This week’s E-Learning Heroes Challenge is Applying Multimedia Learning Priniciples to E-Learning Design.
If you’re not already familiar with the work of Richard E. Mayer and his Principles for Multimedia Learning, a great place to start is David Anderson’s introduction to this challenge and this summary from FutureLearn.
Even if you have never heard of Mayer or his work, you will probably have heard of his Redundancy Principle, which tells us ‘not to add printed text to spoken text’.
This article details how to present your multimedia content in the most effective and efficient way, by:
- Explaining a visual through audio or text, NOT both
- NOT adding on-screen text to narrated graphics
- Adding on-screen text ONLY where there is no video or image competing for the learner’s attention
Nonetheless, you should still add closed captions and transcripts to ensure your course is ‘508 compliant’.
The Redundancy Principle does not apply here, as captions can be switched on and off and transcripts can be read separately to your media content. You’re not forcing the learner to read this text – it’s only there if they need it.
But it’s not quite as easy to provide learners with a range of voices and accents, which can also have a significant impact on how your content is received.
The Voice Principle states that ‘people learn better when the words are spoken in a standard-accented human voice rather than a machine voice or foreign-accented human voice.’
The Voice Priniciple
For this week’s demo, I created a practical demonstration of the Voice Principle by pairing Storyline’s Text-To-Speech function with animated characters created in Vyond.
To prove the point that learners respond better to a ‘standard accented human voice’, I used this method to add a live polling function.
Vote for your preferred style of narration in this interactive demo (with live polling) for this week's @ELHChallenge, 𝗔𝗽𝗽𝗹𝘆𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗠𝘂𝗹𝘁𝗶𝗺𝗲𝗱𝗶𝗮 𝗟𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗣𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗰𝗶𝗽𝗹𝗲𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝗘-𝗟𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗗𝗲𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗻. pic.twitter.com/ZE9WdOrQ7N
— ᴊ ᴏ ɴ ᴀ ᴛ ʜ ᴀ ɴ_ʜ ɪ ʟ ʟ (@DevByPowerPoint) June 13, 2021
Why are you doing this Dave?
But what if you don’t have the budget to hire a professional? You can create high quality narration on a shoestring, as the talented Josh Ritter outlines in his DIY Narrator podcast: Voice your feelings
What do you think about the Voice Principle? Sound off in the comments!
“In certain settings Text-to-Speech can be suitable for your final product” – just like my demo for this week’s E-Learning Heroes Challenge, Design in a 100×100 Story Size.
Meet DOT – Your Micro Sized ‘Microlearning Companion
Absolutely LOVE this!! Fits with my (albeit slightly biased) opinion that humans much prefer to be trained by humans and not machines, and that using AI voices sends a moral signal to the learner that the company doesn’t care enough to use human voices.