The Best Way to Improve Your eLearning Narration
18m
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DIY Narrator: For Instructional Designers Who Narrate eLearning
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"I still sound like I'm reading!" I've heard that sentiment from a number of people trying to get better at eLearning Narration... Then I realized something. All of these people (possibly even you!) are missing one key ingredient when it comes to improving their eLearning Narration and sounding like a professional voice talent — not someone sitting in an office and reading a script or an even worse version of Amazon Polly. That key thing is something you're very familiar with. In fact, when you hear it on this episode, it's going to hit you like a flyswatter on a hot August afternoon. Take a second and think about your typical approach to narration. You only fire up your mic once it becomes time to lay down some dulcet tones on that fancy eLearning module you just built in Articulate. Or maybe for today's forty-second Zoom Meeting. And right there is your problem! The Problem People only worry about being a great eLearning narrator when they have to do the voiceover for an eLearning Module. You don't get better at something by only doing it once a month or even once a week. You need to do things much more often. There's a word for this... hmm... What do we call it when we repeatedly perform a task with the aim of getting better? PRACTICE! When I was first getting into voice over I would fit learning about the business and practicing the craft into as many spaces of my life as I could. I'd listen to podcasts on my drives and dog walks, read about it at night before bed, and practice, practice, practice on my microphone every. single. day. I was submitting hundreds of auditions. Early on, I didn't lie to myself about getting hired for the job, but I knew that every script I read and every hour I spent with my DAW got me a step closer to getting good enough that I'd be able to do the work of a voice talent as a full-time career. And now voice over is what I've done full-time, more comfortably than I was as software developer or a corporate trainer, for nearly three years now. But don't worry about getting 10,000 hours on the microphone. That's not necessary, you just need more focused practice time than you're currently getting. Which can't be hard. More than zero isn't much! How to effectively Practice eLearning Narration Take a listen to the episode for my tips on how to effectively practice your eLearning narration skills. You don't need to spend hours a day recording yourself. But it'll help if you have some guidelines and a good benchmark to work towards. In this episode you'll learn: 3 specific things you need to do make sure you're practicing effectively A simple way to create a benchmark to strive for (what good is practice without a goal?) How often you'll need to practice How to avoid practicing the wrong things and ingraining bad habits Why the CDC Hand Washing article can be an effective practice script Related Episodes Here are some episodes you can check out to help you practice more effectively: Bad and Incomplete Advice Who's it For? Part 1 Who's it For? Part 1 Control Your Breath 5 Performance Tips for Engaging eLearning Narration
The episode The Best Way to Improve Your eLearning Narration from the podcast DIY Narrator: For Instructional Designers Who Narrate eLearning has a duration of
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More episodes from DIY Narrator: For Instructional Designers Who Narrate eLearning
Rise of the Robots! AI Voices in eLearning
Ok, I'm just going to start by saying I'm obviously biased in my opinion about where AI can (should?) live in the eLearning narration world. Full disclosure, in the last year (2020) around 50% my income was from eLearning Narration work. There was a HUGE surge in people needing to produce virtual training, especially in the upskilling/certification world. Not necessarily in the world of corporate learning, that was honestly pretty steady compared to 2019, for me at least. That said, I try to keep my eyes on future advances in technology related to voice and learning, things that might impact my future as a voice talent. In the last couple of months I have seen a handful of articles touting the "benefits" of AI voices in eLearning narration. It's mostly been focused on saving money and speeding up production. No one seems to be talking about how the learners feel. Or how effective it is at accomplishing the real goal... learning. Setting my bias aside, I want to hear from you in the community. What do you think? Is it a handful of companies producing AI voice avatars simply targeting an industry that uses voices and is often very budget conscious? Or... Are we a decade or less from the rise of AI in eLearning and the end of eLearning voiceover for DIY and Pro alike? Knowing full well, we can't predict how good these robots will get, I still feel we're a long way off from a robot expressing empathy or urgency in their read. Let me know your thoughts. Shoot me an email or look me up on LinkedIn.
Do you need narration?
Last week, the wonderful Devlin Peck released a video titled "Does your eLearning Project Need Narration?" - which I thought had some great ideas around necessary application of narration in eLearning. If you haven't watched it, I absolutely suggest you go check it out. Subscribe to his channel while you're over there! Great videos released much more consistently than episodes of this podcast! In this episode, I riff on some of my thoughts on Devlin's major points and expand on them from the perspective of a narrator. I know what you're thinking.. There is one point where I kinda, sorta, somewhat disagree. It's really less of a disagreement and more of a difference of perspective based on what could be a differing approach to the craft of eLearning Narration. That said, I don't really know Devlin's familiarity with my approach to narrating eLearning or if he does any narration himself, so it isn't fair of me to assume anything. Plus my bias as a narrator obviously comes into play when talking about whether or not narration should be included in a project. That said, I'd love to hear your thoughts and comments, so drop them in the box and let me know what you think. Resources Devlin's website Does your eLearning Project Need Narration? - Devlin Peck Mayer's Principles - Devlin Peck Image by mohamed Hassan from Pixabay
You Need To Practice – Part 2
A piano, guitar, and the alphabet walk into a bar... Oh wait. That's a different thing. After a bunch of questions, I'm revisiting the concept of practicing your eLearning narration. Many of you have asked "How much do I need to practice?" or maybe "What should I practice?" Well, listen in and you can hear me riff a little more on what practice actually means to me. You can also listen to the previous episode, if you want to dig in a bit more. Photo Credit: https://www.pexels.com/photo/music-musician-piano-keyboard-4934190/
Don’t Fear the Silence
Ask any good musician and they'll tell you the trick is the space between the notes. That's what we're here today to talk about. Pauses. We're usually so focused on the words and the performance of them, that we forget to address intentional silences. We can use them to catch a breath, add emphasis, and help pull a listener along. They can also be used to overwhelm a listener or ruin your effectiveness because you paused for too long and left them wondering if maybe the audio dropped out. Because less is more, that's all I have to say for now. Enjoy the episode.
Keep Yourself Engaged
This month I've been working through a huuuuge eLearning Narration project. I mean, HUGE. Nearly 80,000 words, more than 30 modules, all for one client. That equates to probably close to 8 hours of completed audio. The full process involves the following main steps: A quick read to know what's coming Recording the first take and fixing mistakes as I go Creating regions for file naming Proof listening a module to find mistakes I missed during recording Cutting in new lines or recutting an entire section to improve the original take for clarity/pacing/spaces/etc Fixing any annoying breaths, mouth noises, or odd background sounds I didn't notice while recording Rendering to MP3 Making sure the individual files are all there, named correctly, and sound as I expect (rendering errors and artifacts can definitely happen!) The Wandering Mind The biggest problem you have when you're doing this much narration is a wandering mind. At various point during the process you can start drifting mentally to any number of places. Especially if you find the content a bit dry, you've been going too long without a break, or you have a lot of different things pulling at your attention. A drifting mind has a number of consequences for your learner, the worst is a disengaged performance. Your learners take your cue from you. If you're engaged and interested in what you're saying, they'll be interested in what you have to say. But if you have no energy, are thinking about dinner and what you have to do later, and checked out while you're reading to them... well, they aren't going to be listening. Keeping your eLearning Narration focus, will also lead to an increase in your perceived Authority. So that's a win-win situation for you and your learners. Also, check out the 20-20-20 rule for preventing eyestrain while reading