Narration Time per Slide
One of the first reactions from our customers when they see a 70-80 PowerPoint slide draft of their lesson is that we are using too many slides for a 25-30 minute lesson. We use PowerPoint to storyboard a multimedia movie. Thus each slide only lasts 25 seconds or less.
I am often told students will never tolerate a lesson that has so many slides. Since the final lesson is created by converting the PowerPoint slides to a Flash movie with Articulate Presenter students are not aware of the total number of slides.
It is not the number of slides that is important, but the quality of the content on those slides. Seth Godin, recently wrote about the ideal length for advertisement copy. He proposes that the ideal amount of copy for an advertisement is neither too little text or too much.
The same principle certainly applies to the length of narration for an e-learning slide. Each slide should cover one main point or thought. Think of each slide as a paragraph - a short paragraph - of an article. We have found that keeping the narration short for each slide allows us to be more creative with what we put on the slide. A single concept can be represented with an image, object, or animation. Multiple important points on a single slide inevitably lead to bullet point lists.
Tags: Articulate, E-Learning