Before you start building your course, you need to think about where it will live. Your selection here will influence how easily people can access your course and how much work it is to manage.
Picking the correct eLearning platform is vital for the success of your course. There are many options available, each with its own strengths and costs. You will need to consider many things before picking a platform, including the differences between Learning Management Systems (LMS) and simpler course platforms.
Choosing the right platform is vitally important for many reasons. Here are the main ones:
Enhances the learning experience. A well-designed platform ensures easy navigation, making it simple for learners to access course materials, participate in discussions, and complete assignments. It should be intuitive to minimise learner frustration, whilst allowing them to focus on the content. And it should also be able to support diverse content formats (videos, audio, interactive exercises), catering to different learning styles and enhancing engagement.
Ideally, the platform should prioritise accessibility to ensure that learners with disabilities can fully participate in the course. Finally, good platforms will allow learners to track their progress, and for you to monitor progress. This helps with learner motivation and allows you to see where learners may be having difficulties.
Efficient Course Management. Ideally, the platform will have user-friendly authoring tools to simplify the process of creating and organising course materials. Features like automated grading, enrolment, and progress tracking can save time and reduce the administrative burden. Finally, platforms with robust analytics can provide insights into learner performance, allowing instructors to identify areas for improvement.
Keep your surveys short and sweet. People won’t finish them if they take too long. Use multiple choice questions to make it easier. Once you have the results, you will know what to include in your course.
Scalability and Reliability. When picking a platform, you need to know that it can handle increasing numbers of learners without compromising performance, and that it is reliable ensuring that courses are always accessible to learners. And with GDPR legislation in place, you need to know that the platform is secure, protect both your intellectual property, and the learner’s private data.
Cost-Effectiveness: You need to find a platform that aligns with your budget, but it is also crucial to consider potential hidden costs, such as limits to learner numbers, transaction fees or storage limitations.
Effective Marketing and Sales: Importantly, the platform should have the ability to brand your course pages, and course materials. This will help to establish your credibility, brand and will help in the marketing of your courses. Finally, some platforms offer built-in marketing tools, such as landing page builders and email marketing integration, to help promote courses. They can also integrate with payment gateways to ensure secure and efficient transactions.
This final point is less important within the platform itself as there are numerous external tools and strategies available to perform these tasks. These include external website integration, email marketing services, social media marketing, payment gateways, sales funnels and affiliate marketing. Don’t forgo an important feature to enhance learning just because the platform looks good at marketing.
Finally, think carefully about what you need and how good you are with computers before you pick one. Switching LMS or course platforms can be a complex and costly that will not only affect you, but your loyal customers.
There are two main types of eLearning platforms: Learning Management Systems (LMS) and course platforms and they do things in slightly different ways.
So, what is an LMS? Basically, they are like an education setting but on a computer. They are designed to ease the burden of administration, documentation, tracking, reporting and delivering educational courses or training programs. They are good if you need to manage who sees what when, keep an eye on how learners are doing and providing assessment tools. An LMS lets you see reports and helps you manage your learners and courses easily.
Course platforms on the other hand are often easier to use if you just want to create a course and start selling it. Course platforms usually have easy setup and sales tools. These help you get your course out there and make money. If you are an individual or a small business, this might be a good option.
A third option may be a shared platform. These offer the benefits of an LMS, but with the budget of a course platform. The downside is that you will share the platform with others trying to sell their courses.
It is very important to think about cost. Different platforms charge in different ways. Most will want a fee each month to cover hosting and support – check what this fee covers, especially in terms of how many learners you can have on the platform. Others may take some money each time someone buys your course. Some have tiers so the price goes up with the number of courses or learners.
Watch out for hidden costs or scalability costs. Some platforms may seem inexpensive for the first few learners, but as your course grows in popularity you could find yourself paying unreasonable amounts for more and more learners. Other platforms may limit how much storage space you get for your videos and files, charging for extra.
It all comes down to thinking about what you really need, how good you are with technology, and how much you can spend. If you do this, you can choose a platform that is right for you. This will give your learners a good learning experience.
One of the most important features of a course is to regularly check in on how learners are doing. Assessment tools are your way of checking up on people. Using these tools let you see what your learners understand and what they are finding difficult. Before you choose a platform to place your learning on, make sure it has the assessment tools you want to use.
There are many kinds of assessment tool, including:
Quizzes and tests: These are the classic assessment tools and can test knowledge quickly. They usually contain different question types, such as multiple choice, true/false, drag and drop and fill in the blanks. The beauty of this type of assessment is that it can often be marked and feedback given by the platform itself, removing the need for you to get involved. Indeed, AI is beginning to be used to enhance quizzes and tests, and can be used to generate questions, provide personalised feedback, and even detect cheating.
Assignments: These are usually more formal written pieces, such as essays, projects or creative works. Many platforms allow learners to upload their work, and some even allow uploading of presentations, images, audio and video as well normal documents. The downside here is that someone will need to look through and assess the responses from learner to be able to grade and give feedback.
Discussion forums: Getting learners to participate in online discussions can be used to assess learning. It also promotes communication between learners and may even lead to peer teaching. However, like assignments, these forums need to be monitored, although with the rise of AI monitoring and identifying learners who are struggling or not participating is becoming easier. If you want to use discussion forums, you need to ensure the platform you choose can support them.
Simulations and interactive exercises: These tend to be used to provide assessment through practical activities. These are often used in determining someone’s proficiency in a particular software package. AI can be used to create more realistic and engaging simulations and can also be used to provide personalised feedback on student performance. If you want to use this type of assessment, then you need to ensure that the platform you choose can support them.
The majority of course designers will opt for the quizzes as these are quick for learners and can be machine marked, therefore requiring little or no involvement on the part of the course creator. However, you decide to check on your learner’s progress, try to be creative with it. It doesn’t always have to be dozens of questions at the end of a course; quick knowledge tests can be placed throughout a course.
Reporting goes very much hand in hand with assessment – it’s all about tracking learner progress. The right platform can show who finishes activities and who doesn’t. They can show quiz scores and even see how long someone spends on each part of a course. As a course creator, this will help you see where people might be finding things hard.
This reporting goes hand in hand with feedback surveys. Feedback surveys are a vital tool for course creators to gauge learner satisfaction and identify areas for improvement in online learning environments. They can provide a direct line of communication between course creators and learners, allowing for valuable insights into the effectiveness of course content, delivery methods, and overall learning experience. Well-designed surveys can gather feedback on various aspects, including the clarity of instructions, the relevance of materials, the helpfulness of instructors, and the usability of the online platform.
By analysing both the reports and survey responses, course creators can pinpoint strengths and weaknesses, make decisions to enhance course quality, and ultimately improve learner outcomes. Furthermore, feedback surveys also demonstrate a commitment to continuous improvement, fostering a sense of value and engagement among learners.
The final tool you need to consider when choosing a platform is how you are going to keep in contact with your learners. You need to keep in contact, not only to market new courses, but also to provide help for you learners. Afterall, good help is a must for everyone.
There are different ways to keep in contact. The most obvious is through email. Some platforms will allow you to send emails directly to learners from the platform rather than using your normal email system. This is a quick and easy method of contacting relevant learners and reduces the opportunities for learners to be missed. Some platforms even offer and internal messaging systems, much like Messenger, or live chats, though someone must be available to respond.
If a platform allows it, an AI chatbot may be present to answer questions about the course. These chatbots use the content of the course as their background knowledge and will try to answer learner questions.
If you’re a little more traditional, there are forums that allow learners to post questions and comments, giving the instructor or other learners the opportunity to answer. Or question and answer pages, often called FAQs, that are very common.
Whichever platform you decide to use, using assessments, reports and feedback, and keeping in contact with your learners, will allow you to develop your course and learners have a good learning experience.
