Hot Tips for Creating Excellent Online Training

Creating excellent online training can be tough. There is a fine balance between ensuring your material is engaging and interactive, whilst also ensuring you are getting substantial "cut through" of vital information. It is crucial to keep in mind the environment through which your end-users are receiving the material. Quite often, they will be surrounded by distractions, perhaps multi-tasking and juggling other home and family commitments. It is a very different situation to typical face to face or on the job training, and as a result the design of your training has to reflect that.

Before you begin, take some time to identify your objectives for your online training. Who is your target market and what is their existing skill set? How will those users connect with your training? What do you need the training to achieve? Do you just intend to offer basic details and easy testing in order to get maximum compliance rates or do you want to challenge your users and encourage them to really think and grow? These questions will help to set the tone for your training and help in the design and development process.

Sometimes, when moving from traditional training programs to an online environment, there can be a tendency to just cut and paste content into slides. Unfortunately the outcome can often be that the user's mouse never moves far from the "Next" button and the material is only skim read. Online training needs to be more than just online reading. You have to ensure that you engage and challenge the learner and snap their brain into learning mode on a regular basis.

It is also essential to develop uniform standards for the design of your online training including colors, fonts, text size, layout etc. These standards help to teach the user tips on how to learn from us because they streamline the way in which we highlight crucial points or add a call to action. With consistent standards, the student will begin to understand that whenever they see a particular icon they need to complete a task, or whenever they see italics, that there is a link to more information. Aside from providing consistency for your students, these standards will also save you time due to the fact that you do not have to custom design each slide.

The image boxes in design templates can be very tempting to fill and can definitely help to bring your training to life. However, make sure that the images you include are relevant to the content and not just there to fill space. Does the image help to communicate the message you are attempting to present or does it detract from your information? We've all seen those charming or witty cartoons in a Powerpoint presentation that help a trainer to engage their audience, but bear in mind, in an on-line environment, YOU aren't there to draw the link between the cartoon and your message. So try to select images that add to the learning, instead of simply filling the white space with a stock image of a handshake.

Wherever possible, try to get out of the box of the basic information followed by question and answer. While this is helpful, your aim should be to discover ways to really engage your users with the content. Think of including case studies to link the subject to real life situations, interviews with staff, adding simulations, interactive games and so on. These features help to break up the monotony of slide after slide of information and assist the user to use the learning to their day-to-day work.

Lastly, it is a great idea to keep your training programs to a practical length. Even with highly engaging online training, you can only hold your users attention for so long. Lengthy and laborious modules can quickly start to bore participants. Short tests generally increase engagement levels and also help to provide a sense of accomplishment as users complete each unit and advance through the course.

Remember, if you want your online training to reach the mark, you need to try to see your content through the eyes of your users and focus on developing an environment for engagement and learning.

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