How does studying with a learning platform differ from reading a text from a file or paper? With Vuolearning, you can easily transform your existing texts and files into rich, motivating, and learning-enhancing online courses with just a few simple changes. Read this blogpost to find out how!
Vuolearning's unique tool allows existing materials to be easily imported and updated
Do you or your organization already have materials and files that you would like to use as a basis for an online course? Great!
Existing materials, content, and files mean that you have already gotten started in producing an online course. Vuolearning includes a tool that easily converts PDF, PowerPoint, and Word documents onto the online learning platform into an editable, functional form. When you import a file to the platform, the system converts the content into text, images, video, and other elements on the platform. The tool has been invented and developed by Vuolearning's founder and CTO Otto Pellinen, and it is currently awaiting patent approval in the United States and Europe.
This unique tool makes it easy to import ready-made material into the platform, and with just a few small changes, it can be made into motivating, engaging, and learning-enhancing, ready-to-use course material.
Transferring material from file format to Vuolearning as an online course supports not only learning but also the ability to keep the materials up to date. The platform allows you to easily edit the content and the changes are immediately visible to users, rather than having outdated versions of the material in circulation. Utilizing an online course platform also records analytics about learning, so it is easy for the trainer to see who has studied the material.
How to design a course and the content?
Once existing material has been brought onto the learning platform or new material has been created, it is time to start thinking about how to build the course in the most effective way. In a learning environment, the study material can be designed and constructed in ways that support the learners' motivation and learning.
Within a single course, the material can be sequenced using chapters and headings. It is often more pleasant to go through the material, when it is not just one long file of text but is structured in a logical, structured way in the learning environment. This way, the learners feel they are making progress when going through the material and they can see how things relate to each other. This is also helpful when searching through the material later, as the chapter titles and headings allow the learner to easily find the desired information in the material.
Inside the chapters and headings, it is also worth paying attention to the structure of the text content itself. There are a few things you can do to draw the learner's attention to the right things and help maintain interest.
On the Vuolearning platform, you can highlight your text with colors, bolding, italics, or underlining. Highlighting can be used to bring attention to the key points of the text and help the learner to understand the most important things. However, it is important not to highlight too many things. Highlighting too many things will make it lose its effect.
The use of such highlights can be used to highlight key points in the text and help the learner to extract the most important points from the content. However, it is important to use emphasis in moderation - too much emphasis will miss the point.
When formatting text in an online course, the text should be divided into short paragraphs. Text in short paragraphs is easier to read, which supports a wide range of learners.
In addition to the structure of individual courses, multiple courses can be structured as learning paths. Learning paths are combinations of several courses, that are related to, for example, a specific task, a certain period of time, or the learning of a skill.
Breaking down a broad subject into a learning path is useful, since it increases the feeling of succeeding as the learner progresses on the path, and it helps the learner understand how the subject could be divided into smaller chunks. This helps the learners with studying the material alongside their everyday work, studies, or other activities.
A learning platform allows you to enrich the course material
Even tiny changes to text content can make it more motivating, engaging, and learning-enhancing. Diversifying the content increases the learners' interest in it, supports different learners, and makes it lighter to study.
So how can the content be enriched?
For example, different forms of media content are a great way to enrich the course. Images, videos, and audio files diversify the course content and support different types of learners. Images and videos can be used to visually illustrate the information and add variety to the text content. Videos and audio files can be used to help learners who need auditory stimulation. Course content can be produced in audio format, giving learners the chance to choose between reading or listening to the content.
The interactivity of the content can be increased for example through tasks and discussions.
The Vuolearning platform offers a wide range of task types you can add to your course. Tasks on online courses can have many purposes, for example, to test knowledge, to activate the learner, or to simply lighten up the course content. The Vuolearning platform allows you to set automatic feedback that is given after tasks to increase the interaction between the trainer and the learner. Interaction between learners can be increased through group discussions and peer assessments of tasks.
Online courses are a great way to train
Producing learning material in the form of an online course, rather than a simple text file, benefits both the learner and the trainer.
A versatile online course...
- Supports different learners and ensures learning
- Increases motivation and creates a feeling of succeeding
- Makes the content more interesting and easier to learn
- Is convenient to keep up-to-date
- Is easy to build with an easy-to-use software, either from scratch or using existing materials as a basis
As you can see, there are many reasons to transfer or produce your course materials on a learning platform. Even with a small amount of effort, big results can be seen!
Do you want to hear more about how you or your organization could develop your courses and training with Vuolearning? We are happy to tell you more! Call us at +358 9 31545225, mail us at sales@vuolearning.fi or book an online demo with one of our experts here.