Learning isn’t merely cerebral. It’s emotional, too. Researchers, in fact, have confirmed how emotions affect mental processes. They finally found the missing piece of the learning puzzle and even encouraged instructional designers to include positive emotions as an important learning factor.

Effective eLearning courses don't happen by magic. They come out of purposeful, thoughtful and learner-focused design.

Effective learning doesn’t require expensive technology and elaborated training sessions. It doesn’t even demand the impossible from you, the course developer. But it does call for a change in mindset.

Many learners take an eLearning course because they have to, not because they want to. This is the reality for most learners. Every course developer should acknowledge their need to get in and out of the course quickly—and consume the material with as little friction as possible. Still, even the most motivated learners get frustrated with crappy courses.

Design is more pervasive than you think it is. The moment you fire up your eLearning tool and make a slide, you face issues of design whether you like it or not. And if you explore them a bit and find ways to improve a design, you become a designer yourself. You may primarily be a student, an author or a corporate executive. But you can effectively design an eLearning screen too.

The art and science of design acknowledges the habits and actions of people. Effective images, video and text take into account the reasons people do what they do to ensure the viewer gets the right information and takes and takes away the right message.

You’re neither an instructional designer nor a graphic designer. In fact, you don’t have any formal background in designing educational materials and interfaces. But you are willing to create an eLearning course on your own. Making something useful and effective can be a little bit daunting especially for first-timers. Don’t worry. Here’s an indispensable guide to the basics of creating DIY topnotch courses:

Everyone needs a little more time in their day, but since no one has invented the 27-hour day or a way to be in two places at once, we simply have to get more creative with how to use the time we have.