Between March 24 and June 10, 2026, more than 1,500 people from 103 countries joined the iSpring Course Creation Contest. The final round included 145 finished courses: 80 slide-based projects and 65 scrollable longreads. Twelve Learning and Development (L&D) experts and 10 mentors reviewed the submissions using the same evaluation criteria.
The authors chose their own subjects, so the entries covered very different learning contexts. This variety makes the collection particularly interesting to study. Looking through the strongest entries, I found eight practices worth paying attention to, some of which go hand in hand with established principles of instructional design.
Great 8 Practices
PRACTICE 1: Audience insight shapes the entire course.
Audience analysis has been part of instructional design for decades. The strongest entries showed how much of a difference it makes when this kind of analysis remains visible throughout the course.
You often could tell who the learner was within the first few screens. The language felt familiar to that audience, and the examples came from situations they might actually encounter, so the characters had recognizable concerns. The courses also assumed the right level of prior knowledge.
Intimate Talks: A Parent’s Journey through Difficult Conversations, by Israa Warrar, is a good example. The course addresses parents through situations and language that belong in a family conversation.
Course project: https://course-contest2026.ispring.com/app/preview/2f8b3948-4d01-11f1-b1a7-6a40eb5570b7
What stood out to me is how much easier design decisions become once the audience is specific. You have a clearer filter for what belongs in the course and what feels off. This kind of clarity saves a lot of unnecessary content production time and effort later.
PRACTICE 2: Courses address clear performance gaps and applications.
Another pattern appeared in courses tied closely to workplace performance.
Entries such as Delivering Reliable EV Charging Support, by Hashini Liyanage, focus on situations where the learner needs to make a decision or perform a task, which gives the course a clear purpose and makes content selection easier.
Course project: https://course-contest2026.ispring.com/app/preview/e172375c-4cdd-11f1-be77-6a40eb5570b7
In other words, clear performance gaps help keep the courses focused and grounded. The target is an observable behavior on the job, giving the designer a concrete basis for choosing examples, practice, and feedback.
PRACTICE 3: Microlearning controls cognitive load.
A short course can still feel overwhelming when every screen introduces several new concepts or when the learner has to retain too much information before using it. The best minicourses in the contest were ruthless about scope. They:
- Focused on one narrow task, decision, or concept
- Gave learners only the information needed to deal with it
The approach kept each course short enough to complete in one sitting and specific enough to use immediately.
The course, What’s in the Bowl? Choosing the Best Food for Your Dog, by Qibu Ri, for example, deals with a topic that could easily expand into a much larger course. Yet its scope stays manageable. Short sections and clear navigation help learners move through useful information quickly.
Course project: https://course-contest2026.ispring.com/app/preview/3b366627-3585-11f1-9de7-b2ae50b7086b
PRACTICE 4: Storytelling organizes and guides the learning experience.
Some of the most memorable entries used storytelling as the structure that moved the learner through the course.
In Who Did It? Using Critical Thinking to Evaluate Arguments, by Will Snoad, the audience becomes an investigator and has to weigh conflicting information. The story creates a reason to examine evidence carefully because each piece contributes to solving the case.
Course project: https://acc-22250.ispring.eu/app/preview/5f5411ac-4498-11f1-a97d-6e80e5a93d8c
Storytelling adds narrative continuity. The course returns to the same characters, situation, or central question as new information is introduced, so each concept lands inside a story the learner is already following along.
PRACTICE 5: Guided skill rehearsal connects knowledge with action.
Several remarkable entries gave learners opportunities to rehearse the behavior the course was teaching.
This sounds obvious, yet it’s easy for a course to focus too heavily on explaining what good performance looks like. For skill-based learning, the activity should reproduce the actual mental or physical work the learner is expected to perform later.
A New Manager’s Playbook by Gabrielle Argueta uses guided decisions and practice to bring the learner closer to real behavior. Feedback then explains why a response works and helps the audience adjust their thinking before they face the situation at work.
Course project: https://course-contest2026.ispring.com/app/preview/352d411e-4b28-11f1-8b6a-6a40eb5570b7
PRACTICE 6: Visual design and user interface (UI) skills emerge as an area for growth.
Visual quality varied significantly across the submissions. Some authors handled hierarchy, spacing, imagery, and animation with confidence. Many others struggled with:
- Typography
- Color
- Composition
- Navigation
- Consistency
In many cases, the instructional idea was stronger than its visual execution. This deserves attention because visual design affects how easily learners understand structure and progress through a course. A weak hierarchy, crowded layouts, and poor navigation make important information harder to identify.
The contest leaves instructional designers with a big professional question: How much UI and visual design knowledge do we need to develop ourselves, and where should we collaborate with specialists?
PRACTICE 7: Scrollable courses continue to gain ground.
Scrollable entries accounted for 45 percent of submissions this year, up from 37 percent the previous year. That is one of the clearest visible changes in the contest data.
Courses such as E-Bikes: Choose the Right Ride, by Laura Lubecki, demonstrate why authors are interested in the format. A scrollable course can support a continuous learning flow and works naturally for short narratives, explainers, and materials learners may want to revisit.
Course project: https://course-contest2026.ispring.com/app/preview/61b9e38a-31f0-11f1-a582-126d9c1c8a44
The format also changes the designer’s job. In a slide-based course, screens create obvious content boundaries. A scrollable course needs structure through sections, transitions, spacing, and navigation. Pacing has to be designed into the page.
Slides continue to work well when the learner needs controlled sequencing, checkpoints, or structured interactions. The growing use of scrollables gives instructional designers another format to choose from, which makes the choice itself more important.
PRACTICE 8: Conscious AI use becomes essential to course quality.
Artificial intelligence (AI) was visible across the contest in several ways. Some participants created courses about generative AI, cybersecurity, scams, and other technology-related topics. Authors also used AI during development for text, imagery, voice-overs, and other course materials.
And I have to say, the quality of this use varied greatly. In weaker submissions, we could spot that:
- Generic wording in generated text received little editing.
- Some visuals lacked consistency from one section to the next.
- Broad explanations sometimes missed the details that would make them meaningful to a specific learner.
High-quality entries showed a much more conscious approach. When the use of AI was apparent, the wording stayed specific to the topic and audience; the visuals followed a coherent style; and the generated elements fit the course’s instructional logic.
The topic of AI and informational ethics itself was recurrent in the submission topics. Courses such as Absolute Beginner’s Guide to GenAI, by Tricia Cozier, and Mindful AI, by Haifa Audrey Azzahra, showed how designers are reflecting on emerging questions around AI, digital judgment, and online risk through concrete learning experiences.
Course project: https://course-contest2026.ispring.com/app/preview/e5dab874-4a26-11f1-9580-324d32898ed1
7 Design Lessons Worth Carrying Forward
Analyzing these entries, along with the entire body of this year’s submissions, gave me a few things I want to keep front of mind in future course projects (and encourage other instructional designers to do the same):
- Start with the learner’s situation and let it shape the language, examples, and scenarios.
- Define the action the learner should take after the course before selecting content.
- Choose the format after mapping the learning flow and practice.
- Give learners a chance to make a decision, test an idea, or practice a behavior.
- Treat visual hierarchy, navigation, and pacing as an integral part of instructional design.
- Use AI-generated material selectively and revise it for accuracy, specificity, and consistency.
- Remove anything that doesn’t support the learning goal.
Across very different subjects and formats, the best courses showed the same underlying discipline: the learner, the goal, and the context of application stayed connected throughout the experience.
This may be the most actionable insight from this year’s contest. Good course design becomes visible in the decisions an author makes from the first screen to the final activity.
