Category: voiceover audio

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Effective eLearning Voiceover Audio: Sell It!

by Jeff Hanley
 
What's the objective of your eLearning? To change behavior, right? Perhaps you are trying to get learners to examine their health benefits during open enrollment and take action. Maybe you want to make them aware of safety concerns and convince them to think and act safely in the workplace.

Do you think your eLearning is going to change behavior if it is boring, and contains lackluster voiceover that's delivered in a monotone?

The first rule of an effective voiceover is "sell it." The audio is one of the most important pieces of your eLearning content and it needs to be presented in a dynamic and convincing way. Voiceover is like acting or singing. You need to project and give the audience something compelling on which to focus. Why? Many things get between you and your audience and distract them from your content.

  1. Technology. It's a long way from your microphone to the end user's ears and eyes. The technology, including the processing of audio and video for streaming, will suck the energy out of your presentation. You need to reach through that dissipation and compel your learners to pay attention and absorb your information. That requires a little extra dramatic "push" when delivering a script.
     
  2. Much eLearning is consumed at work with coworkers, meetings, phones, and email all serving as distractions. Voiceover audio that has a monotone delivery is not going to keep your audience engaged through all those distractions. Give your learners a reason to pay attention.
     
  3. Changing behavior requires convincing people to hear what you're saying, take what you're saying seriously, and take action after the eLearning. Words like important, required, critical, and bottom line need to be communicated with the substance and urgency demanded by your learning objectives. 
Remember, what you are presenting is more than just "words on a page." Your eLearning might be about safety, health and well-being… perhaps your company's bottom-line is at stake. Voiceover, in this case, is not a close-up, though the microphone and quiet room where you record may make it feel that way. It's actually more like presenting in front of a big room, with air-conditioning humming, doors slamming, and people talking. You need to compel learner attention with energy, meaning, and by keeping the learning objectives in mind with the delivery of every word.

Sell it!

Note: I'll be contributing articles to this newsletter that discuss all things voiceover audio. I'll be covering best practices for microphone technique, the hardware you'll need, and the software available for recording quality voiceover for your eLearning.
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Looking to get started with eLearning? Check out these live, online classes.
Posted on

Adobe Captivate: Six Ways to Use Voiceover Scripts

by Jennie Ruby View our profile on LinkedIn
 
I often point out in my classes on writing eLearning voiceover scripts that a script is necessary so that when you record the audio you don't skip anything, don't stumble, and don't say "um." However, using a voiceover script for eLearning is way more useful than just that.
Let's say for example that your eLearning project will be developed in Adobe Captivate. Captivate allows you to type–or copy and paste–the script into Slide Notes, similar to the slide notes you might be familiar with in PowerPoint. From there, you can use the notes in several different ways.

Adobe Captivate: Slide Notes 

First, just as in PowerPoint, you can create handouts that print the Slide Notes along with an image of each slide, like this:

PowerPoint notes. 

Second, if you are going to record the voiceover yourself, you can display the notes in the recording dialog box, like a miniature teleprompter, for your ease in recording the audio. At the bottom of the recording window, click the Captions & Slide Notes button to display the notes.

Captions & Slide Notes 
The slide notes. 

Third, if you are hiring voiceover talent to record the audio, you can provide the script to that professional, slide by slide, so that he or she can record the audio for each slide separately.

Voiceover scripts 

Then, fourth, once you either record the audio yourself or import the recordings from your voiceover talent, you may need closed captioning. Once you have pasted the voiceover script phrase by phrase into the Slide Notes pane, you can create the closed captioning just by clicking a check box.

Adobe Captivate CC's. 

And if you have accurately divided the script into phrases as shown above, it will automatically be synchronized with the audio. Below, you can see the yellow markers indicating the closed caption that goes with each audio segment.

Closed captions synchronized 

Fifth, suppose instead of hiring voiceover talent and instead of recording the audio yourself, you decide to go with Text to Speech. Since Captivate comes with several high-quality computerized voices from NeoSpeech, this is a viable option. Just as with the closed captioning, creating the Text to Speech from the Slide Notes is very easy. In the Slide Notes pane, you click the TTS check box.

Text to Speech

Then you open the Speech Management dialog box, where the Slide Notes are automatically imported, click the Generate Text button at the bottom, and you've got your voiceover audio.

Speech Management dialog box 

And as before, to get closed captions with that, you just click the Audio CC check box.
Sixth, and finally, if you are creating accessible eLearning that is 508 compliant, then the final thing you can do from that one voiceover script is automatically import the Slide Notes to the Slide Accessibility dialog box. This contains the text to be read by screen readers, for those accessing the training through audio only.

Slide Accessibility 

So, let me count them up–yep, that would be six (6) ways to use a voiceover script to help in the development of eLearning with Adobe Captivate. By starting with a good voiceover script, you not only create a clear and well-planned audio, but you also save tons of work by using the script to automatically generate any or all of these aspects of your eLearning project.
Are your scripts up to the task? Join me for my afternoon mini course on how to write a good voiceover script.
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Need more help with your script? Look for our hourly consulting service. We'll help you evaluate, substantively edit, or rewrite your voiceover script to make sure it is up to par.