Before starting an eLearning project, it’s important to determine a purpose and a goal for your coursework. Is your intention to create a simple, user-friendly course? Or, do you want an in-depth, feature-heavy advanced course? Depending on your audience, skill-set and authoring tool, you can use the same information to build many different courses, but it’s important to outline your plan before beginning development.

Step 1: Research.

In order to successfully deploy an eLearning course, the developer must research its target audience and what they want to get out of the course. In addition, the designer must realize their course creation abilities and how these skills align with the learners’ knowledge base. For example, do your learners want to expand their grasp of nuclear physics? If so, then the course material may need to be more intricate, and the designer’s skill-set must comply. Finally, developers must research various authoring tools to ensure that they are using the right tool for their learners’ needs. Should you simply use PowerPoint? Or, should you take a more advanced approach and use a more robust authoring tool, like Lectora Inspire? These choices depend on thorough research.

Step 2: Set Specific Objectives.

Make a list of 5-10 objectives for your course. Remember, these objectives should be measurable and attainable. Here are some examples:

  • To increase learners’ knowledge of nuclear physics by 5% at the end of the session.
  • To increase my designing skill-set from novice to intermediate at the end of the developing period.
  • To create a visually appealing and complex course using an advanced authoring tool.
  • To learn all of the intricacies of Lectora Inspire at the end of the developing period.
  • To include an assessment at the end of my course that evaluates learners’ retention of the course material.

Step 3: Create.

Start developing, but don’t rush. Quality eLearning material is not created over night, and it requires thorough planning and discussion amongst co-workers or peers. You should learn all of the features within the tool that you are using to ensure that your audience is getting the greatest experience possible. If you are using Lectora Inspire, you can take part in a training session before you start development to perfect your skills and make certain that your design abilities are up to par. So, when you sit down to create your course and finalize your materials, keep in mind all of your objectives, and the course will most often support your goals.

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Step 4: Evaluate.

This, some may argue, is the most important phase of the process. The purpose of researching, creating objectives and aligning your eLearning material to those objectives is to reach some sort of over-arching goal. In order to determine if you’ve achieved this goal, you must evaluate your objectives to see if you’ve met them. Some of your evaluation may occur directly within your course, like in the results of an assessment. Other information that you can evaluate may need some outside effort, for example administering a questionnaire to determine the value of the course for learners. Using this type of information, you can evaluate your course’s success and decide whether or not you achieved your goals and objectives.

At the beginning of the design and deployment process of an eLearning course, a purpose-driven mindset will bring success in both the quality of the course and its benefits to learners. If you, as the designer, have a goal in mind when creating course material, your audience will subconsciously pick up on this goal, and ideally achieve the appropriate end-response.

 

 

 

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Heather Thomas is the Social Media Lead at Trivantis Corporation. She is a senior public relations student at Kent State University and is interested in corporate PR and social media. She enjoys traveling, reading and writing.