It’s been over a year now since the UK and the rest of the world retreated indoors and started the largest work-from-home experiment in history. For the most part, virtual working has worked quite well.
For anyone in learning, however, going virtual has added an extra layer of difficulty to the task of staff training and for teaching too. There’s been a big demand for eLearning materials to go digital, and for those materials to be more engaging and better produced. Unfortunately, a quick webinar isn’t quite going to cut it anymore, but corporate narration can help!
What Is eLearning?
Simply put, eLearning is any kind of learning and/or learning materials that are provided in a digital format.
Some examples of eLearning materials include:
- eBooks
- Audiobooks
- Digital worksheets
- Digital handouts (PDFs, PowerPoints, etc)
- Explainer videos and tutorials
- Webinars
- Virtual Conferences
- Virtual Q&As
- Livestream learning (such as a live-streamed lecture)
- Online/Digital quizzes and exams
- Online courses
There are many different ways to build an eLearning suite, and for many larger companies, employing an eLearning team is usually very cost-effective. You’ll have a whole team of experts at your disposal to create bespoke eLearning materials and other training materials for you and your company.
How Does eLearning Work?
Every company is different, just as every education institution is different, but in general, eLearning is more self-paced than a standardised and formal type of learning, such as classroom-based or training day learning.
For many companies, investing in high-quality eLearning materials that can be kept on their intranet and accessed whenever the employee needs them is the best way to improve staff training programs. It’s also cheaper because there is no need to hire specific trainers on day-rate contracts when you have a selection of pre-recorded and compiled eLearning materials that can be used time and time again.
How To Use Audio In Your eLearning Materials
Having high-quality eLearning materials will pay you back dividends, but the attention to detail, such as good corporate narration, with your materials will make or break them.
For a lot of companies, investing in digital materials such as audiobooks, ebooks, and videos is becoming the new norm. There’s a lot of evidence to suggest that learning via both visual and auditory methods helps learners to retain more information compared to traditional learning such as reading books and materials alone, especially when the voice over talent used is engaging to listeners.
It’s for this reason that using videos with voice over audio narration in your eLearning materials is a good idea. How do you ensure that the audio for your videos is the best, and how can you expand your audio eLearning materials to be more flexible for different types of learners and different learning styles?
Here at Chatterbox Voices, we’ve helped companies of all sizes to create the perfect eLearning materials for every setting and every budget at our recording studios using great voice over audio, whether you decide to go for video learning, audiobook learning, or even podcast learning. The latter is an area that is rapidly expanding as community-learning takes off.
Corporate Narration
With our team of expert engineers and our connections to some of the best voice actors and voice over artists in the business, we can offer a comprehensive voice recording and corporate narration service to clients who are invested in ensuring that their eLearning materials that need corporate narration voice over audio are of great quality.
This is especially useful for clients who are providing CPD training materials and eLearning materials for higher and additional education purposes. In these situations, students will be learning in their own time, on their commute, and during the evenings and weekends.
These materials in particular need to be engaging and easy to understand while the student is possibly doing other things, like commuting, which means your corporate narration and voice-over audio needs to be clear and concise and not reliant on video or text support.
Top Tips for Better eLearning Materials
Thanks to our many years of experience providing professional voice over services for eLearning content, we’ve had the pleasure of helping clients from all kinds of educational backgrounds and settings, from multi-national corporations to smaller educational providers design bespoke eLearning materials.
To help you make the most out of your eLearning materials using audio learning, we’ve come up with eight tips to bear in mind when you’re creating your materials.
- Keep it clear and concise – Consider the time it will take your students to listen to your materials. Make them as short as possible whilst including as much information as you can and ensure that the language you use conforms to Plain English Guidelines.
- One message per segment – It’s better to have shorter segments for your eLearning material, both for video and pure audio narration. If you have lots of messages and points to get across, split them up into clear segments or chapters to allow learners to pause and make notes.
- Clear and easy to understand accents – As much as we love regional accents, it’s best to stick to accents that are very clear and easy to understand. This doesn’t mean shying away from diversity though -we’d actively encourage diverse accents. It does, however, mean making sure all of the voice overs you use are clear and speak slow enough for people to understand, but fast enough so your learners don’t get bored.
- Interesting scripts – For a lot of training materials, the subject matter might not be all that thrilling to the average learner. Try to make your corporate narration scripts interesting and engaging, without being too patronising!
- Use of video – Video is a great way to help people learn, and it works well for both auditory and visual learners alike. Stick to the segments or chapters theory though and be clear with your messaging. Also, make sure the voice over audio supports what’s going on on-screen.
- Make It engaging – Especially for video, make your materials engaging but don’t go overboard. You want your materials to look and feel like your branding, but don’t be afraid to use motion graphics and switch up what’s on-screen every 2-4 seconds to keep users engaged.
- Gamify in the right context – Gamification is big business right now but be sure it’s used in the right context. A simple quiz is effective and useful but creating a whole video game platform for your eLearning materials might be a little bit too much!
- Use of Foley – Foley is used in the film and audio world to add to sound design. Recreating sound effects to give the piece of work more depth and realism. Include foley in both your video and audio (book/podcast) settings where appropriate to make your materials more engaging.
Get in Touch
If you’re ready to take your eLearning course materials to the next level by investing in good quality audio and clear end engaging voice narration, contact Chatterbox Voices today on +44 (0) 203 744 3558 and chat with the team.
We’ll help you start your journey to better education for all.
