The challenges L&D teams face are well documented, and the data below highlights why elearning quality, engagement, and impact continue to be areas that people discuss.
- 71% of L&D professionals say poor content quality is reducing the impact of their online training programmes
Source: Elucidat – Elearning Best Practice Guide
- 65% say improving engagement and learning experience quality is a top priority
Source: Elucidat – Elearning Best Practice Guide
- Over 80% of employees resist elearning primarily because they feel they don’t have enough time to complete training
Source: iSpring – Elearning Best Practices
- Many L&D teams still default to completion and satisfaction metrics that fail to connect with business performance and productivity outcomes
Source: Training Industry – L&D Metrics That Matter
Those numbers explain why “good enough” elearning no longer survives, most people will have seen ‘bad’ elearning. But if you are involved in digital creative we’ve all seen projects that don’t work. It is part of the creative process and how we learn to develop innovative, creative and projects that do work. It’s why conversations about what makes a great elearning course are do important have shifted away from tools and models towards judgement and quality. Although its important to remember that without the best tools you are giving yourself a disavantage.
The best elearning courses I’ve ever worked on didn’t start with a perfect brief, a neat handover, or a polished plan.
They started with everyone in the room.
Writers. Designers. Developers. All involved from the very beginning. Not waiting their turn. Not “picking it up” once someone else was finished. Sitting together and working out how the thing was actually going to work.
That decision alone made more difference to quality than any tool, model, or framework I’ve seen since. We’d often have an idea about how a project would work or idea based on the client meeting or having seen the content. It’s just part of the creative process. At this stage it wasn’t about the tool, but we were thinking about ‘what good was’ and how the final project might look like.
Stop Treating Elearning Like a Relay Race
There’s a comforting idea in elearning that projects should move cleanly from person to person. Writer to designer. Designer to developer. Everyone does their bit, passes it on, and stays in their lane. This feels comfortable, but do you get the best creative ouput? I’m not sure you do. We’d ignore this. If you had an idea, offer it. If you were a designer and had seen something that would work from a UX/UI perspective – great. The same principle worked for the programming team.
In reality, that’s how you end up with courses that technically work but feel flat if you don’t share ideas from each other.
When we brought everyone in early, the questions changed. Not “what do you need from me?” but “how is this supposed to feel?” We talked about flow, interaction, pacing, and constraints before anything was locked in. That meant fewer surprises later, and better decisions early on.
It also made it easier to spot when a direction looked solid on paper but wasn’t going to deliver in practice.
My thought was “I have models, processes, and specifications in place, but still need to trust professional judgement because the direction I am heading in will not deliver the outcome I need?”
Trusting Judgement When the Design Isn’t Right
On the strongest projects, you can often feel early on that the current design route isn’t going to work, even if it hitting every box in the specification.
You can have models, processes, and specifications, but at some point you have to trust professional judgement. Staying with a safe direction because it’s defensible is often the bigger risk. You get to the end and what you’ve got is something that looks nice, but does it actually deliver anything? Change, experience, learning, impact?
We saw this clearly in a football technical scouting project. The design was ok, it looks nice, but it was too close to work we’d already delivered. This wasn’t an internal training course. It was a retail product, and expectations were higher. People working in sport are used to well-designed digital experiences. They don’t lower their standards just because something is labelled “learning.”
“Is the design route too close to work we have already delivered, even though expectations are higher and customers are used to well-designed digital experiences?”
– Scott Hewitt
We weren’t chasing gimmicks. But we also weren’t pushing the software or our development skills far enough to create something genuinely strong. The experience was fine. And “fine” wasn’t going to be good enough.
So we changed direction.
When Throwing Work Away Is the Right Call
By the time we made that call, the designers had already finished the graphics. Content was in good shape. From the outside, it would have looked reckless to go back to the start.
But the alternative was shipping something we knew would blend into the background.
We rethought the interface, the interaction, and how the whole thing worked. At times, we couldn’t clearly articulate what we wanted, only what we didn’t. We designed as we built. We ignored a lot of traditional development rules and focused on the experience we were trying to create.
The end result was closer to a simulation than a course, influenced by modern football products and platforms. It landed immediately and reviewed well from day one. Not because it was flashy, but because it respected the audience.
“Is staying safe the bigger risk when the current design route is not going to work, even if it looks solid on paper?”
– Scott Hewitt
Budget Reality, Not Fantasy Advice
Budget and commercial constraints are always present. It’s easy to talk about “pushing back on order taking,” but that advice often ignores reality.
Many L&D teams are small. Some are teams of one. Roles can be fragile. Influence can be limited. Not everyone has the freedom to challenge decisions loudly or endlessly.
In our case, the budget decision was ours. We thought about reputation, doing exceptional work for the client, and the long-term value of the project as a marketing asset. That justified investing some of our own capital. We treated it as more than just a course.
That’s not a universal recommendation. But it is an honest reflection of how real trade-offs get made when quality actually matters.
“When budget and commercial constraints are always present, is the budget decision about reputation, doing exceptional work for the client, and the project’s value as a marketing asset?”
– Scott Hewitt
Clients Aren’t the Problem. Dismissing Them Is.
Client reviews get a bad reputation in elearning. Too many comments. Too many opinions. Not enough clarity. Comments will come in form multiple directions. You’ll get them via Slack, email and calls. It is easy to feel overwhelmed. Even if you have a process it can still be easy to dismissed the client comments.
That’s lazy thinking.
Clients are part of the problem space. They helped define the brief. In many cases, they are the customer. Some of the best development sessions I’ve had involved clients directly in the design thinking. Trying ideas together. Seeing reactions early. Exploring what might work before anything was locked down.
If you want to do something genuinely new, you don’t disappear and unveil it at the end. You need to get the client involved, ask for their comments – get them involved. The best projects involve the client and the ideas that they bring.
AI Still Doesn’t Tell You What Good Looks Like
AI is now embedded in most development workflows. It’s almost unavoidable. What’s avoidable is pretending that tools replace judgement. You need to trust your judgement and that of your team.
Having AI video tools doesn’t make you a director any more than having a phone camera makes you a filmmaker. You still need taste, restraint, and an understanding of experience. I’ve seen platforms that can do astonishing things automatically while failing at basic, reliable outputs.
Tools are not the work. Knowing when and why to use them is. Much of this isn’t different to when we started to work and understand rapid development elearning tools. There was a huge excitement about how they would reduce development time, it was going to overhaul development and output. But quick, doesn’t mean efficient and its doesn’t mean quality. On more than one occasion we’ve picked up more than one rescue project.
What’s a rescue project? Its a project that’s been started using a development tool, or perhaps started with AI but the outputs are not what was expected and expertise is needed to get it back on track. Again, you need to understand what good looks like.
Elearning Improves When You Look Outside Elearning
Some of the best work I’ve been part of involved people from game design, graphic communication, film, and writing. People who didn’t grow up inside elearning models but understood interaction, story, design, brand and creative. It’s not about being the best instructional designer, or only using instructional designer – for me, you need to understand design, creative, interface and how people use product. Have you ever stopped and seeing how people use digital products? You can now stand and see how people use Apple products in their shops. Everyone uses them slightly different. Some are cautious, some are explorers, some looking delving. Its interesting. You might think the interface is easy to use but the experience is different for everyone.
Take time to see how everyone is using the digital products that you see out in life. It might be a car park payment machine, an entrance to a theme park or a self service supermarket till. All these experience will help your elearning designs.
Early on, we learned by buying other publishers’ CD-ROMs just to see what was possible. Development was slower, but it forced intention. Today, inspiration is everywhere, but it’s easier than ever to stay inside the same patterns.
Awards didn’t come from following norms. They came from borrowing ideas and get inspired and influenced from ideas that worked elsewhere and applying them with discipline.
Failure Builds Better Teams Than Success Ever Will
Not every project worked. Some failed outright. You musn’t be afraid of failure.
Early in my career, I built a revision CD-ROM that was a mess. Disorganised code. Poor graphics. Bugs everywhere. I completed the project, but I knew it wasn’t good.
That experience changed how I worked. I learned that creating interactive learning takes more than knowing the tool. And developing the project, I hardly knew the authoring tool. I was put on the job because we were struggling for resource. It takes structure, discipline, and respect for what you are doing. You can’t just try to bundle through it. Later, when I worked with development teams, that mattered. I knew what the job involved. I knew where things broke. I knew what “quick” actually meant.
It made collaboration better, not easier.
Great Elearning Is Still About People
L&D teams are under intense pressure, often operating as very small teams or even individuals, responsible for delivering learning across an entire organisation. Advice about “seats at the table” does not always reflect that reality.
The real challenge is not seeing elearning as just another course, but having the time to evaluate and consider to assess all the possible options, from print and video to face-to-face and digital. Elearning often suffers from a poor reputation, but it is part of the solution and the wider learning strategy, not something that should be dismissed or expected to do everything on its own.
“Do people have the time to assess all the possible options, from print and video to face-to-face and digital, rather than seeing elearning as just another course? ”
– Scott Hewitt
The common part in most great elearning project I’ve worked on has been people. Curious teams. Honest conversations. Willingness to start again. And the confidence to say, “This isn’t there yet.”
Technology will keep changing. You need to be thinking about how can we do this different. It is actually hard to consider all of the various factors that makes good, especially against a background where thought leaders may be suggesting that content isn’t wanted, or elearning isn’t needed.
Knowing what makes a great elearning course, and having the nerve to chase it, is still the hard part.
FAQ
Q: How to make a good elearning course?
A: Involve writers, designers, and developers from the start. Focus on flow, pacing, interaction, and audience expectations early. Be willing to change direction if the design will not deliver impact, even if work has already been done.
Q: What are the qualities of a good online course?
A: High content quality, strong engagement, respect for the audience’s time, and relevance to real performance needs.
It should feel intentional, well-crafted, and comparable to other high-quality digital experiences learners already use.
Q: How do you ensure elearning is effective?
A: Use professional judgement, not just models or tools. Design with the audience, test ideas early, involve clients where possible, and avoid relying only on completion or satisfaction metrics that do not link to real outcomes.
Q: What is the key to the success of elearning?
A: People. Curious teams, honest collaboration, trust in judgement, and the confidence to say when something is not good enough. Tools and technology support the work, but they do not define quality.
