I’ve been reading Tom Kuhlmann’s eBook as pictured on the right. Tom is the author of The Rapid E-Learning Blog (part of the Articulate website) and although the book has been around for a wee while, there are some really great ideas and relevant tips in there. I extracted a few of the ones I liked the most for this post:


10 Tips from ‘The Insider’s Guide To Becoming a Rapid E-Learning Pro’:

1. The difference between a novice and pro is that the pro knows how to contribute to the organization’s bottom line. Remember, while training is important and e-learning is vital to effective training, the organization’s true goal isn’t to create more training. Instead, the goal is to meet performance objectives. E-learning is just a means to an end, and performance results are the pot of gold at the end of the e-learning rainbow.
2. The more relevant the course is to the learners, the more engaged they would be, even if the course isn’t “best in breed” multimedia.
   
   On content authoring tools…
3. START WITH A TOOL THAT LEVERAGES POWERPOINT. PowerPoint is a very flexible application and most people have access to it, and there are many products that leverage PowerPoint to create Flash-based e-learning.
4. The secret is to step away from the PowerPoint look. Treat it like a blank canvas and you can do some really nice things with it.
5. Effective e-learning requires assessment, and there are many similar quizzing tools on the market. What I’d look for is SCORM compliance, ability to publish to flash, and ease of use.
6. To get the most out of your authoring tool you need to leverage multimedia to make quality e-learning courses.On images, audio and video recording…
7. One of the main considerations is whether the image can scale without losing quality. Those that can are called vector images and are preferred when working with most e-learning tools.
8. When it comes to audio, start with the best quality you can, because you’ll never have better quality than your source file. [Here are some more tips on recording audio]
9. Before you commit to using video, ensure that your organization has the infrastructure and investigate the technology available to your end users.
10. Make it a habit never to exceed 3-4 minutes on a single video and you’ll avoid losing viewers.

I would definitely recommend giving the full eBook a read as it’s free to download here.