E-learning has really come of age, thanks for the most part to the march of technology.
Voice overs for e-learning modules are being integrated more and more as e-learning professionals understand how they help the learning process.
Fast Internet connections and virtually unlimited storage capacity have now made it possible to create whole libraries of e-learning material and deliver them efficiently to students.
Growth has been impressive. Revenue for global corporate e-learning is expected to reach around $31 billion by 2020, and training for individuals is also a big growth area.
For example, online education company Lynda.com started out in 1995 as a small provider of video courses in software, creative, and business skills.
But by 2013 its revenue had reached $100 million and in 2015 it was bought by LinkedIn Corporation for $1.5 billion.
E-learning is now often used in organizations both as a supplement, and sometimes as an alternative to conventional teaching methods.
It allows them to quickly get staff up to speed with information about their products and services, internal culture, or anything else that they need to know.
There is a lot of information new staff needs to absorb when they begin with an organization, and also as they continue on their professional development journey, and the beauty of video or presentation-based training is that it is convenient, portable, and cost-effective.
Unlike an in-person training session, e-learning can be viewed and reviewed until the information has been fully internalized.
Different approaches for
e-learning narration
Educational psychologists are constantly theorising, testing, and refining approaches to learning, but currently, narration for e-learning material usually sounds like one of these four examples:
- Elaboration – the voice gives additional information to the on-screen text.
- Paraphrasing – the voice summarizes the text.
- Verbatim – the voice reads all the words seen on screen.
- Descriptive – the voice describes the images seen on the screen.
No one approach is better or worse than another, but some will be more or less useful depending on the material being covered.
For instance, long passages on company policy might be better summarized, while short important phrases can be repeated verbatim.
Whatever is displayed on screen, learning is best helped when the narration is happening at the same time.
Research has showed that learners do better at retaining the information when this happens.
