Where can I find a good argument for using "You" instead of third person? We are a medical research company whose past writing styles were formal and dry. I am the only instructional designer and need reasons why it's better to make our eLearning narration less formal. What can I say?
You're in luck! There's solid research backing the "personalization principle," as explained by Dr. Ruth Clark in this article.
Scroll to the section called, "The personalization principle: Use conversational tone and pedagogical agents to increase learning."
In the Research subsection, Ruth explains, "Based on the work of Reeves and Nass, Mayer and others have established that learning programs that engage the learner directly by using first and second person language yield better learning than the same programs that use more formal language." Voila!
You can also find much more on this subject by doing a Google search on the phrase, "personalization principle." (If you need to locate the specific experimental data in order to convince your group, but run into difficulty finding it online, I'll be glad to summarize it from my sources.)
Unfortunately, I don't have any research to back it up, but I can say from experience that it works well. I started changing the writing tone for my company's learning resources a few years ago, and now it's second nature for my team, and many of our business partners have asked us for help in learning how to more effectively communicate to the target audiences in their own creations.
I love the information in the article Adele shared too!
2 Replies
Hi, Lori!
You're in luck! There's solid research backing the "personalization principle," as explained by Dr. Ruth Clark in this article.
Scroll to the section called, "The personalization principle: Use conversational tone and pedagogical agents to increase learning."
In the Research subsection, Ruth explains, "Based on the work of Reeves and Nass, Mayer and others have established that learning programs that engage the learner directly by using first and second person language yield better learning than the same programs that use more formal language." Voila!
You can also find much more on this subject by doing a Google search on the phrase, "personalization principle." (If you need to locate the specific experimental data in order to convince your group, but run into difficulty finding it online, I'll be glad to summarize it from my sources.)
I hope this helps you make your case!
Adele
Hi Lori!
Unfortunately, I don't have any research to back it up, but I can say from experience that it works well. I started changing the writing tone for my company's learning resources a few years ago, and now it's second nature for my team, and many of our business partners have asked us for help in learning how to more effectively communicate to the target audiences in their own creations.
I love the information in the article Adele shared too!
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