As eLearning professionals, we believe in the value of learning from others. Collaborative learning is an essential learning strategy and one we can apply to our profession as well, especially in eLearning design.

Eyes are lenses through which learners perceive the value of your material. But these organs respond differently to screens in varying designs. A cluttered screen would obviously make it harder for the eyes to read. But a simple, usable design—one that guides the eyes smoothly along the screen—would definitely make learning much more effective.

The secret recipe to a truly persuasive eLearning course is simple, at least in theory. Professionals in the fields of psychology, advertising, marketing and copywriting, have talked about some “rules” on how to persuade people. But all these rules lead us to two things: the human brain and human emotions. Note that these don’t just involve how people think and feel. They also include the subconscious mind and the unconscious mind of your learners.

As the cliche goes, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. People decide what is beautiful in accordance with their own likes and dislikes. However, studies on what we find aesthetically pleasing find that in truth, there is a serious science to making things beautiful.

“First there is emotion; after that comes cognition,” said Frank Thissen, a Multimedia Didactics and Intercultural Communication professor at the University of Applied Sciences in Stuttgart, Germany.

Everyone learns a little bit differently. Some people excel with visual information while others have to hear or write something down for learning to stick. Just like each person has a learning style, groups have learning styles as well, especially adult learners.

Portable devices are changing the way we read or consume content. That's a fact. And the novel of it is that people tend to read more on screen than on paper. Many of us, however, are still not comfortable with our changing reading behavior. As eLearning professionals and educators, it's our job to deal with these facts—not ignore or downplay them. If we really want people to pay attention to our eLearning content, it's not the reader who has to change. It's us, the authors.

The challenges eLearning professionals face daily are many and varied, and in many ways do not differ too much from the challenges any teacher may face when contemplating how best to hold the students’ attention.