How Do You Show Dialogue and Conversations in E-Learning? #105

Conversations and Dialogue #105: Challenge | Recap

Challenge of the Week

This week your challenge is to show how dialogue can be shown in e-learning courses. You can focus on talking, texting, instant messaging, video chats, or any other form of communication.

Your projects can be static or interactive and you can build your demos with any authoring tool. We just want to see your creative solutions for showing dialogue in e-learning.

To get help you get started, I’ve rounded up a few community examples that feature creative ways to show dialogue.

Grammar Guide to Speech Balloons

There’s no better guide to understanding speech balloons than Comic Book Grammar & Tradition by Nate Piekos. You’ll find a list of every type of speech balloons and when you should use them. If you’re building e-learning scenarios, you’ll want to bookmark this article.

Comic Book Grammar & Tradition by Nate Piekos

Comic Style Speech Bubbles in E-Learning

Speech balloons don’t have to be used with comic or illustrated characters. I like the way this example combines comic style panels and speech balloons with photographic characters.

View Fighting Harassment Comic Book Style

Interactive Conversations in E-Learning

In this example, users control the pacing of the conversation by clicking characters to advance from question to answer. The overlapping speech balloons help learners focus on each character’s words.

Free PowerPoint Template: Conversation Interaction

Using Pull Quotes to Depict Speech

Typically used in journalism, pull quotes are graphic elements that are used to highlight an excerpt or key phrase from an article. This type of approach also works well for showing on-slide speech.

View the interactive pull quote example

Instant Message Experience

Simulating instant messages on mobile phones is another way to show digital communication.

Text message template

Showing Text Messages in Film

If you’ve ever watched BBC's Sherlock or House of Cards, you’ve likely noticed the innovative ways filmmakers are depicting on-screen text messages.

House of Cards uses animated chat boxes layered over live action footage. This enables viewers to remain in the scene with the actor while the text messages are displayed.

Sherlock takes a more simplistic approach by using floating words without the bubbles around the text. This prevents the graphic elements from appearing outdated as text messaging styles change.

You can learn more about the ways filmmakers are experimenting with text messaging styles in A Brief Look at Texting and the Internet in Film.

Resources

Previous challenges:

• Using Characters in E-Learning #18
• Preventing Workplace Violence: E-Learning Scenarios #57
• Engage Your Learners with Interactive Conversations #90
• How Are You Using Branching Scenarios in E-Learning? #99

Forum discussions:

• How to make a quotation interesting
• When do you use Speech Bubbles?
• User incremented speech bubbles

Articles and blog posts:

• Create Custom Callouts for Your Courses
• Engage Your Learners By Mimicking the Real World

Downloads and templates:

• More than 100 Free Callouts for Your Online Course Design
• Over 45 Free Speech Bubbles to Make Your E-Learning Courses Talk
• FREEBIE - speech and thought bubbles in PowerPoint

Last Week’s Challenge:

Before you sweet talk your way through this week’s challenge, check out the audio portfolio examples shared over the past week:

E-Learning Voice Over Portfolios #104: Challenge | Recap

Wishing you a chat-tastic week, E-Learning Heroes!

New to E-Learning Challenges?

The weekly challenges are ongoing opportunities to learn, share, and build your e-learning portfolios. You can jump into any or all of the previous challenges anytime you want. I’ll update the recap posts to include your demos.