The look and feel of your eLearning materials has an impact on training effectiveness. The combination of colors, font types, and images affect the way your learners go through your content and eventually the lessons. Your goal is to make your content more exciting, easier to understand, and more interesting to read. A good combination of the elements mentioned above can help you achieve your training goals. Conversely, a bad combination could make your learners bored, disinterested, and perhaps even sleepy. Needless to say, this will result in bad performance and ineffective learning. Here are some important considerations when using color theory, typography, and images in your eLearning course design: 1. Keep it clean and simple. This does not mean that your design should be stark and boring. You can use bold colors like reds and oranges, and your design will still be clean and simple. Avoid the clutter and pay attention to readability and ease of … [Read more...] about Eye Appeal in eLearning Course Design: 3 Effective Ways to Use Color Theory, Typography, and Images
Graphic Design
How to Incorporate More Visual Content into ELearning
According to Psychology Today, our brains are wired to out-process visual data and video-based information, as opposed to text, by a factor of 60,000 to 1. The reason why visual content is so effectively processed has to do with the cognitive function of the brain.When we read something (text-based), the brain is also actively trying to create mental structures to help us understand what we read. Looking at graphical content however, is much more passive, thereby enabling the brain to focus more on grasping and understanding what we see. This fundamental architectural difference, on how the brain reacts to different types of content, is one of the main reasons why instructional designers should incorporate more visual content into eLearning. Here are 6 best practices on how you can enhance visual content in your courses: Shorten the use of text: Where possible, limit lengthy written narratives. Instead, substitute words for graphical … [Read more...] about How to Incorporate More Visual Content into ELearning
Infographics and eLearning: Benefits and Tips to Succeed
We are in the age where there is accelerated growth of information. Thanks to the Internet, online learning has been made easily available, but it has also led to information overload. The use of infographics in eLearning is proving to be an easier way of simplifying the most complex eLearning ideas. Infographic helps to identify, analyze, and break eLearning content into smaller, manageable pieces. It also organizes learning into suitable graphical structure representation. Some of the benefits associated with using infographics in eLearning include: Offering a step-by-step visual guide Even when it’s broken down into points, learning complicated task can be challenging. Not only that infographics makes information easier to understand, but it also helps learners memorize and process the content faster. Increasing knowledge retention Using infographics in online learning enhances knowledge retention. Learners remember images, slides, charts and other elements … [Read more...] about Infographics and eLearning: Benefits and Tips to Succeed
3 Easy Ways to Create Effective ELearning Graphics
We all know that graphics can make our eLearning courses fun and engaging, but we also know that our graphics should be relevant to the content, and that we should avoid decorative graphics as much as possible. Designing effective graphic that really works is time and resource consuming, so in this post, I will cover 3 easy ways to create effective eLearning graphics. Crop existing stock photos – Using existing stock images can be a real time saver, but most of the stock images are simply boring. Furthermore, a lot of these images have been used and reused so many times that most of us are so tired of looking at them that we often ignore them to the point where these images become meaningless in the course. Luckily, there is an easy and quick fix for that. Consider cropping photos, so that you only leave the details that are truly pertinent to your message. You can easily crop stock photos using Photoshop, but if you don’t have that tool available to you, you can consider other … [Read more...] about 3 Easy Ways to Create Effective ELearning Graphics
Five ELearning Graphic Design Tips That Every Instructional Designer Must Know
The responsibilities of instructional designers vary from organization to organization. While some companies do have graphic designers on the team, others require instructional designer to wear a hat of an artist. Regardless of your responsibilities, it is suggested that you become comfortable with basic graphic design theory so that, if needed, you can apply it to practice. Here are a few basic recommendations that many instructional designers should find useful. •If you know how to do something that does not mean you should do it. In eLearning, less is more, so if the tool or an option is available to you that does not mean that you should actually use it in your project. This particularly applies to animations. Try to avoid animation whenever possible. Instead, consider separating information into several slides. •The same principle applies to images. When you add images to slides, always be sure that they are meaningful and are not just there for decoration. Images … [Read more...] about Five ELearning Graphic Design Tips That Every Instructional Designer Must Know
