Developing an eLearning course has a lot of ins-and-outs to consider. From three types of interactivity and when you should use each to starting with strategy and how to polish your course at the end.

This is an important step. Because whether you’re developing the course yourself or working with a performance partner for a quick turn around or a more in-depth, custom course, when you get to the end, it’s time to customize and polish your course.

1. Add voiceover for better understanding

Adding voiceover is a great way to explain a challenging graphic or to propel the learner through the course at a particular pace. Try not to use voiceover to narrate text that is displayed on screen. Not only is it a frustrating experience for your learner, the redundancy actually interferes with their ability to digest the information.

2. Polish your course with interactions

These are welcomed additions like drag and drop, multiple choice, matching, etc. They are short activities that get the mind moving and stretching in a different rhythm than the rest of the course. Like an active rest. It’s a great way for the learner to test their knowledge a bit and keep them engaged.

3. Create a gated course

Gating is essentially preventing a learner from accessing a piece of content until they’ve met certain criteria. When gating, part of the course is off limits to the learner. An assessment, for example, might be a part of gating and if the learner doesn’t score 80% or higher on a quiz they can’t move to the next part of the course.

Gating a course is all about setting the pace so your learners don’t miss important information.

4. Add some pizzazz with custom graphics

Depending on the subject, graphics can be a critical component to learning in a course. These are the graphs, charts, and diagrams we design to simplify and clarify information that would otherwise be very confusing.

5. Customize with high quality images and media

Good images often go unnoticed, but when an image is wrong it sticks out like a sore thumb and is completely distracting to the learning process. What’s tricky is when you’re looking for a stock image sometimes the word you search for and the images that show up are so off they are downright humorous! It takes lots of digging and a good eye to find the right image that connects to the concept.

6. Assessments are a great finale

It’s fair to say you probably all know what an assessment is. Typically, assessments can be found at the beginning and end of a course. These are generally meant to assess overall knowledge and get a baseline. There are also knowledge checks, which are basically smaller assessments that are probably not scored for a certification, but rather used as a gage for the learner to self assess how they are doing along the way.

Something to keep in mind—you should avoid adding assessments in “just because,” they should be incorporated into your course with a clear instructional purpose like a certification.

Polish your course for success

Great courses have three or all of the above options in their eLearning courses. It’s about finding what works for you, your content, and most importantly, your learners.