5 User Experience (UX) Design Trends for E-learning in 2017

UX design revolutionizing E-learning

What if learning could be an enjoyable ride like a roller-coaster game? What if understanding concepts only took a few minutes? What if sharing knowledge with your friends could happen at the click of a button? The list is endless but we envision a better future for all those involved with experiencing a digital learning solutions.

Learning Should be Fun and Engaging! But how do we bring such an engagement?

Building positive user experiences in e-learning is about creating a robust, engaging & intuitive platform that matches users needs with e-learning capabilities that are easy and pleasant to use.

Today’s digital users have higher expectations from their e-learning course provider than ever before. To be successful, e-learning companies need new and innovative approaches to attract and retain students through highly relevant and personalized experiences across multiple channels.

“Our priority must be to switch from a product centered to user centered thinking”

Meanwhile, the trends we witnessed in 2016 will continue into 2017, driving the need for e-learning transformation. These trends, mixed with a flexible user experience, will provide a formula for success in 2017 and beyond.

Here’s the food for thoughts; our 5 pointers to help you vision the future.

1. UX design for personalized learning

Creating a ‘me’ experience for the user is essential for e-learning driven by self service. The need is to create personalized experiences rather than boring and presenting same template based approaches to allow for user to get involved, evolved and get back to utilization of the knowledge garnered through the process in an easy and intuitive way.

Yes, we understand you won’t have the bandwidth to personalize your course content for everyone but what if you deliver the same content in different fashion to allow the user to consume the same with a more personalized sense to it.

Imagine the same ‘How Google Sheet works?’ is answered in 3 ways to appeal to a budding research analyst, a Sales enthusiast and an accountant allowing them to consume the same content but the start and end is changed to create personalized self learning scenarios. Scenarios hence created would have a direct appeal to the user’s mindset while challenging him to dig deeper every time as the content stays relevant and moves at the pace user wants to learn at. Let’s understand your users and categorize them hence offering the most personalized experiences for one and all.

2. Gamification through UX design

Gamification in e-learning is fast emerging as an effective technique to engage learners. Learners would be more motivated if learning is more like a play and by increased competition between students.

In order to properly and effectively add gamification to your courses, the game elements need to be thoroughly thought out and well designed. It is very important to set up a relevant content in gaming simulation for higher retention and course completion.

For example, if a person wants to learn any particular language, we can map this situation to a gaming scenario. Here an avatar based approach can be used where an avatar of the person is simulated. The avatar in the gaming scenario is presented with a series of questions which he needs to answer to reach to next level. The correct answers to a certain set of questions will take him to the next higher levels. For completion of each level the avatar gets badges or stars. This approach also features leaderboards making it more engrossing.

By adding more elements of challenges (like bombs, competition), rewards (like stars, badges) and fun elements, the learning can be made interesting and interactive. This approach will enhance the learner’s engagement in any traditional e-learning course.

3. Social Learning

Social media has become an ingrained part of our lives today. Learners are constantly on social media platforms like facebook, instagram, twitter, pinterest or snapchat. To integrate real world in e-learning, social media is a valuable tool.

For example,

• On facebook, a group can be created for each class and the live video feature can be used by students to create course videos and share it on the group.
• On pinterest, a board can be created for each class and the useful resources like documents, images and videos can be pinned on that particular board. Learners can also create course material on their own and pin it on the board.
• Twitter which is a micro blogging portal can be extremely useful for sharing knowledge. A classroom hashtag can be created and teachers and students can tweet in 140 characters the actual essence of the message instead of posting long walls of text.
• Youtube channel can be created for a class and instead of watching videos created by others, students can create their own material and share it on the youtube channel

In short, since students are already on social media platforms integrating it with e-learning will offer an interesting new twist in their academics.

4. Microlearning

We all know that learners don’t have patience to go through the entire course material. They need information in the form of small chunks which gives them a brief description

Teaching and delivering content to learners in small, very specific bursts is going to be the trend to watch out in 2017.

Instead of presenting information in the form of long articles, it will be more engaging if we can provide information in the form of a short explainer video or a slide or a game video. This consumes less time and helps learners to quickly grasp concepts. Imagine a person wants to learn the basics of Photoshop, instead of writing loads of information, a short video explaining the basics with few examples or a single slide with bullet points will be more helpful for the user.

This helps learners to manage their time and constantly learn on the go. Microlearning can also be used to provide personalized learning experience for learners by sharing personalized content.

For example, Google’s primer app is a microlearning for marketing skills.

The content can be in the form of a game, video, presentation or any other format from which someone learns. In the below example, the concept empathy is explained using a simple short explainer video.

5. Immersive Learning design with UX

Immersive learning is gaining momentum with the advances of AR and VR technologies. They give ability to improve the e-learning courses, custom tailor every e-learning activity, and completely transform the nature of online training where learning feels more like a play and everyone has access to impartial education. Learn more about how AR and VR is a booster for e-learning  here.

Emerging trends in e-learning

The efforts you put into e-learning will yield great results. You will see happy and enthusiastic faces taking up your courses, since your students will realize how fun learning can be. Start implementing the above UX design trends in your e-learning business and you will soon notice you are making a big difference into the way your students perceive education.

What kind of scenarios have you enjoyed that has helped you learn something? Share with us your thoughts in the comments section belo