Editing voice over work can be tedious and painful. For one recent course, we received a single 1 hour audio file from our voice talent that had to be chopped up and incorporated into almost 100 slides in Articulate Storyline. Listening to a 1 hour file, cutting it up and saving it manually to individual files for each slide is far too time-consuming, so I wanted to share our approach in case it can help other people save time editing. For audio editing we use Audicity. It’s free and works well. After loading the source file up in Audacity, the first thing I do is double the playback speed. At 2x the normal speed I can still understand what’s being said well enough to identify where slide audio begins and ends, and I can also make out potential recording errors. Listening to the audio at normal speed just to identify dividing points takes too much time. The best way to divide audio by slide and do a batch export is by using labels in Audacity. Start at the beginning of the recording and press CTRL+B (command+B on Mac). This creates a label; name it “Slide 1”. Now listen to the […]

I recently participated in a webinar facilitated by a large elearning group that was delivered to about 1,000 people. It’s been a while since I sat in on a webinar of that size, and given the group’s industry and audience, I expected a really polished session that I could learn from. What surprised me most were just how many easily fixable issues still pervade webinars, even at the top levels. The problems started during the introduction. The facilitator was clearly reading notes from a script and stumbling through them as admin activities were taking place in the background. For scripted content, why are people still not prerecording everything to ensure a polished performance? If there’s no video and no audience interaction, the people on the webinar will never know the difference; they just get a great delivery. With the introductions out of the way, the problems shifted to the presenter and her interaction with the moderator. First the presenter had trouble gaining control of the webinar to show her materials (wasn’t there a run-through?). Then the lack of an audio check meant that the moderator had to interrupt the presenter to see if abandoning the headset and going with a […]

Sometimes the elearning solution you want costs more than you want to spend (or more than you can spend!). Balancing budget and scope is always a challenge, and the cost of elearning can vary widely depending on the context and requirements. According to a 2010 research report by the Chapman Alliance, the cost of a 1-hour elearning course might average as little as $10k for a basic, linear course with static media to as much as $50k for a highly interactive and dynamic program. In this article, we’ll look at some ways to keep your project costs lower when you work with elearning vendors. Make sure your goals and objectives are clearly defined before including any outside parties in an elearning project. What do you really need and what are the expected outcomes? Risk and unknowns are going to increase quote costs and potentially lead to expensive rework late in the project. The more you can define and prepare up front, the less you’ll need to spend. Keep everything as simple as possible. Use animation and interactivity sparingly to improve knowledge transfer, not just to look good. Think about what really needs to be custom and what existing resources can […]