With the wealth of information available to us, it can sometimes be challenging to filter the content that your e courses will have. Obviously, you cannot put everything in the course. That would take forever to complete. Not only that, the learners could suffer from cognitive overload.
It is very important to filter what you will include in one elearning course. You cannot jam everything. If you have to create a series of courses to completely teach the content that you have, that is what you should do.
Of course, filtering the information that you will include in the course is not that simple. You do not want to keep vital information – but at the same time, you do not want to spoonfeed the learners. Through e courses, you can encourage them to learn how to pursue the answers to their own questions. But you still need to guide them and ensure that they will seek answers in the right places. All of these make content creation quite challenging.
To help you identify the content that you should use, here are three techniques that you can use.
Know your objectives. Start by having a firm grip on what your objectives are. Some lessons come with a lot of content. For instance, if you want to teach financial management, you have various sub-topics to cover. You need to cover budgeting, saving, spending, and even investing. While you can teach all of these in one course, you need to check your objectives to know the depth of each sub-topic. If your objective is to educate debt-ridden consumers so they will make better financial decisions, you should probably talk about each topic in depth. That could mean dividing the content into different e courses. But if this is meant to be a prerequisite for another course, then a brief introduction and definition for each topic would suffice. That is how your objectives can guide you when it comes to choosing the content that you will place in the course.
Know what they need. It is also important for you to consider what the learners need. After all, they are the ones who will benefit from the course. There are various ways that you can do this. One is to directly ask them what they expect from the course. Obviously, this should happen prior to the content creation. You can also do some research about the industry, background, and preferences of the target audience of the elearning course. That way, you will know what they need and what they want out of the course. Just like your objectives, this will help you filter the content that you need to put in your e course.
Know the time limitations. Time is an important investment in elearning. Your learners will be investing this time to learn something new and you want to make sure that it is worth their while. This is also the reason why you should be considerate of the length of the course. Obviously, the content will dictate the length. If you put in too much content in it, that would make it long. If the learner is quite busy, you might discourage them from taking the course. It is actually best to keep the courses short but if there is no helping it, you need to time it carefully. You do not want them losing attention in the middle of a lesson because the course ended up being too long.
Consider all three of these during the content creation of your e courses. These can guide you in creating the best elearning experience for your target audience.
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