In the past couple of decades, e-learning has evolved significantly in terms of variety and reach. It has grown beyond just a medium for essay help for students. You now have the option to enrol in your preferred certificate course through e-learning and add more skills to your profile. And if you are interested in the instructional design, you have a lot of great e-learning courses to consider in 2020.
- MasterTrack Certificate:
Image Source: Coursera.org
The Instructional Design MasterTrack Certificate program from Coursera helps you gain skills that are in demand in the domain of instructional design. Here, you need to attend two graduate-level courses with readings, videos, real-world applied projects, graded assignments, and live global classroom sessions.
Also, you will earn graduate credits from the University of Illinois. If you wish to pursue a master’s degree after this course, you can apply the credits you earn to a degree course. In this certificate program, you will learn the following:
- Different ways to perform in-depth learner analysis to identify learner objectives
- How to make data-informed decisions to improve the existing learning programs
- Various strategies for using advanced technologies to design interactive and meaningful learning activities
- Several methods for developing proper learning assessments and evaluations
- Different strategies to use learning theories and technologies to develop innovative learning solutions
This program is ideal for people with a bachelor’s degree and intermediate designer who wish to move to an advanced level. This program takes 4-5 months to complete.
Course fee: $2,316
2. Instructional Design Pro Part 1:
Image Source: Udemy.com
This program is the first part of the three-part series. Brought to you by Udemy, this self-paced, on-demand course focuses on the initial steps in the process of instructional design, which includes conducting a needs analysis and understanding the audience. This course is led by the founder and CEO of Rule the Room Train the Trainer, Jason Teteak.
The course also focuses on transferring training skills through practical, simple, universal and immediately actionable techniques. The other two courses in this series offer you insights into course design and curriculum production, which you can pursue once you are done with this course. Here, you can learn the following things:
- Identify the needs, goals and desires of the audience
- Identify what they do and organize the course in a way that makes sense
- Make sure end users can do their job by offering the right tools they can use on a regular basis
- Determine what to teach and how to organize the course
- Provide the best experience for both trainers and users
This course is ideal for trainers who develop their own course materials, people who want to learn needs analysis, and designers who are seeking practical tips which they can implement right away. This course consists of 28 lectures which are packed in 6.5 hours of video.
Course fee: $199
3. Create Your First Course in Articulate Storyline 3:
Image Source: Udemy.com
This e-learning course covers the fundamentals of learning Articulate Storyline 3. This program in Udemy is conducted by a stalwart graphic design instructor, Radu Velcea. He guides you through the creation of a Storyline e-learning project.
You also get to learn how to start a project from scratch and add interactive elements. Velcea also teaches how to assess a learner’s retention of the material by creating quizzes and a result page. You do need access to Storyline 3 to get full advantage of the course. In this course, you will learn the following:
- Setting up global preferences
- Building a new project from scratch
- Introducing animation, transitions, custom buttons, and images to a project
- Ensuring that your course project meets accessibility requirements
- Preparing a basic assessment
- How to publish your project
This program is ideal for people who are new to Articulate Storyline 3, and the designers who wish to make their e-learning courses more engaging and effective. This course consists of 28 lectures which are packed in 2.5 hours of video.
Course fee: $99
4. Adobe Captivate Courses:
Image Source: Udemy.com
Udemy offers three different courses on Adobe Captivate. These courses are:
® Responsive Custom Quiz Questions
® Focus on Simulations
® Focus on Demonstrations
Each of these courses teaches you how to use the various advanced features of the e-learning software. Check out these courses if you are willing to learn the use of variables, advanced actions, and multi-state objects. However, none of these courses offers an introduction to Adobe Captivate. In these courses, you get to learn the followings:
- Developing your own advanced actions for multiple-choice questions
- Creation of effective simulations and demonstrations using Adobe Captivate 8
- Learning the screen recording process of the software
- Getting to know how to configure the Mouse, Highlight Box and Text Caption Objects
- Choosing the right output type based on the audience
These courses are ideal for designers who have a basic understanding of Adobe Captivate, yet want to learn the advanced features of the software. Each of these courses is 2 hour long.
Course fee: $19.99 per course
5. MicroMasters Program:
Image Source: EDX.org
This Instructional Design-based program from edX consists of four courses, including:
® Learning Theory
® Instructional Design Models
® Digital Media, New Tools, and Technology
® Course Evaluation and Capstone Project
Each of the courses lasts for 8 weeks, but they have a set start and stop date. These courses are offered by the University of Maryland University College (UMUC). No surprise, these courses are taught by the UMUC professors.
This edX program puts stress on understanding learning theory and demonstrates how to combine traditional design models with data analytics and rapid prototyping to develop online courses. In this program, you will get to learn the followings:
- Understand the latest learning theories to gain online learning experiences
- Learn the application of instructional design models to the development of online learning experiences
- Select, evaluate or design digital media to help learning
- Identify, evaluate and integrate emerging technologies to back online learning
- Design the process of implementation for online learning experiences
- Put data mining techniques to use in the designing and evaluation of learning experiences
This program is ideal for those who want a more organized, instructor-led program, those who are interested in learning theories, and designers who are thinking of getting a Master’s degree but aren’t sure if they should try it. This set of courses lasts 32 weeks.
Course fees: $796 (Total)
6. Introduction to Instructional Design:
Image Source: Harvard.edu
This course is similar to any other college-level course you can find at Harvard. It’s an instructor-driven program that involves academic readings, group discussions, and 6 projects. You will have to study learning theories and frameworks, project planning, communication, content expertise, writing and technology, and how to put these theories to use in instructional design projects.
Moreover, you will have to work together with your peers to produce learning experiences using contemporary media and technologies. Students need to submit a project every two weeks in this course. So, if you wish to enrol in this course, you need to plan ahead. This course is not available on demand. You can avail it only in certain semesters. In this course, you’ll learn:
- Proper instructional design paves the way for better learning
- Empathy is the foundation of instructional design
- Everyone needs to involve in a continuous learning process in today’s world
- Metacognition is nothing but a continuous practice that allows you to become a better learner and instructional designer
This course is ideal for those who need an academic experience, the professionals who want to develop their portfolio, and designers who wish to work with other parties on academic projects. This course lasts 15 weeks.
Course fee: $1,700
In conclusion,
Today, there are more options for learning about instructional design than ever before. However, you can’t just pick them randomly. You need to consider your learning style, your objectives, and obviously, you budget while choosing one of these options. You also need to consider how much time you can invest in learning these new things. No matter which program you decide to pursue, remember, there will always be something new to learn every time.
Author bio: Henry Howkins is an independent content marketer in Australia.He has also been associated with MyAssignmenthelp.com for the past three years as an expert. He usually serves students with APA referencing.
