Some tips on creating E-learning courses with Exploodo
Course elements
- Starting page with course title, information regarding course content, button "Start Course“
- Optional: Content overview for longer courses
- Educational contents, e.g. 10-20 text elements, 2-6 interactive exercises
- Last page: Again course title, thank you for cooperation or attention, button "Restart Course"
Characteristics of educational contents
- In most cases, educational contents open after clicking on a hotspot (or in a different way if it makes sense)
- Heading = hotspot title
- Texts are short and to the point (no redundancies)
- Contents are correct (Use specialized terminology carefully)
- Texts are easy to understand (which conflicts with brevity and correctness)
- If possible, texts should contain direct recommendations for correct behavior!
Good: Stop at the red traffic light.
Bad: Be especially careful if the traffic light is red.
Good: Do not tell the caller that your colleague is sick but say that she is currently not available.
Bad: Handle sensitive information carefully.
- If certain educational contents are more than one "page" long, number them using "page 1 of 2", not "1/2". This works better for screenreaders.
Text length
- At least one sentence or a list
- No more than 100 words of continuous text
Writing style
- The user should be addressed in a polite way.
- For better readability, standard courses do not use gender-neutral language.
- Easily understandable language
- Use specialized terms correctly; no colloquial language
- Use verbs and avoid nominalizations (e.g. "use" instead of "usage")
- Try to use mostly positive language, for instance: "What can I do as an employee? How can I contribute in a certain field by behaving in the right way?" Try to avoid negative wording, such as possible severe consequences in case of violations. Neuroscience has demonstrated that people can remember more easily if they are in a positive mood and not under negative pressure.
Types of interactive educational contents
- Questions + answers + solutions
- Simulated conversations with answers to choose from + solution
- Picture puzzles (e.g. messy desk in the Security Awareness course)
- Picture puzzles with additional videos/sounds during mouseovers (e.g. chaos at the printer in the Security Awareness course).
- Clicking on terms to receive a solution (e.g. personal data in the EU General Data Protection Regulation course)
- Assigning terms by clicking on them. This is an alternative to drag-and-drop which has been replaced for reasons of accessibility (e.g. assigning documents to their classification level in the Data Classification course.)