Best practices for eLearning content development
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We always strive to create and deliver eLearning solutions that help learners increase their knowledge levels. But how do you go about it? You must present content in a way that allows the learner to understand and retain the information. One of the most important aspects of providing an efficient eLearning solution is training content development. Aside from effectively communicating learning objectives, it can also retain a brand’s tone. A successful custom eLearning program improves performance and changes learning behaviours, making the overall experience memorable, impactful, and motivating. We cover accessible eLearning best practices in this article to create engaging content for every member of your audience while meeting compliance regulations.
What is content development?
When content is presented with appropriate graphics, it becomes more meaningful and helps to reduce cognitive overload. This is where you could use free eLearning templates to present content based on its type. Find the best content campaign ideas from the experts of the digital market.
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Content development is the process of researching, planning, creating, and refining various forms of content to engage, inform, and persuade an audience effectively. This process is crucial for businesses, organizations, and individuals aiming to establish a strong online presence, build brand awareness, or convey a specific message. This essay will explore the different aspects of content development, its purpose, and why it is essential in today’s digital landscape.
Content Types and Formats
Content development encompasses the creation of diverse content types, including blog posts, articles, social media updates, videos, podcasts, infographics, eBooks, whitepapers, and case studies, among others. Each content type serves a specific purpose and caters to different audience preferences, making it essential to develop a variety of content formats to reach a broader audience and achieve desired outcomes.
Purpose of Content Development
Audience Engagement: Well-developed content can captivate the audience’s attention, providing valuable information, entertainment, or inspiration. Engaging content encourages users to interact with the brand, which can lead to increased brand awareness and customer loyalty.
Educating and Informing: Through content development, businesses and organizations can educate their audience about their products, services, or industry trends. Informative content helps users make informed decisions, positioning the content creator as a reliable and knowledgeable source.
Building Brand Authority: High-quality content development establishes credibility and trust among the audience, positioning the brand as an authority in the industry. This increased trust can lead to stronger customer relationships and improved sales or conversions.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Content development plays a significant role in improving search engine rankings. By creating relevant, high-quality content that effectively utilizes targeted keywords and adheres to SEO best practices, businesses can increase their online visibility, driving more organic traffic to their website.
Training content development is an essential component of any content marketing strategy. Many people nowadays depend on online information to assist them to make purchasing decisions. The process of curating a piece of content by researching, drafting, collecting information, and incorporating textual, infographics, audio, and video material to meet the strategic goal is known as content development. You can then use content strategies to distribute it to current and prospective customers based on where they are in the sales funnel.
What are the best practices for eLearning content development?
Relevant eLearning Content
Since the average human attention span is less than 8 seconds, it is critical to avoid inappropriate information in an online training course. These programs should display the information that is important and required for a specific job designation. Another important consideration is to avoid training employees on what they already know and to respect their prior knowledge. To guarantee contextual eLearning content is provided in digital training programs, designers and subject matter experts must collaborate closely.
Content Design
Presenting the content as is without proper design can be daunting to learners and enhance cognitive overload. Divide the content into chunks to make it relevant and meaningful. Smaller information chunks make it easier for learners to comprehend the content and preserve key learnings. improving its presentation strategy.
When content is presented with appropriate graphics, it becomes more meaningful and helps to reduce cognitive overload. This is where you could use free eLearning templates to present content based on its type.
Delivery Methods
Identify the right delivery methods for the content to adequately manage the competency requirements. Customised web-based training is an excellent solution for objectives that must be measured. Such as when specific standards must be met for internal or external compliance requirements. When a user wants to explain a topic quickly and in an engaging manner but does not involve the learner to take a course, attend a meeting, or attend a traditional training course, a video may be the best professional eLearning solution. For more complicated content that necessitates detailed instruction from an expert or live mentor, instructor-led training is the best-personalised eLearning method.
Learning Portal
A learning portal is an excellent solution for wrapping multiple delivery methods. It may be appropriate to explain one concept in a video format, another in a game or activity format, and additional details in a few swift micro-learning panels. A learning portal allows you to centralise all of your learning services and provide easy access to your users through a single interface. This type of customised navigation can be beneficial for quick reference purposes. Of course, when choosing custom eLearning delivery methods, you must also contemplate the schedule, budget, and power grid. One of the primary benefits of this method of delivery is the tendency to construct content with usage at the frontline of the design. It is beneficial to begin the design process with an Excel spreadsheet modelling the content and coordinating it with specific learning objectives.
Content Development
You must work on the final stage of content development depending on the type of eLearning that you are delivering. Once relevant content chunks and presentation strategies have been identified, these content parts can be easily used for a variety of eLearning solutions such as an emailer, infographic, job aids, videos, Web-Based Training, Instructor-Led Training, quick reference guides, and so on. Aside from templates, you can use a variety of other assets for eLearning course development, such as icons, graphics, illustrated characters, and backgrounds. These can become used to create these various eLearning solutions.
Provide Job-based Training
Lessons organised around theory or product features, rather than job tasks, are the single most widespread and fatal problem in much course development today. It’s become standard practice to introduce software by walking through various menus and demonstrating product features. This simple and obvious step eliminates the need for task analysis and audience targeting. Instead of product-based training, provide job-based training. It concentrates on job-specific tasks carried out within software. Learners learn more than they would in a tour, and they discover the interface in the context of practical uses. When creating eLearning courses or other types of software training, you can quickly incorporate new knowledge into the learner’s world by looking at specific skills each person requires to complete job-related tasks. To develop directly relevant software lessons, you must tailor them to your destined audience’s job role and technical experience.
Encourage Collaborative Learning
Employees benefit from collaborative training because it allows them to facilitate peer-based learning. By including social shareability options, they can interact with one another via discussion forums, knowledge portals, and social media groups. Furthermore, simulations and real-life scenarios can aid in understanding the training topic better. As a result, a collaborative eLearning experience builds a robust training environment in an organisation from the standpoint of problem-solving in a group environment. It can be useful to think of the design document as evergreen throughout the development phase of custom eLearning.
Wrapping Up
If done correctly, these practices boost the effectiveness of your overall corporate training program. Collect the necessary information from the Subject Matter Expert and analyse the content in light of the training requirements and learning objectives. If the content was obtained through research, has it been validated? Divide the information into smaller chunks. Determine the best presentation strategy for each content chunk. Use appropriate graphics to supplement the content. Make extensive use of templates and other assets to speed up the content creation process. These best practices for eLearning content development will assist in creating an exceptional learning experience that will leave a lasting impression on the learners while broadening their knowledge horizons.
Best practices for eLearning content development
