Percentages of Media types for Best eLearning

Jun 24, 2022

Does anyone have any kind of chart or advice about how much of each kind of media to use for best learning practices in an eLearning course? I know it depends on a lot of different variables but are there any rules of thumb or principles you apply when you are starting to develop a course? For example how much video, animation, written text, scenarios, etc. are good to use?

1 Reply
Kristin Hatcher

Hi Celeste, I don't know if you've found anything on this, but I'm not sure there is anything out there. I'm not sure it's possible to quantify this, I think what you are asking is for something like this: "Ideally a course will include 10% video, 30% still images, 10% white space and 50% text." Is that right?

I think we can say that pages that are wall-to-wall text are less appealing and make participants not want to read. We can say that images, especially those that explain the text on the page, are always nice to have. But I don't think I've ever seen anything that says there is an ideal ratio of video, animation, still images, etc. 

If you can create a course with no text, then I think that's great. 

Do you have higher-ups asking for this information, or is this for you? I worked for a group that would request this type of information, and then if we provided it, every single course would have to be exactly the same and built to that standard. I always worry that non-instructional designers are asking for the information because they want to reduce your job to an assembly line. IF that is the case, you can help speed things up by providing a good template that uses good design principles and is aesthetically pleasing. 

I hope this helps a little.