An exciting new project has started involving teams from right across the globe – both within the organisation and from external suppliers. The first priority is to get all the teams working in harmony using the organisations well-established project management framework. So the first task is to prepare the training materials.
Even if the world was not currently experiencing a global pandemic it wouldn’t be practical or cost-effective to fly trainers around the world to deliver the training course in multiple locations and potentially multiple languages. So even in normal situations the prfect choice would be online learning or e-learning.
There are plenty of professional tools such as Adobe Connect or GoToTraining that enable real-time training to be delivered remotely with a variety of interaction features so delegates taking the course can easily ask questions, share screens and work together on documents. There are also opportunities to have small group activities where delegates learn from each other.
For the person delivering the training these tools enable easy scheduling of sessions and distribution of course material plus real-time sharing of handouts and notes. You can also see how the training sessions performed by requesting feedback and reviewing attendance reports. But, perhaps best of all you can record live training sessions for re-use.
Think about the language
E-learning programmes are a great idea – reaching remote departments across the world and remote companies working on international projects. However, there is one potential stumbling block for truly effective training and that is the language barriers that may exist. Business truly is global these days and many people across the world speak good English as a second language – but certainly not all. If there are going to be people working on important aspects of your project then you need to be absolutely certain they fully understand the requirements and how the project is to be managed. For these reasons you should seriously consider using subtitles on your recorded training sessions.
Even when trainees’ English skills are good it can be helpful for them to have subtitles in their native language included on the video. That way the e-learning courses work for as many different people as possible: new employees and staff across the company worldwide and partner companies working on your projects. Using a professional subtitle service for multiple languages will enable you to deliver the necessary information with additional layers of clarity.
Voiceover for e-learning
Voiceovers are another way to ensure your e-learning material is accessible to multiple target audiences involved in a project, whatever their native language. Learners will gain a clearer understanding of the content and will, therefore, be more likely to deliver on their responsibilities and meet the requirements of the project.
Whether to use voiceovers or subtitlesdepends on what type of training is to be delivered and who exactly is the audience. A voice over track can be used for friendly explanations specific to certain regions or languages in addition to a direct translation of the spoken words of the trainer. It also allows for music or even sound effects to be added should that be relevant to the product or service that your project will ultimately be delivering.
When deciding between subtitles or a voice over for an e-learning programme, the majority of organisations consider voiceover the best choice. It gives more control over the localisation of the language and the tone of the corporate message. Plus there is no visual disturbance as there will be with subtitles.