DIY Narrator: For Instructional Designers Who Narrate eLearning

DIY Narrator: For Instructional Designers Who Narrate eLearning


Keep Yourself Engaged

December 18, 2020

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