Successful eLearning courses hook readers on the very first page. That’s because eLearning, in essence, is all about engaged learning. It’s multi-sensory in that it engages all senses through interactive texts, stunning graphics and compelling videos.

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!

Motivation. The word is bandied about too much these days. An entire body of literature has sprung up around it. There are coaches who teach people how to cultivate motivation. There are websites, courses, seminars, and workshops to teach the how-to's, the wherefores, and the what-ifs of motivation. So first, let's address what is motivation? And why should you care about it as an eLearning professional?

We, instructional designers, know the feeling. We take copious notes when we interview the SME, and when we return to our desks, we are at a loss wondering what information to include in the course and what to toss out. Most of us end up squeezing into the course almost everything the SME had said. At other times, we read through the raw content, fall in love with a piece of data that is new to us and seems exciting, and cram it in the course. The result is an information-heavy eLearning course that overwhelms the learner but does not benefit him or elicit the response from him that you had desired. Information overload is a common pitfall that eLearning designers should be wary of. Your goal should be to create a course that packs in only that much information that fulfills the learning outcomes. Relevance increases learner engagement. Besides, your adult learners are busy people; you cannot expect them to sit through a course as you ramble on.

Keeping learners motivated throughout an eLearning course is a challenge for even the most seasoned designers. Not only is it difficult to hook and keep learners engaged offline, but asynchronous training invites an even larger set of challenges. There is no way to read visual cues if students are bored or for an instructor to redirect training if there are questions. Online courses also provide an anonymity that prevents some learners from even participating at all.

Although it might seem absurd to design training without the end user in mind, an audience analysis is an extremely important yet often overlooked element of instructional design. Before creating an eLearning course, you should find out as much as possible about your learners. This information should directly impact your design and content choices. For example, the experience levels of the audience will affect the types of activities incorporated in the course. During the eLearning audience analysis stage of design, it is important to think of your learners as a group of individuals with specific goals. Remember, demographic profiles of your target audience do not always paint the complete picture. You have to look beyond statistics like age, educational qualification, and occupation to understand the learner. Your learner is a sum of his or her past experiences, desires, aspirations, and expectations. Their learning styles and media preferences are shaped by their familiarity with and access to technology. Their cultural upbringing influences their perception of symbols, images, words, or analogies. Learners are a complex and multi-dimensional human beings; just a few numbers do not define them. Here are five ways you can get to know your eLearning course target audience: