How do you build an e-learning course?
Following a consistent process is key to ensuring effective and efficient instructional design. Here’s the process I like to follow from start to finish.
Needs analysis
The first question to consider before creating an elearning learning solution or course is “Why does your audience need this?”
I like to consider the following questions:
What problem is this elearning course going to overcome?
What outcomes are we hoping to achieve?
How will it help your organization or client reach their business goals?
Is elearning the solution? Elearning is often very suited for a skill or knowledge gap, but won’t solve motivation or job design problems, and may not be necessary for some compliance courses.
Define the audience
Researching your audience to find out what they already know and what they need to know will help us create more useful content for them.
It’s key to learn about the audience’s existing knowledge and skills, how they will use the results on the job, their basic demographics and how they are likely to access the e-learning.
Task analysis
Next, we’ll look in detail at the problems the learning solution is going to address. Key questions include:
What tasks does the learner need to do?
Why aren’t they currently doing it? What are the most common mistakes they make?
What barriers are they facing? We’ll think about whether an elearning course will address these barriers.
In what situations will learners use this information?
Write learning outcomes
Learning outcomes define what we want our learners to be capable of doing by the end of the course. It’s also best practice to create three to four more detailed learning outcomes per module. They are very important in guiding what is necessary and unnecessary content for the learning solution. If content doesn’t help learners meet a learning objective, then it doesn’t belong in the course!
Review and sequence content
Next, it’s time to review existing content and consult with the subject matter expert (SME) to write a detailed outline of how the content and activities will be organised throughout the learning solution.
At this stage, we will consider whether the course should be a self-paced, instructor-led or blended course, and how one activity or module supports the others.
Choose technology
There are countless fantastic elearning tools on the market, and needs will vary depending on the project or organisation. When considering which authoring tools or learning management system to use, we will consider the following factors:
products currently available at the organisation
your experience and satisfaction with different products
features, user experience and implementation and ongoing cost of alternate systems.
Script content
These days with rapid authoring tools, a highly visual storyboard is often not required. This is because it’s usually just as easy to develop a working prototype (see next step). However, a text-based script is still critical to organise content and make authoring much easier.
A script includes all text to be included in the elearning course, with a text description of imagery, interactions and other elements will look on a page.
We will involve the whole project team at this step, to help approve the script and give input on structure of appearance, content and interactions of the course.
Develop a prototype
If developing self-paced elearning, next it’s time to build a working prototype of a module of the learning solution. A prototype will help to test technical functionality, and demonstrate the look-and-feel of the course.
It’s important for the project team to approve the prototype before developing the rest of the course. Changes can be made much more rapidly at this point rather than later, when more content has been produced.
The project team will meet to discuss the prototype, specifically focussing on how the learner will engage with the course and whether the content helps them meet the learning outcomes.
Create course modules
Once all issues have been discussed and key issues addressed, each module of the elearning course is developed in turn. At this stage, I’ll review the original learning outcomes to double check the content and activities haven’t drifted too far during development.
Final review
Once the course has been fully developed, we’ll ensure it is reviewed by experts outside of the project team. They have the advantage of seeing the course with fresh eyes, and their input can help to refine the course before it is published. I look to gain their feedback both at detailed level (inaccuracies, technical errors etc), as well as the general opinion of the course overall.
Publish and promote the course
Once feedback and comments have been incorporated, and all corrections made, then it’s time to publish and promote the course!
Why do your learners need the course? How will they find it? By this stage, we’ll know that the learning solution can help them, but now they need to know about it! It’s time to promote the course as it’s released. To do this, we’ll focus on the benefits to your learners so they are invested in the learning solution.
Evaluate course
After the course has been completed by the majority of learners, it’s key to try to figure out what we did right and what we can improve on in the future with the learning solution. We’ll start to determine how effective the course has been by asking your learners for their reaction, but deeper evaluation can measure the learner’s knowledge, competence and behaviour change through observation and metrics.
To get the best idea of key performance indicators and metrics, it’s key to involve the management team and other stakeholders.
Wrapping up
By following these steps from start to finish, we will ensure the learning solution is custom designed to be directly relevant and engaging for your learners, driving performance improvement in your organisation.