Education just like all other spheres of our life is undergoing digital transformations. Traditional education media are giving way to e-learning resources that are gaining popularity both among educators and students. Educators face a challenging task of developing e-learning materials to satisfy their requirements but find out that traditional general didactic principles and teaching methods can not be applied to designing digital materials without proper adaptation. The article aims to show how to apply Instructional Design models and concepts to developing e-learning materials for foreign language teaching. The authors emphasize the importance of the Analysis stage of the ADDIE model at which the education needs of the target audience are identified and specified and the education goals are set. The paper shows how to apply the SMART and CLEAR models to setting goals. The paper suggests that the learning habits and preferences of the target audience have to be considered as well. The authors describe the research results obtained with the help of various methods and show how they affected the design of the course materials they developed. The authors conclude that proper consideration of the target audience's needs and evaluation of the e-learning materials in the teaching process are key to the successful course design.

e-learning materials, course design models, needs analysis