10 Things That Make eLearning Ineffective

An improperly designed eLearning course is a punishment to your learners. They feel sick and tired of taking the course. The ultimate result is poor uptake of courses and high dropout rates. Based on our experience in designing eLearning courses, I have listed out 10 mistakes that eLearning course developers commit that ruin the eLearning courses. Those are as follows:

1. No clear idea about the target audience

Designing the course without knowing who your learners are is just like cooking a no vegetarian meal for the vegetarians. If you do not have any idea of who is going to take your course, then your course is sure to suffer.

2. Cluttered text

Excessive usage of text, an unorganized way of representing content and too much of content per slide may whirl your learners’ mind and confuse them profusely. This obscures the idea you want to convey. Thus, learners are bound to feel uninterested.

3. Unclear navigation

If the learner is unable to find the navigation buttons or finds it difficult to navigate through the course, it would be just like driving him to an unknown location, dropping him there and asking him to find his way out. He may get frustrated and sign out.

4. No realistic scenarios

Failing to present content with realistic scenarios and authentic examples makes it difficult for learners to relate with real-time working conditions. They may tend to dropout if they find the course not relevant to them.

5. Ineffective narration

Limited use of audio narration is very essential. Narrating the entire text presented on screen will perplex the learners. Although audio is an important criterion, an imbalance between the audio and text is sure to ruin the success of your course. (For more information on effective use of audio narration click here.)

6. Information without any specific need

Content that does not serve any purpose is just an information overload. Burdening the learners with unnecessary information increases the cognitive load among learners.

7. Poor selection of rapid authoring tools

Selection of the right authoring tool should be based on the type of content and requirements of the course. For example, Lectora is the best tool for developing content-heavy courses, Articulate for rich interactivities and Camtasia for simulation-based training courses and so on. Poor selection of the authoring tools may devalue the learner experience.

8. Poor grammar

Any eLearning course is expected to be flawless. Grammatical or spelling mistakes will surely disturb the learner focus on the course.

9. Ineffective learning objectives

Learning objectives of courses state what learners are going to achieve after the course completion. The objectives set should be in a way that it would motivate the learner to take the course. If the learners find that these objectives do not satisfy their need or fail to motivate them, then they may dropout.

10. Inappropriate assessments

When assessments are not aligned to the learning objectives or set to test the learners memory instead of learners understanding of the concept, the course may not provide the desired learning outcomes. For example if the objective is to make the learner work effectively on machinery, the assessment, instead of just asking the learners to name the parts of the machinery, should be a scenario that presents a problem to the learner.

They are many more mistakes that kill your eLearning course. Please add on to the list!