Web Copywriting: E-learning Scriptwriting

I've written scripts for a few e-learning firms in several areas, such as finance, healthcare, and insurance.

The process is extremely collaborative; I write drafts in real time with the client, or what we call subject matter expert. I have to be able to understand on the fly how a company's operations work and don't work, in case I need to press the client to be more clear or illustrative. So, to be successful, I do my due diligence on the company ahead of time, learning highly technical or industry-specific information, occasionally on a short timeframe. (We're talking within a few days, here, people.)

The firms I've written for base their courses on actual situations employees encounter on the job. My role is to translate lenghty explanations of day-to-day activities into concise stories that the learner can visualize. Though written for a production team using Flash and other software and coding, the stories look much like film scripts. E-learning scripts follow a plot andcontain dialog and cues for the animator.

Of course, the most important element of the e-learning script is how it engages the learner to absorb and retain information. Each script has to meet learning objectives that the e-learning company and client set together. Most of the time, I work as part of a team under a producer and alongside an instructional designer.