Imported from Diigo

<b>Conclusion </b> Spaced education consisting of clinical scenarios and questions distributed weekly via e-mail can significantly improve students' retention of medical knowledge.

<p><strong><span style="text-decoration: underline;">1. Class Size</span></strong></p> <p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">My initial thought:</span> Decreasing Class Size from 25 to 15 could significantly improve student achievement.</p> <p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">The bold, loud claim I hear:</span>&nbsp; “Decreasing class sizes is a key to student success!”</p> <p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">What the research says:</span>&nbsp; Of the 138 factors of the meta-analyses done, this was ranked as number 106, and had a impact factor of 0.21, well below the hinge point of showing notable change.&nbsp; This is based on studies of more than 40000 classes, and nearly 950000 students worldwide. Perhaps not surprisingly, “quality teaching” has nearly double the impact on student achievement than this factor.</p> <p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">My new thought:</span><strong>&nbsp; </strong>Not the high-yield strategy that I believed.</p>

<p><strong><span style="text-decoration: underline;">6.&nbsp; Formative Evaluation of programs</span></strong></p> <p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">My initial thought</span>:&nbsp; Extremely important for teachers to adapt and change their methodologies in response to student learning. Using student data to guide instruction and reflection through collaboration with their peers is something that we have been<a href="http://thelearningnation.blogspot.com/2010/11/restructuring-not-remortgaging-to-make.html"> focussing on in our school through our change in structures</a>.</p> <p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Loud, bold claim I hear:</span>&nbsp; “I know what works in my class!”</p> <p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">What the research says</span>:&nbsp; This ranks as #3 of 138, with an effect of 0.9 over nearly 4000 students and 38 studies.&nbsp; Teachers being purposeful to innovations in that they are looking to see “what works” and “why it works” as well as looking for reasons why students do not do well lead to improvement in instruction and student achievement.</p> <p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">My new thought</span>:&nbsp; This is the high-yield strategy that can really make a difference at our school, and through the Professional Learning Community Model of providing time for teachers to collaborate and reflect on teaching practices, we have seen a marked increase in the success of our students.</p>

<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>