Interesting Way to Present the ‘Click on Tabs’ Interactivity in E-Learning

Are you bored with the same presentation patterns and interactivities in your eLearning courses? Looking for ideas to give a makeover to the existing patterns and present them in newfangled ways?

Well, I was in a similar predicament last week and after a bit of creative thinking, found a new, interesting way to present the ‘Click on Tabs’ interactivity.

I will share it in this blog and hope it will help you come up with many other interesting ideas on presenting existing interactivities with new twists and tweaks.

Limitations of traditional ‘Click on Tabs’

Often, we use tabs in a standard layout which is present on-screen right from the time the screen loads. But this tends to get boring on repetitive usage.

• It also compels us to fill the space with images if the content is not enough to occupy the whole tab.
• This becomes daunting when the subject does not support images.
• It becomes even more confusing when one tab has a lot of content. Do we use images in all the other tabs except this one?
• What if we need to place additional content on-screen, apart from the tabs?

How do we solve these issues? This is where ‘Just-In-Time’ tabs play a major role. 

What exactly are ‘Just-In-Time’ tabs?

Well, for starters, they are not your standard tabs which are present on-screen right from the time the screen loads. As the name suggests, they appear ‘Just-In-Time’ when needed. They can appear on the screen, at locations specified by us. It could be the top-right corner, top-left corner, bottom-right corner, bottom-left corner…. the choice of placement is ours.

Also, they do not have a standard layout. They present the content in a pop-up box which can be closed after reading the content. This provides the facility of presenting important, introductory text or a single relevant image, always on-screen.

Once they appear, they remain on-screen and hence learners can visit them and read the content whenever needed.

This approach has another advantage too. If a slide needs to refer other content, that content can also be presented in these tabs which will appear only when needed, rather than being present throughout and occupying space. This is particularly helpful if the slide needs to refer some definitions, policies or part of a policy, etc.

The instruction for this tab can be ‘Just-In-Time’ too. Rather than being present on-screen, it can only be narrated in the audio just before the tab appears.

This concludes my blog on ‘Just-In-Time’ tabs. I hope you get inspired to use the regular presentation patterns in exciting, novel ways in eLearning courses.

Do share your thoughts with us.