The E-Learning Genre
You have valuable information to share.
Whether it's mandated safety training, software onboarding, students on remote-learning days, or professional development, many of us make learning a lifelong activity. Each setting requires it own structure, accountability, pace, and depth of information. You rely on your experience as well as research detailing best practices to develop a super program. Sometimes with all the thought and expertise you put into it, so much of your information can fall on deaf ears.
Mandatory learning can be an oxymoron.
Expanding your mind and world through learning should be amazing! And it is: when we've decided we're interested. When we’re there because we are told to be, staying engaged is often a challenge, and that makes absorbing the information exponentially more unlikely. We all know how hard it is to suddenly be interested in History, because it's now 11:15 and class has begun. So much corporate training is mandatory too, and videos can be just as much of an excuse for team members to check out and check their phones, as it is for kids. Or worse, they mean a struggle to stay awake! Sometimes this is because the people creating and delivering the training are themselves bored. How on earth could the viewer then see it otherwise? Or the narrator is trained in the subject matter that they love, but not trained to deliver it in a way that is not only meaningful, but interesting.
E-learning courses can't rely on an in-person instructor…
…to adjust the pace or presentation as engagement wanes; you need to know that your e-learning course has clear and appealing narration from the get-go, with well-interpreted text that is easier to stay interested in and so is easier to understand and retain as well.
I have decades of experience as an instructor in multiple industries: blue-collar, white-collar, safety, healthcare, some purely informational, some hands-on, and some very personal. I know how to relate with people in widely varied contexts.
As a trained voice over actor, one of the reasons I decided to make e-learning a specialty is that I can find something interesting in any topic. That's probably why I have familiarity with an incredibly wide range of topics, so I can get up to your speed quickly. I am engaged, and so is my performance. With a course developer who is also committed to making something mandatory also being something fun...well that's a chance to be a fantastic kind of subversive. Learners will be lots more attentive -- and retentive.
