📢 [MeGA]: Make eLearning Great Again! 👑

Five practical tips to help you design scintillating digital learning

People have been writing off elearning for years now while simultaneously talking about how good YouTube is for learning (newsflash: YouTube is also elearning)

It's true that elearning particularly in the workplace has struggled to rid itself of the baggage it acquired over the years with all the attempts to cram information, templatize design, and generally replicate the classroom. The issue isn't with digital learning itself, but how we've been trying to use it.

Here are my Top 5 (hopefully practical) recommendations for designing more impactful elearning, and reclaiming a legitimate space for this format in your organizations.

A few things to note:

• I've tried to keep these as broad as possible, but even so it's likely they won't be applicable in all situations.
• These relate to design of standalone digital learning, but to create an effective learning experience you'll need a strong blended learning strategy. (whole other topic)
• This is not a definitive list and I'm sure there's more (or better) design principles you're using already. If so, please do share in the comments.

Let's get started!

1. Avoid opening with text

When clicking a Play or Launch button on a device, the brain is primed to watch rather then read, so if the first thing it encounters is a wall of text, as a designer you've fallen at the first hurdle (and also made a weak first impression). A video introduction, even a very short one, is generally a good idea, or there's some other options below you can use.

2. Get interactive

Use interactivity very early on to draw learners in and establish a very important ground rule: this is going to be an active rather than passive experience. Needless to say, clicking the Next button does not count as interactivity.

3. Make it a challenge

Learners of all ages love puzzles and games, so think about how to use these to prime the brain for learning. Start easy so you serve up a couple of quick dopamine hits. A good opening sequence could be to use a scenario-based activity to introduce a concept, use the results to summarize, and then quiz to reinforce.

4. Tell a story

Framing your learning as a story/ quest will help spark curiosity. Learning objectives can help set the scene but if they're too precise they can be limiting. Position the experience as a way for learners to find out something new about themselves and the world, and leave space for incidental learning / insight along the way.

5. Keep it short

Sadly, there's no magic number here in terms of duration but digital learning is ultimately a solitary activity and we learn best by collaborating and applying. So while a good piece of elearning which follows a well thought-out narrative arc can hold a learner's attention for extended periods, eventually you'll also hit the issue of cognitive load. Understanding digital learning's limitations will help you better play to its strengths.

As I said, this is not a definitive list but I hope these are useful and give you some ideas on how to storyboard and structure your digital learning.

At Arcadis, our teams are experimenting with all the above approaches so if you'd like to see and/or discuss further do reach out; always happy to compare notes..

Good luck and happy designing!