Articles
Voice Effect Marshalling
by Joel Harband, February 5th 2008
 About
Joel Harband
Joel Harband heads
Tuval Software Industries, based in Israel.
Their best
known product is Speech-Over
Studio, a PowerPoint add-in that enables PowerPoint
slides to incorporate narrations using automated voices.
|
Introduction
How Voice-Over Narration Increases Learning Impact
Challenges for Cost-Effective Voice-Over
Narration
Continued
on Page 2...
Introduction
Today’s course development tools don’t allow developers
of rapid e-learning and training courses to take advantage of voice
narration to boost learning impact in a fast and cost-effective
way. Professional voice-over talents are costly and can delay production,
audio editing of voice-over recordings is difficult, and synchronizing
voice-overs with animations by time-line editing is time- consuming.
The solution is Voice Effect Marshalling (VEM), a new technology
that synchronizes voice-overs automatically, handles voice-over
changes easily, and makes it simple to mix two or more voices on
a slide. An additional solution is to generate voice narration
with text-based computer voices. Eliminating recording and professional
voice-overs, voice narration is added and maintained by text editing
alone - cost-effectively and without production delays.
Background
Speed and ease of use are critical factors in today’s world
of ever new and changing knowledge and products that need to be
taught and presented. It’s less and less practical to spend
time and money to produce a high-level training video only to find
that it’s out-of-date and hard to update.
Over the past few
years, developers have begun using PowerPoint© presentations
to rapidly develop education and training courses. These courses
are brought to the learner’s desktop for e-learning with
PowerPoint to Flash conversion tools.
For effective results with
e-learning it is desirable to simulate the classroom and a good
teacher’s voice makes a big difference. However, producing
and maintaining high impact voice-over course narration in a rapid
and cost-effective way is still a challenge.
Conversion tools can
record or import a voice track and synchronize it with the visual
animations with time-line editing. However, these tools are limited
in their ability to produce professional voice narration efficiently.
There is a need for a new and more powerful technology for producing
professional narration in e-learning and training courses cost-effectively
and on time.
Back
How Voice-Over Narration Increases Learning Impact
Learning expert Dr. Richard E. Mayer has formulated a set of principles
for combining visual and verbal forms of presentations for more
effective learning (see http://www.indezine.com/products/powerpoint/personality/richardmayer.html).
Guidelines on how to add voice-over narration to increase learning
effectivity have been drawn from these principles and are listed
below.
| Principle |
Explanation |
Guideline for Adding Narration |
| Dual-Channel Information Processing |
The human information processing system has separate
information processing channels for visual material and verbal
material |
Add voice-over narration to the visual material
because it significantly increases the amount of information
that can be effectively learned from a slide |
| Contiguity |
People learn better when corresponding words and pictures
are presented at the same time or next to each other on the
screen |
Synchronize the voice-over narration with visual animations
on a slide in order to better describe and explain text and
graphic objects. |
| Modality |
People learn better from animation with spoken text than
animation with printed text |
The text in balloons and call-outs should be spoken rather
than written on the screen. |
| Personalization |
People learn better from conversational style than formal
style |
Voice-over should be personal, interesting, and colloquial |
| Active Learning Processing |
People understand the presented material when they pay attention
to the relevant material, organize it into a coherent mental
structure, and integrate it with their prior knowledge. |
All the following categories of narration should be provided:
- Organize and Orient – Provide introduction, thesis,
summary topics
- Explain in Detail – Provide detailed descriptions
of slide objects
- Integrate with Prior Knowledge – Provide concrete
examples
|
| Summary |
Personalized voice-over narration that comprises general
orientation topics and detailed object-synched topics significantly
improves learning. |
Back
Challenges for Cost-Effective Voice-Over Narration
Voice-Overs are Costly, Time-Consuming and Delay Production:
Quality voice-overs are studio-recorded by professional voice-over
talents with attendant issues of cost and availability. Difficulties
in scheduling a voice-over session can delay production.
Editing Voice-Overs is Difficult: A major challenge
with recorded narrations is the need for audio editing and re-recording
in case of changes and updates. Frequently, a narration is simply
not updated because of the trouble and expense involved.
Synchronizing Voice-Overs is Time-Consuming and Requires
Expertise: Synchronizing a voice recording by time-line
editing is a time-consuming process that has to be repeated whenever
changes are made. Because of this, developers are sometimes hesitant
to add the animation required for effective learning.
Mixing Multiple Voices on a Slide is Difficult: Having
more than one voice in a slide narration, for example, male and
female voices speaking alternately, helps keep a learner’s
interest but mixing the voices requires audio editing and expertise.
Back
Continued on Page 2...
           
|
