Technology took a huge leap forward in the recent years, with new devices being released on the market that we could have only dreamed of at the beginning of the 21st century. Needless to say, the Internet continues to grow even more every day, having whole virtual worlds built around it. We can shop online, we can communicate online, and pretty much every activity that we used to do in real-life now has an online equivalent (such as watching TV and playing games).
Something that’s beginning to grow in popularity is e-learning – shortly put, a way for students to learn and take courses, independent or part of superior learning, from anywhere in the world without having to physically travel. When you’re from the extreme Eastern hemisphere and your college is in the USA, it’s understandable that this method seems like a holy salvation. But actually creating an e-learning platform is a calculated and pretentious process. If you want to make e-learning available for all your future course-takers or students, here’s what you need to do.
#1 Outline a Plan
There are still nine steps left ahead of you, so it’s important to organize your thoughts and ideas before continuing any further. Not doing so might result in a mess and you won’t have anything to refer to when trying to find out where something went wrong. You can find several types of software on the Internet that you can create charts and drawings on. As a traditional alternative, simply use pen and paper to create some drawings. In both cases, make sure to stock the information somewhere to keep it safe – a cloud service in the first case and photos on your phone in the latter.
#2 Make Notes and Share Them
Note-writing is pretty much the written and more detailed version of creating charts, previously mentioned. You can take all of the general ideas established before and detail them in various software tools that allow you to create organized notes. This way, you can share them with the other participants in the project, with the detailed explanations attached to them.
#3 Create Graphics
You can’t create a website and leave it blank, with nothing but huge chunks of text filling it. Aesthetics plays an important part in attracting visitors and capturing their attention, so edit some images that you can put up on the website. There are numerous tools, with Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator being the two obvious choices, but you can save up on money by opting for a free alternative.
#4 Choose the Right Authoring Tool
Authoring tools are the foundation for e-learning course creation. Consider several factors when picking the one you wish to use, such as your team’s or your experience in coding and authoring tools. There is an abundance of software out there, both for novices and experts, so don’t try to stretch beyond your knowledge and abilities.
#5 Run a Website or Blog
Your website is going to be like the publicity billboard for your course. It needs to be aesthetically pleasing and descriptive. To avoid getting visitors tangled, keep everything minimal – navigation, page arrangement, or login processes. If it can’t be helped, highlight a link that can direct them to guides that explain step-by-step how the login process works or how to find certain pages.
#6 Make Your Website Interactive & Accessible
Picking up on the previous idea, you’ll want the whole learning experience to go smoothly, otherwise, it will just frustrate the course-takers, and your reputation will suffer. If you recommend certain materials, books, articles, or videos, embed them into your website so they can be at the students’ disposal with just one click. You can also introduce gamification elements, which are rapidly growing in popularity.
#7 Make Your Content Backed-Up & Shareable
There will be courses and content that you’ll need to distribute to all participants, so you naturally can’t go around handing them over individually, right? Both for this purpose and to keep your data protected and stocked up in a safe place, use a cloud software such as Dropbox or Google Drive.
#8 Use an LMS
In other words, you need a tool that can help you with the statistics of your course. These kinds of software will monitor the productivity and activity of your students, and it will compile reports to help you understand how effective your teaching methods are.
#9 Prepare for Online Lectures
As much as we’d like to rely on a cloud software and some YouTube video links, face-to-face interaction is mandatory once in a while. Since that’s not possible for obvious reasons, make an account on a communication platform that allows connectivity via webcam and microphone. The obvious choice here is Skype, so ensure that all your students have an account readied for an online meeting.
#10 Promote Your Course
Promotion is an important aspect, given how, unfortunately, we can’t just have interested people fall from the sky for no good reason. The best way to do it is to branch out on all forms of social media and engage with other users or participate in discussions on themed forums and websites. A good starting point is Twitter, for which there are provided quite a few of informational guides for newcomers who wish to know where to start with their business promotion.
These were the basics steps on the path of e-learning course creation. What’s left is up to every developer individually. Showcase your creativity by putting your mark on the design of the site or invent a whole new kind of interactivity method. But the most important thing is to be wholly dedicated and to keep your reputation in a constant ascension process.
