instructional design

Probably the most common complaint about e-learning courses is "long, boring bullet lists."

For writers, it's all too tempting to put together many lines (from the source material) on one page and segment them into bullets. It takes work to organise the info, and a little more to reduce on-screen text. But it's worth the effort!

By “knowledge checks,” I’m referring to the short evaluations that punctuate a learning package. They’re also called recall screens, recall exercises, quizzes, or something else. Here’s a mix of ideas, random thoughts, and tips about knowledge checks.

“Knowledge checks are boring and useless...”?

I’ve seen people dismiss recall quizzes for various reasons:

If you’ve decided to use an e-learning course for your training needs, you might hear the terms “Level 1 course,” … up to Level 4. These numbers indicate many things — the level of interactivity in the course, the complexity, the sophistication. Maybe you’ve been told that a Level 3 course is the best, while being the most expensive to develop. Or, maybe you’re just wondering what “level of interactivity” means. Here’s a primer.

Ask “What is the role of colour in our lives” and you’ll get one of two responses -- “Yes, colours influence us in many ways,” and “Hmm, perhaps they do… I don’t really know.”

Making a course interesting, engaging and interactive is the subject of instructional design. Here, we’ll do a quick round-up of dos and don’ts that can save your course from being clicked straight through to the end! 

Subtlety works... In advertising, in movies, in arguments, and in learning material.

What is the importance of feedback after a quiz or test? Here’s a useful analogy: What quizzes are to the material, feedback is to the quiz.

Quizzes complete the loop. In that sense, saying just “Correct” or “Not correct” reduces the value of the quiz—just as course would be less useful if quizzes weren’t included.

Is text plus audio really reinforcement—even when they convey the same thing?