Use case – better course design through design thinking

A few years ago, I had a small business client who was selling their courses online in an asynchronous eLearning format. The courses they were selling centered around a proprietary framework of sorts that the company had developed. I was called in as a learning consultant as they were not selling many courses and saw high attrition rates in them.

After gaining access to their Learning Management System (LMS) and reviewing the courses, several issues with their existing learning surfaced:

• The company was running asynchronous eLearning courses that the learner could enroll in at any time, yet they had discussion boards. The purpose of a discussion board is for learners to engage with each other; without a cohort of learners present at the same time, it was the luck of the draw whether learners interacted on the discussion board at all, much less were in the course at the same time!
• The course included exercises...