Practical Instructional Design for eLearning

Explore how e-learning enables training on any digital device and see examples like educational videos, online articles, and online quizzes to support flexible, accessible learning.

Discover essential e-learning terminology and download the glossary to master the key terms used in online instructional design.

eLearning consists of two sectors: academic, including K-12 and higher education, and corporate, focused on building competency through onboarding, sales, and software training.

Master the eight steps to design an e-learning course, from finalizing the brief and outlining content to chunking, defining objectives, deciding the treatment, storyboarding, and creating assessments that meet objectives.

Read a client brief, then proceed to the quiz following this brief to reinforce instructional design for eLearning.

Define the target audience and the type of cookies to clarify the course objective. Ask about content sources, duration, elements, budget, and desired interactivity to guide the course design.

Identify three levels of interactivity, from basic click-through and static content to intermediate audio, video, and quizzes, up to advanced simulations with branching scenarios.

Identify essential questions to ask every client when given a brief, using this list as your guide. Apply these questions to clarify requirements for practical instructional design in e-learning.

Fill in the content outline template by detailing client and project data, objective, audience, duration, interactivity, and audio; then outline modules, units, topics, screens, and their treatments and durations.

Gather all information, including the brief, answers to questions, and additional content, to fill the content outline; download resources to see how they are used.

Fill a content outline template using information from the brief. Set course objective, target audience, duration, level of interactivity, and audio notes to guide the storyboard.

Assess the content order for logical sequencing and reorder topics from tips to ingredients to instructions, ending with how to freeze the dough, with prep time noted before ingredients.

Assess the right amount of content by calculating voiceover duration at 150 words per minute, then add introduction, quizzes, and assessment to meet the 15-minute brief.

Assess and use simple, audience-appropriate language for instructional content, check for unclear terms, and recommend rewrites or glossaries to improve readability, grammar, and punctuation.

Assess content relevance by considering the target audience and their prior knowledge. Chunk information into bite-sized pieces, separating need-to-know essentials from optional details linked as hyperlinks.

Learn how to chunk e-learning content at two levels—college and screen—by structuring into modules, lessons, and screens, and applying screen-level techniques like subheadings, bullets, short sentences, and bold fonts.

Fill in part 3 of the content outline by adding quizzes and assessments with ballpark durations, while leaving the treatment column and objectives for later, and download the document to review.

Rewrite course objectives by breaking the big picture into milestone goals, then list ingredients, understand baking tips, and measure timing to guide learners through a logical sequence.

Explore the elements of objectives, including the stem sentence, the terminal objective, and milestone goals that become enabling objectives.

Master the template for objectives by layering the terminal objective, stem sentence, and enabling objectives, then integrate them into the course outline. Download the outline to see placement.

Explore Bloom's taxonomy revised, detailing six cognitive levels—remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating, creating—and how to apply level-specific action verbs across three course interactivity levels.

Plan how to display course content through the treatment, basing decisions on content evaluation and the course level chosen as typical for that level.

Learn to treat e-learning content by selecting display methods—static text, images, videos, charts, diagrams, interactive reveals, simulations, and branching scenarios—matched to the content.

Assign treatment by level. Level one uses static text and images with quizzes; level three adds audio, video, transitions, animations, simulations, and branch scenario based questions.

Explore storyboarding with Word and PowerPoint templates; PowerPoint is more visual, helping clients unfamiliar with e-learning visualize the course in development.

Explore the storyboarding template in Word, which guides course authors to fill fields for content, voiceover, graphics, onscreen text, quizzes, and notes, tailored by course type.

Master the PowerPoint storyboarding template for e-learning, detailing slide-by-slide content with logos, course and storyboard details, notes, breadcrumbs, icons, audio/graphic notes, and assessment templates for single- and multi-select questions.

Storyboard your screens by detailing module names, objectives, tips, and content layout, including text on the left and images on the right, with graphic and audio notes guiding animation.

Design assessments that highlight key elements, evaluate instructional effectiveness, and measure learners' understanding of objectives, reinforcing learning through timely feedback.

Design effective assessment questions that cover course objectives, include plausible distractors in stem sentences, present wrong options clearly, and provide constructive feedback.

Identify diagnostic assessments before the course to gauge prior knowledge, formative assessments after each topic to measure understanding, and summative assessments at the end to evaluate mastery.

Identify common doubts about assessment questions and review types such as multiple choice questions, true or false questions, fill in the blank questions, and matching questions.

Explore a template for an assessment question, including the question text, instructional text, and the correct answer option, as well as the incorrect options, submit button, and next button.

Explore intrinsic and extrinsic feedback, with indirect cues and direct statements, and show how pop-up boxes present correct or incorrect feedback while outlining the parts of your feedback statement.

Identify the parts of a feedback statement: acknowledge the response, present the correct option, restate it, and explain why, while starting objectives with action verbs.