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4 things to think about before building e-learning courses

It costs money to build e-learning courses and it costs money to take e-learning courses. Considering the cost, it’s important to ensure that you get the most value out of the courses you create.

One way to get value is to not create a course. Seriously. We don’t want to admit it, but many courses are pointless and a waste of time.

However, if you do need to create e-learning courses, then consider the following points below:

Create a Resource Hierarchy

You have limited resources and you want to make sure you use them wisely. In a recent post, I shared how I’d determine which e-learning application to use and when. This type of approach will save resources and help you get the most out of the e-learning software you use.

Move Content Offline

A lot of e-learning content is content that already exists in other formats. And most of that content is text-based. If the course is mostly reading and lots of text, why not take it offline and create PDFs or some other medium that’s easier to read? If you need a course, make it an abstract of the resource content with some activities to demonstrate understanding.

Teach How to Find & Use Resources

Since a lot of content already exists in other places, perhaps it’s better to teach them how to find and use those resources than it is to copy and paste that content into e-learning screens. Create real-world activities and then design the courses so that the learner is accessing resources and using that content to solve the activity.

Make the Courses Smaller

Do you need big courses? That seems like something from the 1990s and not the YoutTube generation. Instead of one big course, perhaps it makes sense to create a series of mini courses. They can always be bundled to create a cohesive learning path.

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