For global brands, ensuring the continual development and training of international teams is crucial to the success of the business. Some of the most common challenges our clients face are creating e-learning courses from existing materials, keeping the audiences’ attention, and training for information retention.

According to Learn Upon, 71% of respondents found engagement the most challenging part of delivering training. So how can you make learning more engaging and fun for learners? Here are our top 10 considerations for developing engaging e-learning courses.

1.) Set Clear Objectives

Know your learners and provide clear objectives for them. Setting objectives at the beginning of the course will help keep you on track. Avoid unnecessarily long modules where learners can lose focus. Highlight what matters most to help them understand the important points.

2.) Use Video

Data from the SAVO Group shows that the average employee will have forgotten 65% of the course material only seven days after the training session. After six months, this number increases to 90%.

According to Wyzowl, people remember 80% of what they see and do, over 20% of what they read, and 10% of what they hear. Video is more engaging than text-based documents and helps significantly with long-term retention.

3.) Keep It Concise

Finding the sweet spot when it comes to video length is an important factor for engagement and retention. In a study completed by Techsmith, 43% of people preferred instructional and informational videos between three and six minutes long. Breaking content up into smaller chunks with interactive elements in between will create a much more engaging course for your audience.

4.) Make It Visually Appealing

Creating a training course that’s easy on the eyes is a great way to grab and maintain your learner’s attention. Use high quality video, high-resolution imagery, and short text. There’s nothing worse than pixelated photos and reams of content when you’re trying to learn.

5.) Use Scenarios

Use your course to tell a story! Providing a scenario gives the learner an opportunity to apply what they’ve learned to an example in a real-life setting. Make it as specific as possible to ensure relevancy.

6.) Make Learning Interactive

Grab your audience’s attention by asking for their involvement throughout the course. Adding small quizzes or tests after each video or section encourages retention. It also gives participants a chance to show off what they have learned. Let’s be honest, who doesn’t love to be told they got an answer right?!

7.) Explore Gamification

Level up your course by gamifying it! Provide additional interactivity, motivation, and fun to corporate learning; giving learners the opportunity to earn rewards will encourage them to try harder.

8.) Improve Accessibility

Accessibility for all learners is crucial when rolling out e-learning courses. There are certain things you can put in place to ensure ease of access.

In addition to human voiceover, which can be added to videos, there’s also natural AI or text-to-speech solutions. This is a great option that can give the same auditory experience but can also be more cost-effective.

Adding closed captions to videos assists those who are hearing impaired, and translations can be easily included for those who don’t speak English. Simply adding captions while building out a new course can keep you one step ahead of the game from the start.

9.) Create Personalized Experiences

Personalization is the adaptation of learning courses from a single audience to multiple regional audiences, while maintaining the efficacy of the original content. The aim is to create course material that relates closely to the individual learner. This can result in higher adoption and completion rates thanks to communication that provides relevant context.

10.) Speak Your Learner’s Language

There’s no way around it; training in your native language will always provide the best learning experience. Ensuring your content is culturally appropriate for the market you’re training employees in will help you avoid confusion and miscommunication. Additionally, it directly improves engagement and retention.

However, translations are often an afterthought when developing courses. Plan ahead to not only minimize the costs associated with translation but also create even more engaging courses for your international teams.

Whatever your business, you can find ways to make learning more exciting for your employees and ensure maximum effectiveness. If you’d like to hear more about how TransPerfect’s e-learning team can make your content more engaging, improve retention, and reduce costs, contact us today.