I'm currently in a debate with a colleague at work about the appropriateness of audio narrative in e-learning courses. My colleague stumbled across an online article where research and studies have shown that adding narrative in e-learning is wrong and actually hinders learning. (Here's the article he was referencing). This comes from Cathy Moore's 'Making Change' e-learning blog, which I do subscribe to, so this post in no way is meant to disparage that blog or the information it contains. In fact I really enjoy this blog and the information it provides. With that said....
I'm not like my colleague who tends to be a rule follower and when he reads something like this he automatically takes it as the gospel and starts adhering to it. I tend to challenge and question studies like this, hence our current debate. I've taken many narrated courses in my time and many of them I enjoyed and found very effective, so how can these courses be wrong? How can I be wrong? I'm never wrong!
I happen to think that if the user can hear the narrative articulated it can squelch much of the misinterpretation that occurs when you leave the reading to the user. Tone and manner, inflection, phrasing, emphasis and more can all be achieved through narration so I tend to disagree somewhat with this article and claim.
The only aspect of this article I do completely agree with is that it's better to have images and short succint text accompany narration, rather than having the word-for-word narrative appear on the screen while it's also being spoken.
Here's an article on how narration in e-Learning can be a good thing. So who's right here? The post that opposes it, or the post that promotes it? Perhaps there is no clear right or wrong answer? Which is exactly my point.
I'm writing this post to encourage you to not always follow the rules. Studies are great and all that, but sometimes they just get in the way of creativity. If everyone followed the rules then we'd all be a bunch of robots building nothing but cookie-cutter courses and what fun would that be? Take a risk people, buck the trend, question studies and don't be affraid to break the rules. Compliance is over-rated!
Now if I could just get my colleage to buy what I'm selling I could win our ongoing debate. What do you think? Click the 'Comment' link at the bottom of this post and let me know.
What exactly are you disagreeing with? I don't see anyone saying that we should never include narration; Cathy Moore just points to research indicating that we shouldn't read on-screen text to our learners (a point with which you say you "completely agree").
ReplyDeleteNarration is great for explaining a complex graphic, or if our subject matter has an emotional component, such as a scenario in soft skills course. For a software simulation or compliance training, though, narration doesn't add much benefit; on the contrary, it increases development time, makes courses difficult to update, and slows down learners if they can read faster than we can speak.
I'm going to have to side with your co-worker on this one. :-)