eLearning Experts

About eLearning Experts

Online learning is usually designed as though the learner arrived rested and undistracted. Almost nobody does, and that single fact should determine most of the design.

Picture the actual conditions. It is a Tuesday evening or a snatched hour between shifts. The learner has already worked a full day. They are on a laptop with several other tabs open, or on a phone. Somebody may interrupt them. They have between twenty and fifty minutes before something else takes priority, and they are not certain they will get the same window tomorrow. That is the environment nearly all online learning is actually consumed in, and it is almost never the environment it was designed for.

The designed-for learner is different: they have a clear block of time, they will work through the module in order, they will engage with the reflective activity, and they will return to the discussion forum later in the week. Design decisions follow from that imagined person. Modules run an hour because an hour is a sensible unit. Content is sequenced on the assumption of continuity. Activities assume the learner will be back.

eLearning Experts is about designing online learning that people actually finish: segment length, resumption, interaction that earns its cost, assessment that survives being unsupervised, and the maintenance burden that begins at launch.

The editorial position is that the binding constraint is the learner's available attention rather than their capacity, that most courses are designed for an imagined learner with an uninterrupted evening, and that low completion is usually a design finding rather than a motivation problem.

This publication is independent. It is not affiliated with any authoring tool, platform, content library or consultancy, it does not accept payment for coverage, and it does not sell course development.

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