There are many things you need to consider when developing a course. This is generic guide to the decisions to be made regarding any course. At first creating a course may look easy but once you list all the pieces you realize that there is a lot of work to do. I recommend to my clients that they create a template to be used for all their courses for several reasons.

1. Savings: The biggest reason is to save time and effort. There is no real need to make all these decisions and create all the components over and over again . It can take anywhere from one day to a week for all of these. Why reinvent the wheel from course to course. Why add that overhead to your courses? Your real focus should be on the course content rather than on the components covered in this guide.
2. Professional appearance: Using a template for all your courses gives courses same general look and feel which results in a more professional look. You can afford to spend a bit more time creating a good looking interface because the cost will be spread over many courses.
3. Course-takers learn more: It makes the courses easier on the learners. Once they have figured out where to look for things and how the navigation works, they don't have to do that again. They can spend more of their energy learning the material rather than discerning the interface to the course.

Each of the topics listed below in this guide contain many points that you need to consider when developing e-learning.

1. Components Common to Most All Pages
   1. Common Parameters
   2. Page Background
   3. Common Page Header
2. Typical Course Pages
   1. Beginning Pages
   2. Body Pages for Linear Courses
   3. Body Pages for Branching Courses
   4. Wrap-up Pages
   5. Knowledge Check (Test)
   6. Popup Pages
3. Template-wide Considerations
   1. Appearance
   2. Other