Here’s How Interactive eBooks Elevate The eLearning Experience And Its Effectiveness

How Interactive eBooks Can Elevate eLearning
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Summary: eLearning is becoming the primary method of imparting education due to its many benefits. Interactive eBooks add to that growth by making content more engaging and effective. Teams with multiple eLearning stakeholders are involved in their development to create the best possible outcome each time.

Interactive eBooks Impact eLearning— Know Why!

The age-old tradition has been for children to gather around a known senior and listen to their stories filled with life’s experiences. The interaction enabled between the storyteller and the listener makes the entire experience that much more enjoyable. With greater fun comes greater engagement and improved attention.

The digital age version of this activity is the interactive eBook. It is a type of eBook that prompts or simply allows for the voluntary interaction of the reader with its content. It could contain visual content alone or audio as well. How interactive eBooks will boost eLearning is by taking the engagement level up several notches, allowing for smoother and lasting information transfer.

How eLearning And eBooks Have Changed The Learning Landscape

Gone are the days when teaching meant a classroom full of students monotonously listening to a tutor and scribbling notes. It is also not a world where books mean heavy objects that are a pain to haul and torturously boring to read through.

It is the era of eLearning, where the learning material is predominantly virtual, including, at times, the entire session. It has registered a growth of over 900% since 2000.

Corporate learning has been the biggest beneficiary of this transformation. Since 2011, about 80% [1] of corporate trainers have used eLearning. 93% [2] of companies globally are looking to adopt eLearning [3], showcasing its immense popularity. Academia is not far behind, with 40% [4] of college students finding it helpful.

Such adoption is expected to push the market to $243 billion globally by 2022.

The world is today witnessing the impact of eBooks on educational learning. Combined with cloud-based learning management systems (LMS), they are available for use anywhere, on any device. eBooks are not limited to displaying static images and text like their traditional counterparts; they can contain dynamic audio-visual elements.

The difference is told with these amazing statistics:

  • Student retention has increased 5 times with eLearning.
  • Online courses enable savings of up to $50,000 [5] compared to a traditional college education.
  • Companies save up to 70% [6] on their training costs when they shift to eLearning.
  • Learners can complete their courses faster with eLearning.
  • 42% [7] of US organizations have seen an increase in revenue after adopting eLearning.
  • Employee productivity has been shown to increase by 15-25% [8] and engagement by 18% [9].
  • eLearning reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 87%.

Interactive eBooks expand the possibilities of eBooks immensely. Learners and trainers can, at the single click of a mouse or tap of a screen, listen to video snippets of the material directly in the book, highlight, save, and share segments they think are important instantly, go to more resources online via embedded links, get dynamically updated questions in the practice Q&A section, and much more.

The eLearning Portfolios Behind Interactive eBook Development

The interactive eBook development [10] lifecycle is exhaustive and involved. There are many factors to take into account, requiring a dedicated team of experts in various capacities.

The stakeholders involved in the development of interactive eBooks are:

1. Training Managers

The training manager [11] is the person who overlooks all training activities within an organization. They coordinate with HR and supervisors to recognize the training requirements and devise plans for the same.

They are crucial to the development of interactive eBooks, as they bring their experience in coaching teams, developing skills, and methods of instruction. While they may not be involved with the minutiae of the eBook’s development, the goals they set provide the direction of the development.

2. Subject Matter Experts (SME)

SMEs decide what goes into the books themselves. They are professionals well versed with the training requirements of the target demographic and are also known in their respective domains.

The eBook development team may have one or many of such SMEs in it. The latter is the case if the books are to contain chapters on multiple subjects or verticals. They also fact-check any present content to ensure it meets the standards set by the organization and the requirements of the learners themselves. They will also preside over the content’s legislative compliance. They can act as the bridge between the business unit’s needs and a project team.

3. Instructional Designers (ID)

How content is presented and consumed determines its effectiveness. It could be considered the principle behind interactive eBook development. IDs are the experts who handle this aspect of the development process. They are fundamental to determining how interactive eBooks will boost learning.

Their purpose is to recognize the gaps present in the knowledge, skill, and attitude of the target audience and devise ways to fill them. They work to provide a full-fledged learning experience through the creation, selection, and suggestion of appropriate course material. They work closely with SMEs to keep the process smooth and error-free.

4. Graphic Designers/Animators

Appealing visuals are what makes interactive eBooks the attractive learning tools they are. Those visual elements are made possible by the graphic designers who work to create, select, and edit them to perfection.

They follow the requirements set forth by the personnel mentioned above and add the most suitable image, graphic, or animation in the appropriate section. Animators will be called in for the job in the latter situation.

5. IT Support Team

Once the eBook’s conceptualization, design, and content are taken care of, they need to be created, uploaded, and managed in the organization’s database. That is the job of the IT team. Their part is indispensable in interactive eBook/workbook development [12].

The team will have both frontend and backend categories. The frontend team handles the aspects of the eBook that users directly interact with. They develop the algorithms necessary to bring the eBook into existence.

The backend team works on the eBook’s data management aspects. It’s their job to ensure that its data is present in the correct section of the database and that the links to access it are not broken.

They also handle some of the security requirements to prevent attacks on the data. They also coordinate with the cloud/LMS service provider for the purpose.

6. Tutors

The significance of tutors cannot be ignored in the eLearning era. They are, after all, the people who interact with learners and work to deliver the lessons understandably. While their presence may not be required in every virtual classroom, the human component they bring to learning makes them indispensable.

Experienced tutors act as valuable assets in the development of interactive eBooks. That experience of managing learners would’ve given them insights into how people learn and how they interact with their learning material. Shaping the interactive eBook with such insights will go a long way in increasing its effectiveness.

7. Learner Test Groups

The creation of the interactive eBook is complete. All possible measures have been taken by everyone involved to ensure that it will perform as expected. But as with everything else that’s developed, testing it will tell how truly effective it is.

Who better to recognize the impact of eBooks on educational learning than the learners themselves. Running the eBook through a sample test group of them lets its creators know how close or far it is from the intended results.

The performance of the test group will inform the stakeholders about the gaps in any aspect of the eBook or how capable it is of augmenting other learning material. They can then come up with solutions to improve the eBook's shortcomings.

In Conclusion

The eLearning landscape is vast and ever-evolving thanks to technology and market demands. Interactive eBooks are another milestone in that transformation toward enhanced and quality learning.

Knowing the impact of eBooks on educational learning, you can appreciate the need to involve them more in your training. With eBook conversion [13], you get to keep the best part about legacy training material while gaining the advantages of eBooks.

References:

[1] The Ultimate List of eLearning Statistics for 2021

[2] 76 Essential LMS & eLearning Statistics: 2020/2021 Market Share And Data Analysis

[3] eBooks, Enhanced eBooks, and Apps – Understand Which Is Best for You‎

[4] E-learning and digital education - Statistics And Facts

[5] The who, what, when, and why behind online education

[6] Reducing Corporate Training Costs With eLearning

[7] 29 Astonishing E-learning Statistics for 2021

[8] eLearning Statistics and Value for your Organization

[9] Online Learning Statistics And Infographics 2019-2020

[10] A Comprehensive Guide On Creating Interactive And Enhanced eBooks

[11] Training Manager Job Description

[12] Learn How to Create an Online Interactive Workbook for Schools in A Few Simple Steps

[13] eBook Creation and Conversion Services