Interactive Audio: Using Soundboards in E-Learning Courses #88

Interactive Audio in E-Learning #88: Challenge | Recap

If you’ve spent any time on online, I’m sure you’ve come across a few celebrity soundboards. Soundboards have been around for quite a few years and they're nothing more than a series of interactive audio clips triggered by pressing buttons.

Soundboards usually feature funny quotes, one-liners, or catch phrases from pop culture and celebrities.

This Napoleon Dynamite soundboard is a typical example:

Napoleon Dynamite soundboard

Soundboards for Learning

As much fun as soundboards are to play with and create, they also offer course designers a creative way to incorporate expert voices into their e-learning courses.

This audio soundboard from the New York Times is a terrific example of how audio interviews can be presented as an e-learning soundboard:

Perspectives on Haiti's Earthquake

The Voice of Experts Lends Authenticity

The voices of experts, specialists, and employees performing tasks can lend credibility and authenticity to your course. Rather than using your SMEs for their content expertise, use them for their authentic voices. Let your SMEs drive the storytelling in your soundboards.

Here’s a design concept for a compliance soundboard:

Reducing Bullet Points with Audio Sound Bites

Looking to reduce on-screen text and bullet points? Soundboards are another presentation strategy for lists, FAQs, best practices, and expert tips.

Challenge of the Week

This week your challenge is to create an interactive soundboard. This week’s challenge is mostly a technical challenge so you can choose any topic and design style you like.

I’m interested to see how you would work soundboards into your real courses, so bonus points for anyone who shares real-world examples.

Learning Soundboard Ideas:

Here are a few soundboard ideas to help you get started.

• Sales and marketing: Seek out salespeople who always exceed expectations. Curate their wisdom into interactive audio sound bites.
• Instructional design quotes: Create a learning soundboard for your industry by interviewing experts in your industry.
• FAQs: Convert an FAQ slide into interactive sound bites using one or more speakers.
• Customers: Create a customer-focused soundboard where you ask customers what they think about your company or services.

Resources

There are hundreds of soundboard designs for you to work from.

Here are a few I bookmarked years ago. I’m sure there are more current examples. If you find any you really like, please share them in the comments below.

• Stacey King Soundboard
• Arnold Schwarzenegger Flash Soundboard
• Bart Simpson Flash Soundboard
• Napoleon Dynamite soundboard

Share Your E-Learning Work

• Comments: Use the comments section below to share a link to your published example and blog post.
• Forums: Start  your own thread and share a link to your published example..
• Personal blog:  If you have a blog, please consider writing about your challenges. We’ll link back to your posts so the great work you’re sharing gets even more exposure.
• Twitter: If you share your demos on Twitter, try using #ELHChallenge so your tweeps can track your e-learning coolness.
• Facebook: Share your work on our Facebook page by replying to this Facebook post with a link to your example.

Last Week’s Challenge:

Before you jump into the recording studio to complete this week’s challenge, check out the amazing collection of fakecation pics your fellow community shared over the past week:

E-Learning Fakecation #87: Challenge | Recap

Wishing you a sound-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.