Webinar | Designing Online Materials for Today’s Learners – five key principle

With the global shift towards online learning that took place over 2020 and more recent rapid advances in AI, today’s learners have very different expectations to those they had even 5 years ago. This is notably the case in healthcare, where students learn profession-specific language around demanding study and work commitments. With limited time and unpredictable hours, learning content has to be accessible, convenient, engaging, relevant, and able to meet the evolving demands of a rapidly changing environment.

While traditional textbooks remain part of many curricula, they are not as central to the learning experience as they used to be, as educators and their students increasingly augment courses with topical, media-rich and interactive digital content. However, online resources can often come across as unstructured, unclear and underdeveloped for teaching purposes. And where does one start? The sheer volume of content available can seem overwhelming.

This talk looks at how to address these issues by articulating five key principles of design that, when applied, will not only enable teachers to develop materials that support and engage their learners, but also use them effectively in practice. Understanding the principles behind digital materials design allows educators to create dynamic learning experiences that will effectively support their language programmes, meet learner expectations and produce excellent learning outcomes.