If you are a writer then you have probably heard how important it is to develop your unique “voice”. In fact, writers spend years trying to perfect their voice. It often becomes their “brand”.

Anything we put in a digital format has a “voice”, even videos. Yes, we can actually hear the voices in a video, but in this context it makes more sense to talk about the feeling people get as they watch.

Maybe the video is meant to have humorous undertones, or maybe it’s meant to demonstrate deep knowledge (and therefore elicit feelings of ‘trust’). In either case this has to be planned and done intentionally. You don’t want to accidentally give the wrong impression!

With all that said, have you ever considered the impression your courses give – and more importantly – does it match up with the learner expectations?

For example, if you are creating courses on sexual harassment, then it’s probably not a good idea to use a casual tone in your content. Certainly no one would do this on purpose, but accidents can happen.

The best way to see how your course material comes across is to ask for feedback from those that take the course. Just include some questions related to the subject in your surveys. You may be surprised to see that attendees get a different impression that what you intended.

Even better is if you can do this prior to the course being live, but if it is live already then that isn’t a problem, better to fix the issue late than never at all!