Thoughts on….e-learning

Is it necessary to have teaching experience to be a great e-learning narrator?

No it isn’t.
But it certainly helps.

During my years as a “working actor” (which mainly meant not working as an actor 🙃 ), I took on lots of different jobs to pay the bills. One of them was teaching.

It is the only “non-acting” job I still do today.
Because I love it.

I find passing on knowledge and experience to (more or less) eager students incredibly rewarding.
And I have learned how to engage a crowd, even on a topic that they couldn’t care less about.
Nothing gets me more fired up than seeing 25 bored faces blankly stare back at me at the start of a session. I love a challenge.

This morning, I read on a Facebook thread with other Voice Actors that someone had come across an e-learning course narrated by a virtual presenter. One of the commenters under the video said:

❗ "Using Al just makes it feel like you couldn't be bothered to get a real person to deliver the message. I know it's fun to play around with new tech but remember that you are communicating with fellow colleagues."❗

I think this absolutely hits the nail on the head.

I don't want to start a discussion on AI here, there's enough of those happening everywhere.

What I want to get at, is this:

Learning is an incredibly vulnerable experience.

Most of us don’t like being told what to do.
Putting ourselves into a position of learning can be difficult, annoying even.

So it’s important to approach an e-learning narration from a place that’s nurturing, inviting and on a level with the audience.
It can't be patronising, scolding or condescending. And it certainly can't be robotic.

Getting someone to sit through an hour's worth of customer privacy training without switching off is difficult. But it's possible through genuine connection.

Over the past few years, I have narrated hundreds of hours of e-learning (Thanks, GDPR) for global companies as well as start-ups.

My approach to each one of them is to take the listener by the hand and guide them through the course. As if I was there in the room with them.

And thanks to my real-life teaching experience, that's not hard to imagine at all.

Have a listen to my e-learning samples here.