The market for online courses has grown exponentially recently and many entrepreneurs have taken this opportunity to make their way into the online world and build content. Here are three types of self-paced online courses that might work for your business:

Scenario-based learning takes elements of storytelling combined with real-world practical examples. There are different types of scenarios that instructors can choose based on what they want to achieve, including skill-based, problem-based, and gaming scenarios.

Besides offering interesting, accurate and reliable content, you should also make the learning experience easy and enjoyable by allowing your students to navigate through a consistent design, recognizable anywhere, anytime, in the best way possible.

We often speak in terms of boosting performance when it comes to e-learning, but for self-paced courses to be truly effective, we need to talk more about learning experience optimization as a motivating factor. For an optimal learning experience, instructors need to consider four major categories that have the most impact on the overall satisfaction with an online course.

Regardless of how well-written the text in your online course is, if it is not well-presented, it won’t be read all the way — let alone learned. So make sure you use the right fonts, colors and visuals that compliment your content and highlight its value.

Online course creators are often focused on the content of the course, but there is another crucial aspect that sometimes gets put on the back burner even though it should be equally taken into consideration: the visual elements. Here’s what to consider when using these in your online course:

Even if your long-term goal is to create and sell comprehensive online courses, it’s important you don’t overlook the growing appetite that audiences have for microlearning. If you want them to buy your intricate and delicious four layered cake, you’ll have to convince them with a taste of a skillfully made slice first

Quizzes are an integral part of a self-paced course so you want to spend some time learning how to get them right. There are a few mistakes that even more experienced course creators make. It’s up to course creators to make quizzes engaging enough so they serve their final purpose: help learners retain what they’ve learned.

Whenever you know a lot about a certain subject there’s the risk of overstuffing the learning modules. The information shared with the learners should be just about as much as they need to know, while the bulk of the expertise should be there to back it up and answer questions if they arise.

Using gamification in online courses can have multiple benefits, including an improved attitude towards learning, higher motivation and better engagement rates. Here are a few tips on how to include gamification in your course design: