Hooking learners with a simple story: Kevin Shadix describes why he uses a short story to motivate learners with a “teaser” scenario. He shows his scenario and asks, “Does a introductory story/scenario like this make you more likely to be interested? Or is it too goofy?” Stop by his blog and give him your feedback.

Your (teeny-tiny) brain on drugs: Join the Mouse Party to learn how drugs affect the brain. When you drag a drugged mouse to the x-ray-type machine, a narrator first explains what’s happening in the brain–and then text appears with the same info, reinforcing the narration. This seemed much more effective to me than simultaneous text and narration.

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See examples of 10 multimedia approaches in USA Today’s Interactive Bag of Tricks (from Multimedia Learning). The short presentation includes many links to examples, and you can download a PDF with the key points.

A timely example for people in the US is the Candidate Match Game. Answer questions that gauge your opinion on key issues, and the candidates that most closely match your views rise above the others.

If you like the examples from USA Today, visit the elearning examples page in this blog to see several more from other producers.

Tom Kuhlmann has posted a thought-provoking demo that shows four ways to approach narrating a course.

The first three slides use some sort of narrated text. The final slide shows the best approach for that content, which is narration with visuals and no text.

My concern is that many people assume that narration is best for all content. However, research suggests that narration should be used only in certain situations.

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It’s common to assume that you should have a narrator read text to the learner. However, this could hurt learning in three ways:

• Increases cognitive load: Learners will read more quickly to themselves than your narrator can read to them. Research suggests that this sets up a distracting echo that interferes with learners’ ability to process the information.
• Takes control from learners: A narrator can force learners to move at the narrator’s pace. Research shows that learners do best when they control the speed.
• Weakens motivation: Reading text to adult learners could suggest that you see them as children, not as capable adults. (My opinion only; if you know of any research into this, please let me know.)

Some recommendations:

• Cut text. Most online courses I’ve seen would benefit from losing at least a third of their text. If you feel you must present a lot of text, consider providing it as a printed job aid.
• Don’t read text aloud unless you know that your learners have trouble reading to themselves.
• Narrate complex graphics and don’t include redundant text.

Research doesn’t appear to support the popular idea that we should cater to different learning styles. However, research does show that reading printed text to learners hurts their performance.

Your safest bet is to let learners read on their own but use audio to describe complex graphics. It’s also good practice to present the same ideas in different ways–just not simultaneously.

To learn more:

• Cognitive load: Efficiency in Learning
• Learning styles: “There Is No Such Thing as Learning Styles”