A successful e-learning course comes with a lot of qualities. It has to be learner-centric. It has to be engaging. It has to be interactive. It has to provide learners with the best learning experience there is. It also has to instill the love of learning and self-exploration. All of these qualities are important. Most of the time, elearning materials will focus on a couple of qualities – depending on the learning goals. But if you look closely, all the qualities mentioned are usually there.
However, there is one quality that is just as important but most of the time is ignored by elearning professionals. That quality is consistency. Being consistent with your course is important because of a couple of reasons.
It improves quality. First of all, it helps improve the quality of the course that you are creating. When something is consistent, it boasts of being well thought out. It becomes obvious that the creator placed a lot of attention to it. This is because of the small details that are consistent and in harmony with the other aspects of the course.
It builds credibility. Since the quality is high, it builds the credibility of the course and the one creating it. The course appears to be professionally made and with a lot of expertise. This makes it more reliable and trustworthy in the eyes of the learners. They will be more than willing to accept and absorb the content that you will place there.
It makes future courses easier to create. Finally, the consistency you will build in your course will help set the foundation for succeeding courses. Being consistent means you follow the same steps and the same process in creating a course. Although there may be areas that will require revisions or improvements, you do not have to build everything from scratch. It will all go towards improving the course as you create one after the other.
Of course, ensuring consistency in an e-learning course is another matter. This is especially true if you are working on it as a team. The different expertise of the people working on it has various opinions of how the course should end up. You need to align your ideas to make it appear like only one person created the course.
Here are a couple of tips that you can use to create a consistent e-learning material.
- Use a template. This will allow you to follow a predetermined layout. It will not only make your course appear consistent, it will also help everyone understand the flow of the course.
- Follow a color guide. Colors play an important role in e-learning courses because it helps stimulate the right mood and emotions that can heighten the learning experience. But beyond that, using the same color combinations will help identify your course. You know how certain colors are associated with brands and logos? The same is true. If you have a color guide and you are consistent in using it, the learner can easily identify future courses that come from you.
- Set the right font. Headings and subheadings can be easily identified if you follow the same font size and color throughout the course. The same is true for important keywords. This will help the learners immediately recognize important keywords and phrases that they should pay attention to.
While consistency seems like a trivial detail in e-learning courses, you might be amazed at the way it can significantly improve your learning materials.
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