Eliminating Clutter from Online Lessons
Recently I was decluttering my garage from a summer of accumulating new kid toys, lawn care equipment, and the remnants of several home improvement projects. The pile of cardboard was moving like a glacier across the final car parking area.
As I said goodbye to items that were one time treasures I thought about the importance of eliminating clutter from online education lessons. Most EPS lessons are delivered as Articulate Presenter movies that are 25-30 minutes long. This is what I do to lessen and remove clutter:
- Use a standard lesson template. Our medical lessons commonly follow this template - 1) introduce the problem, 2) review relevant anatomy and physiology, 3) discuss assessment of problem, 4) explain treatment of the problem
- For lessons with an audio narration, based on a written script, know the relationship between audio file length and narration word count. We aim for 3,800 to 4,000 words for a 25-30 minute lesson. Check the word count and delete as needed before audio recording begins.
- Build the visual elements after the narration is finalized since graphic design has greater production time. I only build slides that I actually plan to use.
- Seek out and delete the merely interesting. If content does not relate to or enhance the course objectives it is not worth keeping.
- Park extra content in an additional resources or a read more if you are interested area.
- Make some content optional depending on the provider level. For example, BLS concepts are not included in the ALS version.
- When in doubt, throw it out … but always keep drafts or early versions because some of the unused content may be useful for future lessons.
Although garage space for online lessons is unlimited, you have a responsibility as an educator as your learners to maintain focus on the lesson objectives and to not clutter the online lesson with excessive information.
Tags: Articulate, Production, Template