I get a lot of questions from organizations that are at the beginning of their e-learning journey and not quite sure how to get started. The following tips are three key considerations to get your program moving in the right direction.

What Type of Course Are You Building?

I like to keep things simple. Generally, there are two types of courses that get built: explainer and performance.

• Explainer courses present key content critical to the learning experience. This can be content like user manuals, video tutorials, company policies, etc. These courses generally combines content with context. For example, an explainer course not only shares information but adds context to how the information is relevant. But they generally stop at sharing the content and don’t include relevant practice opportunities.
• Performance courses focus on the performance expectations. What is the learner supposed to do? How can they learn it in the course? What activities get built in the course for the learner to practice and prove their skills and understanding?

Both types of courses have value. However, if you have clear performance expectations and you build an explainer type course, then you need to determine what activities outside the course are required for the learner to practice and prove.

Craft Clear Course Expectations

The end-goal isn’t to build a course. Instead, the course is a solution to meet the end-goal. Thus, the end-goal needs to be determined and clearly stated. After the person takes the course, what are they supposed to do?

Odds are that many of the explainer courses that are created have no “supposed to do” attached to them. And that’s why a lot of online courses aren’t effective.

• Create a clear objective.
• Determine how to measure it in the course and outside of the course.
• Build practice activities and an assessment that provides proof of understanding.
• Get connected to the team that can provide the metrics outside the course so you can verify success.

Build to the Expectations of the Learner

This part is a bit challenging because often courses are designed around the content presentation and not the learner expectations. We’ve all taken annual compliance training. The content is valuable, but it’s usually not framed in a way that’s relevant to the learner. It’s content that’s mostly relevant to the organization and it’s framed that way.

However, the organization is paying you to build a course which costs money. And then your course pulls people from productive work which also costs money. If you have a 60-minute course and 100 people have to take it (assuming an average cost per employee is $100); that’s about $600,000 per 100 people. That is a lot of money. Is your course getting at least $600,000 of value?

You may not be able to control whether or not the course gets built, but you can definitely advocate to build the best type of course. And the best type of course considers the learner and how the content is relevant and meaningful.

Obviously, there’s a lot more to consider when jumpstarting your e-learning program. The key consideration is whether or not the course is built around performance expectations and then designing a product that meets those goals.

What would you add to this list if someone asked about getting their e-learning program started?

Events

Free E-Learning Resources

Want to learn more? Check out these articles and free resources in the community.	Here’s a great job board for e-learning, instructional design, and training jobs	Participate in the weekly e-learning challenges to sharpen your skills
Get your free PowerPoint templates and free graphics & stock images.	Lots of cool e-learning examples to check out and find inspiration.	Getting Started? This e-learning 101 series and the free e-books will help.

One of the best ways to learn to build courses is to get inspiration from what others build. That’s one of the reasons I like the weekly challenges.

Everyone is presented with the same challenge, yet each challenge entry offers something unique. There’s always something to glean: from interesting visual design to creative use of the application’s features.

When I get the chance, I like to highlight the work that people put out there. Today, we’ll look at some of the examples from Samara Reyneke. Keep in mind that many of these are not complete courses but instead they’re prototypes created for the weekly challenges.

What I like about her examples:

• Visually rich design
• Custom navigation & prompts
• Interesting animations
• Engaging content design

Check out some of these examples below. You can also see more under her community profile.

E-Learning Example 1: Telling a Good Story

• View e-learning examples here.
• Weekly challenge #296

E-Learning Example 2: Space Adventure

• View e-learning examples here.

E-Learning Example 3: Knuffle Bunny Challenge

• View e-learning examples here.
• Weekly challenge #312

E-Learning Example 4: Learning Experience Design

• View e-learning examples here.

E-Learning Example 5: The World of Bees

• View e-learning examples here.
• Weekly challenge #320

E-Learning Example 6: Email Etiquette

• View e-learning examples here.

Takeaways

• Thanks to Samara for sharing her courses and downloads.
• Make it a habit to at least look at the challenge recaps, even if you can’t participate in them.
• If you see something interesting, try to replicate it to learn how to build it yourself and then figure out where you can use that in your course design
• Many of the challenges also include download links so you can checkout the source files.

Events

Free E-Learning Resources

Want to learn more? Check out these articles and free resources in the community.	Here’s a great job board for e-learning, instructional design, and training jobs	Participate in the weekly e-learning challenges to sharpen your skills
Get your free PowerPoint templates and free graphics & stock images.	Lots of cool e-learning examples to check out and find inspiration.	Getting Started? This e-learning 101 series and the free e-books will help.

It is important to manage the customer relationship while building courses, as customers may not always know what they want. Customers often default to building more training as a solution to issues, but course designers need to step in and provide the best solution.

Here are a few tips on managing the relationship with your customer.

• Is training the right solution for them? They want the person to go from point A to point B, but what are they doing now and why aren’t they getting there? How is training going to impact those reasons?
• It is important to establish clear expectations for the course you will be delivering. This can be done by analyzing the needs and writing up a service level agreement that details what they will receive and when.
• In order to ensure that your course is successful, it is important to set clear objectives and determine how you will measure them. This helps gauge whether or not objectives met.
• The customer’s expectations should be established at the beginning of the work. Then every effort should be made to exceed them.
• Make your customers look good by promoting their assistance and success. Write nice things about them to their managers. This helps get more of their time, especially if they’re also the subject matter expert.
• Courses should be effective, as noted above, but they should also be efficient. Manage your costs and calendar well. And make the learning experience and efficient use of the learner’s time.
• Do everything you can do to finish ahead of schedule. Many projects don’t because there’s a lot of scope creep where more gets added to the request. A good service level agreement helps resolve some of those issues.
• Pay attention to the project and anticipate issues. Then take care of them before they do become issues.
• After the project is delivered, I quickly review the service level agreement with the client and get them to sign it. I’ve worked on projects that failed (because the customer wanted a course that wasn’t needed) and somehow the blame got shifted down to the training team. By getting the client to review and accept the agreement, I can prevent that from happening.

This isn’t an exhaustive list. What are some things you’d recommend to someone just getting started?

Events

Free E-Learning Resources

Want to learn more? Check out these articles and free resources in the community.	Here’s a great job board for e-learning, instructional design, and training jobs	Participate in the weekly e-learning challenges to sharpen your skills
Get your free PowerPoint templates and free graphics & stock images.	Lots of cool e-learning examples to check out and find inspiration.	Getting Started? This e-learning 101 series and the free e-books will help.

A guest post by Elizabeth Pawlicki, Senior Customer Advocacy Manager, Articulate.

Last week I was at Devlearn, one of my favorite events of the year. After no event in 2020 and a scaled-back Articulate presence in 2021, it was nice to be back and see some familiar faces and meet so many new people.

What I enjoy the most about Devlearn is DemoFest, where people show off real e-learning projects. And they showed up in big ways, with examples ranging from health literacy to escape games to how to make hamburgers. In fact, the Guild is going to do a webinar highlighting the various entries.

Personally, I like DemoFest because it gets me out of the weeds. I get to use Articulate 360 while helping customers, but I don’t often get to stretch my creative muscles and build big courses. That’s why I love the projects at DemoFest. What people share is so inspiring.

Another reason I like DemoFest is that it’s frustrating to see discussions in places like LinkedIn, where there’s lots of complaining about what everyone in the industry is doing wrong, but those same complainers rarely share their examples of what to do right.

Do you know why?

Because it’s easy to be a critic, especially when you don’t show your own work. It’s much more challenging to be vulnerable and put your work out there to be judged. Kudos to those who bravely shared their work (especially the student projects from Bloomsburg University).

Events like this are how I connect with our customers and hear all the cool things people are working on. I love talking to folks in the booth and hearing what kind of courses they’re building, but seeing someone sharing their work to hundreds of DemoFest attendees is really special. And what always strikes me is how impactful these courses can be. E-learning courses can contribute to cost savings, time savings, reduction of waste, and about a million other objectives.

What’s Your E-Learning Success Story?

Not everyone gets to go to Devlearn and share their courses. But everyone has a story. What courses are you building? How has e-learning helped your organization? I’m fired up from DevLearn and I’ll be doing a series of success stories and case studies about the great work our customers are doing.

Do you have something you want to share? I would love to chat with you. You can either fill out this form or send me an email at elizabeth@articulate.com.

Events

Free E-Learning Resources

Want to learn more? Check out these articles and free resources in the community.	Here’s a great job board for e-learning, instructional design, and training jobs	Participate in the weekly e-learning challenges to sharpen your skills
Get your free PowerPoint templates and free graphics & stock images.	Lots of cool e-learning examples to check out and find inspiration.	Getting Started? This e-learning 101 series and the free e-books will help.