More and more people with no eLearning background are creating eLearning. I see the result of their work every day. I found that there are three simple things that will make the eLearning courses more effective:
- Have a clear goal
- Define proper learning objectives
- Do things in the right order
The wrong way to start creating an eLearning course
Many people who start creating eLearning for the first time start with a presentation in mind, and that is the wrong way to start. An eLearning course is very different from a (PowerPoint) presentation. Here is how you should do it.
1. Have a clear goal
Before you start with eLearning you need a well-defined goal for your eLearning course or quiz. Also remember that your eLearning course will probably not be the only thing you do, maybe you will combine it with a face-to-face meeting, maybe you will put a video online. All these things will help you to reach your goal, but every separate element will have its own specific objective. Make sure you have your overall goal clear and the separate objectives of separate element (course, quiz, classroom session, video, blog) that you will create.
2. Define proper learning objectives
When you have defined your objective for the e-Learning part of the goal you should work this out in more detail. This leads often to more than one learning objective. Defining learning objectives can be hard. But there is help and that help is called Blooms taxonomy. The taxonomy divides learning into 6 different levels, so the first step to take is to determine the level (or levels) you want to reach with your goal:
Levels of learning
| 1. Remember | Students can use knowledge and facts from long term memory. |
| 2. Understand | Students can make sense of what has been learned. |
| 3. Apply | Students can use new knowledge or information in a similar situation. |
| 4. Analyse | Students can break down knowledge to see how it all relates. |
| 5. Evaluate | Students are able to judge based on standards. |
| 6. Create | Students can use what was learned and create something new. |
If you break down the learning objectives you will find that there are always the same six elements present.
You need to define all six of them to make a good learning objective. The nice thing is that there is a range of verbs connected to each level of Blooms. For the remember level you have verbs like define, describe, state and many more. You will find that choosing a level of learning and then choosing a verb will help you greatly in creating your objective. To make it even easier, we put these levels and the verbs in a free tool. We call it the learning objective maker and it is available for everybody that wants to create a learning objective based on Bloom’s taxonomy.
Here is an example of the result of the tool:
3. Do things in the right order
The last thing for a proper start is not to start writing content. Here is the proper order:
- Create your learning objective
- Create questions that will assess this objective
- Create content that will help the learner answer this questions.
Try it out, it really help. Remember, less is more, so only add the content that is really to help the learner answer a question. If you want more detail and instruction on this. I have created an eLearning course on this topic feel free to take it.
The Learning 2019 conference
I have been to a ton of learning conferences but this will be my first time at #learning2019. I’m looking forward to it and I’m planning to report on all interesting sessions via this blog.
