From PowerPoint to e-learning: 4 pitfalls

You know them: those passionate trainers who stand in front of a group and craftfully share their expertise with learners. Transitioning to teaching in an online environment is a challenge that many education and training professionals are currently facing. In a traditional classroom setting, trainers can rely on direct interaction, spontaneous discussions, and practical examples to deliver their message and engage their audience. However, this dynamic can easily be lost when the content is transferred to an online learning environment.

When transitioning everything you teach in a classroom setting to an online format, it might seem natural to write it all out. Yet, this approach often results in a digital book - something that, frankly, no one wants to wade through when they sign up for an e-learning course. You'll need to carefully evaluate your content, deciding what to keep, what to add, remove, or rewrite. How do you go about this? And how do you ensure the material resonates with your learners?

One of the biggest pitfalls of designing online courses is offering long pieces of text without any variation. Text alone can be effective, but it can quickly become boring, resulting in a loss of focus and learner engagement.

The following two tips will empower your e-learning and make the difference between a dull text and an engaging online training:

Tip #1: Offer different formats

When designing a learning program it is essential to provide different types of content to keep learners engaged.

• Text: short summaries or additional texts can function as reference points.

• Videos: summarise your content, provide examples, share a story, or present a case study.

• Visual explanation: images, infographics, and models that clarify and make complex information more understandable.

• Podcasts: audio provides an alternative way for consuming information, such as while on the go.

Tip #2: Promote interactivity

Interactivity is crucial for keeping learners engaged. Here are some simple ways to add interactivity to your course:

• Quizzes: tests and quizzes help reinforce knowledge and encourage active participation.

• Drag-and-drop questions: have learners move elements to the correct place to test their understanding.

• Hotspots: provide interactive images where learners can click on different areas to get more information.

• Activating elements: use tasks or simulations that require learners to think and apply their knowledge.

This Thinkdom blog explores different ways to introduce interactivity, categorised into three levels of complexity.

When converting a book into an e-learning course, you'll encounter text that is often long-winded and detailed. You'll need to streamline this content to focus on the essentials. In contrast, PowerPoint presentations are designed to complement spoken explanations, so you should aim to create a clear, engaging, and compact narrative without overloading the audience with information.

In both cases, less is more: the more brief and focused your online content, the more effective it will be. Break your content into small, manageable pieces (chunking) and revisit them periodically with increasing intervals (spaced repetition).

Guidelines

Consider the following guidelines to help you write clear and effective texts that resonate with your audience:

• Write engagingly: understand your audience well and tailor your text to speak to them, perhaps by creating a persona and focusing your content accordingly.

• Cut, cut, cut: eliminate all unnecessary words and sentences to keep your text as brief and clear as possible.

• Keep it short: use short paragraphs and plenty of white space to make your text easy to navigate and read, improving the overall reading experience.

• Use visuals: a well-chosen image can often express more than words, so incorporate visuals to support or enrich your message.

• Write actively: your text will come across as more lively and direct when written in an active voice.

• Coherence principle: include only relevant images, words, and sounds to avoid distractions and ensure your message is communicated clearly.

• Personalisation principle: address your audience in a friendly and informal manner, as if you are speaking to them personally, to make the learning experience more engaging and effective.

When writing texts for your online learning environment, personalisation is crucial. A common mistake is crafting generic content that fails to address the specific needs and characteristics of your audience. This makes the content less relevant and engaging for learners.

"Isn’t a book also written for a general audience?" That’s true, but a book can be broad because its audience is much wider. Readers accept this general approach. Similarly, a PowerPoint presentation can be general because the presenter adds a personal touch. However, e-learning is different from both a book and a PowerPoint and must be tailored to the target audience.

To achieve this, it is useful to create a persona or an empathy map. A persona is a detailed profile of a typical participant in your course, based on research into your audience. An empathy map helps you understand how this persona relates to your product. Investigate who your audience is, what their challenges are, what goals they wish to achieve, and what situations they find relatable. By integrating familiar scenarios, such as those they might encounter in their workplace, your audience will feel more engaged, and the content will resonate more with them. This not only increases relevance but also enhances the impact of your message. The same principle applies to photos: ensure that the people shown reflect your learners.

Also, make your learning environment adaptive where possible. Not every learner starts with the same level of knowledge and skills. Therefore, design your e-learning to adjust to the level of each learner.

You've put a lot of thought into your design, and it is logically structured. However, a common pitfall is presenting learners with content without providing the larger context they can hold onto. While PowerPoint presentations allow you to explain this context and books have a relatively fixed structure that people can navigate, e-learning can be much more flexible. Without a clear overview, learners may become disoriented, wondering where they are, how long it will take, and whether they are making any progress.

It’s crucial to provide learners with a framework at the beginning and to show them step-by-step where they are in their learning journey. One effective method is to visualise the learning path as a kind of roadmap. Guide learners through the process, marking when a step has been completed. You can do this through pop-ups, text, or video messages.

Learning Objectives

A common mistake we often encounter, even offline, is stating the learning objectives word-for-word at the beginning of a topic. Fact: almost no one reads this, and even if it is read, it often doesn’t stick. It’s better to approach learning objectives in a different way. Will Thalheimer found that explicitly stating learning objectives at the start of a lesson or training is not always useful. In some cases, it can even be distracting and make the learning process less effective.

He suggested that integrating learning objectives subtly into the learning experience helps learners focus without lessening their curiosity and motivation.

A powerful approach is to start with a question. This encourages learners to think about the learning objective and engage with the content actively from the outset. The result? Greater learning effectiveness.

In short

Converting classroom training to an online learning environment comes with its challenges. It is crucial to maintain the interaction and dynamics of a physical class, even in a digital setting.

By avoiding the pitfalls discussed and implementing the right strategies—such as varying content, keeping your texts brief and impactful, personalising, and visualising the learning path—you can ensure that your online training remains engaging and effective. This approach will elevate your e-learning to a higher level and create a meaningful impact on your learners.