So you’re creating an online course and want to know how you can improve it for your students so they walk away feeling fulfilled and confident from their learning experience…
Let’s not waste time and just jump into some quick tips to improve your e learning course for student engagement and learning retention.
E-Learning Examples: Enhance Your Online Course
Handouts
Handouts offer students something tangible they can take away from the course. They can provide a quick-reference to key information or space to practice what they’ve learned.
Go beyond informational handouts and include sections that prompt students to reflect and recall information.
Quizzes and Assessments
Quizzes and assessments offer an opportunity for students to apply what they’re learning and check-in to see how they’re doing at set stages during a course.
Assessments allow students to teach-back the information they learned, recall information, and think critically about how they may apply the information they learned to real life examples.
Templates and Standardized Formats
Do yourself and your students a favor and create a standardized structure and templates for your course materials.
Not only will this make your course more cohesive and professional, but the consistency will make the user experience much smoother for the student.
Closed Captions
Including accurate closed captions for your course video content play a vital role in ensuring your content is accessible for individuals with hearing impairments.
Many individuals without hearing impairments benefit from closed captions as well so by including them you are creating a more inclusive learning space for different learning styles, needs, and preferences.
Visuals
If your course content mostly contains slides that are walls of text, consider what portions can be transformed into useful visuals such as video clips, images, graphics, graphs, bullet points, demonstrations, or animations.
The same idea goes for the talking-head style of video content. Students don’t want to stare at you talking the whole time, cut away to one of these visual elements to help retain interest and keep students engaged.
Wrap-Up: Developing ELearning Courses - E Learning Examples
To develop effective e-learning courses it’s important to prioritize strategies that will boost student engagement and learning retention. Get to know your students and their unique learning needs for the content you’re teaching and implement some of the e learning examples above.
Providing interactive handouts that go beyond mere information, implementing interactive quizzes and assessments, and standardizing your materials enhances the overall learning experience.
Additionally, integrating accessibility features like closed captions, and visuals such as videos, graphics, and animations can significantly improve engagement and comprehension, ensuring students successfully complete your course.
Leave your course creation questions in the comment section below, and let's continue the conversation on how to make your online course even more impactful and successful!
And don’t forget to download our Online Course Template.
Inside you'll find a general template and an example outline for a 5 week course.
Hope it helps you move forward in your course creation journey!
About the Author
Sara is a Registered and Licensed Dietitian, artist, writer, and video editor. She holds a Bachelor's of Science degree in Nutrition from Oregon State University. In 2021 she founded The Kerrminator LLC, which specializes in creative services including video editing, graphic design, and content creation.