercises.
• Get the learners to participate in collaborative discussions to work in groups for specific projects and gain knowledge from the free exchange of information from their co-mates. 
• Assign different exercise to the learners and ensure each member in the group participates to fulfill their respective responsibilities.
• Let the learners find resolution to their problems.

Warnings

• Although infotainment is important do not try to over burden your course with unnecessary engagements just for fun. This might eat away considerable part of their productive time.