how long should each module of an elearning course be

Full Answer

How long should your eLearning courses be?

As a rule of thumb, the general theory is that people can only give about 20 minutes of attention before there is a need to take a “mental break”. This doesn’t mean that your elearning courses should only be 20 minutes in length, but it does give you an idea of how you may wish to break-up the content.

What is the ideal length of an online course?

So what is the ideal length of an online course? First, consider how long you would want to spend taking an online course (without breaks). As a rule of thumb, the general theory is that people can only give about 20 minutes of attention before there is a need to take a “mental break”.

How long should your workplace learning courses be?

In other words, the studies didn’t occur in your workplace with your employees, so they should be thought of as guidelines—not rules. Here’s an abbreviated look at many studies’ conclusions: Fifteen to 30 minutes is the “sweet spot”. Courses should be as long as needed, even if they’re 90 minutes.

How to make your eLearning course look good?

This is why it's all-important to ensure that your eLearning course features simple and straightforward navigation. Buttons should be in plain sight, and every link should be valid. Making an aesthetically pleasant eLearning course is important, but be cautious.

How long should learning modules be?

Fifteen to 30 minutes is the “sweet spot”. Courses should be as long as needed, even if they're 90 minutes. Shorter is always better.

How long should an online learning module be?

This should be 10 -15 minutes maximum. Green, is 'good to know'. It needs to be short, sharp or if longer requires gamification or great interactivity. This is generally 2-5 minutes or could be longer if it's engaging.

How long should an eLearning video be?

(6–10 minutes) There is some research that says that six minutes is the optimal length for a video. That's certainly a compelling case, and the bulk of your content should lie in this range.

How many modules should an online course have?

For a shorter course, you probably only want 3 to 5 main steps or modules that will comprise the bulk of your course. Every module contains several lessons that teach the actual course.

How long is a module?

1 credit = 10 hours of study Most undergraduate modules are either 15 or 30 credits. A 15 credit module takes place in a single semester; a 30 credit module will either be spread across two semesters, or it will occupy the space of two 15 credit modules in a single semester.

How long are typical online courses?

The length of online classes varies. Some can be completed in as little as five weeks, while others take longer. On average, online courses last eight to nine weeks, especially those offered through universities.

How long should online course videos be?

A large-scale study from researchers at MIT that used data from 6.9 million video watching sessions. The top of the second page has recommendations for the types of videos that work best, including a recommendation that videos should be shorter than six minutes in length.

How long should lectures be?

Modern best practices strongly suggest limiting the length of a lecture to 15-20 minutes, or breaking up a longer lecture with hands-on activities, as research shows that 20 minutes is about as long as humans can maintain their attention on one source of information (Bligh, 2000).

How long is a short online course?

The length of an online course depends on the end goal you want your students to achieve. Typical online course lengths can range anywhere from 30 minutes to 4 hours, depending on the type of course and complexity of the information you're teaching.

How many hours does it take to make one hour of eLearning?

How long does it take to develop 1 hour of eLearning? A average 1-hour interactive elearning course will take 197 hours to develop. But development of a 1-hour elearning course can range between 49 hours for the low end of the range of a “basic” course to 716 hours for the high end of the range of an “advanced” course.

How do I structure my online course?

6 steps to creating an effective online course structure.Create an outline for your online course. ... Develop well-organized, bite-sized courses. ... Add interactivity to your lessons. ... Ensure a user-friendly navigation. ... Incorporate both synchronous and asynchronous eLearning styles. ... Ask for student feedback throughout the course.

How many hours should you spend on an online class?

You should plan to devote a minimum of three hours per week per credit, plus an additional hour per class each week to review materials. For instance, for a three-credit online course, you will need nine hours of study time and one hour of review time each week.

How long are online classes a day?

One of the many advantages of online schools is that they will require less time from you compared to traditional schools. But then again, it is highly dependent on the online school that you or your child is enrolled in. On average, students spend four hours online.

How many hours should you spend on an online class?

You should plan to devote a minimum of three hours per week per credit, plus an additional hour per class each week to review materials. For instance, for a three-credit online course, you will need nine hours of study time and one hour of review time each week.

How many hours is an online course?

Thus, many online courses run the same length as their on-campus counterparts. This means that a semester-based schedule will include approximately 15 weeks of work for 9 hours per week or 135 hours total for the semester for each 3-credit course.

How many hours does it take to make one hour of elearning?

How long does it take to develop 1 hour of eLearning? A average 1-hour interactive elearning course will take 197 hours to develop. But development of a 1-hour elearning course can range between 49 hours for the low end of the range of a “basic” course to 716 hours for the high end of the range of an “advanced” course.

Chris Gaborit Follow

How long should an eLearning module be? What is the ideal length? Can people concentrate for longer than their shoe size in minutes? What is the average attention span?

Chris Gaborit

We are often asked this question - How long should this eLearning module be? Here Chris Gaborit answers this for you.

Michael Eichler

Great insights Chris.... Like you I think we need to learn from our society and they way we interact with our everyday lives. Television is one of the key models where we see adaptation, although it has been subtle changes along the way.

Amit Sarkar

Well articulated, Chris! Honestly, if the "creator" you gets bored creating the piece beyond a certain duration, the "learner" you will definitely hate it! Stand back and look at your course wearing your "learner" hat, and you should know when to quit while the going's good 😃

Anthony Deardorff

Appreciate the insights. Totally plan on using the Tv show comparison! Couldn't agree more that at the end of the day, it's all about preparing good learning objectives and accomplishing them.

Anantha Bhaskar

Good insight and thoughts to begin with. Well rounded and summarized. This is one monkey that an instructional designer or an e-learning developer always carry on their back. After years of research and work in the digital learning industry i personally realized that there is no specific method to decide the duration of a learning capsule.

Chris Gaborit

Hi Anantha thank you for your comments and great summary of a short TNA on the needs. Always happy to connect with people. Feel free to join.

How long should an elearning course be?

The answer to how long an elearning course should be. In summary, there is no prescriptive answer to how long an elearning course should be. 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 60 minutes or 90 minutes may all be completely fine. Ignore warnings of ‘people have the attention span of a goldfish’. People will stay engaged if the content is relevant.

What is instructional design in elearning?

Broadly speaking, instructional design in elearning needs to manage the cognitive load in learners to allow working memory to process information before it is transferred to long-term memory.

What is the mistake #2 in elearning?

Mistake #2 – Not enough focus on cognitive load. A more important issue when determining how long an elearning course should be isn’t about attention span – it’s about cognitive load. Adults are capable of focusing for a long time. However, we are not capable of learning indefinitely.

Why should cognitive load be shorter?

The issue of cognitive load suggests they should be shorter, to allow time for learners to digest content. And to a degree that is true. Less information is, at first glance, easier to consume than more information. That too is a simplistic analysis, however. The issue is not how long an elearning course is.

Is elearning a problem?

The issue is not how long an elearning course is. The issue is creating space within the elearning course. If the elearning course is FULL of content without any reflective learning activities, so that the learner never takes a break, then even a short elearning course can be a problem. All learning needs pauses.

Is elearning generic?

Generic elearning, by its nature, is generic. It’s often not suited to the learner’s role, organisation, culture or personality. It’s not surprising that style of elearning needs to be short, because it is boring and irrelevant.

Can elearning hold your attention?

We have a problem with content which can’t hold our attention span. Not surprisingly, most generic elearning cannot hold an adult’s attention span. But this isn’t due to a problem with our attention span – that’s the symptom. The problem is content which is not relevant or contextualised.

What dictates the duration of a course?

In many cases the content of the course is what dictates the duration, but sometimes instructional designers are guilty of cramming too much content into a course.

What happens if a course is too long?

If your course length is too long, then there is a strong possibility that the learner is going to seek ways to remove themselves from the course. To a certain extent this cannot be avoided, but you don’t want to encourage it either.

How long is a TED talk?

15 minutes is okay… if your audience has the time. Interestingly, a session of 15 minutes conforms to the TED Talk format, which stipulates that no presentation should be any longer than 18 minutes. TED curator Chris Anderson once said: “Eighteen minutes is long enough to be serious and short enough to hold people’s attention.”.

How long is 15 minutes?

In terms of the web, 15 minutes is a LONG time – typically, visitors to a website spend about 2 minutes on it before moving on.

How much learning is lost in a month?

One source found that about 50% of learning is lost in less than one month, with employees reverting to their original behavior. Training should be an ongoing component of your organization, so much so that it transforms from “training” to become part of your everyday culture.

How long is the average human attention span?

Long story short:The average human attention span is about eight seconds —that’s shorter than the attention span of a goldfish! That’s sensational! That’s amazing … that’s misleading, like a vacuous, attention-grabbing headline:

Is shorter training better?

Shorter is usually better, sure, but there are plenty of jobs and processes out there that simply need more. Identifying your requirements and then applying the lessons discussed in this article will help your training be the best fit for your employees—and make your training more than white noise.

Can eLearning help retain information?

Even a razor-sharp eLearning course can’t help learners retain information that they never need to recall. This is where reinforcement comes in. Regardless of the length you choose, training should never be a “one-and-done” experience. I often see companies allocating time for annual training on a topic just to satisfy a compliance requirement. Annual training is like duct tape: It sort of fixes anything, but that thing is still broken; a fact you’ll probably be reminded of at an inconvenient time. One source found that about 50% of learning is lost in less than one month, with employees reverting to their original behavior.

How long is an elearning module?

Most elearning modules created by study participants are about 20 minutes long. 2017 research on the time to create one hour of learning.

How many hours is authoring in Storyline?

Authoring/Programming is 18% or 99 hours. That seems low for building in Captivate or Storyline, based on my experience, even assuming that we rely heavily on templates. IconLogic’s estimate is 2 hours per finished minute (120:1), or 360 hours. That’s a big discrepancy between the benchmarks. For my work, there’s some overlap between creating the template and authoring, so I can probably reduce this from the IconLogic estimate. I’ll split the difference and call this 180 hours.

How many hours does project management take?

Project Management is also 6% or 33 hours . How much project management I do varies depending on the project and who else is on the team. I’ll assume 20 hours for this example.

How long is QA testing?

QA Testing is 6% or 33 hours. Again, I think this is part of the difference in the IconLogic benchmark, since it doesn’t split testing out as a separate task. Generally a full review of a course takes me 2-3 times the length of the course, plus testing interactions throughout the process.

How long is a front end analysis?

Front end analysis is 9% of 552 or about 50 hours. The analysis involves other stakeholders, so it’s not just my time. I’ll call this analysis 30 hours.

What is a lesson in a course?

Lessons build on each other so that learners are more informed with subsequent lessons. They are the areas of a course where actual learning takes place through several strategies.

What is a module conclusion?

The module conclusion provides a summary of the module and a transition to the following module. Revise all objectives one more time. This module ties your lessons neatly. It is a final opportunity for the learner to revise everything they have studied. Provide a list of key terms introduced in the module. Provide access or links to supplementary material. Provide options for the learner to navigate back to the start of the module or move on to the next one. Describe the upcoming module by relating current information with the future one.

What is the first screen in a module?

The first screen provides a brief overview of the module and a brief description of what the learner will learn and the second screen lists the module objectives. A great idea to start a module is to use a story or a real-life vignette to provide an overview of the problems to be solved in the module.

What is a learning objective?

Learning objectives (LO) define the KSA (knowledge, skills, and attitudes) your learners will achieve after completing the course. There are two types of learning objective. Terminal Learning Objectives (TLOs) are the objectives for LESSONS and are a statement of the course developer’s expectations of the Learner’s performance at the end of a specific module. The flowchart below shows how the objectives sequence:

What is the second screen in a course?

The second screen is the Module Menu – The Module Menu provides a list of options including the Module Lesson, Module Summary, and Comprehensive Knowledge Check. Providing course navigation allows learners to stay “grounded” in the module. They are able to monitor their progress better.

How long does it take to create a DCO?

This detailed document aids IDs in determining the scope of the course. Depending on the content of the course, a DCO can take about 5 days to create. The notes generated in the initial meeting you had with all stakeholders are ideal for creating the DCO. The purpose of the detailed outline is to provide eLearning IDs all of the content information, broken down into Modules, Lessons, and Topics to design a course. Distribute the DCO amongst all stakeholders. Ask for their suggestions. Refine the DCO and resend. Be patient. This is the fundamental step in ensuring everyone gets what they want from the course AND your efforts move in the right direction.

Mistake #1 – Too Much Focus on Attention Span

Mistake #2 – Not Enough Focus on Cognitive Load

Mistake #3 – Not Enough Focus on Chunking

Mistake #4 – Too Much Focus on eLearning Fads

The Answer to How Long An eLearning Course Should Be

• In summary, there is no prescriptive answer to how long an elearning course should be. 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 60 minutes or 90 minutes may all be completely fine. 1. Ignore warnings of ‘people have the attention span of a goldfish’. People will stay engaged if the content is relevant. 2. Think about your content and trying to avoid cognitive overl...

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