• Pace
• Pitch
• Projection

Today, I will talk investigate the art of the Pause.

In my view, narrators are afraid to take advantage of a dramatic pause. Anyone who has worked in media (particularly radio) will tell you that they constantly worry about ‘dead air’ – silence. Perhaps counter-intuitively, a stop or pause in a narrative causes your listeners to unconsciously anticipate the next word – after all it must be important if you’ve paused – rather than causing the listener to switch off. Used correctly and in concert with the other ‘P’s,’ pauses or caesuras will direct listeners’ attention as you choose, creating the appropriate amount of expectation or to emphasize the key points and messages that you want to convey.

However, if your speech is too staccato – stopping and starting, leading your audience to multiple points of anticipation, without any special meaning or pay-off, any pauses will serve only to irritate and frustrate your listeners.

This speech pattern is most apparent when a podcast has not been designed, planned and scripted properly. I can best illustrate how to do it, and how not to do it by example.

Here are two excerpts from podcasts about archeology from iTunes U.

The bad news first: Sample 1 (MP3, 1.3MB click to play in your browser | right click to download) is from UC Berkley’s History 4a course, The Mediterranean World (2009). In this excerpt, the speaker introduces the course, before going off-topic

As usual one page of my lectures is sitting in my office…

Sooner after the speaker digresses again:

So that [pause] actually, ehh, [pause] I’ve got a couple of good quotes for you and I wanted to discuss that with you. So eh, we’re going to be [pause] [sigh] finishing up here, right?

The lecturer then digresses yet again by discussing a final exam, but has “no idea where it is” (the location is “apparently…online”). I have edited this piece down a little but in the unedited version of this podcast, the lecture proper does not begin until nearly two minutes into the podcast.

Contrast this with Sample 2 (MP3, 1.0MB click to play in your browser | right click to download) from Archaeology: Pompeii and the Roman World (Open University, 2009). Here, the speaker Phil Perkins defines an empire, before expanding in the theme of statehood and polities. He then discusses interaction, rivalry, competition, power, and war, before asking the question

Is dominance enough to create an empire?

…all in under a minute, and in less than 150 words.

Which podcast did you find more engaging and informative? Which kind of podcast would you prefer to deliver? Which podcast has more value for your audience?

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References:

Pafford, I. (2009). Twilight in the West. History 4a: The Mediterranean World. UC Berkley [Internet] Available from: http://deimos3.apple.com/WebObjects/Core.woa/Browse/berkeley.edu.1625336377.01625336380.1623195422?i=1284407406 Accessed 3 August 2009

Perkins, P. (2009) Archaeology: Pompeii and the Roman World. World archaeology. Open University. [Internet] Available from: http://deimos3.apple.com/WebObjects/Core.woa/Browse/itunes.open.ac.uk.1544964539.01556024330.1827251501?i=1680120285 Accessed 3 August 2009

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Allow enough time to each learning point for it to be well understood. Then move on.

Anticipate how your audience could interpret a word and understand how it might affect interpretation of your meaning.

Now read on…

At the conclusion of yesterday’s article I considered single word or syllable emphasis as a useful way to counteract a monotone delivery of content. This techniques is called ‘projection,’ and it’s the third of the Four ‘P’s’ of great podcast narration.

Our vocal range naturally becomes more dynamic in certain circumstances: we tend to speak more loudly when we’re interested, passionate, or excited about something, and we tend to add more emphasis to key words or phrases when we’re attempting to persuade a listener to understand our point of view; we speak softly when we want to create a sense of reflection.

Try this exercise: say the following phrase loudly:

LISTEN TO THIS!

Now, more softly:

Listen to this.

The mood changes instantly. The amount of projection you employ triggers very different reactions in anyone involved in a dialog with the speaker, and you can use the full dynamic range of the human voice when recording a podcast.

One thing to avoid at all costs is projection in the theatrical sense – actors on stage project to ensure the whole audience right to the back row, and up to the gods can hear what they’re saying. Modern microphones can pick up and transmit the loudest and softest of sounds, and if you try to declaim your narrative in the mode of a stage thespian, you’ll just sound shouty (if you’re lucky) and even aggressive – either way, you’re audience will hit the Stop button, regardless of the quality of your content.

Using the full dynamic range of your voice in concert with appropriate inflection and delivered at a good pace will really add meaning to your narrative.

‘Michael Hanley learning consultant and blogger’ tells you who I am and what I do. I can influence how I want someone to perceive me by modifying I phrase those three pieces of information, by changing the pace, pitch, and projection of the text.

So:

Michael Hanley/pause one beat/learning consultant and blogger emphasizes my profession

Michael Hanley/pause one beat/learning consultant and blogger tells you who I am

Michael Hanley learning consultant and blogger equally weighted, describes who I am and what I do.

Did you see the script direction /pause one beat/? A ‘beat’ is the duration of a pause in a narration. More properly called a caesura, it denotes an audible pause that breaks up a line of text. In most cases, a caesura is indicated by punctuation marks which cause a pause in speech:

• a comma
• a semicolon
• a full stop or period
• a dash

Punctuation, however, is not necessary for a caesura to occur.

How long should a beat be? Good question. In my part of the world, we usually tell people that it’s the length of time it takes you to say “a thousand and one” (in your head of course). An American voice-over artist of my acquaintance assures me that where he’s from (San Francisco), they say “one banana” to measure a beat. Use whatever works for you: the key thing to remember is to take you time, and concentrate on how you can elicit the maximum amount of meaning from your content.

More…
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References:

Ahern, S. (2006). Making Radio: A Practical Guide to Working in Radio. Allen & Unwin

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Allow enough time to each learning point for it to be well understood. Then move on.

However, pace alone is not enough to encourage listener engagement with your podcast. Working in symphony with it are the three “other” ‘P’s’ – pitch, projection, and pausing.

A few weeks ago, I was talking to a newly-accredited Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) instructor. She loves the job and working with her students, but she mentioned a particular frustration that occurred regularly: the substantial number of homonyms and homophones in English. She told me that her students couldn’t understand why “bow” /ba?/ (-vb. to bend the knee or body or incline the head, as in reverence, submission, salutation, recognition, or acknowledgment) could also be a noun, and was pronounced like “bough” (bou) (-n. a tree branch, especially a large or main branch), while at the same time was spelled like /bo?/ (-n. a bend or curve, a flexible strip of wood or other material, bent by a string stretched between its ends, for shooting arrows).

The reason for this is of course that the English language is what Stephen Fry calls “a mongrel mouthful.” The language is fundamentally based upon an aggregation of Jutland Danish-Frisian and Lower Saxon dialects, heavily influenced by the Romance language (mainly French, Latin, and Greek) and thousands of borrowed words from all points of of the former British territories (and beyond), not to mention a grammar structure that’s a mystery to many people, including native speakers of the language.

It does neatly highlight the importance of context in any verbal communication, something that’s even more necessary when communicating in audio only, when we do not have the visual and other cues we typically use to elucidate precise meaning. Equally, it emphasizes the point that we, as content authors and producers, can never assume that a word has one meaning. If you think that will be any confusion, change a word for a synonym: for example, if you’re talking about the secret life of the forest, say “branch” rather than “bough” if you think that your listeners could misinterpret the word or the usage; they usually don’t have the benefit of a script in front of them as a reference or to check the meaning.

So, the second heuristic for writing content for podcasts is:

Anticipate how your audience could interpret a word and understand how it might affect interpretation of your meaning.

The right emphasis can be achieved by using the Four P’s. According to Steve Ahern in Making Radio (2006):

The whole sense and emotional feeling of a phrase can be changed by simply changing the way we stress words.

(p.73)

Take the phrase “How are you?”

How are you? is a common pleasant greeting
How are you? can represent a concern on the part of the inquirer
How are you? shows interest in the other person

In most western languages (it’s different for tonal languages like Mandarin Chinese) voice pitch – or inflection – is used to trigger certain responses in the listener. The High Rising Terminal in declarative questions (”Did you find the CD?”) is an obvious example. Similarly, a downward inflection at the end of a word, phrase, sentence or paragraph communicates authority and command over the facts (”The airships never flew again”).

Try this yourself by saying the following phrase, first with an upward inflection, and then by pitching your voice down at the end of the statement:

“This is a good podcast?”

“This is a good podcast.”

Between these two extremes is the steady tone, which is used to keep your audience’s attention. Aim to keep your inflection and pace steady, and to flow smoothly between phrases and sentences. However, be careful not to fall into monotonous delivery – what my good lady wife Mrs. E-Learning Curve calls a “robot voice.”

To counter a dull and uninteresting delivery, it’s useful to inflect key words or phrases in a sentence. By emphasizing the right word you will enhance the meaning of the sentence and increase its effectiveness.

More…

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References:

Ahern, S. (2006). Making Radio: A Practical Guide to Working in Radio. Allen & Unwin

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The term pace has already entered this series of E-Learning Curve Blog articles about creating podcasts. In this post I will discuss pace, and then the related concepts of pitch, projection, and pausing, over the next few days.

Now read on…

Famously, there are three major elements in human face-to-face communication: body language, voice tonality, and words. According to Mehrabian and Ferris (1967, pp.248-52)

• 55% of impact is determined by body language – facial expressions, eye contact , body posture, gestures,
• 38% by tone of voice
• 7% by the content or the words used in the communication process

Anyone who has ever taken a course on presenting will have heard the instructor assert the axiomatic 55-38-7 formula to their learners as if it were inviolable, like fundamental physical constants like 0 Kelvin, c, or that TOS is better than TNG*.

David Lapakko (1997) asserts that this formula for communication is part of the “catechism” (p.63) of linguistics, proxemics, and psychology.

And that there is good empirical evidence that it is wrong.

According to Lapakko,

A closer look at the Mehrabian and Ferris (1967) study reveals severe limitations that call for prudence in interpreting their results… the findings may be an artifact of [a] small sample size.

(p.64)

His views are supported by other researchers’ findings, including Burgooon, Buller, and Woodall (1898) and Hegstrom (1979). Burgoon et al consider that:

[The 55-38-7 estimate] is erroneous. It is based on extrapolation of two studies, one comparing vocal tone to facial cues… and one comparing vocal tone to single words… rather than comparing all three.

(p.155)

Hegstrom agrees that:

The formula was pieced together from two different studies.

(p.135)

Indeed, Mehrabian himself believes that his findings are “often misquoted.” In Intercultural encounters: The fundamentals of intercultural communication (1995) he wrote that :

…all my findings …dealt with communications of feelings and attitudes…Clearly it is absurd to imply of suggest that the verbal portion of all communication constitutes only 7% of the message.

The refutation of the 55-38-7 formula is great news for podcasters in general and e-learning professionals in particular, because of course it means that we’re not operating in some notional margin of communication, but in its mainstream, as anyone who has ever created a podcast (or even used a telephone) to communicate meaningful information already knows.

In a sense, content delivery works independently of content; some people, as the saying goes, can make the phone book sound interesting. For those of us without this gift, we have to consider how to maintain interest and engage the audience. One of the ways we do this is to pace the dialog appropriately. I would assert that a narrative must be kept moving at a fairly brisk rate. The secret of pace is:

Allow enough time to each learning point for it to be well understood. Then move on.

Pace is impossible without intelligibility. Conversely, it depends in part by not going too fast. Pace depends on the precise shaping of the meaning and the words in time, and it provides the foundation upon which everything else is built.

When a podcast has a lack of pace, it is often down to another, subtler fault: a lack of organization in the underlying form of a podcast’s content. In the design of almost any good podcast, there should be a series of basic units of information, each occupying a few minutes. Each of these should contain one major learning point and sufficient supporting detail to help establish it as clearly as possible. The format of the podcast should provide light and shade within a piece, allow details to emerge, and a story to develop.

Certain types of verbal and linguistic construction don’t work in podcasts: they contain too much content, too little time, or both. For example, the cold, clear logic of a computer language like Java, or a turgid mass of detail are both death to clear, intelligible verbal constructions in sound.

With that in mind, here is the latest episode from my ‘Other’ Podcast – Transatlantic: the Flying Boats of Foynes (’New and Notable’ according to the iTunes Podcast Store). If you choose to listen to the podcast, you’ll notice that the piece is not merely a narrator telling a story: along with narration, there’s dramatization, eye-witness accounts, and incidental and background music. Other sound elements included in the series of podcasts include archive recordings, wild track, and a very cool sound collage to set the scene for the outbreak of World War 2 in September 1939.

In Part 4 of Transatlantic: The Flying Boats of Foynes

It’s 1939.

In Ireland, the town of Foynes in County Limerick becomes a boomtown because of its airport, and a tourist attraction because of the flying boats. The ground staff of Pan Am, and BOAC became part of the community, and the various Irish, British, and American communities live, work and play together.

But in Europe, events leading to the greatest conflict of the 20th Century are beginning to move apace as Fascism rises in Europe.

Autocratic single-party regimes in Germany and Italy have become totalitarian dictatorships. As their military might grows, their leaders lay their plans against the nations of the West…

Click here to listen to the podcast.

Click here to view the transcript of this podcast (PDF, 26K).

The observant among you will notice that the piece isn’t about e-learning. That’s OK – the point of e-learning is to provide training professionals with a means of creating and distributing content that enables people to acquire information, knowledge, skills, and expertise on a diverse range of subjects: as e-learning practitioners, it’s our job to facilitate this process.

More…

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*Humorous Remark Alert! No Trekkie flames please; we all know that Picard is a better captain than Kirk…

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References:

Burgoon, J. K., Buller, D. B., & Woodall, W. G. (1989). Nonverbal communication: The unspoken dialogue. New York: HarperCollins/Greyden Press

Hegstrom, T. (1979). Message Impact: What percentage is nonverbal? The Western Journal of Speech Communication, 43, 134-142.

Lapakko, D. (1997) Three Cheers for Language: A Closer Examination of a Widely Cited Study of Nonverbal Communication. Communication Education, 46. [Internet] Available from: http://resourcemagazine.co.uk/acatalog/lapakko.pdf Accessed 31 July 2009

Mehrabian, A. (1995). Intercultural encounters: The fundamentals of intercultural communication (3rd ed.). Englewood, CO: Morton Publishing Company.

Mehrabian, A., & Ferris, S. (1967). Inference of Attitude from Nonverbal Communication in Two Channels. The Journal of Counselling Psychology, 31.

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This can be achieved by:

• Giving workshops (with varying degrees of sophistication, depending on the skills and experience of the content originator, the SME and the instructional designer)
• Directing scriptwriters as to the needs and dynamic of audio presentations
• Rewriting particular pieces to make them more acceptable for audio delivery (in extreme cases)

Being literate by nature and education, the instructional designers and courseware developers often fall into the trap of assuming that what looks well-shaped in the form of a script on the page, will be so in audio form or when delivered verbally.

Unfortunately, this may not be the case. For it also depends at the rate at which new ideas are presented. Take the case of Pythagoras’ theorem: this can be rendered as

In any right triangle, the area of the square whose side is the hypotenuse (the side opposite the right angle) is equal to the sum of the areas of the squares whose sides are the two legs (the two sides that meet at a right angle).

or

a² + b² = c²

or

Figure 1. Pythagoras’ Theorem

On the printed page, this fundamental of Euclidean geometry can be presented as a concise, elegant argument – and the eye will dwell on it until understood. In the medium of sound, such a construction is out of the question.

In order to ensure even a moderate degree of intelligibility, the argument must sometimes be slowed down to what may seem (in literary terms) like an impossibly slack pace.

For example, say the following aloud:

Click Insert –> Break –> Next Page.

This may be acceptable in a textbook, but to the user this is just a series of non-connected words (unless you know the context). In this highly condensed case, there is no exact or predictable control over what the user picks out. From an audio point of view, this construction is totally unacceptable.

Now (by again saying out loud), contrast the above with:

To insert a next page break into a Microsoft Word document, click on the Insert tab in the ribbon. Click on the Page Break button.

A next page break has been added to the document.

Here, the context is given, the language is logical, and the user is led comfortably and humanely through the procedure, feeling that they have achieved something, not that a series of demands has been made of them.

So even if a user is intellectually equipped and motivated to follow a concise, complex line of instruction, they need time – more time than it takes to present the bare bones of a set of directions – to let it ‘sink in.’ They need time to process the information in their short-term memory and undertake the requested actions or activities.

Direct faults in presentation are:

• Taking too much background knowledge for granted
• The use of unfamiliar words
• The use of unexplained jargon
• The use of flowery analogies or abstractions
• Poor logical construction
• Unnecessarily complex sentences

A good working rule to follow is:

Do not use language that you would not use yourself in everyday speech.

In a learning or informational context, I would suggest that you spend not less than two minutes of total podcast runtime setting the context of your subject matter or learning objectives if the audience is unfamiliar with the topic being discussed. Of course, this is a heuristic or rule of thumb: for unsophisticated subject it may be possible to do less, while a complex argument will need longer to establish fully. In the latter case, it may be better to break the discussion down into stages.

In a 10-minute podcast, for example, I my experience is that it’s possible to cover two major points. The rest of the ten minutes must be spent supporting and linking those points (through example, simulation etc.). If a third point is introduced, it is likely that one of the three points will be lost. To take an extreme case, if ten major points are introduced, then nearly all of them will be lost, and the user may be left with the frustrating feeling that they have missed something. Alternatively, they may remember one of the points that appealed to them, plus the thought that this was part of a pattern that included half a dozen other points that on first hearing seemed plausible.

Cast your mind back to your E-Learning 101 experience – practically the first thing you’re told is that unlike in the classroom, you can’t rely on feedback from your audience about the pace of delivery, which in ILT is subject to the immediate correction of the learners. In contrast, when speaking to an ‘invisible classroom’ there is a perception or pressure to ‘get on with it’, because there is nearly always more to say than time to say it.

More…

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Anthony Bates, author of Technology, e-learning and distance education (2005) states that audio (via radio broadcast) has been used in education for over seventy years. Examples of its uses include school broadcasting, informal general education, social action programming, and adult basic education and literacy (p.117).

Since its inception in 1969, the British Open University supplied about one-fifth of its output via radio programming. Typically it such programming centered around:

Discussions of course material or issues covered in printed materials

• Alternative viewpoints to those contained in the printed materials (i.e. guest speakers interpreting a text)
• Source materials for analysis (i.e. children’s speech patterns)
• ‘Performance’ pieces, including poetry readings, dramatizations of literature, musical performances

There are of course drawbacks to delivering content via radio broadcast or via analog tape. Radio broadcasts are wholly dependent on the broadcaster’s schedule, and minority programming is usually relegated to inconvenient “graveyard slots” – the learner has no flexibility around the schedule. Similarly, broadcasted material happens in real-time – the learner has no facility to ‘rewind and play back’ a presentation if they miss a point, unless they tape the program ‘off the air’ (if you’re old enough to remember, you’ll recall that this could be a messy business).

Cassette tapes had their problems too: analog recordings deteriorate with use and over time, tapes cassettes have many moving parts, the actual magnetic tape can break and become degaussed, and if you have a lot of them, they’re bulky to store.

The introduction of CD-ROMs in the late 1980’s mitigated most of these issues, and in a sense were the hardware breakthrough that presaged the beginnings of e-learning as we know it today. However, CD-based materials were expensive to produce, many pre-Pentium and PowerPC processors couldn’t handle the multimedia requirements needed to view and listen to the material delivered via this medium (800×600 CRT monitor, anyone?).

It was the emergence of the internet that genuinely facilitated audio and visual media-based learning. But that, my friends, is a tale that’s still being told, so I’m not going to discuss it here.

The Open University today, on iTunes U

All I will say here is that the internet enables access to e-learning content:

• For Anyone. E-Learning resources are available on-demand, via synchronous and asynchronous channels
• Anywhere. Digital content can be distributed just as easily on a home-based PC, a laptop, or (increasingly) via a mobile device. Content can be viewed both online and offline for maximum flexibility.
• At Any Time. You no longer need to rely on an IT department for distribution of large media files; content is easily delivered on demand to facilitate self-paced, OTJ and just-in-time learning.

Now read on…

The purpose of this long pre-amble was to emphasize the importance of understanding your target audience. When you start work on a podcast, you must be aware of not only what is to be said, but also to whom you want to say it. This is not merely a matter of your audience’s intelligence, but also of background, experiences and outlook. It is also powerfully related to the things that the listener would like to do – ranging from learning Spanish for a vacation, to passing their Microsoft Office User Specialist certification.

Podcasts – like blogs – develop a distinctive ‘personality’ according to the characteristics of the source material, the type of audience that material is aimed at, and the individual or team who produce the podcast. So, a Wired News podcast reviewing the latest and greatest computer technologies will sound very different from a podcast about conversational French for beginners.

A study in to the effect of BBC educational broadcasts noted that too many ‘teaching points’ (what we usually call learning objectives) – more than six per 15 minutes of programming were definitely bad for the user’s learning curve. Interestingly, where long, complex sentences with difficult vocabulary and a lot of prepositions did appear to have an adverse effect on intelligibility, the presence of a large number of adverbs and adjectives did not.

The conclusion was drawn that an apparent excess of facts, figures and descriptive terms is no disadvantage, because although they may not be assimilated themselves, they help maintain interest during the learning intervention.

More…
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References:

Bates, A. W. (2005). Technology, e-learning and distance education. Oxford: Routledge Falmer

Read more: http://elearningcurve.blogspot.com/2009/07/exploring-podcasting-for-e-learning-and.html#ixzz0MjnglJ8i

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In the meantime, the eLearning Guild have just published an informative primer called Making a  Demonstration Video for E-Learning Use.

The article in  Learning Solutions e-Magazine discusses a favorite of mine: straight-forward ‘How-to’ video demonstrations.   The authors, Steve Haskin and Tim Martin describe this learning modality:

“How-to” instruction is an important training modality; in fact, “learning how to do things” is the cornerstone of being human. Our lives are spent learning how to do things, and this doesn’t stop simply because we “learn” in the workplace or even when we slip the “e-” in front of learning.

(p.2)

In this context then, tasks and activities can be elucidated using a number of video based approaches including:

• Sequenced still images
• Video
• 3-D animation

Video photography is basically light captured on a medium like film, video tape, or DVD. However, lighting a subject properly is something of a black art and if done poorly will undermine the learners’ ability to interact with the subject matter. The article’s authors discuss the basics of lighting in reasonably good detail, including key-, fill-, and back lighting, as well as color temperature, and new lighting technologies like fluorescent and LED light types.

They go on to describe the importance of a good tripod, and what you should look for in a video camera. I would agree with their assertion that HD cameras “are complete overkill” (p.7) and in fact that good old reliable MiniDV digital tape is still the best video media choice for e-learning practitioners – your content is captured as uncompressed DV-AVI video (so it can be edited and rendered in either NTSC or PAL as well as in various compressed formats), and MiniDV is a great archive format. 

The authors conclude by discussing the pros and cons of various video codecs, their benefits and disadvantages.

Video can seem technical, overly-involved, and even intimidating to the novice videographer: I suggest that you have a look at the article if you want a good introduction to video for e-learning and if you want to know your blondes from your redheads. (They’re types of light: I wasn’t being rude!) 

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References:

Haskin, S., Martin, T. (2009) Making a Demonstration Video for E-Learning Use. Learning Solutions e-Magazine [Internet] Available from: http://www.elearningguild.com/articles/abstracts/index.cfm?id=302&action=viewonly Accessed 30 March 2009

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[Click for large PDF of image]

• Designing Web-based Training: How to Teach Anyone Anything Anywhere Anytime
• Moodle 1.9 E-Learning Course Development
• E-Learning: Strategies for Delivering Knowledge in the Digital Age
• E-Learning and the Science of Instruction: Proven Guidelines for Consumers and Designers of Multimedia Learning
• Designing World-Class E-Learning
• Classic Drucker
• E-Learning Strategies: How to Get Implementation and Delivery Right First Time
• Michael Allen’s Guide to E-Learning
• Evaluation in Organizations: A Systematic Approach to Enhancing Learning, Performance and Change
• Evaluating Training Programs: The Four Levels (3rd Ed.)
• E-Learning Tools and Technologies
• Integrating Educational Technology and Teaching (4th Ed)
• Managing Organizations
• Real World Research (2nd Ed.)
• Multimedia Learning. Cambridge University Press
• How To Research
• Interaction Design Beyond Human Computer Interaction
• E-Learning Standards:A Primer for Using the Standards as Decision Support Tools
  (Unseen)
• Evaluating the performance impact of non-formal learning on knowledge workers in a Small-to-Medium Sized Enterprise

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Given the number of responses to the E-Learning Demo comparison articles, I have decided to combine them and make them available to all as a downloadable whitepaper (PDF format) so that the review can be read in one easily-accessible document.

Click here read the review in a new browser window, or right-click and Save As… to download a copy of the paper to your PC or Mac. You will need Adobe Reader to view the file. Click here to download Adobe Reader 9.

My final thought for today: I put a lot of time and effort into writing (hopefully)  useful, informative and stimulating material for this e-learning blog. Being a learning and development professional, the posts I find most satisfying to write concern the reasons people want to learn, the theories and approaches that support learning, and how best to enable learners to acquire knowledge. I guess I have to admit that sometimes I forget that maybe the practical ‘just-in-time’ material is as important as the more esoteric material. In future, I’ll certainly add more posts concerning the practical elements of e-learning development, deployment and delivery into the mix.

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Figure 1. Presenter 7 Publish dialog box

Sure enough, Adobe Presenter 7 does have a ‘Publish to PDF’ output option (see Figure 1), accompanying the ‘Publish to My Computer’ and ‘Publish to Connect Pro’ rendering options available with the previous versions of Presenter (see Figure 2).

Figure 2. Presenter 6 Publish dialog box

Having only just installed Presenter 7, and while I have published some test presentations locally, I have yet to upload any PDF-formatted content to an LMS. So, I have no idea how well this output type functions in comparison to the more traditional XML, SWF, and HTML-formatted e-learning content package when it’s deployed from an online or networked platform.

I will carry out one of my famous comparisons between the two formats at some point in the future. My preliminary view is that the ability to distribute content as a PDF certainly opens up some interesting possibilities and opportunities.

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References:

Adobe Presenter 7 Homepage: http://www.adobe.com/products/presenter/

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