But here’s a burning question; is it even possible for people to visually design their eLearning course without mistakes even when they have zero knowledge regarding how the errors look like? Let’s face it; the answer to the question is no. For you to achieve the best eLearning visual design, you’ll need to get familiar with the common mistakes that most designers make. Knowing them will certainly prevent you from making mistakes while creating your eLearning courses.

In the rest of this article, I’ll be further sharing with you the common visual design mistakes in eLearning that you need to avoid when creating your courses. You can also check here to read about the best ways to create a perfect eLearning design. So, without further ado, let’s dive right in.

Top 5 visual design mistakes in eLearning you need to avoid

1.    Low-quality images

One of the most common visual design mistakes that you need to avoid when developing your eLearning course is using low-quality images. The importance of using an image in your eLearning course cannot be overemphasized. In case you don’t know, supporting your text with images that can easily convey the message you are trying to pass across will help to improve the quality of your course.

According to the popular saying, “a picture is worth a thousand words. With images in your course, your learners can easily catch a concept, especially when they are having a hard time getting it through text. However, you need to understand that adding low-quality images in your course will take away all the benefits mentioned above.

2.    Inappropriate or irrelevant images

As mentioned before, one way to deliver an effective eLearning course is to add high-quality images. While that’s the fact, you need to understand that using top-notch images isn’t enough if they are irrelevant or inappropriate. Irrelevant images are the ones that do not, in any way, convey the message you are trying to pass across to your learners. Instead, they tend to distract the learners from getting the purpose of the course.

Bottom line, when trying to create your eLearning course, make sure you avoid using any images that’ll end up not adding any value. Well, the best way to do that is to ask yourself these few questions:

• Is it in line with the style or content of the rest of the images?
• Will it add any value to the learners?
• Will the image distract the learners from getting the main objective of the course?

The answers to these questions will let you know whether or not the images you’re planning to use are relevant.

3.    Misaligned objects

Another thing you need to look out for when designing your eLearning course is the alignment of the objects. After the design process, before going ahead to publish it, take a moment to check on the course. Next, ask yourself whether or not the objects are properly arranged.

One of the common visual design mistakes that most people make is that they include misaligned text, shapes, and images in their courses. That said, for effective results, ensure that objects are properly arranged and distributed all through the eLearning course.

4.    Too much text

Having too much text in your course is another common visual design mistake that some beginner designers make. Text is only one in many ways to convey a message to your learners. Others include videos, infographics, charts, images, screenshots, audios, illustrations, animations, etc. Interestingly, there’s a way you can combine most of these media elements with your text to deliver an effective eLearning course.

So, when designing your courses, make sure you add a mix of videos, images, and other media elements and keep the text as short as possible. In addition to that, also ensure that the media elements you’re using are relevant to the subject matter.

5.    Too many media elements

As we now know, having your text combined with other media elements, such as images, videos, infographics, and many more, is a good way of designing your eLearning course. However, most people, in a way to do that, tend to overuse the media elements.

Just like text, using too many images, videos, etc in a single course can distract the learners from getting the message you’re trying to pass across to them. That’s not all; too many media elements can also discourage the learners from completing the course – they tend to become bored and less engaged.

Conclusion

There’s no denying that eLearning courses, if well designed, will offer tons of amazing benefits to you and your learners. Matter of fact, a study has it that eLearning is capable of giving you 30 times the money you invested in your courses. However, you need to understand that with visual design mistakes, it’ll become pretty hard for you to achieve the best results with the online courses.

The above-listed factors are some of the many mistakes that people often make. So, for better results, ensure to keep them in mind when designing your courses.