Articulate Storyline

Free to Good Home: Playful Game Template

May 27, 2014 By Jackie Van Nice 4 Comments

Select Image to Launch Original Game

Select Image to Launch Template Demo

. . . .

The Source File Dilemma

People seemed to really like this German drinking game I created for an Articulate challenge a while back. I got requests for the source file but didn’t want to violate license agreements by handing it out with assets intact, and also didn’t want to hand out a stripped file that wasn’t fully functional.

The Happy Result & Lots of Free Games

Last week, still getting requests for the file, I finally took time to rework it so it was clean, easy to customize, and something I could offer as a free download. I wanted to maintain a sense of style and all of the functionality while still leaving it wide open to customize, and I’m pretty happy with the result.

By complete serendipity, David Anderson featured 10 free Storyline e-learning game templates on the Articulate site this week and was able to include mine as one of them. There’s a good chance that any or all of these games will get your creative juices flowing, and you can get all of them right here!

2 Free Templates: Storyline & PowerPoint!

Here’s the download page for the Storyline template, and since people without Storyline wanted to use it, too – I created a PowerPoint version you can download, too!

Videos to Help You Customize

I made a couple of videos to show you a feature comparison and the customization points you’ll want to hit. You can see them here.

Screen Captures Compared

I also created side-by-side screen captures, seen below, to help you see the original next to the template. Click on any image to see it larger.

Introduction

Game Start

Game Board

Progress Meter

Challenge Question

Feedback When Correct

Feedback When Incorrect

The Joy of Success

Let Me Know!

If you have ideas for how you could use this template – or if you’ve already used it! – I hope you’ll let me know. I’d love to hear what you did or would like to do. You can leave a comment below. And have fun!

Show Your Work: E-Learning Messiness By Me

May 18, 2014 By Jackie Van Nice 2 Comments

I love when people show their work. The whole creative process is inexplicable and mesmerizing and the only evidence of the path afterwards is the detritus left behind. My desk is full of mesmerizing detritus, so I thought I’d share. If Austin Kleon can do it, so can I.

This is how I designed my CCAF design model demo for last week’s Articulate challenge. Pretty typical of my process. If I’d known I’d be sharing, this would look way better.

Sketch One: The Whole Idea

First Sketch, Page 1: The Entire Interaction Idea on Paper

I never look back at my sketches, so the surprise to me is that the whole thing was there from the start. It felt more difficult than that. I think there were just a couple of details that bugged me for days.

First Sketch, Page 2: More Detail About the Activity & Feedback Sections

First Screen

It’s interesting to see the quick sketch of the first screen below versus the final result. It was the simplest screen of all, but you see how much went into image and color selection and then making the details tight, clean, and balanced.

Player Tab: I was thinking of including a player tab to offer more details about CCAF, but decided that info should only be available at a point of greater need; just before and after the activity.

Writing: I didn’t work out the text or script in detail beforehand. That comes easily once I’ve got the other elements in place.

First Screen: 30-Second iPad Sketch

First Screen: Final Result

Activity Screens

These ate at me because it took time to get both the layout and functionality exactly the way I wanted, but I was happy when they came together at the 11th hour.

Activity Screen: Quick iPad Sketch

Activity Screen: Final Result

Feedback Screens

In the iPad sketch below you can see I was looking at how many parts of the CCAF activity the user got wrong. I knew the score couldn’t be the focus of the feedback, but it helped me map out the five learner reactions that were the focus.

Feedback Screen: Quick iPad Sketch

Feedback Screen: Final Result

Colors: Obey the Wall

All of the final-version slides show my text-box color decisions. If they’re:

About the ID, they’re the same green as her jacket.
About the learner (including designing for him), they’re the same blue as his shirt.
An instruction or indicator that applies to the whole interaction, they’re the same orange as the wall.

An Eye-Opening Exercise

I don’t know if this exercise was helpful to you, but it’s helped me! I’ve never observed my own process like this before and it makes me appreciate the time and effort it takes to go from A to Z. Sounds ridiculous since I’m the one doing it, but it’s hard to see when you’re caught up in the process. Once I’m done with something I focus on the result, but I don’t go back and look at it like this.

Have You Shown the Messy Side of Your E-Learning Work?

I’d love to see if you’ve shared the messier parts of your e-learning projects, too! If you have, I hope you’ll share your shares.

A Model Smart Enough to Teach Itself

May 15, 2014 By Jackie Van Nice 10 Comments

This week’s Articulate E-Learning Heroes Challenge is to create an interaction to teach something about instructional design. So I took my favorite piece of e-learning wisdom, Michael Allen’s CCAF (Context-Challenge-Activity-Feedback) design model, and used it to teach itself.

Come On In – The Context Is Fine!

Your Context (Select Image to Launch Demo)

I plunged the learner into a demonstration of CCAF by supplying some context. Turns out you’re an e-learning designer who takes pride in creating effective learning. (Who knew?)

Your Challenge

Your challenge is to create fabulous e-learning using the CCAF model. If you accept the challenge and fail, you will torment your learners with terrible e-learning. If you succeed, learners will sing your praises and the world will be a better place. You have the option to check out a handful of CCAF tips before you start, but it’s always more fun to just dive in and see what happens.

There’s Something In My Activity

Your Activity

Since the activity part of this CCAF demonstration is to choose effective design elements using all four parts of the CCAF model, this is where it gets a little mind-bending – not for the user so much as the designer. But my CCAF-inside-of-CCAF-induced headaches this week are distant memories now, and they were worth it.

Everything’s Feedbacking – Can’t You Hear It?!*

Your Feedback

The feedback focuses on showing you the direct result your design choices had on the learner. However, since there are five possible outcomes (choosing 1, 2, 3, 4, or none of the ideal design options) – and I wanted you to be able to go back and play with it to get different results – I decided to give an indication of how many good choices you made, too.

Custom Results Help – Thank You E-Learning Heroes!

I’d never needed so many custom results slides before, and lucky for me – as always! – the Articulate forums came to the rescue. It involved creating 5 custom feedback layers on my results slide – then creating a trigger on the results slide telling it to show the appropriate layer based on the learner’s score using a built-in variable. My shout-out goes to Blair Parkin who offered this helpful little nugget in response to a question, and it really helped me out.

Blair Parkin’s Trigger Magic

Enjoy!

Hope you like this little demo. It lets you be the superhero e-learning designer you always knew you were, and you can try it out right here.

*Gift to self. It’s an impassioned cry on an Apples in Stereo song that I can’t get out of my head when I think of feedback.

The Stuff That Résumés Are Made Of

April 22, 2014 By Jackie Van Nice 10 Comments

Select Image to Launch Demo

I’d recently been admiring some examples of graphic résumés, but couldn’t imagine how I could ever do one. Turns out Articulate’s resident nudger, David Anderson, keeps an eye out for that sort of thing and his challenge this week is to come up with an interactive résumé or portfolio. So time for me to figure it out.

I haven’t had much call for a résumé since I’ve been independent, but creating an interactive graphic where I could play with the idea of a résumé sounded like fun, so off I went.

Inspiration

My friend and talented freelance e-learning designer Donna Carson gave me edits for a bio I submitted with my DevLearn speaking proposals on Friday. The phrases she used made me want to both laugh and go conquer the world at the same time. Her description of my “fearless flair” in designing training inspired me to come up with “Fearless Designs!” “Bold Voiceovers!” and “Daring Development!” to describe what I do. For graphic inspiration I turned to old movie posters. They had the expressive graphics and cool details I wanted, plus they could handle the dramatic phrases I had in mind.

My Graphic Inspiration

Design

Graphics: To start, I pinned old movie posters I liked and chose a color scheme that resonated with me. You can clearly see I used the colors and rough layout of the Charlie Chan at the Wax Museum poster. For text callouts and credits I used elements based on other posters including The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms.

Theme: I chose a detective theme because I was drawn to the idea of Humphrey Bogart’s Sam Spade. He’s on the right side of the law, but still seems a little shady. (His line that the Maltese Falcon is “the stuff that dreams are made of” inspired this post’s title.)

More Graphic Inspiration

The Theater: I wanted an entry screen so that, once clicked, the user’s full attention is on the initial visuals, music, and animation when they hit the main screen – and having them click a ticket to get inside made sense.

The way the overall flow works is based on the little theater I practically lived at as an undergrad at Humboldt State University in Arcata, California. The Minor, off the little town square, was an old art house movie theater that changed its double or triple features at least three times a week. I spent a few thousand of the happiest hours I’ve ever spent in my life there, and got to see a gabillion classic movies like the ones that inspired this piece.

The Minor Theater

When it was cold out, you’d come off the street through a thick red curtain, get popcorn and admire the old movie posters in the lobby, then go through another red curtain to enter the theater. So I was seeing my résumé as one of those old posters in the lobby.

Audio: I wanted to bring it to life with sound. There are effects for audience buzz, curtains being pulled aside, cheers, applause, police whistles, sirens, screams, breaking glass, etc., but I wanted a theme song. The whole time I was working on this I kept hearing a driving theme somewhere between Peter Gunn and James Bond. Lucky for me I’ve got an “in” with talented songwriter, musician, and freelance e-learning guy Dan Sweigert who was able to write and produce the theme song in no time flat.

Content

Résumé Elements: I kept it simple and included my (boldly-phrased) skill set, education, experience, and the main software I use. The sections for education and experience were by far the biggest creative challenges, but in the end I was happy to find a quick way to blow through them that still maintains the tone and theme.

Brevity: I find it endlessly entertaining that each of the links from the main screen shows just one screen of content (at best) that makes the audience go wild. I wanted to get in, show a glimpse of just a morsel of my work, and get out.

See It In Action!

Enjoy the vintage-inspired goodness right here.

Let’s Start at the End (Of Your Course)

April 8, 2014 By Jackie Van Nice 2 Comments

Select Image to Launch Demo

This week’s Articulate E-Learning Heroes challenge is to send a little love to the end of your course. It can be lonely and confusing back there – (“Is it over?” “What am I supposed to do?”) – so this week we’re sending back a life line.

Context & Theme

I wanted to indicate we’re starting at the very end of an interminably long course. My first choice was to start at the end of pi, but finding the end of pi is even more nebulous than the end of most courses, so that was out. (Maybe when I see Neil DeGrasse Tyson at DevLearn in October I’ll ask him if he’s made any progress on that Pi issue.)

So instead I created (the end of) a course called “Enough Already! 5,000 Little-Known Animal Facts”, which starts on the last part of the last fact about the last animal.

Indicating Completion and Next Steps

Spelling it Out

To be clear that you’ve reached the end of the course, I start with a congrats slide that also indicates you have a little more to do before you go.

Final Decisions

Which leads to an animal-themed screen where you get to make decisions. Hover State Visual: Hovering over each picture reveals where you’ll go if you click on it. Hover State Audio: Hovering also reveals a bit of audio. Its purpose is to add a touch of interest, amusement, and wake you up – but there have been reports of startled coworkers and kitties as of late, so consider yourself warned.

Gate Screen for Feedback

Gate Screens

After you make a selection you’ll go to a gate screen to confirm your choice. David Anderson had a gate screen challenge a few months ago where he talked about them, and you can also see the different examples created by members of the community.

Feedback Placeholder

Room for More

In this example, if you choose anything other than “Exit” you’re taken to placeholder slides that could harbor summarizing thoughts, more resources, ideas for review, or a means of leaving feedback.

See it in Action!

Take a look at this wild little ending right here.