Here’s a news flash: If you want to be really great at eLearning design, you need to know more than how to come up with an attractive look and content that gets attention. What’s the secret? Becoming savvy about psychology and behavior. Why? Psychology plays an important role in creating content because it’s all about your learner’s emotions and perception. Simply put, as designers, we have to build effective eLearning courses based on needs and emotions to instill feelings in eLearners. Knowing a bit about social patterns doesn’t hurt either. Design Based on Psychology The whole point of taking psychology into consideration is the end product: individuals who are happier and who will probably experience effective eLearning. Take a peek at some thoughts on the psychology of design: "Psychology is the science of behaviour and the mind. When design and behaviour match, the design will be superior." Simon Norris, NOMENSA.  "A great-looking design isn’t always a great working design and often design without psychology is a source of dangerously misapplied effort." Paul Davies  "Designers are actually psychologists who can draw." Paul Davies 

Usability applies to any user interface, from a door handle to an airplane cockpit - or an eLearning course. It means, simply, how easy it is for users to get what they need out of the device. How usable your eLearning course is, is one of the most important factors that make or break your entire program. Usability is so  critical in eLearning because every minute students spend learning to use the software is a minute out of their time spent learning the content. If you are in the middle or just starting an eLearning course, before you go any further, ask yourself if you have covered the 5 E's of usability .Use these as guidelines or standars to make sure your course is as usable as you can make it.  

Recently, we found some powerful words by Carrie Cousins which made us think on how they apply to eLearning: "Design for readability or don’t bother using text at all. If you want your content to be effective, it must be readable."  As a learning professional, your responsibility is not just to deliver eLearning content to your students - it’s to make sure that it’s engaging and readable. What that means, is that you’re going to have to learn about design, especially typography. At its essence, eLearning is mostly about reading, and if what you’re offering is visually confusing or hard to read, your then your material simply fails to deliver. And since readability is an essential aspect of comprehension, it's necessary to consider the ease with which students can read the text.

Persuasion is an art. Try too hard, and you might be branded as being aggressive. Be gentle, and your message will probably be brushed aside. At the end, the ultimate goal of persuasion is to get a person to change. Persuading someone to come round to your point of view is especially challenging in a virtual learning environment that lacks the intimacy of a face-to-face interaction. What is more, your learner has a choice to go or not go through your course. Thankfully, researchers have figured out how the learner's mind works and how to "persuade" it to fall in line with your content. Monroe's Motivated Sequence lists a proven process—Hook, Need, Solution, Visualization, and Action—to convert a reluctant learner into an enthusiastic participant who readily absorbs the learning and willingly agrees to change his behavior. In eLearning, "telling isn't teaching," and you cannot persuade if you just state the facts. Facts alone won’t significantly change the way people think, do, and feel. You have to carefully choose every element on the screen to do all the coaxing, cajoling, imploring, and pleading to engage and persuade your learners to do something new. Follow this no-fail process for creating eLearning that persuades and changes behaviors. 

Is it possible to make people respect speed limits just for fun? This was the question posed by Kevin Richardson, winner of Volkswagen’s Fun Theory Award. In Stockholm, the Swedish National Society for Road Safety, together with Volkswagen, made Richardson's idea a reality. They installed a lottery radar speed camera which has two functions: Penalizing drivers who exceed speed limits. Giving a lottery ticket to those who drive below the limits, for a prize consisting of the money raised by the penalties. Result: More people respected speed limits. By turning the goal of lowering speed levels into a competitive game, people are more inclined to do it - increased responsibility through gaming.

You have to schedule meetings with the SME. You have to speak with the business executives to figure out the learning objectives. You have to know the target audience. It seems you have your hands full. Why should you bother to rack your brains and think of a story? Why would you need to tell a story in an eLearning course? Stories hold enormous power over our minds and hearts for a reason. They are how we think, how we make sense of information, how we define ourselves, and how we persuade others. According to a recent article in Psychology Today, stories continue to hold power in this digital age because the human brain hasn't evolved as fast as technology and it's only through stories that we can connect to the various digital platforms and media messages out there today.  Stories can improve your eLearning courses, not only making then more instructionally effective but also more engaging.

The need to disseminate education efficiently imposed that classrooms should no longer be confined within four walls. So distance learning came into being. Then as technology evolved, lessons were not only delivered to mailboxes (the ones on the curb) but also reached learners on their computers. Thus eLearning developed. And now, because learners are no longer tethered to their desks (the rise of the remote and mobile workforce), learning is being delivered to their hand-held devices where they can consume it on the go. Although e-Learning and m-Learning are used synonymously in many quarters, the two modes of learning differ in many aspects. As a learning designer, you must know all about the two formats so that you can create effective instructional content for each. We've gone over tons of articles that talk about the differences between eLearning and mLearning, so we've created this blog post to save you time doing your research. Here, we list down four of the main differences between both terms.  You might want to check out these articles: Is M-learning versus E-learning or are they supporting each other?  Mobile Learning versus E-Learning - Is There a Difference? mLearning: The Way of Learning Tomorrow The Different Uses of E-learning and M-learning Desktop Versus Mobile Learning mLearning Is Not eLearning on A Mobile Device From E-Learning to M-Learning: A Different Beast Right Time and Place: mLearning Use Cases

What is Gamification? Most people describe Gamification as "the application of game elements to non-game contexts to increase user engagement". But we especially like Karl Kapp's definition: "Gamification is the cover to add the interactivity, engagement and immersion that leads to good learning". 

"Responsive" is IN. It is the buzzword amongst web designers, website developers, and content creators. And it is time eLearning professionals learned it as well. Your learners have access to a host of devices with different display capabilities. After working hard to design and develop a course, you will want it to show up in all its glory and fidelity whatever the device it runs on.  But wait… What is Responsive Design? In Responsive Web Design (RWD), the on-screen content realigns itself automatically depending on the size and resolution of the screen it is being displayed on. This ensures optimal viewing performance irrespective of the nature of the device.  For instance, if you are viewing a course that features a Responsive Design, be assured that you won’t be made to pan endlessly or squint to read the text even if you choose to access it on your hand-held mobile device whose screen is smaller than that of your PC. The various graphical and textual elements will size and orient themselves automatically to match the dimensions of the screen. Similarly, you won’t have to resize the various on-screen elements if you choose to view the course on your laptop. See: 50 Examples of Responsive Web Design

With the rapid rise of smartphone and tablet penetration across the globe, high-resolution screens and improvements in broadbands speeds and connectivity, online video consumption continues to grow. According to Cisco's 2014 Report, Mobile video accounts for 55 percent of all data traffic. The same trend is visible in eLearning.  For instance, Video was ranked 3rd on the list of top formats for mLearning (ASTD 2012).  But why? This is mainly because the human brain is hardwired to engage better with real conversations (where the tone of voice and moving images/gestures create a multi-dimensional experience). And that's what video is all about: it combine texts, images and sounds to create an immersive learning environment. Adding video to eLearning courses is a sure way of increasing engagement. Additionally, creating videos has become easier for the eLearning designers, whereas it is fast becoming the de facto’ choice for learners.