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<div class="para"><p>The claim that there is a distinctive new generation of students in possession of sophisticated technology skills and with learning preferences for which education is not equipped to support has excited much recent attention. Proponents arguing that education must change dramatically to cater for the needs of these digital natives have sparked an academic form of a ‘moral panic’ using extreme arguments that have lacked empirical evidence.</p></div><div class="para"><p>The picture beginning to emerge from research on young people's relationships with technology is much more complex than the digital native characterisation suggests. While technology is embedded in their lives, young people's use and skills are not uniform. There is no evidence of widespread and universal disaffection, or of a distinctly different learning style the like of which has never been seen before. </p></div>

<p>Here are the guidelines we have adopted as a result of this study:</p> <ol> <li> <p>[How much?] We will use audio only when instructionally necessary. </p> </li> <li> <p>[Control] We will make sure students have the ability to turn the sound on and off, and that they know how to do so.</p> </li> <li> <p>[Who?] We will continue to use in-house talent, but other than credits at the end, we will not identify the narrator unless his or her name or title is pertinent for the instruction, e.g., having the Compliance Officer introduce a compliance course. This will prevent having to re-narrate when someone changes position or leaves the company. We may audition to get more suitable voices.</p> </li> <li> <p>[Quality] We only need slightly a higher quality microphone along with a pop filter to raise our technical quality to the practical limit. We also identified a storage room that will double as our sound studio with the use of inexpensive draperies. This location should improve our ability to splice in updates without sounding noticeably different from the original.</p> </li> <li> <p>We will continue to have learners evaluate the use and quality of our narration and make adjustments accordingly.</p></li></ol>

Only 12% said they prefer professional voice talent. A full 85% said the voice only needs to sound good enough to get the point across without having to strain to understand it. Nearly 60% of our employees said “no preference” as long as the voice isn’t irritating to listen to. 40% prefer that the narrator be someone they recognize (i.e., a well-known manager, process owner, or <span class="glossaryTerm" id="/glossary/getGlossaryDefinition.cfm?id=131">SME</span>). A surprising 9% said the narration could be computer-generated as long as it didn’t sound too robot-like.

We wanted to know the preferences of our employees so we conducted a survey. They almost unanimously said that 1) they do not want the entire course to be narrated, 2) they do not want text on the screen read to them word for word, and 3) about two-thirds of the employees want to be able to turn the narration on or off.

Depending on the length of the script..ie. 5 minutes vs. 1 hour...some narrators charge a flat fee for the first hour (about $250hr depending on your demographic area) with incremental fees for any time over the estimated amount. Of course a 1 hour long course script may take the narrator 2 hours to narrate into final form. I've been producing videos for years and you can easily spend a half hour on a 30 second script.

In the training/e-learning/corporate market you should pay your VO person at least $250 for the first hour, more if a special talent is required. That's just for voicing, mind you. I also have my own home studio (where I also do work for broadcast) and I don't think it's unreasonable for such VO folks to charge something for the post-production and file management activities. At that point you're asking for someone who can voice AND edit. Two services, two charges. Not everyone can do that.

Since this became a general discussion on rate structures, I thought I would chime in that another method exists. You can take a look at the Narrator Files (www.narratorfiles.com). The rate structure is based on a flat $20 per-page fee, the talent is professional and turnaround is 2-3 business days.

I've found it best to determine the finished number of minutes of narration by taking the number of words divided by 160, which is the average rate of narration words per minute.

To calculate finished minutes, I divide the script words by 170wpm. The rate per finished minute for the talents range from $10 to $50 depending on their skill and popularity. The session minimum is generally either $150 or $300 -- as requested by the talent to accommodate their studio and/or editing fees. Most have a home studio and are non-union.

An experienced studio with a proven, accurate/productive narrator and engineer will often charge about $200-350 for an hour of finished, edited, professional audio.

It varies according to the project itself, however I usually charge 250 USD for the first hour, 240USD for the second hour, counting down goes till the minimum charge 150USD/H, this is the pricing structure for Arabic voice over in a very professional studio, a professional presenter and voice engineer.

<h2><em>eLearning, ESL, How-To-Video, Tutorial . . . </em></h2> <p>Much of this work is long-form and/or on-going work. Therefore clients in this category often pay less than other types of narration. Since recording times tend to be lengthy for this type of work, we encourage you to charge per hour.</p> <h3>"PER HOUR" RATES</h3> <ul class="square"> <li>$50 to $300</li> </ul> <h3>NOTES</h3> <ul class="square"> <li>Be sure to set a 1-hour minimum</li> <li>After the first hour charge in ¼-hour increments</li> <li>Consider offering a lower "bulk rate" If a client hires you for an on-going project (you're guaranteed a new script once a month, once a week, etc.).</li></ul>

Although they may seem horribly fake, past research has suggested that we react to them in the same ways we react to a real person: studies have suggested that we tend to be more comfortable when the virtual personality shares our gender and ethnic background, just as we are when we work with living humans. Now, a new study on virtual training instructors extends that to show that people work best with virtual systems that measure progress the same way that they do.

<p id="function(){return A.apply(null,[this].concat($A(arguments)))}" ondblclick="" onkeydown="" onkeypress="" onkeyup="" onmousemove="" onmouseout="" onmouseover="" onmouseup="" title="function(){return A.apply(null,[this].concat($A(arguments)))}" lang="function(){return A.apply(null,[this].concat($A(arguments)))}">The Multi-SCO tool is designed more specifically for LMSs in that it allows you to take two or more individual SCORM-compliant modules created in Captivate and package them all together into one big module for your LMS.&nbsp; The tool creates a new imsmanifest.xml file that lists all the component modules in the package so that the LMS can build it's own menu of links in its SCORM player. Users just click these links to launch each lesson module.&nbsp; Each lesson can have its own TOC if desired, but the menu of links in the SCORM player is all you get for a TOC that shows all modules.&nbsp; That's the way SCORM was originally designed to work.</p><p id="function(){return A.apply(null,[this].concat($A(arguments)))}" ondblclick="" onkeydown="" onkeypress="" onkeyup="" onmousemove="" onmouseout="" onmouseover="" onmouseup="" title="function(){return A.apply(null,[this].concat($A(arguments)))}" lang="function(){return A.apply(null,[this].concat($A(arguments)))}">&nbsp;</p><p id="function(){return A.apply(null,[this].concat($A(arguments)))}" ondblclick="" onkeydown="" onkeypress="" onkeyup="" onmousemove="" onmouseout="" onmouseover="" onmouseup="" title="function(){return A.apply(null,[this].concat($A(arguments)))}" lang="function(){return A.apply(null,[this].concat($A(arguments)))}">The Captivate Aggregator on the other hand was designed to take multiple Captivate published outputs and merge them together in a single large project with a hierarchical merged TOC that listed the contents of all projects.&nbsp; I don't believe the original intention of the Captivate team was for aggregated projects to be used in LMSs but some Captivate developers have managed to get this to work by setting up all the individual projects as SCORMs and then hacking the imsmanifest.xml file to fool the LMS into thinking this was a single large SCO.</p>

<p>This is only possible by concluding that the only time necessary to create e-learning is that which is physically required to manipulate the tools to translate content onto the screen. &nbsp;That thinking applied to my strawberry crop would go something like this: &nbsp;</p> <p>I want us to start having strawberries, and I think we would benefit from producing about six quarts. &nbsp;I see that over at Edwards Berry Patch it takes about 5 minutes to pick a quart of strawberries. &nbsp;So since we need six, you should be able to get them for us in about a half hour. &nbsp;</p> <p>It’s utterly ridiculous; it ignores the fact that it took a year’s worth of effort to make that strawberry production possible. </p>

Thus Kirschner, Sweller and Clark's paper is an important reminder for us to not carry Problem Based Learning (PBL) to its extreme. That is, while it has its strengths, learners often need a more direct approach in order to build a solid foundations before being presented with PBL.

With the title blaring, “<em>Why Minimal Guidance during Instruction Does Not Work”</em> rather than, <em>“Why Minimal Guidance during Instruction Does Not Work for Novice Learners,” </em>the authors almost seem to ignore that PBL is a necessity in order to promote deeper levels of understanding.

The paper relies heavily on Cognitive Load Theory, yet we have to realize that it is still a theory rather than a law.

Thus, both the authors and the constructivism movement are guilty of jumping on theories before they are fully understood.