Top Tips for Producing Better eLearning Audio by Jennifer De Vries and Stephen Haskin

“There’s very little difference between storytelling thousands of years ago by ancient cultures and an eLearning story told today. Ancient cultures used stories so that their descendants would remember the lessons of their culture and history. The same is true today. Telling a relevant story is one of the most memorable learning methods.”

Most corporate eLearning courses, and even adult continuing-education eLearning, involve an audio track, mostly as voiceover for video and also for animated characters. As a result, many eLearning professionals find themselves writing audio scripts as part of their work.

However, there’s a lack of formal training for instructional designers about how to write an audio script that keeps the audience’s attention and enhances learning. In this article, we will provide 10 tips for writing better eLearning audio scripts.

Writing for voiceover is different from writing text that a learner will read; it’s writing for the ear, not the eye. But when you learn to write for the ear, you become a better writer, even when you’re writing material for reading on a screen.

In English, this means directing the script at the learner and using the word “you.” You might also sometimes use a directive, where the “you” is implied. This is like a command: “Do this!” Writing in the second person means that you have to know who the target audience is and what they will do differently as a result of the course. Audio scripts are more memorable when you tell participants what they need to do and why. Listen to these two audio segments that demonstrate the difference between second person and third person.

eLearning audio is meant to support and enhance the visuals and is rarely the main event (unless you’re doing a podcast). I can’t tell you the number of times that we’ve reviewed eLearning courses and it’s obvious that the scriptwriter didn’t know what would be on the screen when the script is playing because the script doesn’t support the visuals. In order to write a good … Subscribe or log in to read the full article.
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