Tips to make your Rapid Elearning a Success

Rapid elearning is not about finding cheap and simple ways with design, but rapidly translating a great design into a working product. Bad design can never deliver a good final product. To begin with, the instructional designers should be task centered rather than being content centered. Usually clients are blamed for bad products, but one should realize that clients are not designers, and therefore are not expected to know the best way to design elearning.

Even today most elearning still focuses on content followed by a quiz. The best way would be to involve learners in a real world activity, and providing information only if required. Flash is a great multimedia platform to present interactive content.  Interactivities are not only about mouse rollovers or click and reveal, but to make learners do realistic work in a safe environment. 

Learners should be treated as adults with the liberty to choose what information they need. In real world you would not get information easily, but you’ll have to seek out based on the needs of task in hand. People like to explore things that look nice and appealing. An ugly and sloppy course is not going to win you audience. However, you do not need to be a trained graphic designer to make your course look good. Rapid authoring tools like articulate PowerPoint are great for doing outstanding design work like layered graphics, masking, vector graphics, and quick fix graphic effects.

Rapid elearning assessments have a bad reputation. After a lot of slides that just provide information, the last activity learners wants is a quiz that rates them on how much they remember. On the contrary challenges should be designed that will help learners to practice a skill, rather than just remembering things.