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A Template Unification Plan (+ Free Template!)

January 15, 2015 By Jackie Van Nice 4 Comments

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This week’s challenge is to take three disparate templates and create one peaceful template whose elements can coexist in harmony. An ambitious goal, but I was up for it.

The Existing Templates

I chose three Storyline 1 templates from the Downloads section of the ELH site: Nicole’s Click-and-Reveal template, Tom’s Storyline Tabbed Notebook, and Tom’s Storyline Decision-Making Interaction. Why these?

I could see them working well together as a main menu, detailed content holder, and a quiz.
Their color schemes were roughly similar.
Their (flat) image styles were similar.
I knew that if I used them as I intended, I could stay true to their functionality.

The Before & After

Before: Nicole’s Template

After: My Main Menu

Here are captures of the original templates next to my made-over and unified template. How did I get them to peacefully coexist?

A Unified Course

As mentioned, one acts as a main menu, one as a content holder, and one as a quiz. Together they comprise the elements of a basic course.

Before: Tom’s Submenu

After: My Submenu

A Unified Theme

I began at the end with Tom’s shipping quiz. I then worked backwards to think of a general way to present info about shipping documents, then backwards to consider what kind of company would be training their people on shipping docs, then backwards to think of how they might start out the training.

Unified Fonts, Colors, and Images

I chose two of the existing fonts (Rockwell and Trebuchet), a simple color palette using a few of the existing colors, and stuck with the existing flat image style throughout. It helped that I made them all the same story size, too.

Before: Tom’s Decision-Making Activity

After: My Quiz

See it! Download it! Try it Out!

Want to see some carefully-brokered template peace? See the demo here!

And download the free template here!

Where Infographics Meet Interactivity

January 10, 2015 By Jackie Van Nice 2 Comments

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This Articulate challenge is to take an existing infographic and make it interactive.

The Infographic

I chose this one because of its simplicity and because I could picture how to make the Venn-diagrammatic intersections of each choice (Fast, Cheap, Great, and Free) interactive.

It also seemed relevant since we’re always discussing image quality and sourcing.

See the Similarity?

3-D Chess, Anyone?

This infographic looks pretty easy to recreate, right? Well, not only were the colors and transparencies of the circles and intersections a challenge to imitate, but because of the interactivity I needed to have multiple images layered on top of one another in Storyline. It felt like I was building a 3-D chess board where the layers of color and transparency had to be kept in a delicate yet precarious balance. Quite the brain-bustery brain buster.

Engineering It

The Original

After the intro slide, everything is on one slide. There’s just one layer for “Try Again”, which means the rest of the interaction is completely controlled by states and conditional variables. Though not as thoroughly brain-busting as the visuals were, it was a good challenge.

I was really happy with my “Try Again” design, by the way. I loved that I got it to blend so nicely into the existing design, it gave me the chance to add some colors that helped balance the existing scheme, and I like the functionality of it.

Try it Out!

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Find out what kind of graphics you get where fast, cheap, great, and/or free intersect!

Drag and Drop Activities: Not Just for Cowboys Anymore

January 9, 2015 By Jackie Van Nice 10 Comments

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This Articulate challenge is to come up with some creative ways to use drag-and-drop interactions. Designing them to present information and provide opportunities for practice broadens their usefulness and makes them more involving than a standard drag-and-drop quiz does.

The Topic

I had already been working on a course that included choosing proper safety gear for construction workers. In this demo I came up with the cowboy option for contrast – but you could use this approach for any two (or more) job functions that require different gear.

Hints Rather Than Answers

Select Image to Launch David Anderson’s Demo

Using David Anderson’s lovely table setting example for inspiration, I provided learner-controlled hints in addition to the ability to check your final answer and get feedback. You can also easily start over and try again. It’s another one of those activities that’s just sort of fun to play with.

Give it a Try!

Someone needs to outfit this guy. You should give it a try!

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Make it a Game: Climb Heroes Mountain!

December 31, 2014 By Jackie Van Nice 17 Comments

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When people are new to the Articulate E-Learning Heroes community I like to point out a few things on the site to help them get going. Even if you know something exists – the weekly challenges, for example – you might not know how to find it.

Make a Game of It!

I thought it’d be fun to create a game that gets newbies to explore the site and points out some of the best tools around to help them succeed in their jobs. I’m entering it into David Anderson’s gaming challenge where I already have one cold, foamy, refreshing entry – but can you ever have enough games?

Some Nifty Features

Here are some elements I used that you could include in any game or interaction to make it more fun, effective, and appealing.

Images That Looks Just Like the Site’s

A fully-realized and consistent theme: Since the topic is the ELH site, I tapped into its visual style and themes to create my own. I used the mountain on the ELH Discussions page and the happy campers in front of it to establish my camping and mountain-climbing theme. I also created pictogram images that mimic the look and feel of the site’s own images.
A game goal: The goal is to climb Heroes Mountain by taking on a series of challenges. Each challenge involves navigating the ELH site to find something of value.
Real-World Challenges & Motivation

Real-world motivation: Aligning your learner’s motivation with the game’s goals makes it involving from the start. My game character is new to e-learning and needs help in her job, just like lots of newcomers. What better motivation to learn about the helpful features of ELH?
Real-world decision making: In the game, you search for things on the site just like you would in real life. The only difference is feedback. If you’re headed in the right direction, feedback is delayed until you arrive at your goal. If you’re headed in the wrong direction, you learn more about the site and get a prompt to remind you of your goal.

Game Progress: Badges!

Game Progress: Some Mountain Climbing

Giving rewards and showing progress: After you meet each challenge, you earn a themed badge and your virtual stand-in climbs a little higher up the mountain. Seeing a goal and your progress towards it is always good motivation to keep going.
A satisfying result: Not only is there a “win” at the top of Heroes Mountain, but the game’s character also wins since meeting the challenges on the ELH site helped her become more successful in her job.

Ready to Make Your Own?

If you’d like to make your own game (and find lots of inspiring examples!) check out these game-specific ELH challenges: Create a Simple E-Learning Game, Steal This E-Learning Template, and E-Learning Games for Kids. Plus you can find lots of free templates to get started on the ELH site!

Happy new year – and happy climbing! You can make your way up Heroes Mountain right here.

What’s Your Favorite #ELHChallenge?

December 30, 2014 By Jackie Van Nice 12 Comments

In the wake of David Anderson sharing his current count of #ELHChallenges by entrant, Kimberly Bourque asked “What’s your favorite challenge?” But how do you pick a favorite – and a favorite what? Favorite challenge idea? Favorite week of entries? Favorite design of your own? Though nearly impossible to choose, I’ve tried.

My 3 Favorite Challenges From David

I’ve learned something every single week from every single challenge, but these stand out for me.

#11: Design a Comic Book Theme. I loved this because unless David had made it a challenge I’d never have tried it. I ended up convinced that this style needs to be used far more often.

#39: Education Podcasts in Online Training. This was a great change of pace from the standard demo, and a true challenge since most of us had never created a podcast before.

#41: Hand Drawn E-Learning Courses. Again, this was an unusual challenge format that demanded a lot of creativity and I liked that we had to think in a very different way.

My 3 Favorite Challenges Where I Loved The Entries

Every week is a good week to see what everyone’s been up to, but these I found especially entertaining.

#41: Hand Drawn E-Learning Courses. I think the fact that this challenge required so much ingenuity made these entries truly fascinating.

#39: Education Podcasts in Online Training. How could you not love hearing your fellow challengees come to life before your very ears? The individuality and energy of it was great.

#32: Death, Taxes, and E-Learning Mistakes. For obvious reasons, checking out everyone’s chosen examples of bad e-learning was both fun and painful – but mostly fun.

3 Favorite Entries of My Own

This really is like choosing your favorite child – but here are three I love.

#63: Is Marsala a Good Color for George Washington? This one is so stupid I’m completely in love with it. Love the way it looks, the way it met the challenge, and the comments it elicited from readers.

#39: Dapper Dans & Pictograms. These guys make me so happy – plus I thought there was a lot of value to the post. I’m also noticing that I apparently like entries where I line up 4 guys in a row.

#37: Cop vs. Kid Spelling Bee. In the end, this one feels so wrong it just becomes right. It’s also the most trouble I’ve had producing challenge audio without laughing.

So what are your favorite #ELHChallenges?