As a learner, did you ever face a situation when you felt that a course had nothing new to offer and the same information was presented in an obvious manner like every other time you have taken an eLearning? That was a common situation for me as well... as an eLearning designer.  Every time I sat to design a course or training material, I was stuck with the same old style guide that the client has provided me and do not get enough scope to experiment. One fine day I decided to take a plunge and move forward. Visual design can affect a host of things in learning. It especially helps to concretize the learning for a more clear and memorable experience. Therefore, we, eLearning designers, must carefully observe current trends that will keep our courses from feeling lifeless. And believe it or not, 2015 is believed to be the year when these visual trends will be seen looming large over the industry and bringing about a change (for better) in the way eLearning is perceived across the globe. 

You have a Moleskin for your to-do lists. Or maybe you prefer an app. You probably get all (or most of) the items ticked off in the list. But what about the ones that you shouldn't be doing? It is as important not to do the wrong things—the ones that sap your energy needlessly or the time-wasters—as it is to do the right things. That is why, productivity champs ask you to take the Start/Stop/Continue road.  You know what to do; start doing them. Figure out what you are doing right; continue with it. But most importantly, STOP doing what is not serving you any purpose.  Here's a do-not-do list to help every eLearning professional become more productive:

"The instructional decisions we make will increase the probability that our students will learn"—Anonymous.  How do you dress? For the occasion, of course. How do you choose your accessories? So they match the dress. You take care to turn out in a well-coordinated outfit. Then why shouldn't the eLearning courses you create show such harmony? The watchword here is alignment. The most effective eLearning courses are perfectly aligned, but most often this objective gets the miss when the course is being planned. At other times, eLearning designers are clueless about the concept, so they naturally do not realize their courses are all over the place but not going where they are supposed to head to.a

If you had not been living under the rock (read: away from the Internet), you know infographics are everywhere. They are on websites. They show up on whitepapers. They are in the ads. They are splashed all over newspapers. But of course, there are plenty of good reasons why content creators use infographics. These stunners are also excellent learning tools. Most human beings are visual learners. As eLearning designers, you too should tap into the immense instructional potential of infographics. But before you blindly jump on the infographics bandwagon and splatter your course with these visuals, make sure that you stock up on information about how they work and when to use them. Badly-designed infographics or placing them out of context can increase the cognitive load of a course. So here's the lowdown on infographics.

Knowledge vs Experience You may be a wizard with numbers, but what good is your knowledge if you cannot number-crunch your way through the mortgage documents? What good is any knowledge if you cannot apply it to solve novel problems that the training courses didn't teach you about? Courses developed in the traditional manner only worry more about filling heads with knowledge. They are loaded with definitions and concepts and are probably accompanied by a list of scenarios or situations where these can be applied. The learners are expected to learn these by heart. But do business crises always turn out the way management books portray them? Can the chef never run out of ingredients when he is about to cook? Can you expect the opposing team to play the same way in every game? Do sales people deal with the same types of customers every day?  NO! Your learners are expected to "perform" at the workplace after they have taken your course, NOT blurt out facts or theories that they have memorized.  This image from Buffer's Blog makes the point clear:  As you can see in the image, knowledge is only useful if learners can make connections between what they know. Without experience, there will never be true knowledge.   

Remember those whodunits or the comic books from your school days that you stayed up late to finish? Or those old movies that stirred you so much that you still can't stifle a sob or resist a chuckle when you think about them? Was that an autobiography, a piece of news item, or a meeting that inspired you to ditch a bad habit or take up a cause for life? We all have memories of such stories that touched our hearts and changed our lives. Don't you wish your eLearning courses would touch people's lives in the same way? Blame it on tight deadlines, stringent budgets, boring (read: technical) content, or dictatorial managers, but most amongst us have created ho-hum courses that have managed to put many learners to sleep. We ourselves cringe when we remember these courses! So how can you create eLearning courses that wow  learners even when the constraints remain in place? How do you create courses that change minds? Here are four proven ways:

What is the first thing that attracts a learner to your course? In most cases, it is a photo or a graphic. No points for guessing it right!

As an eLearning designer, you are expected to create courses that are quirky and engaging besides being informative. Normally, this wouldn't be a tall order for a creative individual like you. But what bugs you is that inspiration doesn't strike you on all days. What is even more nerve-wracking is that you are expected to create wow courses from dull and drab content—systems application training, HR policies, health and safety measures, and the like. These are critical knowledge, and you have to ensure the learners remain hooked to your course. If your creative muse is not around, here are some tips to help you find inspiration.

If you scour Craigslist and LinkedIn regularly, you will often come across this ad: Creative instructional designers wanted. Requirements: Strong writing and storyboarding skills Ability to write engagingly for many different audiences Ability to convert "raw content" into crisp eLearning scripts Ability to explain complex concepts lucidly Ability to bring alive dull technical topics Excellent grammar, spelling and formatting Desire to improve skills by attending eLearning Webinars and joining Instructional Design groups Phew! It is evident that companies are on the lookout for instructional designers who can do more than just put together a bullet list of tips. They want people who can create evocative prose that touches the audience's hearts, appeals to their logic, and rouses them to action. They want creative writers and out-of-the-box thinkers. Especially, companies are looking for good writing skills. The ability to write well, they say, reflects the ability to think well.  Your learners are crunched for time and have short attention spans. You have to create scenarios that are as riveting as a whodunit, dialogs that sound natural, and characters that seem as real as the average man on the street. However, you have to also ensure your script delivers the learning lucidly.

What do you want your learners to think or care about? What do you expect them to accomplish? Can you answer these questions? You should! They'll help you define clear and sound course objetives without wasting time and energy.  However, a bunch of phrases that are put together and doesn’t clearly relate what the learners should be able to achieve at the end of the course is of no use. The objectives need to be written in a way that the learners can relate to their need for taking the training and visualize the end result or the learning outcome. Before writing objectives, you always have to think from the learner’s perspective. You should step into their shoes to understand their needs and aspirations. Also consider the demands of their jobs, so you know exactly what skills they need to excel in their professional duties. Being an integral part of the instructional design process, you can't deny the importance of knowing how to write rockin' course objectives. 

Do you talk to your audience or talk down to them? What does your eLearning courses read like? Like a text book that makes your audience doze off or an interesting story that they can't wait to read through? Do you come across as friendly, knowledgeable, and convincing in your courses or is there something about the way you talk that puts your audience off? The tone you adopt for an eLearning course isn't about what you say but HOW you say it and the effect it has on your learners. Learners may not see their instructors face-to-face but that doesn’t mean they won’t notice your approach. On the contrary, words have to work harder than ever if you don't want to lose your learners. In eLearning, text and audio are the only way to show emotions, personality, and training intentions. Besides, man is a social animal, and he likes to talk to other human beings. An advertisement from a "brand" or a list of instructions from a "business" is not as convincing as an endorsement from a friend or advice from someone trusted. The courses you create should read or sound like the kind and wise words from some such friendly and knowledgeable person who wants to help the audience. You should write in a human tone. Need some inspiration? Check out these articles: Why an Informal Tone Gets Results in eLearning Tone of Voice Matters (In Surprising Ways) Humanize Your eLearning Courses or Risk Losing Learners

In an earlier post, you got the low-down on how to find the right tone for an eLearning course. But writing in the tone that resonates with your audience is not just about doing one thing right. It starts from understanding your learners to identifying the language and the emotions that appeal to them.  The tone you choose will inform all of your written copy, including instructions, feedback messages, scenarios and stories. You have to not only be authentic but also maintain a consistent tone throughout the course. For this, you need a guide, a checklist of sorts, that will help you be on track. Call it the Tone of Voice Guide. This guide will set the ground rules for how you should write in your eLearning course, keeping every screen and learning activity consistent from start to finish.

What do you think is the first thing people would remember about your eLearning course’s screen, if suddenly asked? It should be no wonder that what they will put design on top of the list. But why does this happen? Although you may think that the information provided is much more important than the design, people are visual creatures, and they easily associate memories with colors, texture and images. If you want your eLearning course to create a long lasting impression, do not neglect the importance of an impactful design. Test one or all of these ideas to keep your eLearning courses looking fresh, engaging, and innovative.

What do you remember more vividly? The steps of installing a piece of new software on your computer or the episodes from your favorite TV drama? Human beings are more swayed by emotions than by a bunch of hard facts and cold statistics. Our favorite stories keep us hooked because they tug at our heart strings. We remember scenes from our favorite movies because as a rule, human beings remember emotionally-charged events better than the ones that just aim to appeal to our sense of logic. Understanding the science of emotions is the key to influencing learners' thoughts and actions. As an instructional designer, you need to wrap your wits around this science to create courses that resonate with your audience and stir their emotions. Robert Plutchik's Wheel of Emotions holds the clues.

Wordiness is, without a doubt, one of the biggest enemies of eLearning. Overly wordy content makes it difficult for learners to concentrate. Having more material to consume makes it complicated for them to judge, analyze and make sense of what they are reading. Indeed, studies prove that lessons with the fewer words results in more learning. But what exactly is wordiness? By simple definition, wordiness is defined as a way of telling something with more words than necessary.  A common mistake done by eLearning course creators is the tendency to over-explain everything. If you are one of these people, your intentions are commendable; however, your end result will be that you will bore your learners to death.  

We, instructional designers, know the feeling. We take copious notes when we interview the SME, and when we return to our desks, we are at a loss wondering what information to include in the course and what to toss out. Most of us end up squeezing into the course almost everything the SME had said. At other times, we read through the raw content, fall in love with a piece of data that is new to us and seems exciting, and cram it in the course. The result is an information-heavy eLearning course that overwhelms the learner but does not benefit him or elicit the response from him that you had desired. Information overload is a common pitfall that eLearning designers should be wary of.  Your goal should be to create a course that packs in only that much information that fulfills the learning outcomes. Relevance increases learner engagement. Besides, your adult learners are busy people; you cannot expect them to sit through a course as you ramble on. 

eLearning comprises of two kinds of designs - instructional design and graphic design. When we as commoners think about design, all we think of is superficial things. But design is more than just aesthetics. It involves emotional connect. It involves creating solutions that help in improving the lives of people. Garr Reynolds rightly said that design changes things either in a profound or subtle manner. And good design almost always impacts the lives of people, irrespective of how subtle the changes may be. Everyone concludes that design makes a great difference and that is quite obvious. But is there any living evidence that actually proves this claim? Yes, there are plenty of them.

There are few things more frustrating than finding an awesome, free online design tool then not being able to find it again. As an eLearning course designer you likely have experienced this problem along with the increasing demands put on you to not only write a course but also to design graphic elements. Because of this, it is more important than ever to have your arsenal of design tools organized and ready so you can work efficiently without working harder. Over the years we have bump into different tools, sites and free resources that have been very helpful to us, so we’ve collected them and we are sharing them with you!

We remember the scenes and dialogs from some movies long after we have seen them. Some songs continue to haunt us even though we have not listened to them for ages. We can still recite rhymes and poems we learned when we were toddlers. Do you wonder why? Or if you are an instructional designer, have you wondered how you can create such sticky courses? How can you create courses that learners will remember easily and recall effortlessly long after they are back at their workplaces? It is challenging because forgetting is natural. Scientists carried out a test on some subjects who had to study textbooks, retain, and recall the information. The results were startling: after a day, the subjects remembered 54 percent of what they had learned and after 21 days, they remembered a paltry 18 percent. But are you surprised? When we were in school, most of us didn't remember what we learned in the earlier grade. As instructional designers, you have to create courses that are easy to remember and difficult to forget.

While a great eLearning design can act as a tonic and engage the learner at an optimum level, a bad eLearning design can lull the learners to sleep.  That's right, how your learners perceive the instructional content is more often than not dependent on the design element. Learners ignore cluttered and boring design. They gravitate, instead, to one that’s aesthetically pleasing. If you are new to design, or looking to brush up on eLearning design best-practices, this post is for you! 

If you’ve ever found yourself tearing through your whole house looking for an instruction booklet to fix a phone, tablet or other device that had the audacity to stop working just when you needed it most then you know how important it is to know the procedure for things. Procedures are action oriented. They help complete a task with detailed, step by step instructions. They guide us through the soul-crushing darkness of malfunctioning electronics and help us complete simple to complex tasks. 

It’s no secret that people do a great deal of learning through what they see. Because of this, eLearning professionals have the double duty of not only creating informative courses, but ones that are visually engaging with graphics that add to the learning process. The good news is, with the variety of handy and often free or low cost tutorials, tips and tools to be found online, you don’t need to be a rocket scientist when it comes to design.  In this article we’ll look at easy ways to use basic design skills in order to create new graphics or enhance existing ones.  There’s no need to spend money on expensive graphics or give up control to a freelancer when you can create graphics on your own. 

Whether you’re an aspiring eLearning designer or a seasoned pro with years of experience, there are some key characteristics that predispose people to succeed at this industry, and we’ve listed them here. 

Captivating and engaging. These are the two visual design goals of every eLearning designer. Captivating visuals direct attention and focus on the content, engage the learner’s curiosity to discover more about the topic, and hence simplify communication of ideas. They make your content memorable. This post highlights three simple ways you can leverage your existing images, icons and shapes, as well as creating new ones to boost your course design. Happy designing!