eLearning content development is the creation of online training courses or materials that are used to progress the skills of employees or retrain them in their field. It can also be used in education to develop students’ knowledge and expertise in their chosen subjects.
The benefits of eLearning are that users can do it anytime and anywhere, which means the content development has to have minimal errors so learners don’t run into any issues whilst studying. Due to it being a complex task, there are several parts that need to be considered.
How do you develop eLearning content?
Content for eLearning courses should align with the audience’s needs and pain points. Even if you have great, engaging content, it won’t be beneficial to the learners if it doesn’t resonate with them.
E-learning developers often use tried-and-tested frameworks, such as the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and Mayer’s Multimedia Principles, to help shape the content they design. This ensures that the structure and flow of the course are at the forefront. If you are already familiar with tools like Microsoft PowerPoint, this is an easy place to start. However, for a more polished and interactive presentation, Articulate Storyline or iSpring Suite can improve your content and take it that step further. Alternatively, rather than having to develop the content yourself, we can pair you with a professional e-Learning content developer to help you build courses without the stress.
Why is e-Learning content development important?
The main reason that e-Learning content development is so important is the aspect of flexibility. Learners should be able to access the course on the go, and your course should reflect this style of learning. It is also more cost-effective than having to spend on in-person resources. This process is scalable; it can be distributed to a large audience without bearing any further costs.
Whilst being accessible, customisable, and cost-effective, another benefit of e-Learning is that it removes the pressure from learners. They can study from their own homes and at a pace that suits them best. It promotes active engagement and continuous learning.
The stages of content development
Step 1: Analysis
Before going straight into developing your content, you need to have an understanding of what you want this course to achieve and what skills the learners will get from this course. It’s a good idea to ask these questions:
Who is the target audience and what skills do they need?
What are the learning objectives, outcomes, and expectations?
How will you align your content with the learning objectives?
Talking to potential participants and getting answers to these questions is helpful to know how to develop your content with a learner-centric approach. It’s also a good idea to understand how they want and prefer to learn, as this can direct the types of content and interactivity that will get the most engagement.
Step 2: Creating a design vision
A design vision is a rough idea of how you want your course to look and come across to learners. You can think about the style, tone, format, and also the delivery methods you plan to use. This could be AR/VR, videos, animations, or a combination of them all.
Tip: Include interactive elements to increase engagement potential.
Think about how you will structure the content into different modules, lessons, and activities. It’s important to group similar themes and subjects so the learning journey feels smooth and well-connected.
There are several tools you can use to help out at this stage:
- Mind maps – this technique helps with grouping ideas and options
- Storyboarding – organise your content into a coherent sequence that flows through modules
- Wireframing – this allows you to establish basic layouts and draft content, enabling you to test any interactive elements.
Step 3: Developing your content
This is the exciting stage where you can start to produce your content on your chosen platform. Using tools like Articulate Storyline, Lectora, or Adobe Captivate allows you to create interactive and responsive content. Similarly, video editing and graphic design software are great at this stage for creating engaging visual and audio content.
We would always recommend producing a prototype first before launching your course, so it can be tested and run through to look for any bugs or errors. With feedback, you can refine your design before the launch.
Step 4: Review
Testing your content is a really valuable step. Test it out in front of a group on the actual platform you intend to use when you launch the course. Similarly, test out the interactive elements. You want to make sure the learners are engaged and the course is meeting the learning objectives even in this testing phase, so that you can go back and refine anything that might not be working.
This stage often takes a few revisions, but this just helps to make the final design as optimised as possible.
Step 5: Go live & monitor
After reviewing your content and making sure it all works smoothly, you are ready to launch!
It’s important to keep monitoring your course and the content, as you may need to tweak and amend things over time, for example, if you need to switch platforms or the content becomes outdated.
Things to consider when monitoring are: the number of users, the length of session times and whether they are sticking around for the full length of the course, any specific drop-off points, consider which pages or content types lose engagement consistently and amend those, and finally, which modules and activities are getting the most traffic, is it a particular interactive feature or format? This will help you amend the drop-off points and develop any future courses.
Trends in e-Learning content development
As with anything online, e-Learning is a fast-paced, dynamic environment. New trends in platforms, tools, and content can come and go at any time.
Here are some we have our eye on:
Adaptive learning – this is self-paced learning where students can set their own pace and control how much time they spend learning and where. AI is increasingly being used in e-Learning content development to enable customisation of needs and preferences.
Micro-learning – this technique is used by breaking up content into easy, manageable chunks, which aligns with adaptive learning. Learners can focus and digest the most important information.
Immersive learning – this allows learners to act out real-life scenarios and use the knowledge they have absorbed in situations that are realistic to their roles, but in a safe environment where it’s acceptable to make mistakes.
E-Learning with Instinct Resourcing
At Instinct, we can help connect you to experts in the industry who can help with discussing e-Learning content development.
If you are looking for an expert to join your team or to partner with an e-learning content developer, contact us, and we can help you find the right person to fit your needs. Similarly, if you are looking for a role as an e-learning content developer, submit your CV to us.
Related Posts
