Creating eLearning

It seems that everyone is creating eLearning at the moment. The pandemic has had a huge impact on how training is delivered, with courses that have traditionally been delivered in classrooms – such as soft skills, leadership and health and safety – increasingly moving online. 

Due to necessity, organisations are rushing to create digital versions of key internal training programmes. But there’s a lot of benefits too. Digital training is more accessible, cheaper to deliver and better suited to what employees want. According to HR Dive, 89% of us want training anytime/anywhere – and 85% of us want to choose when we learn.

However, transforming classroom-based courses into effective and engaging eLearning involves a lot more than lifting and shifting. Use our tips below to successfully digitise key training programmes.

Break content into bite-sized chunks

Breaking your course content into a series of short, bite-sized lessons – each focused on a specific message or learning outcome – helps you to get your message across before the next ping or beep distracts your learner (on average, we’re interrupted every five minutes). View our tips for creating bite-sized content to find out more. 

Communicate visually when creating eLearning

Visuals are processed 60,000x faster in the brain than text. Bringing your course to life through videos, infographics and illustrations will make it much easier for your audience to understand even the most complex of messages. Tools like Canva, Vyond and PowToon are a great place to start – they’re easy to use and provide templates and stock animations. 

Choose your images carefully when creating eLearning

Adding images to your lessons is an easy way to reinforce key messages and make your content more visually appealing – be careful not to overdo it though. Check with your marketing or communications team to see what brand images are available. Otherwise, Pexels, Unsplash and Pixabay are great for free stock images (make sure you credit the creator). 

Write for online

When we read online, we scan content instead of reading left to right, line by line. Making your content easy to scan will help you land your message. That means front-loading content (summarising the key message in the first sentence of each paragraph), using short sentences and paragraphs, bullet and numbered lists and lots of white space (you can view more tips here). 

Pay attention to design when creating eLearning

First impressions matter. And with digital communications, first impressions are 94% design related. Digital training is no different. Keeping designs minimal, with lots of white space and a consistent layout across each lesson all help to improve your learner’s user experience. These visual design tips from Training Journal are great too. 

Make sure eLearning works on mobile

Smartphone learners complete eLearning 45% faster than those using a computer. A key reason is that they can learn whenever and wherever works best for them. If your organisation’s Learning Management System (LMS) doesn’t support mobile learning, authoring tools like Rise and EduMe allow you to build responsive courses that can be imported into even the most Luddite of LMS’s. 

Facilitate social when creating eLearning 

Make sure that your learners have a way to share their questions, ideas and thoughts as they progress through your training. If your LMS doesn’t have social features built-in, set up a dedicated channel on Teams, Slack, Workplace by Facebook or Yammer so that people can share ideas. Make sure that someone is on point to respond to anything raised. 

Promote your courses

Unfortunately, ‘build it and they will come’ doesn’t quite work with eLearning. Your audience are bombarded by messages and conflicting demands on their time, so you’ll need to promote your course via your company’s internal communication channels and clearly explain the benefits to drive up those online attendance figures. 

Consider how you’ll measure ROI

Every dollar invested in online training results in $30 in productivity (IBM said that, not us). Being able to measure the return on investment (ROI) for your courses is key. Faster completion times, reduced costs (compared to classroom training), smaller carbon footprints and improved understanding are some examples. Get in touch if you’d like to learn other ways to prove the value of your eLearning.

At Bundle, we specialise in creating eLearning that’s beautiful, short and delivers long-lasting results. Find out how we digitised training for Heathrow Rail Engineering or created a digital version of Kantar’s in-demand manager development programme.

Sound like a bit of what you’re after? Get in touch and find out how we can help you create bespoke digital training packages that reflect your business and your brand while respecting your audience’s time.