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.

Emotions play a pivotal role in learning, too, and eLearning courses should reflect our natural tendency to rely upon our emotions as we learn, grow and discover. Four inspiring leaders provide excellent examples of how to incorporate more emotional content into eLearning courses throughout the year.

The best marketers know their audience—what their needs and wants are, what problems they have to solve. The best teachers empathize with students, the best doctors with patients, and so on. But you get the point. Professionals who do their best work don’t contemplate their navels.

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.