As the MIT Media Lab noted, too many online courses are flat and stale. They look like traditional lectures with “talking heads,” rather than creatively imagining ways to engage students from afar.
What can you do to liven them up?
Whether you work in education, at a corporation, or for a not-for-profit, here are eight tips for creating a killer online learning experience:
1. Know the Technology
Before you even think about the content, you first want to check the capabilities of the system you’ll use to deliver your course. Online courses are delivered through an LMS (learning management system) like Blackboard, Saba or SharePoint, or an open source platform like Moodle. Usually an ISD (instructional systems designer) or an UX (User Experience/Usability Expert) can let you know what kind of LMS or platform your institution uses.
According to ISD Maryam Sadigh, knowing the technology requirements and capabilities is essential before you begin designing and developing your course. Before leaping in, make sure your course and all the content can run on mobile devices, since many learners are now using iPads, Kindles, and smartphones to access their courses.
On a related note, you may want to enlist ISDs and UXs on your team. Both are trained to examine how the user will engage with online content, and can be very resourceful in helping you create a killer online course from a design perspective. They will know what does or does not work in a virtual environment, and particularly on mobile devices.
2. Spell Out the Deliverables
In designing your course, remember to spell out the learning outcomes, expectations, and deliverables upfront. Dr. Yndia Lorick-Wilmot, senior lecturer in the College of Professional Studies at Northeastern University in Boston, says that because of the challenges with communicating in a virtual environment, online courses need to have exceedingly clear learning objectives. You want to organize your content into modules that are aligned with each learning outcome to increase the likelihood that your learner will meet the course expectations.
3. Maintain Consistency
A systematic aesthetic — with consistent font size, layout, color, and navigation icons — can help optimize a learner’s experience. Dr. Rich Hancuff, manager of online learning systems at Misericordia University in Dallas, suggested checking to see if your institution has standard templates for online courses. Inconsistencies in design can be disorienting for learners who are unaccustomed to the virtual learning environment. And for seasoned online learners, lack of consistency will influence how they perceive the course’s quality.
4. Remember: Less is More
Have you ever entered a website and found the landing page so chock full of text that you couldn’t concentrate on what was important? Avoid this in your course. elearning experts like eLearning Brothers suggest that too much text on the screen can disengage the learner. Think about instead including PDFs and PowerPoint presentations for your learners to download, print, and read offline when you have text-rich content. But even then, try to be concise.
5. Make it learner-centered
There are few things worse than giving a lecture and seeing nothing but stares of boredom in return. But at least there’s an immediate feedback mechanism in a classroom. That’s not the case with an online learning environment. You may be riveted while explaining the differences between Beethoven and Bach, but your learners may be quietly scrolling through Instagram, and you would be none the wiser.
To prevent learners from tuning out, give them control over their experience by building many paths up the mountain. You could administer a pre-assessment that allows some learners to test out of portions of the course. You could also include scenarios and branching that encourage the learner to make cognitive decisions. eLearning authoring tools like Captivate, Articulate, or SmartBuilder are great for building these — but I wouldn’t attempt to use these tools if you’re unfamiliar with them and on a tight deadline. PowerPoint is an adequate — and likely more familiar — tool for quickly building branching, scenarios, and pre-assessments. Tom Kuhlmann, author of the Rapid E-Learning Blog, has written an excellent blog post on creating interactive scenarios using PPT.
6. Vary the Media
Consider using audio, video, photos, and graphs to deliver content. Most LMSs have audio and video capabilities. Just remember, as the MIT Media Lab suggested, to keep podcasts and videos as succinct as feasible. For photos, Shutterstock, Fotolia, and iStock are some of my favorite websites to obtain vector images. I’ve also had great results obtaining images from public relations departments. Remember to use clear, proportional images that directly relate to the learning material. It’s better not to have an image than to use a poor quality or irrelevant one.
7. Be Present
Communication can determine the success of your online course and the quality of the learner’s experience. According to Judith Boettcher, an expert in distance learning, the instructor or facilitator should have a presence in the online classroom. She suggests using communication tools like announcements, discussion board postings, and forums, as they let the learner know that you’re present and you care. I personally like to conduct virtual office hours and have video chats with learners.
8. Build a Community
As the MIT Media Lab piece mentioned, some of the biggest concerns about online learning are learner engagement and interactivity. MOOCs (massive open online courses) can be particularly challenging for engaging learners because, according to researcher Katy Jordan, “The average course enrolls about 43,000 students.”
There are some technological fixes to that, though. Saylor Academy and Coursera use Google Hangout to increase learner engagement and interactivity.
You can also make sure that learners can communicate with each other. Cory Jevalier France, who is pursuing an online degree from American University, particularly likes breakout sessions, chat rooms, and webinars. You could also try low-stake assessments, quizzes, polls, or discussion board forums to create this form of community. Group assignments are another way to help create community, too. Most LMSs have many of these functionalities.
Online learning is becoming an increasingly common way to teach new material to students who potentially live around the world. I hope these tips will give you some ideas to create the most stimulating and lively course possible.
Michele Simms-Burton, Ph.D. is a certified ISD with 21 years of experience designing and facilitating courses at universities, the federal government, not-for-profits, and in the private sector.
