eLearning Checklist: Ensure Clear Purpose, Accessibility, and Actionable Objectives

I developed my first eLearning course in 2003, and I didn’t really know what I was doing. Before that, I was in instructional design writing storyboards, but I always handed it off to a developer. They loved my designs for courses and learning games. As a team, we would produce really cool things. But building it myself was daunting when I first tried. Back then, I just jumped in because I had to after starting a new job. I studied others’ work. I frequented industry blogs. I tried things in the authoring tool (Lectora then, though we are mostly Articulate now). I steadily improved, and people started coming to me for help. As I learned new tools, sometimes I attended workshops to get official training. Other times, I just dove in and figured it out myself. Whichever method works best for you, I recommend taking advantage of what's freely available online. Here are some suggestions below. As you get into it, you will discover many, many more. Most authoring tools have online help forums and how-to blogs. Articulate, for example, offers like a gazillion free templates. Tim Slade regularly posts advice and tips for new eLearning designers and offers a designers' academy. Devlin Peck posts some technical how-tos and also has a developer offering. The Learning Guild has different subscriptions. The free level still provides some good resources. You might also find stuff on Association for Talent Development (ATD). And, of course, there is AI. Ask your tool of choice for step-by-step instructions when you need them. IMO, the directions provided are not always accurate, but it does help. If your company is working with an L&D agency team like mine, Integrated Learning Services, Inc. (ILS), you can also ask them about offerings. For example, one of our clients asked us to lead webinars with their internal team. We talked through how we construct certain projects and answer questions related to their own work. We developed more complex courses for them while they learned until they eventually took on more of the development themselves. To experiment yourself, Articulate has the eLearning Heroes challenges. iSpring Solutions has its own competition, which includes a temporary subscription. Tim runs challenges too which are not authoring tool dependent. Look at others' entries in the challenges and at different portfolios and samples. You can learn a lot this way. There are also several developers on here actively posting about live projects, like Nejc Žorga Dulmin, Melissa Milloway, Phil Mayor, Emma Berry, Natalia Vostretsova 🤓, Amy DeMarco, and more. These can provide great tips. I also weave in examples of my team’s projects among my LinkedIn posts, in addition to other related info like estimating projects, typical timelines, working with SMEs, etc. And Learning & Development jokes; I got jokes. These are just some of the resources available to you. Pick a place and jump in. That’s how most of us learned, and you can too.

Most organizations don’t fail at eLearning because of technology. They fail because of implementation. Buying an LMS is easy. Making it work at scale? That’s where things break. eLearning success is not a one-step decision. It’s a system. From what we’ve seen, the difference comes down to getting these right: • Clear learning goals (not just “go digital”) • Readiness across tech, people, and content • Choosing the right mix of tools (LMS, digital library, virtual classroom) • Creating multi-format content learners actually engage with • Defining success metrics early Because eLearning isn’t about content delivery. It’s about learning outcomes + adoption + ROI. And that only happens when implementation is done right. We’ve broken this down into a simple step-by-step framework 👇 https://lnkd.in/gsrwBEY6 #EdTech #eLearning #LMS #DigitalLearning #LearningAndDevelopment #HigherEducation #FutureOfWork

Scenario Based eLearning  Are you using scenario-based learning in your eLearning courses? If not, let me briefly explain how and why you should.  Scenario based learning is a great way to introduce interactivity to your eLearning courses while inviting active participation from your learners. An effective scenario-based learning will be engaging and authentic.   As with all eLearning courses, you must know your target audience and the tasks that need to carry out in their daily duties to create an effective training solution. Ensure to align the scenarios to the learning objectives of the course.  Scenarios should present learners with the following: •Challenge – a realistic work situation that requires a decision.  •Choices – several realistic choices the learner could make. There should be one best choice, but the other options should also be feasible. •Consequences – the learner sees how their choice plays out and is offered constructive feedback on the choices they make. Branching may be used here to let consequences play out in full. Use feedback instead of only telling learner if they made the right choice or not. Feedback is crucial to explain why a choice was correct or incorrect and it should help to reinforce learning.   Following this pattern ensures that the learner learns by doing and is active in their learning.  The most effective scenarios will have: •Realistic situations        •Believable protagonist at the centre of the story  •Meaningful consequences                                                                           The benefits of Scenario based learning include: •Building confidence in decision making – learners get to make mistakes in a safe environment before applying what they have learned in the real world.   •Improving knowledge retention – learners apply what they have learned in a practical way.  •Motivating learners -learners see immediately how the information relates to their daily tasks. Of course, not all types of courses will be suitable to this type of learning – definitions and simple instructions don’t lend well to scenarios – but for the more complex material, scenarios are worth the extra effort it takes to create them. #tcidul

The Illusion of Mastery in eLearning Bridging the gap between short-term recognition and long-term retention. Within the corporate L&D sector, we frequently conflate a "completed" eLearning status with genuine competency and skill acquisition. When developing a recent module on Fearless and Effective Feedback, my primary objective was to ensure the digital content catalysed a tangible shift in workplace culture. A significant hurdle in digital pedagogy is "divided attention." Busy leaders and employees often relegate eLearning to a secondary task, resulting in information being processed only within the short-term memory. While a learner may successfully navigate a post-module quiz, this often reflects "recognition" (the ability to identify a correct answer) rather than true "recall" (the ability to retrieve information independently). As Dr Pooja Agarwal and Patrice Bain elucidate in Powerful Teaching, knowledge lacks the durability required to foster a growth culture without deliberate retrieval. This aligns with the research of Brown, Roediger, and McDaniel (2014), who argue that the ease of re-reading or simple recognition creates a false "illusion of mastery." To mitigate this, we integrated parallel real-world scenarios directly into our module. Rather than passively consuming content, learners are required to apply feedback frameworks to authentic workplace challenges in real-time. This cognitive "heavy lifting" forces the brain to encode information into long-term memory. By shifting from passive consumption to active application, we ensure that the principles of respectful feedback are anchored for the long term—extending far beyond the final slide of the deck. Question: What retrieval activities have you designed into your corporate learning to move learners beyond short-term recognition toward long-term retention that truly impacts culture?

Most businesses spend thousands on eLearning. Their team forgets it by Wednesday. Bespoke training is the opposite of that. It's built around your actual regulatory risks, your team's real roles, and the specific decisions your people face on a Tuesday afternoon when nobody's watching. Your competitors are probably still using off-the-shelf content. Bullet points, a next button, a quiz. Done. And honestly? There's a good chance you are too. Yet clients who've switched to bespoke with us have seen a 34% reduction in compliance failures on average. That's not a marketing number. That's what happens when training reflects reality instead of a generic framework someone built for every industry at once. When a suspicious transaction lands on your team's desk at 4:47pm, they either know what to do or they don't. Off-the-shelf training doesn't prepare them for that moment. Bespoke does. When Study Academy started, we resold eLearning from awarding bodies. It wasn't working. So we built our own, backed by universities. We've now trained over 1.8 million employees across 20+ countries. The businesses that see real compliance outcomes aren't the ones with the biggest budgets. They're the ones with training that actually fits. Bespoke eLearning is the foundation. What comes after it, the measurement, the reinforcement, the ongoing behaviour change, is where the real results live. We've built bespoke training for businesses from 3 employees to FTSE100. Happy to show you what that looks like for as little as £3,700 per course

I taught in a class recently that made me pause and rethink how learning actually happens. The content was great; explanations were clear, but the engagement just wasn’t there. Some learners were passive while others were distracted. Just a few understood the material, but they weren’t actively participating. I ask myself, Is great content enough, or does the experience of learning matter just as much? To explore that, I tried something simple. I took part of the same lesson and redesigned it using Wordwall. The content didn’t change; only the delivery did. The difference was immediate: participation increased and the energy in the room shifted. Learners who were previously quiet became more involved. What stood out was not just that learners were answering correctly, but that they were actively engaged in the process. This experience gave me a deeper appreciation for what Wordwall is doing as a product. From a product perspective, one of the most impressive aspects is ITS RAPID CONTENT TRANSFORMATION. Instead of creating new materials from scratch, educators can take existing content and quickly convert it into interactive formats. This significantly reduces preparation time and makes it easier to experiment with new teaching approaches. Closely related to this is its support for MULTI -FORMAT LEARNING MODES. The same content can be reused across different formats, quizzes, matching exercises, and random selection games without requiring additional effort. This not only saves time but also introduces variety, which keeps learners engaged. Another strength lies in its INTUITIVE INTERACTION DESIGN. The product relies on familiar actions like clicking, dragging, and matching. Because these interactions are already understood, learners can engage immediately without needing instructions. This reduces cognitive load and makes the experience accessible across different age groups. There is also a strong element of REAL TIME CLASSROOM ENGAGEMENT. The product shifts learners from passive listeners to active participants. Instead of simply receiving information, they are responding, interacting, and making decisions in the moment. This changes the dynamic of the classroom entirely. There is also an emotional dimension to the product, which I would describe as its EMOTIONAL ENGAGEMENT LAYER. When I introduced these activities, the atmosphere changed. Learners felt more relaxed, more willing to participate, and less afraid of making mistakes. That shift in emotional experience is something many educational tools struggle to achieve. Finally, the product offers FLEXIBLE DELIVERY ACROSS LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS. It works effectively in live classroom settings and can also be used for independent or remote learning. This adaptability makes it relevant across different teaching contexts. Hello there, My name is Mabel A. Oyekanmi, an edutech product manager. I'd love to connect. #ProductManagement #Edutech #CareerGrowth

Your eLearning timeline is a strategy decision, not a project plan Most L&D roadmaps quietly assume a hard truth: important training will take months to build. The assumption sounds reasonable: "Good design takes time. "Stakeholders are busy. "We can’t rush quality." But here’s the real question: What are you optimizing for? Because when a critical behavior change waits 6–12 months for training to launch, your organization is already paying the price — in missed sales, inconsistent execution, avoidable risk, or employee churn. Long timelines aren’t just an operations issue. They’re a strategy decision. What changes when you can build in weeks instead of months? When you combine human instructional design with AI acceleration, three things shift: Drafting isn’t the bottleneck anymore. Structured outlines and first-pass lessons are generated in minutes, not weeks. Stakeholders react to something real. Instead of debating theory in slide decks, leaders react to concrete scenarios, examples, and practice activities. Your best people spend time on judgment, not formatting. SMEs and designers lean into "Is this the right story?" instead of "Do we have a story yet?" Quality doesn’t go away. It just shows up in different places. A practical takeaway for your next build. Before you greenlight the next 3–6 month training project, ask: - What’s the earliest, smallest version of this training that would still create real value? - Where could AI help us get to a structured draft in a day, so humans can spend their time sharpening, not starting? - How can we involve stakeholders earlier — reacting to something tangible — instead of waiting for a "final" version? Even small changes here can reclaim weeks. At Ascendia, we design our process around one belief: the faster you can get high-quality learning into the hands of your people, the faster your strategy moves. That’s why we focus on human x AI lesson builds that are 90% faster while staying tightly aligned to your context. If you’re curious what that could look like for your team, a focused Free Lesson is often the best place to start.

Product Case Study: Personalized Learning Recommendation System Designed a personalized recommendation system for an online learning platform as part of a product case at Airtribe, aimed at improving engagement, completion rates, and user satisfaction. Problem: - Too many courses leading to decision fatigue - Low completion rates - Lack of structured learning paths Goals: - +25% Engagement - +30% Completion Rate - +20% User Satisfaction User Personas: - Learners - Instructors - Admins Key User Stories: - Learners want personalized recommendations to easily discover relevant courses. - Learners seek skill and career-based suggestions for effective learning. - Learners desire gamified progress tracking (badges, milestones, leaderboard) to stay motivated. - Learners wish to provide anonymous feedback for honest input. - Instructors want to upload and structure courses. - Instructors need engagement analytics (drop-offs, completion) to improve content. - Instructors aim for their courses to reach the right audience. - Admins want to optimize recommendation logic. - Admins seek to analyze drop-offs and funnel performance. - Admins wish to manage feedback and content quality. Core Features: - AI-driven Personalized Recommendations (behavior + goals + skill level) - Adaptive Learning Paths (next best course suggestions) - Gamified Progress Tracking (badges, milestones, leaderboard) - Instructor Dashboard (content upload + engagement insights) - Admin Panel (recommendation tuning + funnel analysis) - Feedback System (anonymous + named) System Thinking: Built a closed-loop system: Data (behavior, feedback) → Recommendation Engine → User Interaction → Feedback → Continuous Improvement Key Trade-offs: - Personalization vs Privacy: Adopted privacy-first personalization (user control + minimal data). - Content Quality vs Supply: Prioritized quality via ranking, moderation, and completion signals. Non-Functional Thinking: -Performance: Fast recommendations (<200ms), real-time updates for leaderboards & live classes -Scalability: Designed for millions of learners, thousands of instructors, and high data volume (feedback + analytics) -Availability: 99.9% uptime with reliable live class experience -Security: OTP-based authentication, encrypted data, spam-safe feedback system -Compliance: Privacy-first design aligned with data protection standards -Monitoring: Real-time tracking of engagement, drop-offs, and system performance -Extensibility: Flexible architecture to support new roles (e.g., mentors) and future features Key Takeaways -Personalization works only when paired with trust -Structured paths significantly improve completion rates -Strong products are built on continuous feedback loops Built with a focus on user-centric, scalable, and data-driven product thinking. Would love your thoughts! #ProductManagement #CaseStudy #Airtribe #EdTech #PMRole #ProductDesign

I’ve just put together the first interactive learning experience as part of my portfolio project and this one is for anyone who has ever thought, “we need a training for this.” The idea behind it is simple: When performance drops, is training really the answer? This experience walks through that question in a more interactive way, looking at what should actually be considered before requesting a training in the first place. While building this, I found myself stepping a little outside my usual tools. I am a big fan of tools like Articulate Rise, Parta, and iSpring. They make building and deploying learning so seamless, especially when it comes to LMS integration and tracking. That ecosystem is hard to beat and honestly not something I am ready to move away from. But at the same time, I have noticed that I sometimes rely on templates more than I would like to. So this project is me experimenting a bit more using HTML to play around with UI, UX, and interactions in a way that I normally wouldn’t. It is definitely not perfect and building something like this without the support of an LMS comes with its own challenges, especially around tracking and data. But it has been a really fun process of exploring what else is possible. This is very much a work in progress and I will keep adding to it over time. If you are in the learning space or have ever been on the requesting side of training, I would love for you to take a look and share your thoughts 😃 🔗 https://lnkd.in/ggCx9Rr8

I'll let you in on a secret. You're doing employee training wrong, and it's costing you engagement, productivity, and team performance. Here's how to fix it with the insider techniques that top learning designers are using right now. Most L&D teams are stuck in the stone age of training—drowning employees in text-heavy slides and mind-numbing content that goes in one ear and out the other. The data is brutal: 70% of employees report being completely disengaged during traditional training. But here's the game-changing approach top organizations are using to flip the script. Imagine training that's so engaging, your employees actually *want* to learn. We're talking microlearning modules under 10 minutes, gamified experiences with real-time rewards, and immersive simulations that feel like interactive video games. The secret sauce? Interactive design that transforms learning from a compliance checkbox into a compelling experience. Think role-play scenarios where learners make decisions with immediate consequences, leaderboards that spark friendly competition, and bite-sized content that respects your team's limited attention span. Successful companies are already seeing massive results: • 40% faster skill acquisition • 65% higher knowledge retention • Significant boost in employee motivation This isn't about fancy technology. It's about creating learning experiences that mirror how modern professionals actually consume information—fast, interactive, and meaningful. Get the full training transformation playbook that top L&D leaders are using to revolutionize their learning programs