A Complete Beginner’s Guide to Building a Basic eLearning Course

Introduction to building an eLearning Course

A previous position of mine was as a junior eLearning developer for a leading eLearning company based in Halifax, NS. While I ultimately pursued other goals, during my time there I paid close attention to what the instructional designers were doing, and asked questions as to why things were done certain ways. I was even given the opportunity to design an eLearning course from the ground up for one of our customers, including the research and full development of the learning program. This post sums up much of what I learned about building a successful eLearning course; I hope you find it helpful in your endeavours!

So you’ve got information, and you want to share it with the world – perhaps charge a nominal fee for that information to make a bit of income while you educate people. The downside? You’re not an instructional designer, you don’t want to spend thousands upon thousands hiring an eLearning specialist, and you want to do this yourself. Never fear, the internet isn’t all misinformation and adult content; and, with the power of open software, you can get your information out there for the world to see.

In this brief guide, we’ll provide a very brief overview of how to build a simple eLearning course in WordPress. We’ll go into some minor instructional design theory in the process, to help you build a course that not only teaches, but engages your students and helps them to retain that knowledge.

This guide is absolutely not meant to replace instructional designers or eLearning developers, and – if you have the budget for them – you should absolutely seek them out. They’re incredible at what they do, and will help you build a much better structured course. That said, they can be very expensive, and we’re tailoring this for the solopreneur or just someone who has information to share – not a big business budget to do it with.

Software (What you’ll need to do it)

In our software stack, we’re going to be using WordPress as our underlying CMS (Content Management System) of choice. It’s what we’re most comfortable working with, and is widely accessible and open source (FREE!). Not all of the software we’ll be referring to here is free, but we’re doing what we can to provide inexpensive options.

So, at a base level, you’ll need a WordPress Site. Don’t have one, or don’t know where to get started? We’ve got a guide for that.

For our LMS (Learning Management System), we’re using Sensei Pro. It’s developed by Automattic, the same team who own the WordPress project (and WordPress.com, but that’s a whole other kettle of fish). Sensei does have a free version, however you cannot sell courses with the free version. If you’re just looking to create a course, cool! Free may work for you. If you’re looking to build something you can market, you’ll want the Pro version. It’s not too expensive, at $15/mo (USD) – billed yearly. There’s other options out there, too. We’re not going to get into the nuts and bolts of the different options, and the theory we’re covering will be completely applicable regardless of the system we’re using. We like Sensei because it’s fast and widely compatible across WordPress’ ecosystem.

Basic Concepts (things you need to know and prepare)

Information

Of course; you can’t teach without having information to teach. It’s important to structure your information in such a way that you can break it up into sections. eLearning is an asynchronous teaching method, so you won’t have the user’s undivided attention. They’ll likely come and go from the course as they progress, so having a clear division of sections helps them know exactly where they are and where to come back to. Structuring your content into bullet point headlines, and then dividing the finished content along those bullet points, is a great way to do this from the get-go.

When building the course, build each bullet point as a lesson (the terminology may change depending on the LMS you’re using). Then, as your learners progress, you can do occasional knowledge checks.

Knowledge Checks / Recall Reinforcement

Just like how an instructor / teacher in a classroom will occasionally quiz the class on content they’ve just covered, it’s important to do the same in an eLearning setting. These occasional knowledge checks, an ungraded quiz, force the learner to do some on-the-spot recall of what they’ve covered so far. These checks actually reinforce the learning by making them recall the information – helping it cement into long term memory more than just reading and re-reading can.

Consider building a 3-5 question mini-quiz every 2-4 sections of your lesson to challenge your learners to recall what you’ve been teaching them. This will have a profound effect on both their engagement and their recall in the final quiz.

In most cases, knowledge checks are not counted against their final grade, because they exist purely to challenge the reader to recall things and cement the knowledge – not to establish the final result of their learning. This isn’t a hard and fast rule, but is how the majority of courses I’ve built were structured.

Visual Elements (Images – Slides – Videos)

Never underestimate the power of a good visual element! It can get soooooo boring reading dry informative text. An image of nearly any sort will break up the monotony of the text, reduce people skimming over text, and can also reinforce the learning by bringing up examples of what’s been covered by the text. Videos are another great example of a visual element which can be used to spice up the content, and add valuable secondary information to the course.

It’s important to note that, just like when building a presentation slide deck, your images and videos should not just reiterate the text, but rather should serve to reinforce the text or add valuable context or examples to it.

Another visual element which is worth mentioning is simply the use of text styles; simple things like underlines, italics, and bolding can cause text to stand out for your readers, reinforcing its importance and – again – breaking up the monotony of just plain text.

Final Quiz – Grading

Now it’s time to wrap up the learning experience with a graded course. This isn’t strictly necessary, depending on the purpose of your eLearning; however, if you’re offering certification, or need to have qualifiable results, you’ll need a final grade to prove your students have actually gained the requisite knowledge.

Depending on the eLearning software you’re using, this should be a fairly intuitive and straightforward quiz. Ensure you’re touching on all of your key points, and I recommend that you *do* use any option presented to mix up the question order. There’s a few reasons for this, but generally speaking if you mix up the order of the questions, you’ll ensure the learning is more ingrained than if you essentially run through the modules again in order.

Building the Course

Now that you’ve got your course layout, the next step is to build it! This is one of those places that we can help. If you don’t have time to do it yourself, feel free to reach out and ask us to quote you on building the course from your structure / layout / content.

Selling the Course

If you want to sell the course, there’s great tools to do that! Sensei Pro integrates seamlessly with WooCommerce, while other tools on the market largely either integrate with WooCommerce, other platforms, or have their own sales process built-in. Marketing the course to your audience, though? Marketing is a whole different ballgame.

A well-built course can be an amazing source of recurring, passive (or low long-term effort) income, and a truly rewarding experience for both you and your learners. Best of luck, and happy building!