What’s In Your Content Hub? 7 Tips for Building Your Elearning Library

In order to ensure effective and successful education and training, it's important to deliver a great content experience for your learners. A content hub is critical to expanding learning opportunities and enhancing the learning experience, yet it's common for companies to slight this portion of the development and focus more on compliance, short-changing the eLearning library itself. 

Without a dynamic, inclusive content library, you risk diminishing the ROI and impact of your eLearning investment. Fortunately, we’ve identified a few ways L&D professionals and admins can build an organized, streamlined, and effective eLearning library.

Read on to discover 7 top tips for eLearning content creation.

1) Identify the Elements That Don’t Work

Within the large majority of learning management systems are standard content elements. However, despite being a frequent inclusion in the eLearning environment, these elements don’t necessarily deliver an engaging, interactive experience. Though this is content, it won't deliver the same results as more engaging options that directly involve the learner in the activity. These items include:

• PDF content
• Recorded lectures
• Slide-based content
• Link items
• Page items

One goal of eLearning content development should be to move away from these passive learning resources and move toward more active opportunities. Things like offering students the chance to submit immediate feedback, take a summative assessment, post a video or audio response on a forum or assignment, or follow a custom learning path with elements that engage the learner can help create more interactive opportunities for learning.

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2) Create an Active Learning Environment

There are several tools that can help make content more memorable—which is, after all, the goal of your eLearning courses. Content that is memorable is learned and more likely to be retained, thereby achieving value for both the user and hosting organization. By diversifying your methods of content delivery, you can create a more active and impactful experience for your learners.

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3) Include Video

Videos are commonly added to courses as they can cover more information without the labor-intensive efforts of creating manuals or how-to documents. In order to assess the success of embedded video in a course, tracking views and retention is important. Unless this occurs, video can be passive content. Creating opportunities for interaction with video, such as adding questions or stop action, can be done through H5P (which is already included in Open LMS), Kaltura, or Panopto.

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4) Introduce Presentations, Lectures, and Reading Assignments

Many content developers will have lesson plan options with embedded questions. Using an authoring tool such as Gomo can help you create and deliver content that increases the opportunities for engagement. Custom production is the best way to deliver content most applicable to the learning needs of an organization. You can introduce presentations, whether through software like Google Slides or Microsoft PowerPoint, with or without the aid of AI content creation.

Reading assignments should move beyond PDFs and summary questions at the end of the module. Mixing questions and visual content throughout the content makes the information more appealing and engaging to the learner. This can be done using H5P , Gomo, and Rustici SCORM Cloud.

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5) Harness the Power of Gamification, Simulation, and Scenarios

One of the newer ways to create engaging content is through gamification, and there are a number of options for including scenarios and simulations into coursework. Assignment leaderboards, leveling up badges, lessons with branching, and H5P activities are just a few of the ways to engage learners with augmented or virtual reality experiences, interactive games, or highly complex videos and animation.

This engagement drives learners toward content that has more direct application as information is put into practice. Motrain or existing SCORM content can help you incorporate these elements.

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6) Leverage the Benefits of an Open-Source LMS

The shift toward online delivery and eLearning continues to increase, though organizations are now looking into the aspects that will be the most effective in delivering the training or information their learners need. This means turning to open source for the value-add flexibility and interoperability it offers. 

Rather than buying into static, generalized content and a delivery platform, an open-source LMS provides native tools that allow organizations to determine content creation with a unique, individualized approach to every piece of content and then build upon that content through seamless integrations. Streamlining your content from a virtual hub with your learners' unique profiles and needs can be acquired or sourced through a plug-and-play LMS without any hassle.

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7) Rely on Support

Creating a virtual content hub specifically designed with the courses and content your learners need is no easy task. However, when leveraged properly, your LMS can streamline the tools and resources needed to make learning resources easily accessible and relevant for every learner regardless of role, experience, or goals.

With Open LMS, you're getting more than just a great LMS hosting company. You are partnering with expert content creators that customize the learning application to your specific program and need. There's an entire suite of content creation skills, from annotating videos for a session to gathering student feedback once the session has been completed. With Open LMS, clients receive customized end-to-end eLearning solutions from world-class edtech experts, including our sibling company GP Strategies, allowing you to encourage professional development and continued advancement, boosted morale, and overall improved performance.

Want to learn more? Check out 'Tips for Building Your eLearning Library', our recent on-demand webinar: