Narration for online training

October 24, 2022 Christine Ryan

Category: e-Learning,Training

Narration for online training

When planning the development of your online training materials, one consideration is whether to include audio narration. Your decision as to whether to add narration or not will come down to a range of reasons, such as cost/time considerations, the content matter and the audience.

Accessibility and diversity

Providing the option to hear your content is beneficial for a range of people, and will help to improve learning outcomes for many people. For example, I recently completed a large project for a government department; they had identified that 52% of their audience has low literacy and numeracy capacity (unable to read to a functional level), so we included narration to ensure that all training participants benefited from the training.

Literacy and numeracy capacity is influenced by many factors, including the training not being delivered in the person’s primary language, low levels of education, learning disabilities or vision loss.

Consideration If any of your training participants are hearing impaired and use a screen reader to access the training, any narration on your training will be problematic for them.

Click here for more information about screen readers (Vision Australia)

Also consider how your learners will access the training materials. Will they have access to audio functionality? Have you prepared them for the need for audio or instructed them on their options to use audio?

Auditory learners

We all learn differently and we have personal preferences as to how we taking in knowledge and content.

An auditory learner is someone who learns most effectively by listening. They are more likely to prefer and learn better by listening to information, rather than reading.

By including narration to your online training materials, you are increasing the knowledge retention and engagement of auditory learners.

Warning Auditory learners are often distracted by background noises and poor quality audio, so it is important that the quality of your narration elements is high.

Audio narration example

Click on this video to view an example of WUZZOO training, with audio narration included:

TIPS for adding narration to your training content

Fast readers and visual learners may not like narration, so give options so they can mute the narration
If you use narration to explain visuals, keep it brief
Words should be spoken the same time as they are presented on the screen
Narrated materials should also be available as text
The narration should be appropriately paced (between 120-140 words per minute)
Ensure the tone of the speech is appropriate to the content
Quality is important; volume, background noise, recording quality and pitch

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