You might have often noticed how a pop of color can instantly uplift your mood. But have you ever spared a thought about how it can change the course that you are currently designing? If you are not aware yet, the color that you use in your courses can have a tremendous impact on the mood of the learner and how they ultimately absorb the information. Now you may ask how colors can impact an eLearning course. Well, 70 percent of the information that people capture in their minds is through visual clues. And this is primarily the reason why colors can have a deep impact on your learners.  There are several ways in which colors can change the entire outcome of your course. Certain colors reduce the stress level while others challenge your grey cells through visual stimulation or pattern seeking. Visual stimulation encourages visual thinking and reduces impassiveness. Give a thoughtful consideration before choosing a color palette for your course. When colors are chosen correctly, you can influence how learners decipher what they see. 

It's no secret that colors have an enormous influence over our perceptions of daily life—consciously and subconsciously. For example, warm tones stimulate and energize our senses, while cool hues bring in freshness and calmness.  This means that we as eLearning designers need to make sure we understand what it takes to make good color choices. A little color psychology may be the secret sauce to produce soothing and productive moods in your learners.  In this post, we will briefly discuss how you can use cool colors to your advantage when designing your eLearning courses.

OMG! Did you just shoot the learner? What did you do? Did you misfire a bullet? Or did you pump in too many bullets? Be careful. The bullet is a powerful weapon. You must use it wisely to create the right "impact." We are talking eLearning here. And the bullets are those little black dots that instructional designers are either obsessed with or hate with a vengeance. The former breed litters their courses with bullet lists—an overkill. The latter group avoids bullets like the plague; they probably do not know how bullet lists make learning matter more comprehensible. As an instructional designer, you have to tread the middle path. Do not pay heed to what the fatalists say. Bullets are not bad. Period. On the other hand, don't be too trigger-happy either. Use bullets wisely to make your courses look good, read intelligible, and make sense to the learner. But before shooting off the tips, here's what you must remember about bullet lists: Bullet lists help to structure ideas and present them in bite-sized chunks that are easy for the learner to skim over. Bullets are like mini headlines. The ideal bullet item is a crisp phrase that presents just the essence of an idea; it is not a rambling sentence that makes the learner trail off midway.

They say, one rotten apple spoils the whole basket. If you are an instructional designer, you are probably nodding your head in agreement. Someone somewhere churns out a few trashy courses and manages to shoo away learners and business owners. Business owners take one look at these and decide they don't want to commission another one ever while learners doze off midway through the course and decide they won't waste their valuable time any more.

Let’s face it: sometimes we may feel as we’re subbing for the whole personnel in a circus. Day in and day out, we are faced with the challenge of juggling content, walking the tight rope of creative storytelling and making our audience gasp with amazement at sensational graphic design. As an instructional designer, we welcome all the help we can get! The good news is we have lots of it, if we look in the right place. So, without further ado, here to assist you on your one-man (or woman) eLearning show is a toolbox of small yet enormously helpful apps and websites for your everyday tasks.

So, you think you found your calling?

The specialized and in-depth knowledge subject matter experts have is a treasure trove for their organization. If leveraged with a learning initiative and transferred properly, it can significantly boost overall performance within that organization.

Attractive, compelling, easily consumable —People have come to love Infographics. They simplify data and makes consuming them easier. They are exciting! And they jazz up your eLearning course like few other elements can!

Concepts are knowledge tools that identify, define, explain, analyze, and demonstrate real-life elements and events. These are broad ideas that are in many instances, true across geographical and cultural boundaries. There are two kinds of concepts: sensory and abstract. The characteristic features of sensory concepts are tangible, can be picked by one or more of our sensory organs, and are apparent in any example you may pick up. For instance, a course for trainee physicians to help them learn how to diagnose diseases will mostly deal with sensory concepts. On the other hand, some features of abstract concepts are neither visible nor tangible. Courses on people management and leadership often contain abstract concepts. As an instructional designer, you will have to teach both sensory and abstract concepts. Here’s a three-step process to help you teach concepts:

Remember how you learned math? You went through four stages. You learned what adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing mean (tell). Then your teacher taught you how to add, subtract, multiply, and divide (show). You practiced sums (do), and then came the dreaded exams (apply). This is how all learning takes place, and it is no different with eLearning.

A metaphor is a powerful figure of speech. It strings together seemingly disparate ideas and/or objects to create novel associations that bring to life and simplify an abstract concept or a complex process. It creates a "shortcut to understanding." Metaphors grab eyeballs by creating novel (sometimes wacky) associations that tickle readers and keep themengaged. Metaphors can also trigger powerful emotions. His business went bust. Vs. His business collapsed like a house of cards. The field is full of yellow flowers. Vs. The field is a carpet of yellow blooms. She felt hopeless. Vs. She was in a bottomless pit of despair. The two sentences in each of the above sets convey the same idea, but the second sentence in each case paints a more vivid picture or evokes a stronger emotion. That's because the sentences use metaphors to emphasize an idea or to expand on the meaning.

Your e-Learning course must have a narrative that flows. Like a cinematic masterpiece, your selection of graphics, text, audio, and video all need to work together — complementing one another so that your learners remain glued to the screen. A great way of developing a narrative that flows is by using various cinematic techniques. Hence, this post will highlight some film techniques that will give a touch of Hollywood to any eLearning course, and which (of course) every eLearning designer must have in their toolbox. But before we can start calling/taking some shots, there is some storytelling to be done.   

You have 60 seconds to hook, engage, and keep learners in your course. Within these 60 seconds you have to make a connection with your audience of learners, introduce them to your course, and show them why they need it and how it will make a difference. You must address and succinctly answer all of the following: Is this the right course for me? Will it be covering the right topics? How good is its content and delivery? How long before I lose interest and get bored? Achieving all of this within the first 60 seconds is the objective of your introduction. This post will explain four simple but useful ideas to make your introductions powerful and memorable. Let’s see how you can hook your learners and reel them in within the first 60 seconds.

With the coming of the Internet, gathering information on almost everything under the sun has become easier than ever before. Just type a few words and Google will throw up tons of information. For instance, there seems to be as many web pages on instructional designing strategies and Photoshop tutorials as there are eLearning designers. But there's a catch. You still have to click open the websites, scroll through them, and read up pages of text to fish out information that is relevant to your needs. It is easy to get lost in the minefield of information that the Internet is. What is scarier is that not all websites house authentic information. So how can you find what you are searching for quickly and easily? How do you make sure that you learn instructional designing theories and skills only from authentic sources? We have put together a list of Web resources to help you get hold of the most comprehensive and authentic sources of information on eLearning and instructional design. Here they are:

As eLearning designers, we have to wear many hats and juggle multiple tasks. We write storyboards, interact with clients and SMEs, coordinate with team members from multiple functions, keep an eye on how the course is shaping up, and ensure the project sticks to the schedule. Oh yes, most of us work on more than one project at a time. Of course, we are expected to be on top of our games and be productive always. It is easier said than done. But, there's nothing that you cannot achieve with sincerity, patience, and a wee bit of effort. You just have to make small changes at work and shift certain thought patterns to become more productive. Below are some ways of becoming more productive. Not all may work for you, but it never hurts to try.

A well-designed eLearning course is a treat for the eye, punches in the message hard, keeps you glued to it, and sticks in your mind. But as an instructional designer, you know how challenging it is to develop such a course. From client and SME interviews and chunking content through to storyboarding, developing, and deploying, the eLearning workflow is time-consuming and demands exacting standards. And there are the time and budget constraints. You have to manage your time, so you can keep up with the pressure and still pull off winners. You learned about some productivity hacks in an earlier post. Here are some more hacks to amp your efficiency and happiness at work. 

There's you. Then there are the graphic designers, the coding guys, and the client. How do you ensure that you are all on the same page about the eLearning course that you are developing so painstakingly? How do you ensure that at the end of the developmental stage, your client does not come back perplexed with these words, "But I thought you were going to…?" These ominous words usually trigger a flurry of activity back at the drawing board. Efforts increase, costs escalate, and tempers are frayed (usually at the client's end). How do you ensure that all stakeholders get a fair idea of how the eLearning course will turn out to be right at the outset, so you are spared the re-work? Do Rapid Prototyping. Here's everything you need to know about it.

For freelance eLearning professionals and training consultants, building and nurturing relations with clients is integral to the success, growth, and sustainability of their business. Poor communication is a surefire way to damage any project or relationship. Regular/prompt, detailed, and personalized communication. That’s the secret to keeping clients happy and your eLearning projects on track. This post will highlight the important tips for keeping healthy communication with your clients, without losing your sanity.

What’s the point of creating a course that no one wants? No point at all, right? YET, we find hundreds of eLearning designers creating courses that nobody wants. Courses which the designers themselves can’t figure: who would want! It should ALWAYS be the other way around. Designers must first understand their target audience and then build content around their needs, circumstances, limitations, preferences, and wants. This means that one must move beyond the common descriptions handed out by SMEs, the manager, or even the client.  Hence, this post where I will talk about empathy mapping — an intuitive, yet highly powerful framework that uses a set of questions that puts you in your audience’s shoes. It is a great way for engaging with SMEs as well as performing your own research. 

Remember those days in school when you used to cram in whole books the night before the test? Did you remember afterwards even a wee bit of what you gobbled up within the space of a few hours? You didn't because you had to cram in the same chapters again when the next test was around. On the other hand, you still remember the multiplication tables that you learned years ago. Why do you think you forgot what you learned the night before the test and remember what you learned years ago? It couldn't be that you didn't work hard to learn. No it isn't. The answer is in the way you learned. Crammed or typical learning (learning in a hurry and all at once) does not aid retention. But when learning is both spaced out and repeated, you remember more. As an instructional designer, it is imperative that you know the difference between the two learning methods, so you can design courses that stick.

Why do you think film makers employ scriptwriters to write dialogs? Why can't anybody write an ad copy? Why do writers spend hours polishing the language of their texts? Why do our political leaders and heads of nations depend on speechwriters to write what they want to say to their followers? That's because words matter! Words are powerful tools that can stir emotions and rouse crowds to action. A cheery "hello" breaks the ice. A heartfelt "how are you" is the start of many lasting relationships. A sincere "sorry" mends broken hearts. And think of all the great political speeches delivered throughout the centuries. Those words have led entire nations to war and ushered in social revolutions. Words are so powerful that they can change the way the brain perceives to make us act and feel.

We have been designing eLearning for quite some time now, but this blog post from Canva made us realize that great design is actually simple to create if you follow a few rules. So we thought we will spill the beans and let the world (the other eLearning designers who are still fumbling with the rules of the game) know about the 9 essential design tactics that will magically transform ho-hum eLearning courses into scintillating works without compromising on instructional effectiveness.

As eLearning professionals we want to take our students on a learning adventure where they come out on the other side brimming with knowledge, inspiration and staggering awe for their superhero-like trainer. Ok, maybe these goals might be a tad unrealistic. Even the best eLearning designers can sometimes drop the ball when it comes to training because we forget that what comes easily to us might not come easily to our students and maybe, just maybe we might even overestimate our students’ abilities and interest level. In order to effectively train, we have to evaluate how we present information and make it easily accessible to both novice and expert learners. The trick is though; we can’t dumb down information to the point that it sounds condescending. Remember, at one point there was a time even you didn’t understand the techniques you are now training, keeping that in mind will help direct your training style.

When it comes to eLearning, every course will be unique. Hence, the purpose of your efforts needs to be defined before you begin to plan and develop the course required to meet that end. This is done by creating an overall strategy for the eLearning project.