The complete eLearning content development guide

eLearning content has gained increasing recognition in recent years thanks to its many benefits.

Organizations that develop effective eLearning materials witness increased productivity, improved employee retention, enhanced innovation, and considerable cost savings. Well-crafted eLearning materials also drive significant improvements in overall efficiency while fostering long-term growth.

eLearning content lends itself to growing global workforces. Thanks to its scalable, flexible, and personalized nature, organizations employing remote workers can more easily onboard employees from different locations. This ensures a company can attract and nurture top talent from anywhere in the world.

Considering these advantages, it’s unsurprising that so many companies are looking into training content development.

In this guide, we show you how you can develop and deliver effective eLearning content. In addition to a step-by-step guide to crafting your own eLearning materials.

Ready to learn more? Then let’s jump in.

eLearning content development refers to the process of crafting educational and training materials suitable for delivery via a digital platform.

Learning and development (L&D) teams typically divide this development process up into three parts:

• Learning objectives

• Topics

• Creating content

The goal of eLearning content development is to engage learners with training content while delivering on learning outcomes.

Let’s dive into how to develop eLearning content!

Your first step is to identify and define the goals of your content. Ask yourself:

• What do I want my content to achieve?

• What are the needs of my target audience?

With the answers in mind, craft measurable goals that align with the needs of your organization and its employees. E.g., "Increase employee proficiency in Adobe Illustrator by 30% within 6 months."

Your next step is to sketch out how you want to structure the content, including tone, format, and style. This is known as your design vision. This plan should provide you and your team with a guideline that informs the development of your eLearning content.

Remember to include information about:

• Your learning objectives

• The target learner

• How the content should be organized and presented

• Aesthetic requirements

• Interactive elements

• Method of delivery

• Tone and style

Now it’s time to start creating your eLearning content, including text, images, videos, quizzes, and interactive elements. Your priority here is to create engaging materials which also support a range of learning styles. This will ensure that the maximum number of learners can fully participate in the course. Smartcat’s AI Course Creator can help you turn your existing training materials into engaging, interactive eLearning modules.

This is when you collect feedback. This data shows you what’s working and what isn’t as well as where you can make adjustments and enhancements.

Organizations need to know if their eLearning strategy is providing the learning outcomes needed by employers and teams. One way of assessing its success is by measuring return on investment (ROI).

To do this, compare the investments you’ve made with the benefits and outcomes. These might include boosted team productivity, improved learner performance, or lowered training costs.

Use the data from these assessments to optimize your content and further improve outcomes. For example, you may wish to refine modules, alternate formats, update materials, or incorporate new technologies.

It’s a good idea to repeatedly assess and optimize your eLearning content. This ensures that the content remains relevant and effective while still aligning closely with learner and business needs.

eLearning content development is important for both learners and organizations. Let’s take a look first at how eLearning content supports learners.

• For learners, well-developed eLearning materials provide them with high-quality, accessible, and specialized educational content. These materials support their training and accommodate their unique learning styles without the need to travel or relocate.

• Learners also benefit from rereading or rewatching eLearning content on a digital platform as many times as necessary. This supports those who need more time to absorb information.

• The general flexibility and convenience of eLearning content also offers advantages. Those who study at different paces or those who learn in less traditional ways can manage their own learning. The interactive format hands autonomy and control back to the individual. It gives them more say over their learning process than they might have in a traditional classroom setting.

• Finally, media elements such as quizzes make the learning experience with eLearning content more fun than traditional methods. This hands-on content helps learners better retain information and stay motivated as it offers them immediate feedback .

Let’s dive into how developing eLearning content benefits businesses.

• For businesses, custom eLearning content development also provides a host of benefits. eLearning materials enable organizations to provide scalable and flexible educational experiences. This is because learners can access their materials from anywhere and at any time.

• Businesses can onboard and train employees across the globe. This is while still enabling teams to manage, update, and scale the content from a single location. Because of this, organizations can find and hire top talent from all over the world.

• Businesses experience significantly reduced costs when they use eLearning content over in-person teaching methods. L&D teams can reuse eLearning materials as many times as necessary and updated as needed. It therefore incurs much lower costs than engaging an in-house educator to train each cohort of employees.

Learn how eLearning content development solutions are evolving and the formats they take with this list of current trends.

1. Adaptive learning

Adaptive learning (sometimes known as adaptive teaching) uses learner data to develop educational materials. This data-driven process helps to deliver tailored resources and activities that meet specific learner needs.

This is a popular approach that maximizes engagement and reduces frustration.

2. Immersive learning

Utilizing virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) technologies, immersive learning involves the creation of hyper-realistic learning environments. In these virtual worlds, the learner can hone complex skills. This makes it particularly beneficial for industries that require hands-on experience.

3. Interactive learning

Interactive learning refers to eLearning content and resources that learners can actively engage with. This approach encourages learner participation and collaboration that supports information retention and motivation.

Examples of interactive learning components include quizzes, surveys, microlearning modules, gamified scenarios, games, and videos. The concept rejects passive learning and encourages participation in activities as this helps to reinforce knowledge.

4. Microlearning

An effective approach for keeping learners focused, microlearning pertains to a series of small modules on one overarching topic. These bite-sized lessons are a great alternative to long content modules for those with shorter attention spans or limited time.

Microlearning also supports flexible study. Students slot modules around other activities without sacrificing a high-quality learning experience. For a workforce managing multiple tasks on different timelines, microlearning is a highly efficient solution.

5. Mobile learning

Mobile learning is a convenient and versatile approach to eLearning that optimizes course materials for handheld devices. Learners benefit from the enhanced flexibility that comes with being able to access the course any time and anywhere.

By adopting this style of eLearning, organizations are able to demonstrate their willingness to meet learners where they are. This helps students feel supported, seen, and heard by their employers–a key element in talent retention.

6. Gamification

Gamification injects an element of competition into eLearning content and is designed to motivate and reward learners. This approach integrates game-like elements into learning materials, prompting learners to attempt more complex challenges.

The goal of using game-like elements is to make learning more enjoyable. This leads to increased participation and improved outcomes–good news for organizations and employees alike.

7. Video-based learning

As the name implies, video-based learning provides learners with teaching via dynamic visual demonstrations. The advantages of video are that it simplifies ideas, appeals to visual learners, and is rewatchable. With the rise of YouTube and TikTok for learning new skills, video has become a popular and effective trend.

8. Social learning

Focusing on the shared learning experience, social learning leverages user interactions for collaboration, mutual learning, and knowledge sharing. This approach is popular on discussion forums and social media platforms where communities support each other in developing skills.

The approach fosters deep group engagement with a topic and nurtures a supportive learning environment.

1. Artificial intelligence

The role of AI in eLearning increasingly revolves around content personalization. Intelligent algorithms can analyze learner preferences and performance, using individual data to create more tailored materials. In addition, AI-powered chatbots and assistants can provide support to learners in real time, enhancing the learning process.

Localizing your materials is a crucial step in the process of developing eLearning content. It personalizes the learning experience, enabling learners from every culture to better relate to the materials.

By doing this, employers demonstrate that they see, hear and value global learners. This process also boosts engagement with the content and increases its overall effectiveness.

At Smartcat, we’ve written extensively about how L&D teams can localize their content for different audiences. Put simply, it involves:

• Translating text, adding AI dubbing, and localizing media elements into the regional language.

• Ensuring all content follows grammar and usage conventions of the target culture.

• Adjusting visuals to resonate with specific cultures.

• Using real-world examples that are relatable to the target audience.

• Adapting cultural references to be more universally understood or replacing them with region-specific alternatives.

• Tailoring content to adhere to local laws and standards.

Smartcat is your go-to tool for localizing and translating eLearning content. The platform offers many tools and services that support businesses in these important processes. Just some of the highlights that Smartcat can offer L&D teams include:

• AI translation that promises near-perfect results in seconds and “learns” your content.

• Translation memories and glossaries for your multilingual content to ensure consistent tone and accurate word use.

• The largest global network and marketplace of 500,000+ professional editors. AI-sourcing analyzes your content and finds you the right language expert for your needs.

• Language quality assurance (LQA) tools for boosted accuracy and consistency at scale.

• Integrations with a wide range of popular third-party tools, like WordPress, Contentful, Salesforce, Figma, Jira, and more.

• Support for 80+ file types, including DOC, JPEG, PDF, JSON, XLIFF, and more.

• Industry-leading analytics to track progress and measure ROI.

Using Smartcat’s AI Course Creator, L&D teams have everything they need to produce effective eLearning courses for employees. The tool works by streamlining and speeding up the course development process. It uses AI to create media assets and content.

These include:

• Courses

• Quizzes

• Videos

• Translated content

• Microlearnings

L&D teams simply upload their existing training materials and the AI creates on-brand and SCORM-compliant content. Users can choose exactly how they want the content to appear and their desired format. In less than thirty minutes, the platform creates and populates an entire eLearning course with interactive and engaging content.

For organizations with global workforces, the AI Course Creator provides full translation and localization support, too. Features include automatic video dubbing and subtitle translation. eLearning content development softwares enable L&D teams to create content that resonates with all employees.

Robust analytics are another core part of the Smartcat AI Course Creator. The tool helps teams track learner progress and content performance. With insights on learner interaction and course effectiveness, teams can regularly improve on their content and optimize outcomes.

Watch our latest webinar on AI course creation: