by Jennie Ruby 
If you've taken any of our Adobe Captivate, Adobe Presenter, or Articulate Storyline classes, you are probably aware that these programs provide a selection of screen characters–cut-out pictures of professional actors in business, medical, or business-casual clothing posed as if they are talking to you. They are intended for use as a kind of avatar of the trainer.
There is research that shows that using a screen character as a
pedagogical agent or learning coach, who speaks informally and appears to be giving the lesson, increases learning. (My reference for this is
Ruth Colvin Clark and
Richard E. Mayer,
eLearning and the Science of Instruction.)
Over the past few weeks, I've had multiple students ask how hard it would be to use themselves as the learning coach. Believe it or not, becoming a pedagogical agent is easier than you think.
Put Your Picture into the Lesson. Place a professional head shot of yourself, your trainer, or expert on the introductory slide (including job title, credentials, etc.), and then have that individual record the audio narration for the project.
Create your own screen characters. Photograph your expert on a green screen background for a full set of screen characters in various poses. The
IconLogic Blog has a whole series of articles on how to do this:
Create cartoons of yourself or your in-house experts. You can use the images over and over in on-going training videos. Here is one article to get you started: Using Bitstrips Characters.
If you don't have specific, known individuals in your company to act as your learning coaches, you are not stuck with the same four or five actors that come with your software. You can purchase additional screen characters from
The eLearning Brothers. Or you can just make good use of some inexpensive clip art. By
trimming out the background in ordinary office photographs, you can get some nice effects.
Whether you use generic actors or your own home-grown experts, screen characters are an excellent way to add the personalization, engagement, and local feel that will bring your eLearning to the next level.
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