Like the King of Pop once sang “it doesn’t matter if its black or white…as long as you use good, complementary choices from the color wheel.” Ok, maybe those weren’t the exact lyrics, but the point is that color, regarding its place in eLearning design, is quite significant and knowing how to use it can make or break your eLearning courses. How do you decide what colors go where and how? The answer can be found in the spinning wonder we know as The Color Wheel. That spiffy, rainbow-hued circle you were likely introduced to all the way back in elementary school is actually an extremely useful tool for creating seamless, organized designs.

Elearning has gone from a niche type of teaching for techy subjects to being a preferred, growing and almost necessary way to teach EVERYTHING. Technology is expanding and people’s need and desire to learn on their own time and at their pace is making eLearning the goal for many companies.

Tom sits down to do his sales training online. He has been asked to complete three lessons each week adding up to 30 minutes of online training. Tom is dreading it, but he is delightfully surprised at how quickly he can navigate the page and how well the content has been paired with the graphics and features. He gets through 4.5 of the lessons and leaves the 5th lesson bookmarked for the next chance he gets. Mary has been trying to find the lesson that the Fraud Department has assigned her. She has barely gotten passed lesson one in the time she had expected to complete at least 3. Her screen has frozen a few times on the graphics, she has had to re-read some of the text-heavy slides, and isn’t sure if the lesson she is on is going to help her with the issues she is meant to address. Which of the two people mentioned above had a better UX Design experience with their eLearning course? Who is going to continue with their eLearning course?

Benjamin Franklin once said “an investment in knowledge pays the best interest”, and we think Mr. Franklin got it spot on. Training isn't something that's 'nice' to have in your organization. It's an absolutely vital part of a company's long-term investment and growth strategy. This seems like a simple point, and it's something that nearly all companies, and L&D managers alike, will agree with. But do companies provide enough training? And what does current research say about the state of corporate training and eLearning? In this post, we look at ten key statistics, and what they mean for your company's future.

Today, the question is no longer if eLearning benefits your business; the real question is whether you can afford not to join the trend. Year after year, eLearning has proved to be more competent and cost-effective as compared to traditional training. Here are some statistics that show the power of online training: According to a Brandon-Hall Study, learning through e-learning typically requires 40% to 60% less employee time than learning the same material in a traditional classroom setting The Research Institute of America found that eLearning increases retention rates 25% to 60% (retention rates of face-to-face training are very low in comparison: 8% to 10%). 42% of companies say that eLearning has led to an increase in revenue. (The Ambient Insight 2012-2017 Worldwide Mobile Learning Market - Executive Report) Read all stats in this article.

We remember the scenes and dialogs from some movies long after we have seen them. Some songs continue to haunt us even though we have not listened to them for ages. We can still recite rhymes and poems we learned when we were toddlers. Do you wonder why? Or if you are an instructional designer, have you wondered how you can create such sticky courses? How can you create courses that learners will remember easily and recall effortlessly long after they are back at their workplaces? It is challenging because forgetting is natural. Scientists carried out a test on some subjects who had to study textbooks, retain, and recall the information. The results were startling: after a day, the subjects remembered 54 percent of what they had learned and after 21 days, they remembered a paltry 18 percent. But are you surprised? When we were in school, most of us didn't remember what we learned in the earlier grade. As instructional designers, you have to create courses that are easy to remember and difficult to forget.

If you are a trainer, an HR manager, or an online course designer, you know it is now time to design and develop courses for mobile users. With high-end smartphones that stream at 4K speeds, increased battery life, and bigger screen sizes, you can expect mobile devices to eclipse desktop or laptop computer as the preferred medium to consume virtual content. Google Insights reported that on average, people use 2.5 connected devices per adult, and “mobile is now central to almost all kinds of internet activity.” You should create eLearning courses keeping in mind that your learners will take them on all kinds of devices, from the desktop computer with its chunky monitor to the mobile device with its palm-sized screen. Get ready to deliver. In this post, we will tell you how reading on the mobile screen feels different than reading from a larger laptop computer screen. We will also provide tons of tips to help you create a distraction-free mobile viewing experience that aids learning.

While a great eLearning design can act as a tonic and engage the learner at an optimum level, a bad eLearning design can lull the learners to sleep. That's right, how your learners perceive the instructional content is more often than not dependent on the design element. Learners ignore cluttered and boring design. They gravitate, instead, to one that’s aesthetically pleasing. If you are new to design, or looking to brush up on eLearning design best-practices, this post is for you!