4 Steps to Great E-Learning Design

Learners and the future workforce now engage predominantly with online content and enjoy games and gamification. This is where eLearning can really support your learning and training goals, offering personalised content and measurable outcomes that appeal to young people and today's employees. 

So what are the key ingredients to creating successful eLearning that achieves results? Our Lead eLearning Designer Richard Pipe gives us the steer. 

1. Storytelling

Since the Caveman era, people have communicated by telling stories, using images and symbols to convey messages. In that respect little has changed! It's instinctive to most of us to enjoy a good story. Successful eLearning design relies on creating an interesting narrative that flows throughout the course.

Working with experienced scriptwriters we can help you get your story straight, right from the start. We can work alongside you to bring the content of your course to life! Whether the content is serious, sensitive or more light-hearted we know how to keep it engaging. Part of doing this is to condense what would be thousands of words or pages of content into short bursts of information explained using a variety of media and interactive tools that are quicker and easier for learners to understand and digest. 

2. Engaging Content

Sports and wellbeing industry's amongst others are particularly good at utilising online learning. They create content that works with modern lifestyles, simple, easy to use with goal orientated outcomes for, example Weightwatchers Flex, daily workout apps, how to cook a healthy meal, video's on mindfulness and full eLearning courses designed to educate and inspire. 

Using a mix of interactive and engaging activities is key to keeping the learner engaged. From drag and drop activities, real-life simulations and scenario based learning the learner is constantly challenged, which keeps them focused on the learning. 

An example of this type of work is a course we created in collaboration with Worldmark Films for the International Olympics Committee.  Designed to educate female athletes on a range of topical issues, the content needed to be sensitive, personalised and engaging. 

 View our work

3. Personalised Content

Personalised content is increasingly popular, used by businesses and marketing to achieve better results. Research suggests that people engage more with personalised content, whether it's an email, online subscription service or eLearning the results are the same. 

In response to this, our designs are fully customisable and can include intelligent entry points. Intelligent entry points assess the learners understanding of the topic or role within an organisation and send them on the pathway most applicable to them, meaning they will receive content that is most relevant to them. 

In this example we produced personalised eLearning content for Apprentices at SAKS Education. The user is taken on a journey and after completing some generic learning, the user selects their pathway which changes the content, images and interactive learning to their option. 

4. Dynamic Design

Capturing and retaining the attention of the learner is crucial to the success of the course. We use bold fonts and where possible vibrant colours. Using our experience in graphic design we can create bespoke graphics and a consistent feel to the course. 

Having worked alongside sports, education and business for over 20 years we know how to create innovative solutions that exceed expectations. 

"My experience of working with First Media has been fantastic! They exceeded expectations and were incredibly responsive, despite the size of the project and the deadline for delivery. We’ve been so impressed we have already started work on developing more courses with First Media."

Dr. Samantha Pickles, Lead Forensic Scientist, Forensic Access

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