7 Easy Tips to Enhance Your Online Courses

So you’ve put the finishing touches on a course and published it to an LMS. But the statistics are showing you that the course isn’t quite as effective as you had hoped. Some learners aren’t completing the course; some aren’t spending enough time on each slide; some are spending too much time! Besides all that, you’re having a hard time gauging the overall results of the training, because there’s no convenient built-in assessments or feedback opportunities.

Looks like those touches weren’t the “finishing” ones after all. Time for an overhaul.

Our friend Paul Shuteyev from Coursmos.com suggests this list of handy tips for that situation:

• Make it shorter. Short attention spans are a common thing nowadays. Go through your course and see if you can trim any “fat” to make it pack more punch. If your subject covers many diverse ideas, then it doesn’t hurt to split a course up into two or more parts to make it go down easier.
• Replace cheesy clipart or stock photography. Besides making your course shorter, you can make it “sweeter” by spending a little more time carefully selecting the artwork that accompanies your course. If your learners see that you didn’t spend time choosing relevant images, then they will be less likely to invest their own time in studying.
  (Hint: Using characters with appropriate uniforms and gestures can be a very effective means of engaging your audience.)
• Break up busy or content-heavy slides. Try to avoid “information overload” by dividing your ideas onto separate slides. A good rule of thumb is to explain just one or two new concepts per slide, so you can be sure no information is missed. Leave plenty of room on each slide for a compelling graphic, animation, or interactive object.
• Add an assessment. In many subjects, comprehension of new material depends on knowledge of more basic material. Before moving on to a more advanced part of your course, it’s crucial to verify that your audience already knows the basics. Therefore, you should insert a quiz to check up on your learners comprehension.
• Collect feedback. Open up your course to direct feedback from your audience. Include a survey or add a comment section so your users can have a chance to voice their own thoughts. Did they find it helpful? Did they learn something new? Will they be able to apply the new knowledge in their jobs?
• Follow up after training. No matter how effective the immediate results of your course, you can never be sure that the information will stick, or that they will always know how to apply it in their jobs. It’s important to follow up.
• Create a few pieces of reminder content or post-training assessment questions and keep in touch with the audience in the weeks/months immediately following the training.
• Review your learning objective. Don’t have a learning objective? Create one! If your course was created with an objective in mind, review it. Does it still make sense for your organization and your audience? Is your course meeting it? It’s okay (and encouraged) to make adjustments as needed.

Hope you found these tips helpful! Please leave your feedback in the comments below!