Importance of Standardization in Designing and Developing E-learning Courses

One of our clients wanted to train his people on leadership and management in the life sciences Industry. The content was provided in the form of MS-word documents. As the client didn’t want audio, the important content must go onscreen. The content was very huge and was divided into a set of 12 modules. Each module has its own style and importance for the learners to know.

As different people work on different modules, each one of them will design the eLearning course in his own style to present the content and instructions. To avoid all this, we decided to standardize the templates. Standardization involves a set of methods that should be implemented in the same way for all modules. Standardization is very important, when you are creating eLearning curricula.

As instructional designers, we first analyzed the entire content. After the analysis, we listed out a few common topics that could be designed in the same way for all modules.

1. One such common slide was “Introduction” to the module. We introduced a manager who will explain ‘why’ you should take this course.

2. We have suggested adding a “Teaser”, which is a segment at the beginning of a module to test the learner’s prior knowledge.

3. Another common slide was “Learning Objectives”. The manager, who introduced the module, will explain what the learner will take away after the completion of this course.

4. Then, each module at the end has a “Case Example” that determines the factors led to its success or failure. This slide could be explained with the help of click on images showing series of situations.

5. Finally, we had an “Application Question” slide. This slide helps in the application of the content. The manager, who introduced the module, will explain the application of the content learned.

Not only these, we have used many other interactive slides like click on tabs, images, slideshows etc. Articulate Storyline gives you the power to present the content on the screen in an effective way. It has many different features to create engaging eLearning content. We made sure that all these interactivities also work on iPads.

As you all know, Articulate Storyline is capable of producing eLearning courses that are iPad compatible. It works well for devices such as iPads because it publishes to HTML5 (an increasingly popular format for delivering content with rich interactivities).

Standardizing a few templates makes it easier for the designer/developer to understand and quickly process the content, and it also helps in adhering to quality and ensures consistency in the eLearning courses, which in turn make the development faster. It will ensure consistent output, even when several people create the courses. Once you define the standards, make sure that everyone in the team follows them.