Every year, the Yukon Learning development team develops hundreds of courses across multiple industries and topics. Many of these customers are e-learning developers who have taken Articulate training with us and create their own courses. We often receive questions from these developers/students about some of the less tangible aspects of creating e-learning courses.
Recently someone asked, “We’ve taken training from you, so we know how to use Storyline; but how do we create courses that look like the ones you’ve built for us? How can we tap into the same vision you have when presenting content?”
The short but unsatisfying answer is, “Lots and lots of practice.” But let’s go a little deeper and answer the “as heard in training” question: “What makes a good course, a GREAT course?”
The best way to answer this question is to tap into the expertise of our development team. If you’ve worked on custom e-learning projects with us, you might recognize some of these names. Let’s take a peek behind the scenes and find out what our Yukon Learning team members are thinking about during the development process.
Jolie (Impactful Visuals)
“Show, don’t tell. A good course becomes a great course when it uses impactful visuals such as animated icons and illustrations, rather than text, to convey information.”
In this example, Jolie used icon-based graphics, animations, and motion paths to help the learner visualize a story without using text.
We often develop courses that deal with sensitive subject matter, so another benefit of this approach is that the imagery helps bring the story to life without using stock photography of actual people (usually paid models), which may not be appropriate when discussing delicate topics.
- Connect with Jolie on LinkedIn
Kim (Consistent UI Elements)
“My goal is to create a visually organized, streamlined user experience that encourages visual scanning across the content and holds the learner’s attention. Keeping things simple and consistent with UI elements throughout the course encourages intuitive usability, and helps the learner focus on the content, and not how to access the content.”
In this flip card interaction, Kim uses both on screen instructions and an icon to indicate how to activate each interactive object.
She also created highly noticeable hover states as another visual cue that the cards are clickable. These elements are repeated throughout the course, allowing the learner to easily recognize interactive slides.
- Connect with Kim on LinkedIn
Laura (Engaging and Interactive)
“A great e-learning course is engaging and interactive. Learners should be an active participant in the course, whether that’s breaking down the content into smaller, digestible chunks using tabs or buttons, sharing their opinion in a reflection, completing a quiz question to get immediate feedback, or participating in a simulation.”
In this example, Laura included a reflection question, allowing the learner to connect with the content and what it means to them.
Subsequently, they have the opportunity to provide additional feedback via a survey question. This kind of interactivity helps learners reach higher levels of thinking while also giving them a voice.
- Connect with Laura on LinkedIn
Paul (Intentional Design)
“Intentional design. Give every color, shape, and animation a role and a purpose throughout your course. These repeated themes will help break the content down into digestible slices and increase learning retention.”
It can be challenging to represent highly technical content in e-learning. Processes, workflows, and document overviews can be especially difficult due to their “less-than-exciting” subject nature. In this example, Paul transformed what was formerly a series of bullet points into a more visual structure, allowing the learner to mentally organize the topics more easily.
- Connect with Paul on LinkedIn
Summary
While practice may be the best way to advance your design skills, we hope these tips from our amazing team will inspire you to try new methods when creating your own e-learning modules. And if you’d like to learn more about designing e-learning experiences that go beyond the software’s functionality, check out our Essentials of E-Learning Design course and see if it’s right for you!
We’d also love to hear your ideas about what makes a good course, a GREAT course. Feel free to leave a comment or contact us to share your approach!
Now, Here Are Some Additional Resources!
For more on this topic, check out the following posts from Articulate and The Articulate Trainer blog:
5 Highly Effective Strategies for Creating Engaging E-Learning (e-book)
How Can I Add the Secret Sauce to My Storyline 360 Courses?
Happy developing!
~ Raye
Thank you for providing the Articulate Trainer “As Heard in Training” e-mails. They are informative and helpful and just one of the many reasons Yukon Learning is such a great source for information and learning.
Thanks for those kind words, Erik! You put a smile on our faces for sure. Glad you are finding the posts helpful – we are here if and when you should ever need us. Happy Articulating!