5 Tips to Create Engaging eLearning with Genially
Every instructional designer is looking to make their content more engaging.
It’s on every client’s must-ask list.
And it makes sense. This format of fully online, self-paced learning is still an experiment. Without human instructors or peers, online learner engagement rates remain pretty low.
While we’re still searching for the magic formula, there are content development tools can help. Tools like Genially make it easy to build interactive eLearning content that can make it easy to boost learner engagement.
Bring your eLearning content to life.
Building learning materials from scratch can be a drag. So much time. So much effort.
Genially makes it easy to create beautiful, interactive learning content. The in-browser design tool comes highly recommended by instructional designers around the world.
With over 1000+ templates, you can create presentations, interactive images, infographics, and eLearning courses with the click of a few buttons.
Compared with other content development tools, the templates Genially offers are more detailed and robust. The gamified templates include word searches, sequence mazes, guessing games, board games, and many others. It’s easy to add some fun to your knowledge check, rather than the standard multiple choice questions.
The presentation-style templates are perfect for rapid eLearning. Animations and transitions are already built-in. Each template is artfully crafted to make it simple to plug in your content and press play.
Genially is also 100% browser-based. Which means it doesn’t matter if you’re on a Mac or PC, you can create amazing content directly from any browser. Pretty cool.
The tool is pretty intuitive to get up and running with a few clicks. But in case you’re looking for some guidance to get started, we’ve put together a few tips to kickstart your eLearning creation with Genially. Here they are.
5 Tips to Create Engaging eLearning With Genially
1. Start with a template
We all know how long it takes to create an eLearning course from scratch. Even with the best rapid authoring tools.
Genially is changing the game. Start your eLearning project with one of the 1000+ templates. Every template is created by a professional designers, allowing you to build a stunning training course with quickness.
In a few minutes, you can create interactive presentations, infographics, and full-scale gamified learning experiences.
Their templates also help get you familiar with the tool and its capabilities. Play around with the templates to see how their advanced animations are set up, so you can further customize them to your needs.
For eLearning, the templates we recommend to start with the presentations, training materials, infographics, and gamification.
2. Create interactive images
Interactive images allow learners to click on part of image to reveal a video, text, or embedded content. They help further expand upon a static image, highlighting important concepts or ideas.
Adding interactive elements to images is a major plus for learning. This type of content provide learners with the ability to connect two visual cues together, helping solidify concepts in memory.
Images with interactivity can be used throughout any part of your eLearning course. They are especially effective as knowledge assessments, where learners are required to click on the correct part of the image to answer a question correctly.
Example: if you’re creating a training course about a software tool, use a screenshot of the tool as your static image. Then add interactivity to help learners understand the various features and buttons of the software tool.
3. Gamify your learning with ease
Gamification is a hot topic in eLearning. Everyone wants it. The problem is that it requires a hefty investment of time and money.
Genially is making it much easier. Their content tool features gamification templates, ready to plug and play. All games are crafted for motivating, evaluating, and reinforcing information retention.
Board games. Memory games. Maze games. Word searches. No longer do you need to build gamified learning experience from scratch. The templates are ready to pull down and begin customizing for your audience.
Example: If you’re creating a training course about customer service, try creating a simple board game knowledge check. In the game, learners have to answer customer questions correctly to win.
4. Display data and processes with smartblocks
Smartblocks are pre-designed elements you can drag and drop into your eLearning course. All you’ll need to do is make a few edits and change the size.
There is a large library of these pre-designed elements; graphics, processes, maps, diagrams and many others.
The data smartblocks make it easy to create beautiful displays of graphs and numbers. Bar charts, graphs, speed dials. Virtually any data visualization you can image, simply update the numbers and watch them come to life.
Smartblocks also has a wide set of process visuals and diagrams. Elements like pyramids, Venn diagrams, and workflows. All pre-built and super easy to customize to your needs.
5. Customize animations and interactivity
One common problem with template-heavy authoring software is the lack of customization. This doesn’t seem to be the case with Genially.
On every element, you have the ability to tweak the animations and the interactivity levels. Change the speed that elements animation. And the direction in which they move in from.
For interactivity, you can change between hover interactions, clickable links, and text box pop-ups. For out-of-the-box content software, Genially allows for a good amount of customization. As they grow their platform, their custom features will continue to expand.
Easy as that! Don’t waste time creating an eLearning from scratch. Genially lets you create beautiful, interactive content in a matter of minutes. We highly recommend you check it out for your next project.
About the Author:
Andrew DeBell is a learning experience strategist and content developer on the customer education team at Atlassian. Connect with him on LinkedIn for more.