Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Tips for creating effective content

eLearning works best when...
1. Content is broken down into 10-20 minute chunks (a "courselet").
Interruptions usually happen faster than that, but 10-20 minutes is the
general concentration span before saturation (or boredom) kicks in.
2. Courses are built so that they can be taken over several sessions
3. Content is searchable so that students can come back to it when they
need details. That is, instead of making them memorize a series of
steps for a procedure, teach them where they can find those steps
written down. When they need it, they should be able to get it.
4. Content is delivered at the student's pace, not the instructor's.
Avoid self-propelled PowerPoint (especially those with flying bullets
and dancing pigs.) Instead provide more web-like delivery (like Google
does).
5. Content shows up quickly - avoid long downloads like videos or a
Flash that has to download entirely before playing.

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