The First Aid Kit for Standards

Content standards play an important role while you develop any eLearning course. There have been instances where standards have not been set before the development of the actual course which leads to multiple iterations of reviews. This post will help identify the general course standards that need to be set prior to any content development.

Titles: Decide upon a standard for topic titles. They could be a combination of Sentence case or uppercase format. All titles should ideally be in camel case.

Instructional Text (iText): Interactivities in an eLearning course need an iText. Some common interactivities may have the following iTexts:

• Images:
  
  
  
  • Single Image- Click the image to learn more.
  
  
  • Multiple Images - Click each image to learn more.
  
  
  
  
• Tabs: Click each tab to learn more.


• Bullet: Click each bullet to learn more.


• Block: Click each block to learn more.


• Icon:
  
  
  
  • Single icon: Click the icon the learn more.
  
  
  • Multiple icons: Click each icon to learn more.
  
  
  
  

Assessment/Knowledge Check:

• Single choice: Select the appropriate option and click Submit.


• Multiple choices: Select the appropriate options and click Submit.


• Drag and drop: Drag each option and place it in the appropriate block.


• Match the column: Select an option and then select its corresponding match and then click Submit.

Other standards: There may be other standards like clickable boxes, circles, etc. for flowcharts. Make sure these standards touch ground before the development process begins.

Special formatting words: Always make sure to get a list from the client where special formatting is applicable to words. For example, some words like organization may be spelt as Organization, ORGANIZATION, Org. etc.

Guru Tip: Although there may be iterations at this level, the key to a hassle free development and review cycle is finalizing a standard document and then moving forward to the next step.

Learning Objectives

Yeah it’s been a while since a post on eLearning, but in my defense its better late than never. Well, in this post we will discuss about Learning Objectives (LO).

Let’s start by first understanding the basics, i.e., what is an LO? An LO is a statement that directs the learner to understand what he/she will learn [addition or development of new skills] after the completion of a course. Therefore, it’s mandatory to have an LO for each course developed.

LO has several benefits to both the learner and the instructor. Some of them are listed below-

• Learner:




• Expected result after the completion of the course


• Understand if the course fulfills the learning needs




• Instructor:




• Development of precise training material aligned to the LO


• Development of assessment and knowledge check components


• Distinguish between need to know and nice to know elements in a course

LO has been further divided into two categories:

• Terminal Objectives (TO): Objectives that define the overall change in behavior after the completion of a particular course is called as TO.
  
  Example- Identify compliance violations for an insurance agent.


• Enabled Objectives (EO): Objectives that support TO are called EO. EO’s can be considered as sub-objectives that contribute to accomplish the TO.
  
  Example: Indentify premium calculations compliance violations for an insurance agent.

In the above two examples, we seen that the TO defines compliance violations for an insurance agent which includes premium calculations compliance violations as well. However, an EO describes only compliance violations related to premium calculations. Thus, we see that EO supports the full picture of the course i.e. compliance violations which is a TO.

Let us see some more examples of TO and EO’s.
• Course on riding a bike
o TO: Demonstrate how to ride a bike
o EO: Demonstrate how to change the gear

• Course on safety in office premises
o TO: List the safety measures in an office
o EO: List fire safety measures in an office

• Course on company policies
o TO: Identify the company policies
o EO: Identify the human resources policies