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- Herausgeber: Packt Publishing
- Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
- Sprache: Englisch
Build up your e-learning development skills with Articulate Storyline
About This Book
- Develop interactive e-learning projects using advanced techniques
- Impress your clients and/or audience with out-of-the-box interactions
- Step-by-step walkthroughs provide practical solutions
Who This Book Is For
This book is for anyone experienced in using the basic functions of Articulate Storyline who are yearning to learn more. It's designed to provide a brief overview of key concepts, to help you refresh your knowledge of common functions, and teach you how to push Storyline to the limit!
What You Will Learn
- Familiarize yourself with best practices for e-learning development
- Review key Storyline concepts before diving in deep with development
- Discover new ways of working within Storyline to extend slide content and enhance interactivity
- Personalize your story with advanced variable-based interactions
- See how JavaScript can be used in your stories to do some really neat things
- Assess your learners using customized assessment options and find out how to troubleshoot common issues
- Customize the learning experience by modifying the player properties and publishing settings
- Customize your story and prepare it for publishing
In Detail
Storyline is a powerful e-learning authoring tool that allows you to take your creativity to the next level. However, more often than not, projects don't require such complex interactions, leaving Storyline's full capabilities untapped.
This book will provide you with the information you need to take your Storyline development up a notch by leveraging the full suite of possibilities Storyline has to offer.
You will be provided with a refresher of the key concepts before we take you deep into the exciting world of enhanced interactivity, variables, and even some JavaScript—oh my! With downloadable activities, you can either follow along and compare your output, use the activities as they are, modify the activities to suit your own needs, or reverse-engineer the activities to better understand how they were developed.
Style and approach
You'll get hands-on working with project files that were created with you in mind. As you move through each chapters, the practical, step-by-step approach will get you using some of the more advanced features of Storyline to create polished and snazzy interactions.
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Seitenzahl: 240
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016
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Table of Contents
Mastering Articulate Storyline
Mastering Articulate Storyline
Copyright © 2016 Packt Publishing
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.
Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.
Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.
First published: June 2016
Production reference: 1210616
Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.
Livery Place
35 Livery Street
Birmingham B3 2PB, UK.
ISBN 978-1-78355-091-3
www.packtpub.com
Credits
Author
Ashley Chiasson
Copy Editor
Sameen Siddiqui
Reviewers
Matt Guyan
Helen Tyson
Project Coordinator
Bijal Patel
Commissioning Editor
Pramila Balan
Proofreader
Safis Editing
Acquisition Editor
Reshma Raman
Indexer
Mariammal Chettiyar
Content Development Editor
Prashanth G Rao
Production Coordinator
Manu Joseph
Technical Editor
Murtaza Tinwala
Cover Work
Manu Joseph
About the Author
Ashley Chiasson is an instructional designer and consultant with nearly a decade of experience developing high-quality e-learning solutions for various clients. She holds a Master's in Education (post-secondary studies) and a Bachelor of Arts (linguistics and psychology). In addition to being a small business owner, Ashley works for Mount Saint Vincent University, Canada, as their resident instructional developer. As a self-proclaimed ambassador of the Articulate software, Ashley truly believes that the only thing standing between you and your ability to create engaging and interactive e-learning projects is your imagination.
With a strong belief in creating her own professional freedom, Ashley has become a successful entrepreneur, working hard to find a place for her in the big world of e-learning. She works hard to ensure that her clients are satisfied, because without them, entrepreneurship would be a lonely place.
You can follow Ashley on Twitter (@amdchiasson) or find out more about her through her website (http://ashleychiasson.com).
About the Reviewers
Matt Guyan has been working in the learning and development field since 2007, starting as a classroom facilitator and workplace assessor, then moving into instructional design (for classroom and online environments).
Matt is currently a solutions developer at B Online Learning where he delivers certified Articulate Storyline 2 training as well as the online Master eLearning course. He’s also a proud Articulate Community Super Hero.
Matt’s interests include eLearning, performance support, community building, and motivation. He has a keen interest in how people learn and the cognitive processing that takes place as we acquire new knowledge and skills and believes applying principles around human cognitive architecture will assist in designing better learning programs and materials, leading to superior personal and organisational outcomes. He’s currently completing a Master of Education in Educational Psychology at the University of NSW.
Helen Tyson is an experienced trainer, instructional designer and e-learning developer. She has been involved in training for over 15 years, focusing specifically on e-learning since 2006. She has worked in a variety of industries, including telecommunications, e-mail order retail, financial services, and clinical software production. After using several other content development software packages, she found Articulate Studio in 2009 and has not looked back since then. This led her to take part in the very first Articulate Certified Training course held in the UK for Articulate Studio.
Currently, Helen is an instructional designer and lead trainer for Omniplex Ltd., a company that provides a comprehensive range of e-learning solutions to customers across the UK, Europe, North America, and Asia. Omniplex is the Articulate Certified Training Partner for the UK and Ireland, and a large part of Helen's role is to deliver the Articulate Certified Program for Storyline and Studio, as well as Instructional Design courses. In addition to training, she works on content development projects, course consultancy, and implements LMS portals. She has previously reviewed Learning Articulate Storyline, Packt Publishing, by Stephanie Harnett and Articulate Storyline Essential, Packt Publishing also by Ashley Chiasson.
www.PacktPub.com
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Preface
Articulate Storyline is an incredibly powerful e-learning authoring tool, but much of its functionality goes untapped—not for long!
As you read through this book, you'll get hands-on experience creating some pretty cool interactions that go beyond the basics of Storyline. You’ll quickly find out just how easy it is to create crowd-pleasing, advanced e-learning elements that build on the basic concepts of Storyline.
Storyline is near and dear to my heart, and once you begin developing in it, I'm confident that the reasons why will become apparent. Acting as a one-stop-shop for e-learning authoring, you no longer need to work across authoring tools to create elements such as interactive video, software simulations, or high-quality audio.
This book takes you beyond the basic concepts of Storyline, allowing you to learn ways of bending the program to your will! Working through the chapters, you will be amazed with some of the things you create—not realizing how powerful Storyline is. By the time you finish this book, you'll be running to show off your e-learning talent to all of your colleagues, and you'll be the Storyline sensei of your office!
With relevant exercises, this book aims to provide you with tons of opportunities to get down and dirty with Storyline, testing out new concepts and applying Storyline features in a variety of contexts.
What this book covers
Chapter 1 , Before You Begin , provides some best practices for development, allowing you to enhance your efficiency. You will learn methods for effectively structuring projects for optimal organization, and ways in which you may streamline your development process.
Chapter 2 , Refresher of Key Concepts , takes you back to basics by providing an overview of key concepts.
Chapter 3 , Creating a Content-Rich Story , explores some of the more advanced aspects of adding content to your story, such as working with properties and using each content type to its fullest potential. Some Storyline 2-specific content will be discussed as well as some helpful tips and tricks.
Chapter 4 , Engaging Your Learners with Interactivity , shows you how to do some cool things to make your stories more interactive. Discussing some Storyline 2-specific functionality such as motion paths and new animation options, as well as button sets, markers, and zoom region "hacks".
Chapter 5 , Using Variables, Conditions, and JavaScript , explains how you can leverage variables, conditions, and JavaScript to create some really neat interactions in Storyline. You will be provided with walkthrough-style examples and plenty of exercises. You will learn how to personalize stories and create some more advanced variable-based interactions, and then you'll learn how to use some simple JavaScript to really wow your users!
Chapter 6 , Assessing Learners , focuses on convert-to-freeform question creation, programming, and troubleshooting, emphasizing the development of feedback masters.
Chapter 7 , Preparing to Publish Your Story, explains how to customize the player and prepare your stories for publishing. Some sections will identify how to move past the basic look and feel of a non-customized player to create a truly unique learning experience. Various publishing options will be discussed, as well as how to troubleshoot some common publishing issues.
Chapter 8 , Becoming More Creative, provides you with some ideas for harnessing your inner creative to do cool things in Storyline.
Appendix, Streamlining Your Development, focuses on how you can streamline your Storyline development by using some productivity-boosting functionality.
What you need for this book
To ensure you reach your full potential in following along with this book, it is recommended that you have the following:
Refer to Articulate's website for a full list of hardware requirements recommended for operating Articulate Storyline.
Who this book is for
This book is for anyone experienced in using the basic functions of Articulate Storyline who are yearning to learn more. It's designed to provide a brief overview of key concepts and to help you refresh your knowledge of common functions, while teaching you how to push Storyline to the limit!
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Questions
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Chapter 1. Before You Begin
You've probably been working in Articulate Storyline for quite some time now. You may be well versed with the basic development functions. You may be looking for ways of pushing Storyline to its limits. If you can relate to any of these scenarios, this book has got your curiosities covered.
Let's learn how to leverage the full potential of Storyline. This chapter provides you with an introduction to the purpose of this book and best practices related to e-learning product development, which will be explained in greater detail in the appendix.
In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:
Pushing Articulate Storyline to the limit
The purpose of this book is really to get you comfortable with pushing Articulate Storyline to its limits. Doing this may also broaden your imagination, allowing you to push your creativity to its limits.
There are so many things you can do within Storyline and a lot of those features, interactions, or functions are overlooked because they just aren't used all that often. Often times, the basic functionality overshadows the more advanced functions because they're easier, they often address the need, and they take less time to learn. That's understandable, but this book is going to open your mind to many more things that are possible when using this tool.
You'll get excited, frustrated, excited again, and probably frustrated a few more times, but, with all of the practical activities for you to follow along with (and/or reverse engineer), you'll be mastering Articulate Storyline and pushing it to its limits in no time! If you don't quite get one of the concepts that have been explained, don't worry. You'll always have access to this book and the activity downloads as a handy reference or refresher.
Best practices
Before you get too far into your development, it's important to take some steps to streamline your approach by establishing best practices–doing this will help you become more organized and efficient. Everyone has their own process, so this is by no means a prescribed format for the proper way of doing things. These are just some recommendations, from personal experience, that have proven effective as an e-learning developer. Please note that these best practices are not necessarily Storyline-related, but are best practices to consider ahead of development within any e-learning project.
Your best practices will likely be project-specific in terms of how your clients or how your organization's internal processes work. Sometimes you'll be provided with a storyboard ahead of development and sometimes you'll be expected to rapidly develop one. Sometimes you'll be provided with all the multimedia ahead of development and sometimes you'll be provided with multimedia after an alpha review. You may want to do a content dump at the beginning of your development process or you may want to work through each slide from start to finish before moving on. Through experience and observation of what other developers are doing, you will learn how to define and adapt your best practices.
When a new project comes along, it's always a good idea to employ some form of organization. There are many great reasons for this, some of which include being mindful of reusability, maintaining and organizing project and file structure, and streamlining your development process. This chapter aims to provide you with as much information as necessary to ensure that you are effectively organizing your projects for enhanced efficiency and an understanding of why these methods should always be considered best practices.
How to be mindful of reusability
When I think about reusability in e-learning, I think about objects and content that can be reused in a variety of contexts. Developers often run into this when working on large projects or in industries that involve trade-specific content. When working on multiple projects within one sector, you may come across assets used previously in one course (for example, a 3D model of an aircraft) that may be reused in another course with the same content base.
Being able to reuse content and/or assets can come in handy as it can save you resources in the long run. Reusing previously established assets (if permitted to do so, of course) would reduce the amount of development time various departments and/or individuals need to spend.
Best practices for reusability might include creating your own content repository and defining a file naming convention that will make it easy for you to quickly find what you're looking for. If you're extra savvy, you can create a metadata-coded database, but that might require a lot more effort than you have available.
While it does take extra time to either come up with a file naming convention or apply metadata tagging to all assets within your repository, the goal is to make your life easier in the long run. Much like the dreaded administrative tasks required of small business owners, it's not the most sought-after task, but it's a necessary one, especially if you truly want to optimize efficiency!
Within Articulate Storyline, you may want to maintain a repository of themes and interactions so you can use elements of these assets for future development and save yourself a lot of time. Most projects, in the early stages, require an initial prototype for the client to sign off on the general look and feel. In this prototyping phase, having a repository of themes and interactions can really make the process a lot smoother because you can call on previous work in order to easily facilitate the elemental design of a new project.
Storyline allows you to import content from many sources (for example, PowerPoint, Articulate Engage, Articulate Quizmaker, and more), so don't feel limited to just reusing Storyline interactions and/or themes. Just structure your repository in an organized manner and you will be able to easily locate the files and file types that you're looking to use at a later date.
Another great thing Articulate Storyline is good for when it comes to reusability is question banks! Most courses contain questions, knowledge checks, assessments, or whatever you want to call them, but all too seldom do people think about compiling these questions in one neat area for reuse later on. Instead, people often add new question slides, add the question, and go on their merry development way. If you're one of those people, you need to STOP. Your life will be entirely changed by the concept of question banks–if not entirely, at least a little bit, or at least the part of your life that dabbles in development will be changed in some small way.
Question banks allow you to create a bank of questions (who would have thought) and call on these questions at any time to place within your story–reusability at its finest, at least in Storyline.
Methods for organizing your project
Organizing your project is a necessary evil. Surely there is someone out there who loves this process, but for others who just want to develop all day and all night, there may be a smaller emphasis placed on organization. However, you can take some simple steps to organize your project that can be reused for future projects.
Within Storyline, the organizational emphasis of this chapter will be placed on using Story View and optimizing the use of scenes. These are two elements of Storyline that, depending on the size of your project, can make a world of difference when it comes to making sense of all the content you've authored and in terms of making the structure of your content more palatable.
Using the Story View
Story View is such a great feature of Storyline! It provides you with a bird's eye view of your project or story and essentially shows you a visual blueprint of all the scenes and slides. This is particularly helpful in projects that involve a lot of branching. Instead of seeing the individual parts, you're seeing the parts as they represent the whole–the Gestalt psychology would be proud! You can also use Story View to plan out the movement of existing scenes or slides if content isn't lining up quite the way you want it to:
Optimizing scene use
Scenes play a very big role in maintaining organization within your story. They serve to group slides into smaller segments of the entire story and are typically defined using logical breaks. However, it's all up to you how you decide to group your slides. If the story you're working on consists of multiple topics or modules, each topic or module would logically become a new scene.
Visually, scenes work in tandem with Story View in that, while you're in Story View, you can clearly see the various scenes and move things around appropriately. Functionally, scenes serve to create submenus in the main Storyline menu, but you can change this if you don't want to see each scene delineated in the menu.
From an organization and control perspective, scenes can help you reel in unwieldy and overwhelming content. This particularly comes in handy with large courses, where you can easily lose your place when trying to track down a specific slide of a scene, for example, in a sea of 150 slides. In this sense, scenes allow you to chunk content into more manageable scenes within your story and will likely allow you to save on development and revision time.
Using scenes will also help when it comes to previewing your story. Instead of having to wait to load 150 slides each time you preview, you can choose to preview a scene and will only have to wait for the slides in that scene to load–perhaps 15 slides of the entire course instead of 150. Scenes really are a magical thing!
Asset management
Asset management is just what it sounds like–managing your assets. Now, your assets may come in many forms, for example, media assets (your draft and/or completed images/video/audio), customer furnished assets (files provided by the client, which could be raw images/video/audio/PowerPoint/Word documents, and so on), or content output (outputs from whichever authoring tool you're using). If you've worked on large projects, you will likely relate to how unwieldy these assets can become if you don't have a system in place for keeping everything organized.
