The Complete 2020 Guide Creating A Winning E-Learning Course

Section 2 - Module 1 - Choosing your e-learning medium and data collection method

In the previous section, you were taught the basic elements of e-learning, how to formulate learning objectives and choose a design model.

This second section will teach both corporate and individual instructors how to plan for effective e-learning.

After completing this lesson, you should be able to choose an appropriate medium for your e-learning courses that has the highest chances of success.

Although the majority of e-learning courses today are presented in video format, delivering your e-learning courses using videos, or any other medium for that matter, can either benefit or hinder the learning process depending on your learning objectives.

There are four main mediums for presenting e-learning course, each appealing to a particular basic sense, these include:

• Video (sight and hearing)

• Audio (hearing)

• Graphics (sight)

• Text (sight)

Video is preferred because it captures more than one basic sense in the human body at a time. This makes them great for presenting complex concepts visually. Audio is great for teaching soft skills such as languages and self-development courses because it only captures one human sense, allowing learners to cover material without having to read the text on the screen and listen at the same time.

Graphics and Text can both be combined or used separately to deliver deeper explanations or clarify complex or high-level concepts.

A good e-learning course combines the best elements of each medium to appeal to the learner’s visual and auditory senses.

Before deciding on a particular type of media, you should review your objectives to see if they lend themselves to that type of media. A good way to do this is by carrying out a need analysis – not only will this help you decide on the best medium for your e-learning learnings, but it will also help you determine the best data collection methods for your course.

Let’s take a look at how to conduct a Needs Analysis for your e-learning course. There are three major types of analysis. They are:

• audience analysis

• performance analysis

• task analysis

Let’s talk about each one separately. Audience analysis - knowing your audience is necessary to effectively present information.

For example, an e-learning course educating professionals on soft skills could be presented in audio format which could be played even while carrying out other tasks. Your audience analysis should include information on demographics as well as on learners’ motivation and background knowledge.

As we mentioned earlier, the ultimate goal of an eLearning course is to close the gap in education. Therefore, the Performance analysis, also called Gap and Root cause analysis, identifies the real reason for training without making any assumptions about training needs and requirements.

You can do this by using the Five Why Technique. The essence of this technique is to keep asking Why questions until you arrive at the root cause of the problem.

Task analysis identifies the knowledge and skills learners needed to exhibit during your e-learning course to accomplish learning objectives.

You should begin by defining your learning objectives and answering the following questions:

• What does this course hope to achieve?

• What are the performance issues?

• What type of training is best to solve the problem?

• Is your content readily available?

• How many parties will work on this project, and what is their availability?

• How long is this course expected to run?

• Will there be assessments?

Now you can select your Data Collection Method. You can do this through

• Observation

• Interviews

• Using focus groups

• Surveys, and

• Questionnaires

Now that you selected your data-collection method, you are ready to begin collecting your data which will help you decide on the best medium for presentation.

If you’re still unsure of what medium is best for your e-learning course, contact the Elite B Growth team and get the only toolkit you need to create amazing e-learning videos.

Learn more about creating an e-learning course in the next video.