9 Things You Must Avoid in Your Courses.

I was recently reviewing an elearning course (per the authors request) and some of things I saw is what inspired this post. Now I'll allow some latitude because the author only develops part-time and is somewhat of a newbee, but some of things I witnessed defied what I consider basic common sense. So without further ado I present to you 9 things that should be avoided in your e-learning course. Simply don't do these things and your e-learning will suck much less. (By the way, the course I was reviewing violated 8 of these 9 things).

Notice how I only have 9 things? Everybody does a top 10, but how often do you see a Top 9? Just me thinking out of the box a little (see number three below).



number one:
Don't indent in elearning. It's not a romance novel or English class we're talking about here, it's elearning and indenting is taboo. Stop immediately.

number two:

Don't overuse transitions. A wise man once said: "Just because you can doesn't mean you should". Use transitions selectively and make sure it has a purpose for being there. 

number three:

Don't be affraid to step outside the box every once in awhile. It's easy to become complacent and this is when all your courses start looking the same. You can scour the blogoshere for ideas, and this is certainly encouraged, however be sure to mix in some originality and your own ideas. Unlock that creativity. Someone once said: "It's better to fail at originality than succeed at imitation". Now I don't 100% agree with this quote when it comes to elearning, but it does hold some weight so be sure to leverage your noggin and dare to be different. Check out this previous post for more on this particular topic. 

number four:

Don't cram too much content on your pages. If you're not familiar with the term "White Space", become familiar with it immediately. White Space basically refers to the vacant or empty real estate on your pages (You should have some of it). Nothing will turn your reader off quicker than a cramped page loaded with text. Utilize show/hide functionality as appropriate so not everything is visible when the user enters the page, and consider breaking your content into more than one page. It's all about the White Space baby!

number five:

Don't forget the little things! Pardon the bluntness here, but don't turn out crap! If your environment is anything like mine it's busy as all get out, and everybody wants everything yesterday. With extreme time pressures it's easy to overlook the little things. Make sure images and text are lined up neatly, and that the quality and integrity of your images is maintained (No pixely graphics).

Below is an actual page I swiped from an e-learning course and my very quick attempt at fixing it. Notice how the original has things mis-aligned. To me it looks like whoever built this put about zero thought into appearance, which in my book is completely unacceptable. My revision literally took about 5 minutes. 

I simply aligned some things, made the font a little bigger, put a subtle drop-shadow on the screenshot and added a person to give it a little human element. Don't skimp when it comes to appearance, it's one of the single most important aspects of elearning development. See this previous post for more on this.

number six:

Don't use too many fonts! I live by the rule of never using more than two fonts in a course. Perhaps I'll use one font for my larger headers and then another font for my text. Too many fonts will subliminally turn off the learner. They may not know why they don't like what they're looking at, but it very well could be your overuse of fonts. One of my favortie fonts to use is Verdana, and I'm also quickly becoming a fan of Calibri, however be careful with this Calibri because it isn't a totally web safe font yet and users who are using anything previous to Office 07' may not have Calibri. Just for the record I don't think I've ever used Times New Roman in a course! 

number seven:

Don't go crazy with colors! I've literally seen courses that have 6 or 7 different colors working throughout a course, and sometimes even on one page. With few exceptions, I try and stick to a maximum of three colors in a scheme. And by all means please don't do things like use white text on a yellow background. Make sure your text is eye-pleasing and readable.

 

number eight:

Don't let your SME wreck your course. If you don't know what a SME is then you can skip this. They are the content expert, not the development or presentation expert. Now you may lose this battle, but don't go down without a fight. If you think what you've incorporated into a course ads value to the user experience then let your SME know this. I have many times been successful at convincing my SME to let me keep something they wanted to ditch, so don't go quietly into that goodnight. 

number nine:

Don't be so corporate and safe! I'm not a fan of corporate lingo and the use of big confusing corporate words (like Verifiable outcome, predictable journey, business acumen, etc.). I personally like to push the envelope a little with the casualness of the verbiage I use in my courses, I guess I'm under some crazy impression that my users are actual human beings and not corporate robots. I've used terms like bad-boy, gotta and even pulled an occasional 'Aint' out of the hat. In the words of Sergeant Hulka from Stripes: "Lighten Up Francis!". Sometimes it's better to apologize than ask permission. Here's a previous blog post I did on exactly this topic.