When designing an eLearning course, we first have to consider: Why do we want it? Creating a good online learning course, even if it is “rapid learning” or “fast learning”, can be longer and even somewhat more expensive than organizing it in person. Let’s see why we should design an eLearning course.
Why Design an eLearning Course?
Multiple Uses of an eLearning course
Ask yourself how many times you have to teach that course throughout the year. An online course is reusable (it is not “extended” when using it and you can create as many groups of students as you want for the same content, simultaneously or successively, as you see fit).
Accessible from any location
Are your students all in the same location? If the answer is no, face-to-face training will force you to transfer, either the students or the teachers, to teach the class. With online training, you can reach all students at the same time, wherever they are, through any device connected to the internet. In other words, if you have several geographically dispersed groups of students to train over the years in a theoretical subject, creating an online course will pay off.
Face-to-face practices
Does the training require the use of machinery or tools in a practical way? If the answer is yes, today’s face-to-face training continues to be more profitable. This does not imply that there are no ways to create an online course that allows students to carry out practices.
About fifteen years ago, simulators began (flight, driving dangerous machinery, etc.). Virtual reality now allows you to create completely immersive environments (as if you were there) in which to practice. What’s the catch? It is still very expensive and few can afford it.
How to design an eLearning course
The first temptation when transferring face-to-face content online is to “upload” it to the platform and that’s it. Training management systems such as Moodle allow you to view pdf and ppt files within the course and it is very simple.
But what is the problem?
- The PowerPoints are usually made as support content for a face-to-face class.
- Without the accompanying teacher’s speech, they are often indecipherable.
- PDFs are usually extracted from manuals.
- Not all the opportunities offered by having the content on-screen are taken advantage of.
- The content’s organization, structure, and presentation are usually left to the developers.
Programmers tend to look for the easiest path in their field (course programming), prioritizing that everything technically works well. If, when clicking on all the buttons of the course, nothing “pops,” and the course returns to the platform, the technician will be satisfied. Seen this way, it seems correct, but:
- What if this criterion involves limiting the user experience, trimming or removing content, or moving themes around because it’s easier to program?
- Would it make sense from the learner’s point of view?
It is as if you let the printer who wrote the books because he is the one who knows how the pages fit together when they are sewn and glued. So what is the remedy for this? It is the instructional script.
The Instructional Script
It is not wise to create a course without an instructional script. You’d better make it based on cutting and pasting text from a manual. Adding some animation and editing videos of face-to-face teachers is the best way to give arguments to those who have not just seen “that” of designing an eLearning course.
It is equivalent to telling a film director that the scenes are recorded first and then edited, but without a movie script, without plot or characters or plot, just as it comes out on the fly. As an experiment, it may be curious, but if what we expect is a job well done, it is not the way to go.
The Instructional script is the “map” of the course, where the following are defined:
- The “rules of the game” in general: how the course is going to work, what methodology it applies, what its structure is, what navigation levels it has, and what kind of didactic elements it is composed of.
- What happens on each particular screen? What content elements appear (text, video, infographics)?
- How are these elements presented on the screen: statically, animatedly, sequentially?
- When the student interacts with them: when clicking
- This information is essential for layout designers, designers, and programmers because it allows them to know the course in its entirety, what resources they will need to develop it, and how to distribute the work to obtain functional deliverables.
Conclusion
As you have seen, there are essential issues that you must take into account when deciding how to design an eLearning course or carry out your training. Now get started with your eLearning course.