Comments on: Should we narrate on-screen text?

By: gregorytt

gregorytt — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 14:19:45 +0000

your template displayed incorrectly in my browser(chrome)

By: Cathy Moore

Cathy Moore — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 01:54:14 +0000

Heather, thanks for the great analogy.

By: Heather

Heather — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 17:55:45 +0000

Here’s a great analogy that someone once shared with me and it has successfully been my guide for the past 10 years:

“Think of the audio as what the teacher says and think of the text as what the teacher writes on the board.”

I think this is a great way to look at it and it often provides the perfect balance of audio and text.

By: Multimedia Learning » Avoid Cognitive Underload: Add Ambient Sounds to Elearning Scenarios

Wed, 19 Mar 2008 05:34:21 +0000

[...] been some great chatter around the use of audio narration in elearning. Both Tom and Cathy have offered up some excellent examples on the appropriateness of audio narration in [...]

By: Chris @ eQuixotic

Chris @ eQuixotic — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 19:10:06 +0000

“My concern is with courses that try to be both: they put dry text on the screen and then read it to you. They would probably be better off replacing the text with a meaningful graphic and using audio to add the details.”

Absolutely, Cathy. When I do narrated coursework, I pay careful heed to Richard Mayer’s finding (Multimedia Learning) that mirroring narrated text onscreen hurts learning.

I try to distill my onscreen text down to the most minimal of bullet points, if I use any text at all. I prefer to use relevant images that reinforce the narration instead. Not always possible, but it’s what I strive for.

By: Cathy Moore

Cathy Moore — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 18:47:37 +0000

Chris, I agree that a well-done course with narration can be far more effective than a silent page-turner. My concern is with courses that try to be both: they put dry text on the screen and then read it to you. They would probably be better off replacing the text with a meaningful graphic and using audio to add the details.

I think we also need to make clear whether we’re talking about a one-shot, standalone course or online training that’s meant to be referred to repeatedly. Audio becomes more problematic in the latter case, because it can’t be skimmed.

By: Chris @ eQuixotic

Chris @ eQuixotic — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 17:39:15 +0000

I don’t know about the theoretical pros and cons for adding audio narration to eLearning, but I do know this: I get a lot of responses from my customers to my narrated Articulate courses to the effect of, “I loved this! Why can’t more eLearning be this way?” Obviously those learners aren’t big fans of our traditional text-based page-turner courses.

Perhaps those are just audio learners finally feeling the love, but I’ve yet to have anyone complain about the audio and claim they would rather just read the material.

Just my real-world, non-scientific observation…

And I agree with Steve: computer-generated narration is bad news.

By: Steve Flowers

Steve Flowers — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 04:54:02 +0000

Eek — machine generated narration. We use it for scratch audio (instant generation) when the customer calls for narration – until we get the final approval for human read stuff. This also helps folks get a feel for ‘how much is too much’. I wouldn’t want to subject a learner to computer read audio (especially since most don’t appreciate the screen text being read to them anyway).

By: Cathy Moore

Cathy Moore — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 15:26:21 +0000

Steve, thanks for your thoughtful comment. I agree that if we’re going to use audio, we could use real people who speak naturally about the subject and not an artificial-sounding narrator who reads dry text. The current approach to narration is just a continuation of the lecture approach to teaching, and we’re fooling ourselves if we think putting this approach online makes it work better.

As for the problems with updating content, on another audio-related post, a vendor left a comment proposing his solution, which is computerized narration. The fact that there’s apparently a market for this is a little disturbing to me. When did we conclude that people can’t read to themselves?

By: Steve Flowers

Steve Flowers — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 22:07:54 +0000

Good, concise article addressing a common problem. Screen audio that automatically plays also presents a pretty serious problem for those that use screen readers. Imagine two voices battling to read the same or similar text. One way to get around all of these issues, and a method that I advocate, is NOT PLAYING AUDIO without the learner activating the audio / media. The DHS accessibility office also prescribes this method of audio on screen. This would seem to satiate all audience needs (if narration was actually necessary in the customer’s eyes). This also opens up some other ’sound bite’ possibilities in the design. Why have an inauthentic, professional narrator reading poorly written dry prose, when you could have a short bite of audio straight from an expert explaining the importance of a concept, rule, procedural step, etc..

This method does not, however, address the argument that the audio should be synchronized with screen elements (an obvious throwback to PowerPoint talking head shows). There is some industry maturity that must happen to break out of old ‘tried and true’ presentation methods that punish those that have to sit through all the drudgery…

The article only approaches one problem area with the narrated screen text. Narrating screen text verbatim also presents a problem to the development of the course. Text changes, that’s one thing. Audio changes that follow the spiral of whimsy that sometimes comes with the evolution of a product, that’s another that can consistently chase the motivation out of the project for folks managing production (often not the same folks managing expectations for customers / sme’s). Just a thought, efficiency is king – so is maintainability. If we have any hope of breaking out of the legacy build cycle we have to move past the tightly coupled content / presentation packaging model. This includes getting away from packaged and overly structured boreware.