The other day I was on an airplane and watched the person next to me “read” a magazine. He basically flipped quickly through the pages and stopped occasionally on a pretty picture and usually started flipping again. At one point he stopped and seemed to read a bit.

When we create eLearning we should remember that people don’t read…they scan!  We all do it. We quickly scan a page to see if there is any information that interests us. Then if that passes our “interest” test we might actually read a sentence and possibly the entire paragraph. Do we develop our eLearning with this in mind? Do we think that people will read all of our text? (Here’s the secret…they won’t.)

Our training must look good and capture the attention of our “shallow” learners. If we do that they may start to pay attention and read.

Here some things to think about when making your eLearning look good:
1. Color – Choose colors that work together. Your marketing department may have some swatches you can use. Focus on branding.
2. Skin – Make your course skin look fresh and up-to-date.
3. Pictures – Create images that tell a story. They could even replace some of your text. Don’t just use image placeholders.
4. Less text – Users aren’t reading it anyway so thin out the text.
5. Consistency – Make everything look like it belongs together. (Standards)
5. Interactions – Break up your content and make it engaging.
6. Fonts – They can add some style to your course just don’t go crazy.

Additional Resources:
Articulate (Tom) did an article on why looks matter.
e Learning Templates that look great and are branded.
Fresh Articulate Skins.

1. Interactions
There are many times when you have various concepts or “chunks” of information on a page. You could break it into multiple pages or divide it into sections. For example use tabs and dividers so that the user only sees small parts at a time. Here are some tabs and dividers.

You could also use some type of simple flash memory cards or drag and drop.

2. Scenarios
If you have a lot of information to share you could package it into a scenario. This is a good way to make it “real”. It also helps the user understand how it relates to them and why they should pay attention. Scenarios don’t need to be complex. They nay just be a simple setup page and a question or two.

Here are some scenario examples:
”The company has recently opened 3 new offices and a launched a new website. What products might help this company process customers’ payments?”
“You see a customer at the counter complaining about their cold food. The customer is visibly angry. As a manager what should you do?”

Here is a simple eLearning scenario template.

3. Case Studies
There are times when your scenario needs to be more in-depth. I like to use case studies when a scenario is too simple. A case study would be more intense and could include background information, bios on persons involved, current setup/date/time, multiple phases/steps, twists along the way, and decision points. Case studies take some time to create but can be very engaging.

4. Quizzes
Knowledge checks can keep a learner’s attention. You could even do quizzes before the course content is presented. This might be a good way to help the learner start thinking about the content and to give them a preview of what’s to come. Theses quizzes could be combined to create the final test. Here are some fun quiz templates and games.

5. Hands-On Demos
Many people learn by actually trying out the system (hands-on approach). Online training is a great way to give learners a way to try out a system without being live. You can recreate a series of steps in a software transaction and package it as a simulation. Learners could have three options:

• Sit back and watch a demonstration of how the software works.
• Be prompted where to click and how to navigate the software.
• Be tested to see if they can use the software without any help.

It is basically the “Tell them, Show Them, Let Them Do It” approach. Simulations are a great way to let learners practice in a safe environment.

6. Learning Games
Is there a way to make your course fun and still educational? There are many types of game ideas from word puzzles, Jeopardy, and Millionaire to more complex, immersive games.

There are tons of ways to create interactive content. Most of the time it just takes a little extra thought.

Related articles:
Check out this past article on brainstorming.
Awesome eLearning Do’s and Don’ts.

Branding a course is more than just putting a logo in the corner. It’s also more than just some pretty colors.

So, what should we think about when creating a brand for our training? Here are some questions to ask yourself:

• What should people “think” when they hear about your group/training?
• What should users “feel” when they take your course?
• What does your course visual style say?
• What expectations do you want to create?
• What “style” of audience do you have?

Branding is your overall presence. It is you.

Here are a few companies to think about:

• Google (what do you think about when you hear the name? What have you heard about their “style and brand”?)
• Apple (would you recognize one of their products in a line up with others? What would you expect from Apple?)

If you took some online training from Apple, what would you expect that training to be like? Probably simple colors, sleek design, cool, informal, and very user-friendly. Everything they do should be inline with their public brand.

Here are a few features/parts of your course to consider when branding your training:

• tone of text
• color pallet
• pre-work / post-work
• availability of contacting a real person
• use of job aids and resources
• style of visuals (simple, technical, corporate, cartoon)
• testing (present or not, certification programs, how data is used)
• mandatory vs optional
• use of text, font, and formatting

Here are some more ideas for branding your training.

What else should we be looking at and considering?

Do eLearning courses have necessary evils? I believe that they do…it’s TEXT. When we think of the worst online course that we’ve ever seen it was probably a “page-turner”. So there was a lot of text and that was it.

Here’s the secret that nobody wants to admit…online learners don’t read, they scan! Let’s admit it, most of our users are scanning our pages and seeing what stands out. If they are just scanning our text then we need to figure out how to help them understand our content.

So if text is a necessary evil, how do we keep it under control?

Make it Easy to Digest – Smaller Chunks
No learner wants to read a bunch of text on the screen and we can only remember a certain amount at a time. So, take your text and cut it into chunks. Many popular websites do this as well. Take a look at CNN and notice that every sentence is a new paragraph. This allows users to quickly scan the story. Maybe our courses should be written in that style? Or maybe something similar?

At times designers want to have less pages in a course. I really don’t pay attention to how many pages I have. I’d rather error on the side of having too many simple, clean pages than having pages with too much text.

Say NO to Jargon
Many times we work with SMEs to get our training content. They may be using words that a new employee won’t understand. It’s our job to break-down the jargon and write to the learner.

Cut, Cut, Cut…
Rewrite your text and then cut some and rewrite it again. There are many times when we use too many words. Can we convey the same meaning in 5 words instead of 15?

This reminds me of a LinkedIn discussion where people has to tell a story in 6 words. I know that a course will have more than 6 words but it shows how much information can truly be portrayed in very few words.

Use Bullets
Learners can easily scan a list. It helps them quickly breakdown the concepts.

(Before) Increased competition, recent uncertainty in the markets, and increasing expectations are just a few of the challenges we face as we seek to strengthen relationships with our clients.

(After) As we seek to strengthen relationships with our clients, we face:

• Increased competition
• Market uncertainty
• Increased expectations

Easy on the Bold, Italics, and Color
Using various text formatting can be very powerful. However if you overuse these formats they become useless.

The use of various text formatting should be explained in your internal style guide. When/what do you bold? When is colored text used? Can text be italicized?

As you format your text you can drastically help the user to understand what is important, what they should pay attention to, and how to interact with the course. Again, if it’s used too much the learner stops “seeing” it.

Talk to the Learner
I prefer to keep the text conversational. If we really want to connect with learners then formal text won’t work. As you write the course pretend like you’re are explaining it to a colleague.

When I see, “the user would then access the xxxxx screen” in a course it feels very distant. Just say, “You then access the xxxx screen”. eLearning is a one-to-one interaction.

Use Images
A picture if worth a 1000 words. Use images instead of text.

Conclusion
Is it possible to do online training with NO TEXT? Check out the videos at Common Craft. (I think that the answer is yes but probably not for every topic.)

Overall we just need to be more careful with our text. We could all spend a bit more time and come up with something that is more effective.

The phrase “Less is more” come to mind.

There are 2 ways to look at this problem:

1. The learner should be responsible and find ways to motivate themselves to complete the training.
2. Course designers should create courses that are more engaging and relevant.

How can this be accomplished? I like the ideas that Shelley shared in “Motivate Yourself to Learn through Attention, Relevance, Confidence, and Satisfaction“.

She mentions the ARCS model as a way to help learners be motivated:

• Attention
• Relevance
• Confidence
• Satisfaction

In the end we all need to be better training designers and training participants. Online training must have a motivated learner and motivating content.

Should our eLearning participants take notes?

Yes! Shelley Gable (“How Can Note Taking Help You with Online Learning?“) has a great article on this topic. She focuses on how taking notes can help a learner remember more. She also covers some note taking methods and what should be included in your notes.

Well, we might not be possible to meet all of the expectations above but we can try. There has been a major shift in Learning over the past decades. Companies have gone from 100% formal classroom training to more of a blended approach.

How do we make the learning available so that the learners can “swim in the pool of learning”? What part does formal learning have in the equation? How can we as training professionals make learning more quickly assimilated? How can we create faster?

Josh Little with Bloomfire has some great ideas, “Collaborative Learning: For the People, By the People”.

Shelley discusses that learners tend to remember the content presented first and last better than everything in the middle. (She refers to the Primacy and Recency Effects.) Now, when I first read the post it seemed like common sense. We just don’t have enough short-term capacity to remember all of it. However the point of the post is more around, “Since this is how the mind works, how are we changing the way we create training?”

Primacy and Recency Effect - Wikipedia

Do you strategically place content in your course based on if it’s closer to the beginning or ending? Maybe we should think about it a bit more.

What if the course starts with a bullet list of learning objects? What if the course ends with a text page that says, “In this module you learned…”? Do these play to the strengths of the Primacy or Recency Effects?

Here are a few ideas to “space out” training so that it’s more effective. (Kineo)

I guess we need to add this idea to our “design flow” to make sure we don’t forget to consider while designing courses in the future.

It seems that everywhere I go in the eLearning world I run into PowerPoint. Most of the new authoring tools either use PPT as their backbone or offer the ability to import slides. Interface creation, navigation buttons, LMS tracking, and testing abilities are then typically added to the PPT functionality.

I “grew-up” in eLearning world using Director/Authorware and then moving into Flash/HTML (PPT was “off-limits”).  In the past few years I’ve started using Articulate and Captivate to do the heavy lifting and using Flash more for specific parts of the overall course. Using these new tools meant that I had to start using PPT.

At first I was very anti-PPT, however I have changed my tune a bit in the past few years. I have come to appreciate that with some good thought and instructional design you can use most any tool to a decent level of effectiveness. I’ve seen terrible Flash and Lectora courses even thought they were created in amazing (expensive) tools. Then on the flip-side, I’ve seen some very creative content built with free tools.

Seems cliché but maybe it’s not about the tool. Good instructional design skills can be applied anywhere.

Here are a few reasons why PPT seems to be so widely used in eLearning:

1. Classroom training is often converted to an online format. Every classroom course has a PPT and it’s usually the first thing that someone thinks about when they want to put the course online. Unfortunately too often the PPT is simply thrown online without having truly turned it into effective eLearning.

2. Everyone has PPT. It’s probably already on every training person’s computer.

3. Everyone knows how to use it (and if they don’t it’s pretty easy to learn.)

4. You can quickly create content and there are tons of layouts, backgrounds, and color themes.

5. And last but not least, Microsoft already owns the world so why not conform?

What do you think? What has been your experience with PPT as a development tool? What is it missing? Do you think Microsoft will add features and turn it into a more robust eLearning development tool? Good article from Rapid eL Blog.

Here are some “weird” things in English:

1. The bandage was wound around the wound.
2. The farm was used to produce produce .
3. The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.
4. We must polish the Polish furniture.
5. He could lead if he would get the lead out.
6. The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.
7. Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.
8. A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.
9. When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.
10. I did not object to the object.
11. The insurance was invalid for the invalid.
12. There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.
13. They were too close to the door to close it.
14. The buck does funny things when the does are present.
15. A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.
16. To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.
17. The wind was too strong to wind the sail.
18. Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.
19. I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.
20. After I read the book I can say it was read.

More weird phrases:

• There is no egg in eggplant, ham in hamburger, or apple nor pine in pineapple.
• Quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.
• Why is it that writers write but fingers don’t fing?
• If teachers taught, why didn’t preachers praught?
• If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat?
• A wise man and a wise guy are opposites?

Isn’t English great!