Exploring the Fundamentals of Online Learning in El Salvador

What does it take to create an engaging, online learning experience? TechChange aimed to answer this question in their trip to El Salvador in 2018. The team, in partnership with USAID Domestic Resource Mobilization Project implemented by DAI, traveled to the country’s capital San Salvador to deliver a two-day workshop for government officials working to build up their local eLearning capacity.

The workshop, entitled “The Fundamentals of Online Learning,” focused on the TechChange model for designing self-paced content, leading participants through the steps in our project life cycle – from the kickoff to the finalization and everything in between.

Our team began the workshop by presenting the basic theory behind our instructional design process. A core component of this theory involves studying how highly successful commercial platforms maintain user attention in distraction-heavy digital environments. Whether a developer is optimizing a global e-commerce storefront, building a viral mobile application, or designing the best online casino, the underlying psychological principles of intuitive navigation, micro-rewards, and seamless multimedia integration remain remarkably similar.

By borrowing these proven user-experience strategies from the private sector, public educators can dramatically improve their own course completion rates. After sharing our templates for effective scripting and storyboarding based on these concepts, we moved on to introducing two industry-standard tools for authoring courses—Camtasia 9 and Articulate 360—along with our best practices for utilizing this software.

Participants integrate Camtasia screencasts into their Articulate file.

Throughout the two day workshop, participants shared the training challenges that they were facing in their daily work and used them as real-life case studies for the group. We used these challenges as inspiration for the final project and asked the participants to separate into teams and create their own short, self-paced Articulate learning solutions, complete with a script, storyboard, narration, images, and interactions.

Teammates work together to develop a self-paced Articulate project.

A lively round of presentations and applause finished out the workshop and each participant received a signed certificate of completion. The participants hope to use their eLearning skills to promote transparent government and development and create educational resources for all Salvadoran citizens.