How to develop quality e-learning without breaking the bank?

Through the years, it has been confirmed that animation has great potential to improve human learning. As discussed in Mayer’s "Animation as an Aid to Multimedia Learning” students learn more deeply from animation and narration than from narration alone. However, not all animation “are equally effective in promoting understanding in learners,” especially if the goal is to promote deep understanding.

Microlearning video-based content continues to provide businesses with high growth opportunities. Statistics show that “marketers who use video, grow revenue 49% faster than non-video users”, and “nearly two-thirds of consumers prefer video under 60 seconds”. According to a report by Cisco, videos will be generating as much as 80% of the entire internet traffic in the world.

Furthermore, gamification techniques encourage workers to interact with their company’s learning management system. According to Brian Burke, the vice president of research at Gartner, gamification “benefits the organization by increasing employee skill and knowledge,” because it “can make learning more engaging and effective.”

What are the Challenges?

• Quality (engagement) - The market is flooded with different e-learning development companies, which offer both free and paid animated content creation. Organizations can use free tools to design their animation by following instructions. However, unless the animation is done by a professional motion designer that is familiar with the formula for creating engaging animation, the final product will most likely be low quality.
• Costs and time consumption - Let’s say the content has been created by an employee that is a professional multimedia designer and has better quality. Consider the time it would take for the employee to craft a simple animation (imagine how much longer it would take for a random employee to do the process). First he or she needs to do scriptwriting - write a compelling story that should be short (without any fluff) but engaging. After that the employee should work on adding compatible motion graphics, etc., making the entire process very time-consuming. On the other hand, having a company to do it for you, might seems more expensive – depending on which platform you choose – but in the long run, it is a better solution. Companies that specialize in e-learning development know how to get you results.

To help you balance it out, here are the top six tools for engaging e-learning development from innovative digital learning companies:

1. Vibons

Vibons is a web platform which helps businesses transform their ideas into engaging motion graphics videos. By focusing on microlearning videos, Vibons does a great job of applying the fundamental principles of microlearning. Ideal for e-learning, training, HR, internal communications.

Why Use it?

Vibons gets to the heart of the matter by creating short and simple videos – crafted for the need of the distracted learner, while ensuring the highest quality of animation. The average production time of a 3-minute animated video is 15 days, and the best part is that the company takes care of everything, including copywriting, storyboarding and final delivery.

Vibons have created explainer animated videos for many brands including Vodafone, Panasonic, Mitsubishi, Coca-Cola and others, and their videos achieved a 250% increase in employee completion rates compared to traditional e-learning methods. This platform is excellent for any company that is willing to invest in quality and effective microlearning but doesn’t have the time to go through the process of scriptwriting or paying employees to do the animations on some random, free software. Vibons’ team is very cooperative through the entire creative process getting you to review and approve everything from the first script draft to the final video revisions.

Challenges:

Animated microlearning videos can be used as teaching and interaction method only for specific parts of the company’s e-learning strategy. It also takes more time to develop than other e-learning (less engaging) methods and is a bit pricier.

2. MySimpleShow

My Simple Show is an online tool that gives people the opportunity to create professional videos for training, corporate communication or change management.

Why Use it?

The software allows everyone to create high-quality explainer videos, based on their script. It provides didactical assistance in the draft process, helps the user narrow down the message and offer value by sticking to the point. MySimpleShow offers high level of accuracy. The search engine’s automated function matches the keywords with appropriate visualization. With this tool, you don’t have to worry about the audio, as it comes with the option of adding generated voice or individual voiceovers.

Challenges:

The two biggest challenges you might face when using this tool are scriptwriting (as in the most part you’ll have to it yourself) and creating the animation also by yourself.

3. Udemy for Business

Udemy for Business is a popular platform that offers more than 2,000 online courses built by instructors on topics of their specialty.

Why Use it?

Udemy provides actionable user insights that allow businesses to measure learner engagement by seeing who is learning, how often they are learning and what are they learning. This innovative course platform gives an incredible insight into courses that are prepared and taught by experts in their fields in over 80 different languages. Many of the courses offered are free of cost, while all of the rest are reasonably priced. Udemy offers the luxury of a real classroom experience at any time, any place, and the content is even available on their mobile app.

For companies, the platform offers a subscription access to the relevant courses. Depending on the subscription model, the company gets a personalized platform for hosting and distributing their content.

Challenges:

Udemy for business is great for on-demand learning for companies with 20+ employees. The only downside is the way learning material is presented to the students. Usually, the instructors upload the materials as PowerPoint presentations, PDFs, and host live classes or have online discussion boards.

4. ToolforGrovo

Grovo is an all-in-one microlearning platform that uses the power of 60-second videos, gifs, text, quizzes and more to teach.

Why Use it?

Grovo offers an immense learning experience by providing the user with microlearning lessons on important topics. This tool works amazing for creating content that suits the innovative workplace learning, as worker’s competencies are based on their actions which link learning to job performance. With Grovo, companies allow employees access to bite-sized content that can be used when needed. This platform tracks learner performance and progress right on the dashboard. One of the best features of these types of learning materials is that they can be easily edited and updated, which can’t be done with other types of content.

The company has worked with brands like PepsiCo, Chevron, Gap Inc. and more and provided an engaging, science-backed learning content that helped employees build skills and knowledge. According to Grovo, with microlearning content, 97% of the assignments get completed.

Challenges:

The challenge with this platform is that it is not suitable for any learning content. Therefore, your company will have to do some analysis to establish the most suitable material to be converted into microlearning content.

5. LeoLearning

LEO provides a personalized learning strategy that includes different types of learning approaches, such as bespoke e-learning, instructor-led training, mobile learning, games and stimulation and much more.

Why Use it?

Creating face-face programmes and combining them with online and technology-based learning modules, the company provides a unique learning experience. LEO uses learning technology to create learning packages that personalized and align with your business goals.

6. GamEffective

GamEffective is a gamification platform that develops engaging e-learning content to accelerate sales, improve employee motivation and performance.

Why use it?

Gamification takes a large portion of e-learning development, with a revenue of $2.6 billion in 2016, a number that is expected to reach $7.3 billion by 2021. GamEffective uses rich narratives and no-code integration to provide learning through personalized gamification that can be easily integrated with existing applications of the enterprise. One of the biggest benefits of this platform is that it provides a real-time feedback where employees can get a “live view of their targets, benchmarks and achievements.”

Challenges:

It takes a lot of time and resources to develop an engaging gamification project. According to a DevLearn study, it takes around 6 to 8 months to develop a banking e-learning game.

Based on your company’s profile, which one of these tools would you choose for your next e-learning project?