Following is a high-level list of trends eLearning developers are encouraged to research and experiment:
- Mobile: elearning Authoring tools now make it possible for non-programmers to create online training material that plays great on tablets, phones, and other mobile devices. If you have not already done so, try creating mobile versions of courses and TEST THEM on various devices. See what works well, what does not, and start building, improving upon, and innovating with mobile delivery techniques.
- Social Learning/Collaboration: There’s an old saying, “To learn, teach.” Implement ways for your learners to share their knowledge with each other, rate each other’s contributions, suggest readings to others that they found useful, and more. When your learners share their knowledge they reinforce and better retain the information they have learned already.
- Gamification: From creating eLearning games as part of your course content to awarding badges and tracking “leader boards” through your LMS systems, there are many ways to make learning fun by appealing to our natural competitive instincts. Research Gamification and attempt at least one game-style project in 2014.
- Modular Development: Get back to instructional design basics by focusing on core learning objectives rather than on entire courses. Think about how small “chunks” or “snippets” of content can be created and deployed separately or mixed and matched into new courses. Additionally, you can convert existing lessons/pages developed in tools like Captivate and Storyline into separate videos and deploy them through YouTube, reassemble these videos into new courses, and more. Experiment with existing and new projects and look for creative ways to get learners engaging with your content.
- Localization: If you have never converted a course into another language, give it a try. As your enterprise grows you may find that in the near future you will have a need to translate courses into one or more languages. By going through this exercise you will learn a great deal. Consider localization at the early stage of course development so that whatever you create today can be more easily localized tomorrow.
What do you see as being a primary focus for you or your organization in 2014? Log-in and reply. We value your feedback!