As an instructional designer, you’ll frequently have the task of assessing whether your courses have met their instructional objectives. Typically, trainers consider several parameters to judge the outcome of a course – course completion, engagement, interaction with fellow learners, assignment quality and timeliness, etc. However, a learners’ performance on tests is often an important benchmark for determining course effectiveness. How trainers and course designers develop those test questions is, therefore, critical. Testing a Broad Spectrum of Intellectual Accomplishments The key to writing effective test questions is in developing them so they assess a broad spectrum of intellectual understanding of the course content. It is important to test all six levels of that understanding, as espoused by Bloom’s Taxonomy: Knowledge Comprehension Application Analysis Synthesis, and Evaluation …with knowledge being the lowest level of understanding, and evaluation … [Read more...] about Ten Rules for Writing Effective Test Questions
eLearning writing
7 Signs You Might Need To Outsource Your ELearning Writing Content
eLearning is the fastest growing method that learners consume training content today. As a result, more and more organizations are committing significant resources to write eLearning courses for internal and external learners. When You Should Outsource Your eLearning Writing Content Unfortunately, despite the increased resources, internal eLearning content writing initiatives still don’t come up to par, and course sponsors and administrators look to outsource some of that work. What are the signs that your eLearning writing content could use a bit of outsourcing assistance? 7 Signs To Look For Sometimes, it’s not the number of resources that matter. Despite adequate staffing and budgeting, your eLearning content projects might still not be living up to learner expectations. You need to monitor for signs that there’s trouble brewing and get help as soon as possible. Here are 7 signs that indicate you might need outsourced help with your eLearning content writing: 1. … [Read more...] about 7 Signs You Might Need To Outsource Your ELearning Writing Content
4 Proven Secrets for Writing Highly Effective ELearning Courses
As eLearning course writers, many of us may think we have a “routine” to create highly effective courses down pat. However, over time, we tend to take some of the basics of efficient course writing for granted. In due course, we may even prefer short-cuts, like diving directly into Storyboarding - instead of doing some analysis and planning upfront. Here are four proven secrets (more like best practices, actually!) for writing highly effective eLearning courses. Newcomers to the field will especially benefit from these tips because not only will they aid in producing engaging content, but will also bring efficiency into the course writing process: Secret#1 - Storyboarding: Your course blueprint Storyboards are critical elements of the design process for the eLearning project. They form the building blocks over which instructional designers create the detailed structure of the course. So, why use templates? Because they…: simplify the process of course design add an element … [Read more...] about 4 Proven Secrets for Writing Highly Effective ELearning Courses
5 Easy Ways to Curate Your ELearning Content: Understanding what content curation is, and why it’s needed
Everyday, millions of pieces of content get created online. So, if you were looking to “learn” more about a particular subject, is going through all those millions of bits of information really the best way to do so? That’s exactly the challenge that eLearning course designers and developers face. And more often than not, content curation is the best answer to this challenge. Assimilating eLearning content So, in the context of eLearning, what does it take to offer great content to your learners, and why should eLearners not go straight to the source – content creators – instead of reaching out for your curated content? Before we highlight why content curation is an essential part of eLearning, consider these facts about content creation first: According to Smithsonian Mag (a site owned/operated in partnership with the renowned Smithsonian Institution), there are over 1.8 million articles and research papers produced every year The same source cites that most of that … [Read more...] about 5 Easy Ways to Curate Your ELearning Content: Understanding what content curation is, and why it’s needed
