Visually branding your e-learning courses is a common requirement. A great way to figure out how to brand the course is by mimicking what’s available publicly from the organization’s website (and intranet).

These sites tend to have all sorts of media assets that are already vetted to fit the organization’s brand and often work well for e-learning content. The challenge is how to get access to those assets.

Connect with the Marketing Team

Before you spend time scraping your sites for images, connect with the marketing (or web) team. In the past, I’ve found that the marketing team usually had access to more media assets than other teams.  Connect with that team (or the team that manages the website) and share what you want to do. Often, they can provide some guidance and give you access to the resources available to them.

Be prepared to dialogue about compliance to the company’s branding requirements. 🙂

Download Images from the Website

One option is to locate an image on the website, right-click and save to a folder.

That’s an easy and effective way. However, it’s also a bit cumbersome. And sometimes the sites are set up to not allow this.

Download Images via the Browser’s Site Inspection

Another way to access the images on your site is via the browser’s ability to inspect the site.

• Right-click on the page and select inspect
• Click on the Sources tab
• Locate the media in one of the folders
• Access the source file and save it to your folder

Download Images by Extracting from Your Website

I covered this in a previous post, you can use a browser extension or this website to extract images. Basically, they isolate and just show the images on the site. I like using the Image Extractor site because I can do a batch download of images which saves some time.

As with anything like this, be sure to properly credit sources.

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I’m not sure what the number is, but my guess is that compliance/regulatory training makes up a large majority of the e-learning that gets created.

Most compliance training isn’t training to change performance. The focus is awareness and certifying that the learner understands and accepts those expectations. Or perhaps it’s some sort of annual refresher.

I used to work with a community healthcare group and the nursing staff did a week of annual training. They already knew the content. However, they had to review the content each year and be certified. But they weren’t really learning a lot of new things.

Another common example is ethics training. We don’t have organizations full of unethical people and then do training to make them ethical. Instead, we do the ethics training to state the organization’s position and expectations.

That doesn’t mean there’s no performance expectation. For example, a performance requirement may be to identify unethical behavior. Or perhaps, it’s knowing what to do when it’s witnessed.

In fact, one of the downfalls of compliance training is that the focus is usually only on the content and end-of-year certification. But what about how to apply the expectations in the real world:  learn how to identify unethical behavior and then what to do?

Because compliance training is usually only focused on disseminating content, the measure of understanding is usually a few simple multiple choice quiz questions and certificate of completion.

However, if the compliance training focused on how the organization’s expectations play out in a real-world environment, the course designer could use decision-making scenarios that mimic the real-world. This is a better way to assess the learner’s understanding of ethics and how they apply the training in a context that’s meaningful to themselves.

I get asked a lot about compliance training and here is my core advice:

• If it’s merely to certify exposure to the content, create a simple course with a simple quiz so that people can get in and out of the course and back to productive work quickly.
• If you want to build engaging and meaningful training, identify the performance angle and create decision-making opportunities so they can process the content in a relevant context.

What do you find to be the biggest challenges with compliance training?

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The death of Flash has created a mess for many e-learning developers who have to look for things in older e-learning courses that were published in Flash.

I run into that a lot in the community and with some of my old demos on this blog. It sure is a pain. Not being able to see the file makes it a challenge to recall what was in it or to even know what to look for to update it and republish.

The good news is that I found this thread in the community recently where Sarah shared a link to a Flash player that may help you view old courses. Below is a quick tutorial on how to use it.

Click to view the tutorial.

There’s no guarantee that these links will work forever, I’d download them now, so you have a copy.

Hope that helps those who need to view older Flash courses.

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Are you tired of building the same courses over and over again? Sure, you may get to build a hundred courses, but they’re the same course built a hundred times. The result is that many of the courses look the same and they don’t provide the opportunity to expand your course design skills.

Today I’d like to offer a few tips on how you can get out of the hundred course rut.

Build Better E-Learning by Making Time to Do Something Different

Many organizations allow their employees to have some free time to hack together ideas or work on other types of projects. I spoke to one e-learning manager that lets his employees spend a few days each month on personal projects. His rationale is that it gives them “time to unwind and play around with ideas.”

Most organizations won’t make time for you to “mess around with ideas” so you need to find ways to get the time. We often used team meeting time to brainstorm ideas.

For example, one challenge was how to navigate a course if all you could do was drag and drop objects and couldn’t click anywhere on the screen. Another was to produce 100 analogies we could apply to our training programs: climbing stairs, climbing mountains, going down a road, entering a building’s lobby, etc. We then used some of the ideas as models for our course designs.

The main point in the activity was to think about things in a unique way and to prototype ideas. They may not always be used, but they will help develop your skills.

Build Better E-Learning Through Inspiration

As you know, I am a big fan of the weekly e-learning challenges because they do exactly what I’m talking about above. They’re a springboard to play with ideas. We present simple challenges to help nudge you a bit. They’re not intended to be big courses or even all that elaborate. Some people put together complete ideas and some just build quick prototypes. The main goal is to get you to try something different than what you normally do at work. Through that process you find innovative ideas and production techniques.

Even if you don’t participate in the weekly challenges, I still encourage you to look at what’s being done. They’re a great source of inspiration. You may pick up some neat ideas that can be applied in your own e-learning courses. All the participants get the same instructions, but the results are always different. It’s nice to see diverse ideas.

Build Better E-Learning Through Mimicry & Iteration

All the Articulate community managers do an excellent job building courses. However, if I were to look at the demos they build without knowing who built them, odds are that I’d be able to match the course author to the course because we all tend to have our own style.

That means our course screens tend to look similar. The layouts, colors, fonts, and object sizes all tend to be the same. That’s not a bad thing. But building the same type of course a hundred times the same way can cause some creative fatigue.

By stepping away from our own style and attempting to mimic the work of others we become better course designers. I recommend collecting e-learning courses, multimedia examples, or visual design ideas that you find inspiring and then setting some time to practice recreating them.

• Step 1: Try to replicate what the content creator did. This helps you figure out what they did and how you’d do the same thing with your authoring tools. Don’t worry about copyright or anything like that. This isn’t for public consumption. Instead it’s for your personal development.
• Step 2: Once you have decent replication, start to iterate. Pretend that a client told you they wanted this project redone. What would you do? From there you’ll be able to transform the idea that inspired you to something that’s uniquely yours. And most likely it’ll look a lot different than what you would have done on your own. I usually look for color themes, font pairings, and visual design ideas like how shapes and lines are used. I’ll create a few different layouts based on the original design.

Here are some of the places I go to find inspiration:

• E-Learning Examples: a good collection of all sorts of e-learning and interactive multimedia examples that could inspire course design ideas.
• Articulate demos: the e-learning challenges have produced over 1000 different examples. You can find a complete list here. But we also feature a few of the more popular ones and other demos in our examples section.
• News multimedia: with every major news event there’s usually some multimedia composed to explain it. USA Today and NY Times (links to examples) usually have some good demos.
• Museums: many of the large museums have interactive tours and demos. Here’s one from the Smithsonian on how to build a sod house (requires flash) and an interactive tour of the Louvre.
• Design sites: I’m not a graphic artist but I can glean ideas from those who are. I like to look at some of the portfolios on sites like Dribbble. I often get ideas on layouts, colors, and UI.

If you don’t want to get stuck building the same course over and over again, challenge yourself to find inspiration in the work of your peers. Make some time to connect with others and if you have time, join one of the weekly challenges. I’d love to see what you do.

How do you find inspiration for your e-learning projects?

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Many online training courses go by a one-size fits all model: build one course and everyone has to take it exactly the same way. I like to think of this as the e-learning gulag where there’s not a lot of freedom for online learners and little concern for their experience.

Who Are Your Online Learners?

Regardless of how you design your online courses, it is important to understand your online learners, their needs, and what motivates them. In this post we’ll look at a few different types of online learners and some ways to create online training that meets their needs.

• Get to the point: these learners have a pretty good idea of what the course covers. They’re not interested in a bunch anecdotal stories or case studies. They’re happy with a list of information, how it impacts them, and what they need to do.
• Curious: these learner are motivated by new things; they’re really interested in the material and what’s in the course. They want opportunities to test ideas and see what happens.
• Mandatory: these learners start out bored and not motivated because the course is mostly irrelevant to the job; however it’s mandatory. They’re going through the motions, looking for the next button, and waiting for the final quiz.
• Tenured: these learners are experienced and already know the content. They’re interested in what’s new and how it changes what they do. They don’t want to waste time covering what they already know.
• Skeptical: these learners are challenged by change because what they know is different and where they may be going isn’t always certain. They’ll embrace the learning but need a safe way to learn at their own pace.
• Multitasker: these learners are a by-product of the Internet’s easy access to information. They like a lot of information, tend to jump around, and don’t have the patience to do more than bite-sized activities.

The key point is that while we build a single course, the reality is that it’s delivered to an audience that’s not homogenous. The online learners come from different backgrounds, levels of motivation, skill, and experience. This makes crafting a great learning experience a bit of a challenge.

How a Single Course Can Accommodate Multiple Online Learners

However, one thing online training does do well is that it offers a lot of flexibility. The key is to take advantage of what it offers to build an online training course that meets the needs of many online learners. Here are a few thoughts:

• Let online learners test out. If the objective is that the person can demonstrate their understanding of the content, then give them an opportunity to do that at the forefront. Passing demonstrates their understanding so they’re done and can get back to work. If they don’t pass then they’re now aware of their deficiencies and prepared to learn.

• Create adaptive learning paths to accommodate the different needs of your online learners. This could be giving them the opportunity test out (as mentioned above) or taking them on a custom journey based on their learning needs. Essentially, the person with more experience doesn’t need the same course as a new person.
• Package the online learning in relevant scenarios and let the learner make a lot of decisions. There’s all sorts of ways to present content and feedback that is engaging and fun. Here’s a post to help you get started.

•  Create bite-sized training modules. Instead of big, long courses, break the content into smaller and more palatable coursels. It’s a great way to make the training appear faster and it’s easier to package the smaller modules into custom training solutions to accommodate different audience needs. It also satisfies the needs of those who want quick access to just-in-time content.

There’s a lot you can do to create custom online learning experiences all inside the same course. But you’ll need to step away from the bullet points, free up the navigation, and give the learners more freedom.

The next time you build a course consider the different people taking it and how you can help meet their needs.

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There’s often a big disconnect between the training that is delivered and the training that has impact. It’s because training is commissioned by someone who doesn’t take the training like a manager or subject matter expert. What happens is that while the training has all the right information it doesn’t frame it in a perspective that is true or relevant to the learner; and that’s because the end-user usually doesn’t have a seat at the table when the training is being developed.

Here are a few ways to change that.

Build Better Online Training by Interviewing Your Learners

Someone asks you to build the training but it’s usually not the end-user. The client has all sorts of content and it’s your job to figure out what content is appropriate to meet the learning objectives. However, you also must craft a learning experience that is effective.

One way to do that is by spending some time with your learners. Share the content and objectives and then get their feedback. Ask them what content is most meaningful and useful to them. Ask how they’d structure the training.

From the conversations with them you’ll get a better sense of what they do and how the course content is relevant to their performance needs. They’ll often give you some really good use cases that can be used for simulations and interactive scenarios.

Keep in mind that what the end-user thinks is important isn’t always the priority. Often the organization has regulatory requirements that may not be relevant from a performance perspective but still a requirement for delivered training. They key point is that you’re getting another perspective.

Build Better Online Training Through Observation

Course content doesn’t always address the nuances of real work. That’s why spending time with your learners and seeing how they perform in a real environment is critical for successful training. And you’ll learn things that aren’t addressed by the content.

For example, I once built training for a production facility. The new hires had to learn how to operate some large and complex machines. I spend some time on the floor and learned that many were intimidated by the machines. This made it hard for them to learn.

Because of this, the first part of their training was to learn the parts of the machine and focus on a lot of preventive maintenance. We wanted them to get their hands on the machine and feel comfortable with it. It worked because their familiarity with the machines helped them feel comfortable and the result was that they outperformed those who didn’t go through that part of the training.

We would never have even considered this part of the training had we not spent time on the floor observing how they did their jobs. There are additional tips in this post on how to avoid needs analysis paralysis.

Build Better Online Training with Rapid Prototypes

As you interview your learners build a quick prototype of how the course would work. It doesn’t have to be perfect. I used to use PowerPoint and hyperlinks to do this. It’s a quick way to get an idea of how to structure the course content especially for interactive scenarios.

Today it’s even easier than in the past. You can shoot digital photos or videos and insert them in slides. The e-learning software is getting so easy to use that rapid prototyping only take a few minutes. I do this all the time at conferences when I’m at the booth. People come up and ask how to do specific things and in minutes we can build a quick interactive scenario.

Don’t worry about everything being perfect. I’m famous for using stick people and blue boxes. The point is that a quick prototype helps you understand the flow and expose potential issues.

Build Better Online Training with Pilot Sessions to Get Feedback

The reality is that sometimes you don’t get access to the learners. This happened to me a few years back when I worked for a bank. I was building training for loan officers and wanted to talk to some to get a sense of how things worked in their work environment. The organization thought it would be a waste of time, so I didn’t get permission to spend time with them.

If that’s your situation then build the course and prior to final approval have some of the end-users take it. If you can, try to observe how they go through the course. Often this will expose some user experience issues like navigation or improper instructions. Try to solicit as much feedback as you can so that you can make adjustments prior to the launch date.

It’s not ideal, but it’s better than launching a course that has issues. Plus, once you have something more complete, your client may not have an issue with you spending time with the end-user. Even if you can’t get a lot of people to pilot the course, try to get at least one person. I outlined some things to do in this post on what do to before your course goes live.

The main point in all of this is that the goal is to create a successful course and one way to do so is to spend some time with your learners to understand their needs and how to design a course that both meets your learning objectives and the needs of the learner.

What tips do you have when it comes interacting with your learners as you build the course?

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As many of you know, I tend to divide courses into two buckets. One bucket is information. The other is performance. When I meet with a client I quickly assess what type of course they want to build so that we can best meet the organization’s goals and control the cost of development.

Information-based courses are common, and many people complain that they’re just click-and-read. However, they are legitimate and do meet a need. Here are few common examples:

• Awareness: sometimes, the only goal is an awareness campaign to share information. For example, the organization wants people to know about a new health program. The course is more like an interactive marketing campaign, but the organization is still going to call it an “e-learning course.”
• Blended: often the information in the e-learning course is coupled with a blended learning solution where the interaction happens in real-life. In that case, the course is more like a multimedia textbook.
• Compliance: let’s admit it, there are a bunch of courses that serve no other purpose other than to have an end-of-year check mark. Obviously, this has little to do with learning. I’m not going to stand on a soapbox and argue against this. It’s just the way it is and probably won’t change.

Performance-based courses focus on achieving specific objectives through performance and behavioral change.  Generally, there are two types of performance-based courses:

• Procedure: teaches defined step-by-step procedures.
• Principled: less about structured steps and more about guiding principles.

While many complain about them, information-based courses have their place. Ideally, we build courses to instigate changes in performance or behavior. With a focus on specific objectives, you also get valuable metrics to demonstrate success. However, when consulting with the client I do try to get to the performance issue so that we’re not just pushing information. If we can’t find the performance issue, then we either don’t build a course, or we build one that’s simple and doesn’t cost too much time and money.

Interactive Scenarios: Procedural

Procedural courses are more how-to type e-learning. They go through a defined flow or process. They’re less about making nuanced decisions and more about following the proper procedures to achieve a specific outcome. Often these are the source of many of our click-and-read courses.

While it’s easy enough to make an information-based course where the learner learns the proper sequence and is tested on it (like the typical linear courses), a scenario-based interaction can add some real world context.

For example, in the real world even if the process is clearly defined, there are other considerations like timing of the steps and maintaining accuracy. This type of context makes the interactive scenario work even if the procedure is relatively simple.

Think of the classic I Love Lucy chocolate factory clip. It’s easy enough to build an information-based course on how to pick up and wrap chocolates. But what the information-based course lacks is the pressure that a real-world context applies. This pressure is easy to simulate in interactive scenarios. So you can teach and assess their understanding of the procedures and do it in a real-world context.

Interactive Scenarios: Principle

Principle-based courses are different. They tend to lean less on specific steps and more on working through the various nuances in the work environment. They require that the learners collect information, assess it, and make the appropriate decisions.

Let’s say you’re a new manager and have to deal with various employee issues. Each employee has unique needs. The organization teaches guiding principles that help you make good decisions. So instead of going through prescribed steps, you collect information, analyze it, and make decisions.

In this case a decision-making scenario works really well. It allows you to teach the learner to evaluate information and make good decisions that are aligned to the organization’s needs. Because the decisions are nuanced, sometimes they’ll make bad decisions which can produce negative consequences and sometimes they make good ones. Just like in real life.

Although in real life, a bad decision may seriously impact the organization. And that’s where an interactive scenario comes in handy. They get to practice the decision-making required in a realistic situation that produces great opportunities for feedback. When they make good decisions, they gain confidence and can demonstrate to the organization their level of understanding. And if they make poor decisions they can receive feedback that will help them make better decisions in the real world. And it’s all done in a safe and non-threatening environment.

E-learning is valuable for more than quick, click-and-read courses. Focus on the performance requirement and then craft a learning experience that mimics real world activities. Even if you build simple courses, adding interactive decisions and real-world pressure will create a more meaningful experience that impacts learning.

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I’m often asked how long an e-learning course should be. My quick response is that it should last long enough to meet your objectives. On the surface that’s not a bad answer, but it’s usually one that doesn’t satisfy either. There are a few variables when it comes to determining how long an e-learning course should be.

However here are some tips that may help answer the question.

Chunk Your Content

The trend in online learning is small, digestible chunks. Some people call it YouTube learning or microlearning. I like to call them coursels (as in course morsels).

The trend makes sense. We’re using more and more mobile devices where quick hit training works better and chunked content is easier to process. By chunking the content, you also have a more agile production environment. The modules are easier to update and modify; and they’re easier to move around to create custom learning solutions.

As far as course length, with chunking it may be determined by the learner and not content. Some people may only need one chunk to meet your learning objectives while others may need more.

Space the Learning Events

There’s a lot of evidence that suggests that spacing the learning events over time may improve learning outcomes. Some organizations create coursels that are introduced over time. The first coursels introduce the big picture concepts and then over time the learning is reinforced through various activities that require recall and application.

Years ago we built a training program where we had a few basic courses that highlighted the organization’s specific performance expectations. And then we scheduled a series of follow up challenges that required the learners to process various scenarios (using what they learned) and then discuss their solutions with their managers.

There’s also an effective way to space training over a shorter period of time in a single sitting. The main idea is to present the course content three times divided by ten-minute breaks. It may look like this: 1) the instructor presents content, 2) 10 minute break activity, 3) students recall content, 4) 10 minute break activity, and 5) students apply the content to demonstrate understanding of content.

I haven’t seen this approach applied to online learning, but I can see how this could work in a blended environment where live instruction blends with online content. In either case, chunking content and spacing out how it’s delivered changes our understanding of how long a course should be.

Be Learner Centric

One of the great advantages of e-learning is that it’s asynchronous which means it’s not confined by geography or time. That gives the learner the flexibility to take the course at a time most convenient to the learner.

Another advantage is that the learning is self-paced, which directly relates to the question of how long the course should be. An experienced person may learn a lot faster than the new person. Thus, length of time is irrelevant.

Take advantage of what e-learning provides to create an environment that works best for the learner.

Here are a few tips:

• • Give them reasons to explore the course content.
  • Have them prove understanding as a measure of success.
  • Provide a lot of resources and guides to reinforce what they’re learning.

• Don’t lock navigation. Let them navigate the course as they desire.
• Check out more tips via this link.

Slide Count is Irrelevant

Often when people ask about course length they also ask how many slides or screens the course should have. Some of this probably comes from the presentation mindset where each slide represents X minutes and if you have a 30 minute presentation you’re constrained to X slides.

However when it comes to e-learning, slide count is irrelevant. The learner looks at a screen, they don’t look at slides. You can put five pieces of information on a single slide or spread that same information over five slides. To the learner it makes no difference.

Essentially the screen shows content—mostly text and some sort of media like images and shapes. That content changes throughout the course. Does it matter if the content changes at the slide level with layers or by jumping to new slides? The end user only knows what’s displayed has changed. They don’t really care how you made it change.

It’s All About Meeting Your Learning Objectives

We all come to learning with different experiences and levels of understanding. Some people can pick up new content quickly while others may need more practice activities and feedback. E-learning is perfect for this approach because it’s flexible and can be tailored to learner needs and progress.

However, any course you build is only a solution to meet specific goals. We don’t build e-learning courses just to build courses. We build them to meet specific needs. Thus looking at the best length for a course is a bit misguided and focused in the wrong area. Ultimately we need to determine which intervention on our part helps the learner meet the learning expectations.

If the tips above don’t work for you, then the next best answer is “15 minutes.”

How do you determine course length?

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One of the activities we do at my workshops is prototype an interactive e-learning module. I provide some generic content and their task is to do two things:

• Determine how to get the learner to interact with the screen
• Craft a relevant and engaging learning interaction

They spend about twenty minutes discussing ideas and then they share their ideas. It never ceases to amaze me how creative they are and what they’re able to produce within the limited time.

I find that there’s no shortage of clever ideas and creative people. However, that doesn’t always translate to the production of good e-learning courses. If we don’t lack creativity, why are there so many bad courses?

Limited Performance Expectations

Many courses only exist because of some legal or regulatory reason. They are not designed to change behaviors or performance. And the only expectation is that the organization’s staff completes the “training” by the end of the year.

In that environment, organizations are reluctant to commit resources to “training” that doesn’t do much to improve performance. And that makes sense.

When I first meet with a client, I try to distinguish the information type courses from those that require changes in performance. I want them to recognize what type of course they want and then commit the resources to meet their goals.

Unfortunately, we still have to build those compliance courses that have little impact to the organization. Here are some tips to help overcome the challenges when building compliance courses. Ultimately, I try to make them light and easy to take. Get the people in and out as fast as you can. And if possible, make the course interesting. A good story helps.

Limited Graphic Design Resources

Look at many of the award-winning courses. They’re not instructionally any more sophisticated than what the workshop participants design in our sessions. Usually the big difference is the way the course looks. The award winners or those types of courses have the resources to build nice looking courses.

However, many of the people I meet are stuck building courses with no graphic designers and limited to the free assets they can find online.

If I were to assemble an e-learning team, I’d value a graphic designer as much as I would an instructional designer. Also if 80% of what is built is compliance training, one of the best investments is to have a graphics person on staff who can make the courses look nice and visually cohesive.

No Budget for Course Design

I once worked at an organization where we were training tens of thousands of employees around the country. I was new to the organization and tried to get $80 to buy some images from a stock image site. Instead of giving me the money to buy the images, we had a team meeting with an executive manager who explained how we could save money using the images on some crappy CD she had at her desk. The organization spent about $2000 in meetings to save $80. This type of thing is typical for many training teams.

The lack of financial commitment to create effective e-learning is probably the single biggest issue I see in our industry. Organizations buy authoring software. But that’s just meets part of the need. They don’t always invest in training their staff and they rarely provide a budget to create e-learning courses.

Some of you get a budget when you build courses. But when I ask at my workshops, usually no hands go up. So if you don’t get a budget, start to ask for one. Perhaps the first time you only get $500. But the next time you get a little bit more. The key is to build the expectation that when a course is required that also means we need a little bit of money to make it happen.

If you have no performance expectations, no graphic design resources, and no budget you’re going to get the types of courses that are too common in our industry. What are some of your struggles with building better courses?

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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.

I get a lot of project management questions, specifically how to keep the projects moving forward successfully. The two most essential elements are expectations and communication.

Understand the Purpose of the Course

When meeting with clients it’s important to understand and identify the learning objectives. And then from there, to craft a good learning plan.

What do they need to know? How do we know they know it? How will the learn it? OK, let’s build it!

Create a Service Level Agreement

What is the final product going to look like? What are the course requirements? When’s the due date? How will it be implemented?

Outline the entire production process and discuss who does what and when. Identify a due date and the measure of success. Then get them to sign-off on that agreement. Whenever, there’s a dispute, refer to the agreement as the foundation for the work required.

Concerning the agreement, get the person who is the final authority to sign the agreement. I’ve worked on plenty of projects that were complete and had the client then take it to someone else above them who wanted to make changes. You want to prevent that.

Establish Clear Expectations

Once that’s in place, map out the process with a clear deliverable date and some key milestones. And at those milestones, do a check-in and confirm things are moving forward as intended. Often projects get derailed with extra content or additional requirements. The milestones are a perfect way to keep track of the project’s progress and focus on the original agreement’s expectations. If they need to make changes, then rework the service level agreement and expectations.

At the end of the project, I get the client to look over the service level agreement and the final project. I then get them to sign an acknowledgement that what was agreed upon was delivered.

Be Proactive

A lot of people wait around until the client connects with them. This often causes delays because while the course is important to you as a course designer, for the client it’s usually just once thing on a list of a lot of other things (and most likely not their top priority).

Keep things moving forward. Anticipate issues or things important to the client so that you can deal with them quickly and effectively.

There you go, four simple project management tips to that help establish expectations and instigate clear communication to help move your e-learning projects forward. Want to learn more, check out this list of tips, some cheat sheets, and a free e-book in the community.

What other tips do you have to share?

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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.

My hunch is the most e-learning courses are explainer-type content, heavy on content, but light on applied learning. This is fine, especially since most of the learning happens outside the course; however, good e-learning courses should be more than content.

Start with Clear Objectives

Most courses are content-heavy because of compliance requirements. And the main objective is certified exposure to content by December 31. If you’re building courses based on performance expectations, you need to start with clear objectives.

• What are they to do?
• How do you know they can do it?

That gives you objectives and metrics.

What’s the Best Type of Course?

The key focus is performance. Sometimes courses consist of mostly content, and then the performance and practice activities happen outside the course. And sometimes, the course is designed to simulate the real-world expectations with plenty of practice activities in the course.

• What do they need to do?
• Where can they practice it?

It’s not always easy to build viable practice activities in an e-learning course. In those cases, find ways to have them practice in the real-world.

Diversity Changes Expectations

Clients request the types of courses with which they have experience. This means typical e-learning courses with the standard object screen, some bullet points, and a final quiz. It can be a challenge to get them to see courses differently. That’s why it’s important to expose them to diverse learning opportunities.

• Collect examples of diverse types of courses and learning activities. I even like to keep samples of mobile apps. This lets you throw out other ideas to push the envelope a bit.
• Create a demo course with different treatments that vary from typical content-heavy to a bit more interactive and focused on decision-making experiences. This lets them see beyond the content.

Focus on the actions required of the learner and then try to present the course treatment around that rather than the content. The more examples of different learning experiences you can show, the better.

As a course designer, it’s you job to help the client to see past the content.

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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.

You want to build an e-learning portfolio, but not sure where to start?

At its core, the work portfolio represents your skills and expertise. For some people, the portfolio is their resume, and they build it to share what they know. And for others, the portfolio shows their projects as part of the journey that needs to be documented.

During the initial planning, decide if you want the portfolio to be static where you only do occasional maintenance and updates. Or if you want a site that’s more dynamic and continually updating?

Build a Static E-Learning Portfolio

For a static portfolio, the main goal is to show off the best of what you can do. It’s your business card. You build the portfolio and it’s not constantly being updated. It’s not something you spend a lot of time on. You only update it once or twice a year.

Here are a few considerations when building a static portfolio.

• Represent diverse skills. Identify a few common course types such as interactive scenarios, compliance training, software simulations, etc.
• Present the projects in a consistent framework: What was the goal? What role did you play? What did you build? What was the outcome?
• Keep is simple. No need to show the entire course. Either show screenshots or small chunks of the module (like just the interactive parts). You could do a quick 30-second video trailer of the module. That’s also an effective way to get around uploading a real course when it is proprietary and you can’t share it.

Build a Dynamic E-Learning Portfolio

For a dynamic portfolio, the main goal is to show what you can do as an ongoing pursuit. It highlights your evolving skills. Many people show projects, share files, and discuss things they learned on the projects.

• Determine a manageable schedule. Most people start aggressively and then peter out and the portfolio goes nowhere. You’re not a news site where you need to post every day. Start slow and be consistent.
• Commit to a production process. What tends to be the most difficult is producing new ideas. That’s why I like the weekly challenges as a way to manage the portfolio. Commit to one per month. This gives you something to build and show as a routine.
• Share your learning. Show what you built and then write about things you learned. They don’t need to be big thoughts or exhaustive. For example, you could say, “in this example, I wanted to play around with animation ideas…”
• Be the expert. Share your source files and do quick tutorials. Read an industry book or blog posts and write your thoughts.

Whether you build a portfolio as an active job seeker or to document your learning, it’s a good practice to develop. Do you have a portfolio? If so, feel free to share a link and share your thoughts.

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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.