You can learn anything
Australian farm kids know it very well. Since the sixties they have used distance learning using short wave radio to communicate with their teachers and their classes, because it was the only possible alternative to have education when schools were hundreds of miles away. Now it’s easier and you dont’ need to be a kid or live in Australia, you can improve your skills in any area thanks to e-learning. All you need is a computer or even a smart phone and of course time and concentration. E-learning was invented in 1998 by Cisco Systems when it discovered that an effective way of training its employees all over the world was sending them e-learning modules. By means of simple animations, videos and diagrams, the student can improve his knowledge in topics like company ethics, effective customer service or safety rules. The beauty of e-learning is that it is a step by step process, in which you acquire skills through a series of tests. It’s self study with a clear objective result, because with a multiple choice system you know and your company knows if you have really made progress. To make e-learning an effective tool in training, the animated modules have always a human voice, mostly a persuasive narrator who is talking to you in your own language. Sometimes it can be more than that, so a real conversation recorded with actors that give life to a particular scene. So recording e-learning is a must and this is what we do very regularly at PrimeVoices.

We select actors for their pedagogical skills, because they have to convey with their voices a series of drills or exercises that sometimes can be complex. A very atypical e-learning course we have recorded it was for Renault and the language involved was Slovenian. It wasn’t easy to find the actors in that language, but then when we recorded it wasn’t an easy task. They had to read a very technical texts with specific instructions on how to operate the machines that manufacture cars at a plant in Slovenia.
How effective can e-learning be ?. It is portable because the modules can be loaded on any digital device, smart-phone, computer or tablet. It is a self-contained training, with speaking e-teacher, the voice you hear, and a series of exercise that assess your level. It is objective and result drive. But what are the inconveniences? E-learning is useless if it is used alone, the user should be supported by a tutor, because self-study has limits. Normally the e-learning package is used by the subsidiary with the help of professional coach that provides general guidelines on how to use it by managers. Last but not least the final user should also have the time within the company to be able to follow the course.
At PrimeVoices we have recorded e-learning in over 30 languages, covering not just audio, voice-over on pictures, but also final post-production with captioning and subtitling. In some cases, we have localized the animations so that the embedded texts can also be adapted to the local language.