Common Mistakes in Creating Educational Longreads and Their Solutions

Content:

• Lost Learning Objective
• Error in Defining the Target Audience
• Illogical Structure
• Ineffective Navigation System
• Lack of Interaction
• Visual Noise
• Technical Defects
• List of Necessary Criteria for Assessing the Quality of a Longread

Methodologist in the Silamedia multimedia communications laboratory, head of the media center "Vspyshka," a media trainer and expert in creating educational programs.

Unlike media longreads, which aim to engage audiences and tell a story, an educational longread should not only convey information but also explain it clearly, facilitate learning, and motivate students to complete practical tasks. Therefore, bright storytelling elements or complex design are often inappropriate for educational materials - excessive layout can distract the reader's attention.

In order to develop an effective educational longread, it is worth considering it from different perspectives.

• from the teacher's point of view, in order to analyze the extent to which the educational goals have been achieved, what is the full content of the material and how it is related to what was studied earlier;
• from the point of view of a methodologist, focusing on the organization of content, ease of navigation and the prospects for non-linear perception of the text;
• From the position of a web designer, when loading a longread on different devices, it is important to check the page parameters and analyze how accurately the design principles are followed.

I will highlight common mistakes in educational longreads related to the content, structure of materials and their perception by students. I will also share recommendations on how to avoid these shortcomings or correct existing ones.

Loss of Learning Goal

When developing a longread, ignoring clearly defined learning objectives, we risk getting only a collection of unrelated materials. Although they can be engaging and informative, this approach does not contribute to achieving noticeable results in students.

To prevent this, first of all, it is necessary to clearly define the educational goal before starting to create educational materials. Striving for this goal will help you understand what content should be added to the longread, and what will be redundant, since it will not contribute to achieving the intended objective. Educational longreads help cover the two lower levels of Bloom's taxonomy, namely knowledge and understanding. At the same time, with the help of interactive components, it is also possible to assess whether students have achieved the third level - the application of acquired knowledge.

First, it is important to convey the learning goal to students. This objective should be stated both at the beginning of the material, for example, with phrases like "In this article, you will learn..." or "After reading, you will be able to...," and at the conclusion, using expressions like "Let's summarize..." or "Now it is clear to you...." When students understand what knowledge they are about to acquire, it helps them focus on the most important aspects and positively impacts their learning motivation. In addition, summing up the achieved goals at the end of the material allows you to evaluate your own progress, which also helps increase the desire to continue learning.

Mistake in defining the target audience

Another significant mistake when creating a longread is ignoring the characteristics of the target audience. As a result, the materials may be either overly complex for students to understand, or, conversely, overly simple, repeating facts they already know. Without a clear understanding of the needs and interests of the target group, it is impossible to establish effective contact, use clear illustrations, and discuss the problems that students face in everyday life.

When creating a longread, you need to consider the interests and level of preparation of your audience. How well do they know the subject under consideration? What method of presenting information will be most effective? What examples will help connect new concepts with the real-life experiences of readers?

It is advisable to perceive any longread as a set of components from which a unified whole can be assembled. This makes it clear that examples intended for lawyers should differ significantly from those suitable for teachers. Furthermore, materials for beginners should avoid excessive depth on the topic, unlike long reads aimed at more experienced professionals, where such detailed sections may be more appropriate.

From a development perspective, this situation appears as follows:

• We define the educational objective. It serves as the basis for the entire long text and becomes the basis for the sections "What You Will Learn" and "What You Have Learned."
• After this stage, we move on to analyzing the target audience, creating generalized images—portraits of students in various segments (this approach is called the persona method). Next, it is necessary to create a list of questions that might interest each of the created personas. For this, I use Buck Ryan's "Maestro" technique, developed for use by journalists. This list becomes the basis for the structure of the longread and determines the format and content of its individual sections. For example, answering the question "What actions should I take?" will require developing an algorithm, while the question "What else can I read on this topic?" involves creating a collection of links. In addition, diagrams or infographics can be useful for explaining the causes of ongoing phenomena or events.
• Finally, it is necessary to carefully consider methods for increasing student interest and adapting materials to their individual needs. At this stage, we determine how to integrate new information with existing experience and knowledge already acquired, and also include practical examples, exercises, and tasks.

Thus, the author of a long text simultaneously works on its structure and selects the appropriate elements. Although this process can be time-consuming, over time, with experience, the creation of such materials will occur much more quickly.

Illogical structure

Sometimes educational longreads consist of endless pages of text, only occasionally interrupted by images. In other situations, on the contrary, the content is replete with headings of different levels, lists, quotes, illustrations, and a variety of other elements. Both of these approaches are ineffective because they lack a clear structure – that is, a meaningful alternation of different blocks.

When developing the structure of an educational longread, it is worth perceiving it as a script for any lesson. You should highlight semantic sections, alternate different types of activities, such as “scanning” information, reading, visual analysis, and interaction. It is important to maintain a logical sequence of presentation and summarize at the end of each block. To facilitate the process of information perception and maintain learners' interest, it is necessary to integrate into the longread not only "theoretical" and "practical" sections, but also "motivational" ones - explanations that show the connection between new knowledge and what has already been mastered, as well as examples from real life and the readers' personal experiences. Storytelling tools can also be very useful.

Headings should be organized into a clear and logical hierarchy.

• Title of the longread;
• Title of the section;
• Title of the subsection within the section (for example, this could be the title of a list or the title of an exercise).

Each screen should provide the opportunity to see both the main part and the beginning of the next block, for example, theoretical information together with examples related to the topic. Although reading on mobile devices has become quite widespread, the volume of longreads is oriented towards desktop screens - with the user's perception of content on computers and laptops being taken as the starting point. This is due to the fact that most desktop screens have a standard resolution of 1920 by 1080 pixels, which ensures the same display of the longread grid regardless of screen size. In contrast, smartphone screens vary significantly in resolution, making it difficult to unify content display.

Secondly, educational longreads should include informative images, such as infographics, illustrations, photographs of objects or phenomena, as well as diagrams of various mechanisms, processes, and algorithms. This will allow students to better visualize and comprehend the subject of discussion, and will also have a positive impact on the consolidation of the learned material in memory. The relationship between textual and visual information (i.e., verbal content and images) and its role in effective perception and memorization is explained by dual coding theory and the concept of multimedia learning based on it.

A third important aspect is control over the pace and rhythm of information presentation. It is recommended that after each text screen, you insert a block with a quote or interesting fact, as well as an image that does not necessarily directly reflect the content, but can serve as a visual accent. You can also use combinations of text with pictures, cards, or other elements that will act as a pause during reading.

Ineffective Navigation System

Reading online has its own unique characteristics, from changing user attention patterns that show how they scan pages and what elements they pay attention to, to the non-linear structure of interaction with information. Effective navigation plays a key role, allowing users to easily navigate content, quickly find necessary fragments, and recognize when a link leads to an external resource and when it leads to an internal section or block.

The lack of a clear navigation system for students will make it difficult to interact with longreads. This can negatively impact both the level of learning engagement and the final results. When a learner has to make significant effort to understand the structure of a longread and find the information they need, cognitive overload is likely to occur.

Each navigation component serves a specific function:

• Breadcrumbs indicate the position of the longread within the course;
• The menu allows you to navigate between different sections;
• Anchor links allow you to return to previously viewed content and navigate to future sections.
• The progress bar shows how much text the user has already read and how much remains to be mastered.

Lack of interaction

Often, when people encounter difficult and extensive texts, they read them "On autopilot," simply skimming the text without paying due attention to parts that might remain unclear after such a cursory reading. Therefore, it's helpful to add small interactive elements to longreads to help readers focus on the material while quickly assessing their level of engagement.

Mini-tests can include a single assignment, a discussion prompt, or a reflective question, as well as options for sending questions to the instructor and other formats. More complex exercises and practical assignments are best placed near the end of a longer text.

When determining interactive formats, consider several factors: the topic of study, the goals of the educational process, the characteristics of the target audience, and the technical capabilities of the designer and the LMS platform where the content will be hosted. If your system supports integration with external resources, the list of available options expands significantly. For example, you can include assignments and exercises in the course developed using services such as LearningApps, Wordwall, or Udoby, and other similar tools.

Visual noise

The desire to make materials more attractive can lead to excessive embellishment, as a result of which the longread's design will distract students from the main content, instead of helping them perceive, comprehend, and remember it.

There are four key principles in design: grouping, alignment, rhythm, and contrast. If you supplement them with the basics of typography, you will get a neat and aesthetically pleasing educational longread that will be comfortable for perception and reading.

Start by forming groups. Longread blocks with similar topics should be placed in close proximity to each other, and the distance between them should be minimal. At the same time, it's important to leave enough space between different groups of blocks. It's also important to ensure that the content doesn't stick to the edges of the page.

After that, make sure the text alignment is correct—the main text should be left-aligned. Centered alignment makes it difficult to read, and justified alignment can lead to uneven spacing between words.

Pay attention to the various elements and their rhythmic alternation. To avoid monotony, you can use reversed text: white letters on a dark colored background. This will create visual emphasis, but it's not recommended to add more than 2-3 such blocks to a single longread.

Pay attention to the font choice. The size should be comfortable for reading, so that enough information fits on a single screen and the student doesn't have to constantly scroll the page. It is recommended to limit yourself to two types of fonts, avoiding excessive use of bold, italics or colored accents - use them only to highlight truly important points.

Technical issues

Even if the longread is not intended for a wide audience and its SEO optimization is not a priority, it is important to ensure its adaptation for mobile devices. The main difficulty is that the same text takes up more space on a smartphone screen compared to a laptop. In addition, the small display size can create inconvenience when interacting with interactive elements. In some cases, it may be necessary to rework up to a third of the content to create a mobile version. Completely manually completing such a task is quite difficult, so in this case, longread builders with responsive design, such as Tilda, ScrollTool and Articulate, come to the rescue.

Each longread development tool offers the ability to preview the page before it is published. Some offer the option to switch between desktop and mobile versions. Available formats typically include smartphone and tablet views, as well as landscape and portrait screen orientations—be sure to check all available combinations.

You should also ensure that all components function as intended: images display correctly and are positioned correctly (this is especially critical when it comes to automatic adaptation for mobile devices, as the designer may change the order of blocks in this case), links direct users to the right place, and automated tests display results correctly. It's equally important to check the text for errors and typos, and to ensure that paragraphs are complete and not broken mid-sentence.

Also, I strongly advise against conducting a final review immediately after completing the layout of a longread. A more reasonable approach would be as follows:

• First, you should independently check and test how the information is displayed on various screens.
• After this, you should ask several colleagues to review the longread, check for errors, and test all links.
• After a few days, you should carefully review the text again with a fresh eye—only then can you say that the final check is complete.

Before sending the longread to students, pay attention to adding tags for headings (H1–H4) and alt tags to images, as well as formatting page titles and descriptions. Don't forget to set up a snippet for social networks. Even if the material is intended, for example, for an internal university course, such work will emphasize your attentive attitude towards readers. Students will be able to share a link to the material in group chats, and it will be accompanied by an annotation in the form of a snippet. Some of them, while doing their homework, decide to listen to a longread using a screen reader, and the correct tag structure will allow the robot to correctly reproduce the text and describe the pictures.

List of necessary criteria for assessing the quality of a longread

In conclusion, I propose considering a number of questions that will help eliminate common mistakes and ensure that the longread is worthy and effective:

• Does the longread achieve a specific educational goal? Do students understand what this goal is?
• To what extent does the content of the longread correspond to the level of knowledge and experience of the intended readers?
• How is the material distributed? Is its organization logical?
• Does the navigation system contain a variety of longread sections?
• How is the alternation of text and multimedia elements organized, and how are visual accents presented?
• Do the interactive components in the training fulfill educational purposes or is their implementation driven solely by the desire to entertain?
• Was it possible to achieve a balance between excessively bright colors and a variety of fonts on the one hand, and the monotony of simple text screens on the other?
• Are all elements displayed correctly, including on the screens of mobile devices?

Read also:

• Longreads and slide courses represent different formats for presenting information, each of which has its own characteristics and purposes.

  Longreads, as a rule, are extensive text materials that deeply analyze a specific topic. They contain numerous details and examples and can include various media elements, such as photographs, graphs, and videos, to make the information more visual and engaging. The main goal of longreads is to provide the reader with a full understanding of a complex topic by immersing them in context and providing a comprehensive overview. Slide-based courses, on the other hand, most often consist of short, structured slides that present information in a more concise manner. They are typically used for presentations, training, or seminars, allowing key ideas and main points to be quickly conveyed. This format is suitable for visual perception and facilitates the assimilation of information, since the emphasis is on the main points.

  Thus, the main difference between longreads and slide courses is their structure and purpose: longreads seek to explore the topic in depth, while slide courses are focused on quickly conveying basic knowledge and simplifying the assimilation of information.

• Ten design mistakes that can negatively affect the quality of an online course.
• How does color influence the design of educational materials and what should be considered when choosing it?
• Developing online courses: an overview of platforms that provide such opportunities.
• Application of the principle of uniformity plays a key role in the development of online courses. This principle allows you to create a consistent and understandable educational space, which significantly facilitates the perception of information by students.

  Firstly, uniformity in the design and format of materials helps students adapt to the course more quickly. For example, using consistent fonts, colors, and styles in video presentations, text, and quizzes creates a cohesive experience and reduces cognitive load. When course participants aren't distracted by design changes, they can focus on learning.

  Secondly, consistency in course structure promotes better understanding and retention of the material. If all modules follow the same logic—for example, beginning with theory, then moving on to practical tasks, and concluding with quizzes—students can more easily anticipate what to expect and how to organize their time. This creates predictability, which, in turn, reduces stress and increases motivation.

  Finally, it's important to consider consistency in pedagogical approaches. Using the same teaching methods, such as interactive assignments, group discussions, or video tutorials, helps maintain student interest and engagement. When students understand what they can expect from each part of the course, they become more active participants in the process.

  As a result, by following the principle of uniformity, online course developers can create more effective and accessible educational products that better meet student needs.