The challenge with a lot of online courses, at least in my opinion, is that they are actually pretty boring. The pattern they follow seems to be:
- Show a static slide of topics or lessons
- Show a static slide with information
- Show a slide with an embedded video
- “maybe” show a slide with some assessment like questions or an assignment
- Repeat
That’s pretty boring. It doesn’t surprise me that completion rates for these types of online courses is low.
What we need are to take best practices from classroom experiences – interactions, variety in approaches to topics, role-plays and more into the online world. We need branched navigations through topics and authentic assessment.
The problem is that this may become a complex and seem intimidating because of this complexity.
For the past couple of years, I have been using an online course-building tool (that really acts as a PowerPoint plug-in) called iSpring. The reason I’ve started using iSpring is because it finally provides me with tools that I’ve wanted for YEARS and are quite easy to use.
I’ve begin creating some videos to guide people through the use of this solution. It’s quite impressive to see in action and I recommend checking it out.
You can get the software here:
iSpring
Here are the first two videos I’ve created:
