eLearning courses are designed to provide students with helpful information and not to bombard them with irrelevant and unnecessary pieces of content. What many eLearning designers don't realize is that if they exceed a human’s brain capacity to understand and retain information, then all the effort spent creating the course goes to waste. Designers are often asking us how they can improve the quality of their eLearning courses and make them more engaging. Our answer: Stick to one of design's timeless rules: “keep it simple.” Applying the principle of simplicity in eLearning means conveying information in the simplest way possible. Less information will always be more. When too much clutter vies for the learner's attention, the learner may not see the forest for the trees. They end up thinking the course isn't worth so much effort, and the content gets lost. However, keeping it simple can be an art. So, let’s discuss some tips to improve your eLearning design and help learners get through the course as fast as possible.

The term “Experience Mapping” isn’t a new one – it’s been around for a long time in retail sales settings. For instance, brick-and-mortar retailers have for years focused on providing their customers the best “experience” possible during shopping, by focusing on aspects such as product availability, price competitiveness, a variety of selection, “airiness” and openness of their shop floors, cleanliness, etc.

There are A TON of eLearning courses out there, and to say some aren’t great, is a complete understatement. With the technology to design courses easily accessible to everyone, there tends to be more quantity than quality. To avoid having your own courses slip into this undesirable category, make sure you aren’t creating any of these worst types of courses:

According to a report by HubSpot, posts and tweets containing colored images increase viewers’ willingness to read by a whopping 80 percent! Other research revealed readers remembered 65 percent of the information several days after viewing it when text was paired with one or more relevant images than a paltry 10 percent when the content was just a hunk of text. Look at yourself. Would you like to watch a demo video and learn how to fix a broken washer or read through the pages of the instruction manual? We love watching movies. We post photos of our trips on Facebook and not essays about our vacations. The power of visuals is undeniable! As an eLearning course creator whose goal is to create memorable learning, you MUST NOT underestimate using this medium correctly when you design your courses.

As our world becomes more media-oriented, it grows increasingly clear that people show a preference for visual information over text. Graphs, diagrams, and other formats are more accessible than a block of text. However, poorly-presented data can do more harm than good. So, when using any of these visualization methods for eLearning, make sure they: are clear and coherent; aren't redundant add value to learning; aid retention and recall; and, of course, are within the scope of your budget. To get started, here are four main types you can use.

We hear a lot about Millennials but who are they statistically? According to Pew Research Center, this generation was born between1980 and the early 2000’s. Millennials are now ranging from ages 22 to 37 and its estimated this population will reach 73 million in the U.S. in 2019. They represent more than half the workforce population. If those numbers made you sit up and take notice then you are well on your way to understanding why it’s important to create training that motivates and engages this generation.

eLearning course materials need to be visually engaging in order to be effective. No matter how theoretically-sound your training content is, if it isn’t presented as an attractive package, participants will lose interest quickly. If you’ve never created an eLearning course or the role of instructional designer has been suddenly thrust upon you, this post is for you! Even if you never planned to be a designer, you became one when you first opened your authoring tool. For starters, you need to know this: Good design not only grabs but keeps learners’ interest. If this sounds daunting, don’t worry! You can learn the basic graphic design skills you need, and you’ll get better as time goes on if you keep practicing. Here are ten tips which will help you to drastically improve your design ability just in time for the next module.

The global eLearning market was worth US$165.36 billion in 2016 and according to figures from Statista, it is projected to surpass US$243 billion in 2022. The flexibility and convenience eLearning offers can’t be understated. However, eLearning professionals often face certain challenges in ensuring their courses are a success. While solutions can be found to the roadblocks, it is important that organizations know to look out for them. This way, they can put strategies in place from the outset to counter them. In this post, we describe what we consider the top problem areas and offer solutions for fixing them.