Tips on how to improve e-learning

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As what we have discussed in one of our previous posts on the result of what is the respondent thought on what feature is needed to be added in order to make e-learning interesting, today's post will be on the tips on how to improve the e-learning education.

There will be a few tips on how to improve e-learning.

In this era, E-learning has changed a lot of people's life. Most of the people now go for e-learning courses because it is convenient, available for 24 hours and so on. There will always be feedback and comments on users who use e-learning. The developers of the website and the instructors will then think of various ways to improve the e-learning to make it accessible to various type of users so that everyone can access to e-learning courses. It is like when you first time baking a cake and you give your friends to taste it, they then give you feedback about the taste and it seems that it did not turn out to be good feedback, so you will then try to figure out what is the problem and try to improve your baking skills. You will keep on trying until you receive good feedback. This is just like how website developers want to improve their websites after getting a lot of comments from users.

The first tips will be to consider the technology requirements used by the learners

Everyone uses different hardware, software and connection method. So, programmers and instructors should work closely together to plan what type of hardware, software and connection method that their target audience will use. For an example, not everyone has updated their browser version and programmers should consider to make the website to be best supported for almost all version of browsers. Besides, if learners want to download the notes but need to wait for an hour because of the connection speed, instructors should categorized the file properly. Not only that, instructors could either make it readable online or download the notes to read it offline. Programmers and instructor should think their learner's convenience. Apart from that, instructors should also keep the font of the text used simple. The font used like Arial, and Times New Roman are common font where they are readable on the screen. Not everyone can support other type of fonts. Instructors should also consider choosing the font that everyone's computer system have. There is no point downloading the notes when the font of the text could not read and appear to be all different type of characters. Therefore, it is advisable to use font that is available in almost all of the computer system and commonly used.

The second tips will be to motivate learners

This is where the instructors need to upgrade and improve the teaching style. Instructors need to come out with interesting way of teaching and not the dull way to motivate learners to learn. We know this is like a common tip or guideline where everyone knows but it is a very important tips. Instructors need to think of various way to motivate learners and know their needs. The way to motivate the learners is different in a traditional way of learning which is in classroom and in e-learning environment. In e-learning environment, instructors need to put a lot work and effort to make the course designs presentable in an interesting and creative way so that it will motivate the learners to learn. Do the learners prefer the visual design type or the information design type ?

Visual design is where there will be a lot of images and graphics when presenting the information for the learners. For information design, it is where there will not be much of images and graphics and there will be a lot of words in the content. The whole notes will be full of description of the information.

1) Visual design type- with a lot of graphics


Image source: dashboardspy [Online], Retrieved on Saturday, 13th March 2010,
URL: http://dashboardspy.com/dashboards/45/executive-dashboards-in-performance-improvement-frameworks

2) Information design type- with a lot of words


Image source: indezine [Online], Retrieved on Saturday, 13th of March 2010,
URL: http://www.indezine.com/articles/dumpthattext01.html

In our opinion, does anyone really read all the text on the power point slide? Well, they are probably some people but not all. Putting too much of information in one slide will make it looks dull and not interesting. This will demotivate the learners to continue reading the following slides. They will not pay attention on the slides. Information design type is where there will the design will be text-based design. It is easy to create where the instructors will just type in the information but it will make the learning to be boring. Learners will not have the interest to read the information.

Moving on, putting more pictures, video clips, interesting layout and so on will grab the learners' attention. Well, people love to see colourful things. Instructors may need to put more related graphics according to the information for the learners to see because it is easy to understand and it will make the learning more interesting. In e-learning, it is advisable that instructors need to put more effort to motivate the learners to learn and understand by giving creative and attractive notes. The graphics and images must be relevant to the content. Notes which are full of words may seem to be informative but learners need to be very concentrate in order to read the notes. Overload information will demotivate the learners to continue reading the rest of the notes.

The third tips will be adding mini games


Image source: imlaudienceresponse [Online], Retrieved on Saturday, 13th of March 2010,
URL: http://www.imlaudienceresponse.com/products/quizzes/interactive-quizzes.html

Well, putting some mini games like quizzes will make learning more interactive and interesting. Learners can take the quiz test before subscribing to online classes to see which chapters you are weak at and emphasize on that particular topic. Not only that, the objective to put some mini games is to make learning fun and not dull. Inserting some mini games like SUDOKU will also test their strategies in solving problem. This will also help them to improve their thinking skills. Courses like Maths require very good thinking skills as there will be a lot of tricky questions. Try to put quizzes on every chapters to let the learners take the quiz to see whether or not they understand the particular chapter. Well, make sure there will be feedback given after the quiz section.

References:
-Lee Ann Obringer, howstuffworks, How E-learning works [Online], Retrieved on Saturday, 13th of March 2010,
URL: http://communication.howstuffworks.com/elearning9.htm

Avelyn