The Writers Gateway

I am sure you must have read a lot about how audio and visuals must complement each other in e-learning courses. You must have heard experts say that voice-over used in e-learning must never read on-screen text. If you are using voice-over, try to minimize on-screen text and use a lot of visual elements. Of course, this makes a lot of sense because no one can read and listen at the same time with ease. That’s why a lot of e-learning courses these days provide Mute ON/OFF button so that the learner can choose to either listen or read.

However I notice a common problem with the use of Mute ON/OFF button. I would like to discuss the impact of this button and show an example of a possible solution in this post.

The Impact of Mute On/Off buttons

As mentioned earlier, most e-learning courses these days provide this toggle button using which you can choose to turn on or off the voice-over.  Now what causes the hitch?

• It does happen that after you turn off the voice over, things shown on-screen make no sense at all and the learner is completely disoriented.
• In spite of using voice over, some e-learning courses do use on-screen text in the form of call-outs, small dialog boxes or labels.  These e-learning courses use a combination of voice over, onscreen text, visuals and also have this Mute On/Off button. Now when you go through such a course you are faced with this challenge of looking at the visuals,  reading onscreen text and listening at the same time.
• If you turn off the voice over, you have to read the voice over script at the bottom of the screen, the onscreen text and decipher the visual elements to understand what the content is all about.

How do you solve this problem? How do you design your e-learning courses in such a way that visual elements and voice over complement each other? How do you ensure that the Mute ON/OFF button does not ruin your e-learning course?

This is what I think, all of us must keep in mind while designing our e-learning courses:

1. If you are using voice over, please try to avoid on-screen text. If you want to highlight the key learning points, give it to the learner towards the end of the topic or lesson in a printable format.
2. If you are providing the Mute On/Off button, make sure that your slide content makes sense when you turn off the voice- over. It is a good idea to give the voice-over script at the bottom of the screen but then it should not happen that the learner reads only the voice-over script and pays no attention to visuals elements or on-screen text. Then the whole purpose of using visual elements is not met.

I would like to cite a good example for illustration purpose. Here is a snapshot of a slide from the course: BBC Computer Tutor.

In BBC Computer Tutor, you can choose to bring the volume to zero and switch on the subtitles. When you do this, the first thing you do is read the text at the bottom of the screen. You do not pay much attention to the anchor though you know she still exists.

After you read the subtitles, you then move on to the visuals on-screen. The course gives enough time for you to read the subtitles and then pay attention to the visuals on-screen. The visual elements keep repeating till you choose to move forward. For example the visual you see in the screenshot is a demonstration of mouse movement. The demonstration keeps repeating till you choose to go forward. You do not face the pressure of paying attention to both the visual elements and the subtitles at once.

Here the Mute ON/OFF button makes no negative impact on the course.

There cannot be any fixed solution to the problems discussed in this post. However if you continuously test your e-learning courses and you know what to test for, a lot of such problems can be avoided at an early stage.

Now it’s your turn to speak:

What’s your take? How do you test your e-learning courses that have Mute ON/OFF button? What are the things that you keep in mind while designing such courses?

Please share your thoughts.