If you want to create an effective E-learning course, you have to ensure that you can avoid the common mistakes that other developers or instructors usually make. Learning from other people’s mistakes is the best way to avoid them.
Here are the common errors made that you should carefully try to stay away from.
- Having vague objectives. You should always start with a clear objective for your course. If not, your vision of the course will be clouded as well. That could lead to having a vague idea of who your audience will be. It can also affect the content that you will create and your choice of delivery. It could lead to the misunderstanding or misinterpretation of your training or lesson – thus making your elearning a failure.
- Using generic E-learning courses. Using templates, especially when you are new to making elearning courses, is okay. It helps make things more cost-efficient. However, it is important that you make it as unique as you can. Do not just copy the template. Change something to make the course more custom made. That way, it can relate to the specific needs of your learners.
- Forcing the training/lesson into an E-learning course. Let us face it, while there are a lot of training programs that can be done through an elearning course, there are lessons that can only be taught the traditional way. When we say traditional, we mean in a face to face classroom setting. This is especially true if there are practical lessons to be taught. Think about it before you really choose this delivery method before you create one.
- Failing to evaluate the course. Even if you have a clear objective and superb content, if you fail to evaluate your course after every lesson, you will never really know if you are meeting your goals. Make sure your course has a survey, quiz, or any other evaluating tools to make sure that the learners are getting what you want them to.
- Trying to create a course without the right knowledge of how to do it. Some companies would try to cut back on costs by trying to do the E-learning course in house – when clearly they do not have an idea how to. If you are unsure how to create the course, just hire someone to do it for you. Sometimes, it will save you more in the long run compared to what it will cost you to do trial and errors with your self-made course.
- Wrong use of media/multimedia tools. In elearning, we are always encouraged to utilize multimedia to make our courses interesting. However, some of us fail to use it properly. We either use too little or we use too much. Try to find the balance and learn not just how much of it to use, but the exact media tools that you should use. There are tools that work perfectly with specific courses because they compliment your content. Think about it carefully.
When creating your E-learning course, avoiding these mistakes will not really guarantee that everything will be perfect. Every situation is unique. Make sure that you setup your course in such a way that you can identify these mistakes so you can remove them and improve your course.
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