Whenever we find ourselves headed to a live event, we are subconsciously prepared to see teachers, training facilitators, and/or presenters expressing information. When we go online to learn, we are subconsciously prepared for far less human interaction; usually none at all. The evolution of eLearning is only now providing easier ways of bringing what we expect at live events, online. This evolution brings an enrichment of video, motion, imagery, and engaging content delivery tools, making the human touch no longer a thing out on the horizon. Providing the human touch to our projects can be easy (and fairly inexpensive) to implement. The human touch provides:

• An emotional connection between content and user. “Hey, let’s hear what this person has to say.”
• A cadence, or inflection that can bring emphasis to important words or key points. “That point seems a little too important to forget.”
• A sensory tool to engage and provide interest. “Movement! Audio! This seems a bit more interesting… finally”
• Hands on, one-on-one interaction. “Oh… that is how that works. Nice to have the presenter’s time focused on me.”
  
• A bridge, or break between topics. You don’t need to have ADD to want a little variety. “Nice that everything isn’t running together.”
• A team member, watchdog, guardian, or even a feeling of protection. “Someone is watching over me and wants me to learn. Time to pick up the game.”
• A feeling of other people’s involvement, or even a competitive tone. “Hey, other people learning with me! I better keep up to the level of everyone else.”
• A pace to the material. “Hey, we are moving through this information pretty quickly!”

And there are so many more. Go ahead and try and think of a few additional ways human interaction has effected you throughout your education. Go ahead… I’ll wait.

OK, so how do we bring the human touch to eLearning? The most common method is to use pictures of people. If the topic is how to fix a bike tire, have pictures of a person fixing a tire. Even a single photo of someone standing next to a bike can make the connection (and show the end result of a bike with a fixed tire). Next up is narration. Voice over is used more and more. It is relatively cheap and goes a long way to keep everything moving at a proper pace. Video is next on the list. Video of a person, or even a cartoon character/avatar adds movement, provides a lot of emotion, and can drive content home while moving the learner along.

A few methods that we use to bring the human touch, while keeping projects on budget are to:

• Use video with narration in quicker, “bite-sized” chunks to depict processes and content.
• Use voice over or video only on introductions and objectives. This provides continuous breakaway from the content and keeps users aware of what they are there for and what they need to learn.
• To further the human touch past introductions and objectives, you can use images of the same person or additional people sprinkled appropriately through the content. This continues the idea that this teacher or presenter is always there.
• Use images of people interacting with the content. Showing someone holding a white sign and placing your content within can do a lot to lighten the mood and keep a user focused.
• Writing the copy to have a bit more conversational feel can add enthusiasm. Look at the written copy and think about how you would say it to someone in conversation.
• We also write a lot of content into scenarios. The scenarios provide a lot of real life situations the user must work through while providing a guide or characters they interact with.

Again, I will wait while you think of a few other methods that might bring the human touch into your eLearning projects. Seriously! Think about it. I will wait. I am have the time.