Using characters and captions
Aug 26, 2014
By
Amanda Allen
I'm confused as to the appropriate way to use characters and captions. I've read blog posts on both using characters and e-learning mistakes. One of the mistakes was that of redundancy and displaying the same text as heard in the audio. Given that, I'm not sure if it's okay to display what my character (who is the narrator) is saying in a caption or not. I think it's awkward for a learner to just stare at a screen with an image of a person on it while they're hearing what is supposed to be the person's voice. Since it's my welcoming slide, there really aren't any relevant images to display.
2 Replies
One of the ways I've handled this is by paraphrasing the audio or lifting the point of emphasis from the script. Yes, displaying the whole thing in the bubble is a little redundant. It's also a little harder to manage the screen space with a large bubble full of text.
Hey Amanda!
That is a great topic, thanks for posting it here in the forums.
I don't think there are any hard and fast rules about using characters and/or narration in e-learning. Every project is different and what is appropriate in a specific course depends on the content and a lot of other variables, including time, what the stakeholders want, etc.
Personally, I think its fine to have only key points or an edited version of the text appear in the caption next to the character, and the audio narration could be a bit more elaborate or detailed. Here's an example of an e-learning demo I created where the on-screen text is a shortened version of the narration: How I Record Audio For E-Learning. There are no characters, but it's just to give you the idea.
I've also had the experience of designing and developing an e-learning course that used static images of a "course guide" character along with narration (unfortunately this course isn't accessible or share-able here). Again, the narration was a bit more elaborate and the on screen text was a redacted version of the narration script.
Something else I found when using static character images with narration was that I had to have pauses in the narration and fade in and out of character poses that worked with what was being said. If not, having the same static image for too long did look weird, and the facial expression, which would go well with the initial sentence or two, would not match up what was being said after awhile.
Anyway, these are just a few things I learned from my own experiences. Here's a few links to related forum discussions that might also be helpful for you:
Hope this helps! Keep us posted
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