Perfect eLearning Design Elements

You might have a plethora of content to offer to your online learners but as long as your online academy is not properly designed it means nothing. Sounds harsh? Well that is the brutal reality of online teaching.

Recent studies have revealed that online courses which are not properly designed witnessed a lower student retention rate. In the digital world the presentation matters more sometimes.

However, designing your online course does not necessarily always indicate that you need to change your color or theme. Design encompasses a lot of things.

The overall visual design and aesthetics of the e-Learning website often impact the knowledge retention, information gathering, and overall engagement of the online learners. But do not assume that it is very hard work. If you know the tricks of the trade then it is just about doing the right things.

This article in particular would throw some lights on the major factors which influences online learners. Just little adjustments here and there can make a big difference in your learner engagement and ultimately retention. So let us see what all we can do make your online academy more interesting and an attractive place to learn.

1. Contrast and Repetition

   You can use contrasting colors, different font types or even opposing size. This shall help to draw the attention of the learner to some specific parts of the course. On contrast to this, by repeating the background theme or the font for the title and subtitle, a sense of cohesion on the same course is established. The learner feels interested in the course and the visuals speak to him.

2. Color palette and readability

   While designing a course palette, you need to keep in mind the audience and the course type which will best suit it. You can read about color theory or color psychology. The basic theme of your course can invoke the users feeling. Readability should never be hampered and the color combination should not hide the text within them.

3. Graphics help to remember previous knowledge

   Most Learners fall under two categories of people who have prior knowledge based on their work experience and culture and new joiners with very little knowledge about the content. Visual memory is also important and graphics can help bring it back in the form of charts, mind maps, concept art or diagrams. A mind map can also be de-stressing and relaxing for many.

4. Minimize the Cognitive Overload

   Cognitive overload means that our memory is overloaded with lots of information in a short span of time and can generally happen when a lot of text is provided in a course and that ends up overwhelming the learners. You can use some simple tricks like to go for diagrams wherever possible instead of paragraphs of text. Procedural activities or steps should be portrayed by visuals. Flowchart or a simple step diagram can be used to achieve this. Maintain consistency in the course and to understand where an image would be better or where animation would fit mote appropriately. This will depend on the contents of the course.

5. Graphics can motivate Leaner

   There is no doubt regarding the fact that E-learning and graphics are a very good combination and much better way than just purely relying on texts and paragraphs to convey the same thought or meaning. This can trigger motivation and interest in learners to pursue the topic and apply the knowledge in real life. Instead of reading a manual of the work they are supposed to do, if you show them a video of the work or even an interactive video of the work, then, they can retain it better and will be able to understand the work better than just reading about it in bullets or steps.

6. Establishes relationship between topics

   Human beings love patterns and graphics designing helps to achieve this feat by coherence between two or more slides or if you want to change the topic to something else, you can change the color, background color or the text color. This establishes the fact that a new topic is beginning or till the same color stays, the user will remember it all together in one module and this will help while he wants to recall information from memory.

Thus visual design is very important for any E-learning course and without it the efficiency will go down a lot. Texts are good but courses in the form of visuals and interesting graphics are more soothing to the eyes. Even if you are uploading.