Narration in eLearning

B.J. Schone at eLearning Weekly, shared his experiences with incorporating audio narration into eLearning courses. His strategy, is mainly to do as much as possible in house and to avoid hiring outside professional audio help, such as voice talent and a studio engineer.

I too firmly believe in the high value that narration adds to a course. However, for many of the issues that B.J states, we long ago, gave up attempting to do audio ourselves by "volunteering" our co-workers and using them as the voice talent. If a client requests audio for a program we now only use professional voice talent and do all of our recording in a studio. Without seasoned voice talent, who have years of experience in providing narration, it turned out to be too much of a crap shoot. My co-workers are great, however, speaking into a microphone, is not their strong suit (myself included!)...The quality of the audio was just not there. In addition, the recording equipment was not sophisticated enough and this also affected the quality of the audio output.

Here are some general guidelines that we follow when audio narration is required:

1. At the beginning of the project, set up a detailed schedule of when audio narration will begin. It is always recommended that the audio recording session take place near the end of the project after the client has complete at least two content reviews. To avoid the problems of the course's content changing after the recording is complete, the client must be made aware that there needs to be a content "freeze" date when changes can no longer be made. We usually reinforce this by stating in the contract that if significant changes do take place, then additional costs may be required.

2. If costs allow, use professional voice talent, or at least a person who has some acting or even singing experience. A nice sounding voice goes along way.

3. Make sure the script matches the course content and that it has been reviewed by the client. The client should not be surprised. They need to know before the session, what material you intend to narrate and what will not be narrated. For example, it is our general practice that we do not use audio narration for any assessment of mastery tests. This is something we bring to the client's attention very early.

4. Speaking of scripts, make sure the voice talent (whether amateur or professional) has a copy several days in advance. We have notices that if the talent sees the script beforehand and practices a little, the recording session goes more smoothly. Also, depending on how technical the content, there may be some very difficult industry related words or terms...give the talent an idea of how difficult (or not) the content will be.

5. Keep the client involved in the process and have the primary client project manager attend the recording session...This is a must. It is very important to have the client actually attend the session in person. There have been many times, that once the narrator starts reading a page of content, it suddenly doesn't make sense anymore. By having the client there, they can make immediate decisions on any changes that affect the audio.