Professional Voice Overs: Enhancing Dynamic Elearning experience

Whether you are aiming to teach your students the application of Thermodynamics, learning a new technical skill or trying to garner sales by training your employees, Elearning is the best way to achieve these objectives. Today’s digitized world does not limit the accessibility of learning and this has led to the proliferation of various kinds of online courses and Elearning modules.

Elearning is imparting and facilitating knowledge on media, electronic devices like that on the Internet, CD-ROMs, and DVDs, streaming media etc. The idea of Elearning is to empower learners to absorb personal accomplishment, obtain a degree certificate, provide training and grasp the lessons adequately by keeping the learners’ interest intact.

Elearning is an effective and powerful tool as it makes information easy to grasp and absorb. It imparts enhanced ability to learn and implement among the learners and the engaging Elearning voice overs help in retaining knowledge for a longer time.

If you too are planning to create your online course or training module, here are some steps that can help you to conveniently and easily create Elearning courses that will help your learners achieve their learning goals and objectives.

Research your Elearning audience and subject matter: The first step is to effectively assess and analyze the audience or the subject matter beforehand. If at all possible, enlist the aid of a subject matter expert to get an idea of what content needs to be included and what can be omitted. As for the audience, you'll want to gain invaluable feedback via surveys, interviews, and focus groups, so that you have an in-depth understanding of what they hope to achieve by taking the Elearning course and what their expectations are, in general.

Create a Course Storyboard: After you’ve gathered all the necessary information for your online course, it’s time to map out the course or “create a storyboard.” A storyboard is a document, slide deck, or prototype to lay out the framework for the course. In addition to the written content,, it also includes all of the information in terms of photos, icons, charts, infographics, animations, or videos that will be used in the course. It is therefore important, not only to think of what media you’ll use, but also to prepare all of the necessary assets. This is what can be included in an Elearning storyboard: 

1. Slide title/name
2. Screen text and elements
3. Graphics and animation
4. Navigation
5. Audio narration script
   If you’re going to include a large volume of information in your online course, divide it into short modules. A microlearning course can be a 5- to 8-minute lesson or a series of short standalone lessons that cover one topic or target one specific learning objective.

​​​​​​Write a Script: Now that you know the structure of your online course, you need to write a script. When done correctly, a script serves as the backbone of your course design and transforms the subject matter into something engaging. Very often, one has to deal with two types of scripts: an on-screen text and a narration script.

On-screen text : Here, we mean all of the text a learner will see on the slides. A good on-screen text can enhance your brand image and strengthen your brand identity. To make it really helpful, you need to consider the following things:

1. Add only core concepts to the slides. If you want to provide some additional information, you might record a voice over or support the text with images, infographics, and videos.
2. Minimize the text on a slide. Eyes glaze over when they see large blocks of text, so try to make it as short as possible. Remove unnecessary words and break down long sentences.
3. Make sure the content looks good on small screens. The text, as well as other content items, must be visible, whether a course is viewed on a tablet or a smartphone. Keep this in mind when creating a course and check how it looks on a smartphone at the end of the development process.

Narration script: Creating a narration script is about writing a text for learners to hear, not read. The primary task is to make a script that is listener-friendly. To do this, you need to turn it into a conversation.

1. Your learners should feel like they’re dealing with an actual person. So write a script that has a conversational tone, without complex sentences or a lot of acronyms and jargon.
2. After your script is ready, read it aloud. You may find that you need to replace or remove some phrases to make the speech smooth and clear. If so, make any necessary touch-ups.

Record Your Audio: An engaging audio can serve as great assets to support the text on the slides. People engage better with learning when there is a human voice involved in its delivery. A professional voice actor not only adds value to your Elearning course but can be an effective tool to attract more customers and increase your profit. Adding a voice to an online learning process helps users master new knowledge faster as it makes it more personal.

The narration for Elearning material usually sounds like one of the following:

1. Elaboration: the voice gives additional information to the on-screen text.
2. Paraphrasing: the voice summarizes the text.
3. Verbatim: the voice reads all the words seen on screen.
4. Descriptive:  the voice describes the images seen on the screen.

A great Elearning voice over can boost the learner’s engagement and it’s one of the things that a good voice over artist can inject into an Elearning project. Using the right audio in your Elearning course can make it even more memorable, emotional, and engaging for online learners. This can lead to greater knowledge absorption and retention which also helps to maximize the benefits of the Elearning course. That voice selected (Voiceover recording) needs to be able to maintain a consistent style and rhythm, sometimes over several hours, and it should not sound monotonous.

As the sound is the most sensitive component of any Elearning module, when carried out by professionals, it can enhance the overall learning experience of the audience. A professional voice talent will not only maintain the same tone and consistency throughout an entire series of Elearning modules but will provide authenticity and will generate user engagement by following:

1. Voice Quality: It’s tough to listen to and learn from a recording if you can’t stand a person’s voice. Elearning voice over typically involves extensive listening, which means you want a voice that is pleasant, likable and free of breathiness and crackles. The voice over narration quality should be crisp, clear and agreeable to the ear.
2. Pristine Audio Quality: It’s likewise tough to listen and learn if a recording is full of pops, white noise and other distractions, making it essential to look for pristine audio quality. This is especially important since many Elearning recordings are listened to using headphones. Good, solid recording equipment is a must, as is a narration voice over actor who is highly adept at using it.
3. Ability to Handle Audio Technical Specs: The audio format for Elearning files can vary greatly, depending on different preferences and programs used. The ideal Elearning voice over narration talent will know how to handle them all. In addition to having the technical knowledge of recording equipment and different types of microphones, your narrator should have the ability to save the audio in the format needed at the levels needed in the specs required. Even the most pleasant and pristine voice recording won’t do you any good if you don’t have a way to access or incorporate it into your finished project.
4. Conversational Tone: Being conversational in voiceover isn’t as easy as it sounds. It takes an innate ability to lift words off the page effortlessly and speak at conversational speed–the typical pace that we speak in everyday conversations. This skill is the result of not over- or under-articulating, and is key to engaging the listener and maintaining their attention.
5. Fast Turnaround Times: Elearning projects tend to be fairly lengthy, and they often require a massive amount of editing. That means not only does the initial recording have to be completed in a timely manner, but you also need a way to efficiently and quickly edit the project. Whether you outsource the editing to a competent and skilled editor, or the voice over artist has the skills and ability to edit the recording herself, speed and efficiency are critical.

If you are trying to incorporate professional voice overs to add to your Elearning course, then Voyzapp, a top voice over company India, can help you to get quality Elearning voice artists who work in multiple languages and will provide you the best narration in a reliable and quick manner.

Keep video and graphic elements simple: It might be tempting to go overboard when you're integrating multimedia into your Elearning course. You may feel the urge to incorporate as many graphics as possible or to deluge your learners with an abundance of videos or podcasts. Resist this urge. Instead, just keep things simple and straightforward. By keeping video, and graphic elements to a minimum, you not only make the design and development process less stressful, but you keep the focus of the Elearning course on what's truly important, which is no other than the subject matter. Concentrate on the content itself and ensure that every element you do include serves the primary learning goals and objectives, with no cognitive overload.

Add Assessments and Knowledge Checks: Quizzes and tests are primary tools for checking knowledge in Elearning. They allow you to keep track of your employees’ progress and let you see what has been learned and what has not. Plus, they drive learners’ engagement and help them retain new information longer. Good assessments are those which are properly integrated into the course or the entire training process, are relevant, and well written. You may even develop questions before the rest of the learning content and then build the content to answer those questions. By combining different test and quiz options, and at different intervals will provide a higher chance of content retention and a better learning experience.

Hiring a professional voice talent will help you to get high quality voice recordings that will allow your audience to focus on your message, turning your Elearning module into a success. By incorporating all these basic guidelines, you will be able to develop better, more engaging, and more effective Elearning courses!

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