Jackie Van Nice

E-Learning Goodness by Jackie Van Nice

Instructional Design

When Postcards Need Glossaries

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Select Image to Launch Demo

Select Image to Launch Demo

This week’s Articulate ELH Challenge is to create an example of a glossary for e-learning. I’ve been meaning to make one lately, so this was a good chance to play.

The Idea

People have done some wonderfully creative interactions for this challenge that you can check out here. In my case I wanted to create an über-practical glossary that was incredibly quick to build, easy to maintain, and that could handle a lot of entries. Oh, and my example helps decode German idioms used by someone visiting Bali.

The Design

Back of the Postcard

Back of the Postcard

The Postcard

The postcard itself is straightforward: A front-of-postcard screen and a back-of-postcard screen. On the back of the postcard there’s an instruction to hover over/select underlined text to see its meaning. When you do, a lightboxed glossary slide is displayed.

The Glossary

Inserted Table Lightboxed Glossary

Inserted Table Lightboxed Glossary

The glossary itself is built using an inserted Storyline 360 table; a feature I love. In this example I only have a few glossary entries, but for more you could either place a longer table into a scrolling panel, or you could use multiple glossary screens with lightbox navigation to jump between them.

The Result

Ready to see which German idioms cause vacation confusion? See the glossary that straightens it all out in this air mail special delivery interaction!

Simple (and Free!) Animated Timer in Storyline 360

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Select Image to Launch the Animated Timer Demo

Select Image to Launch the Animated Timer Demo

I recently made a game for the Escape the Room ELH Challenge and made a simple animated timer to regulate it. I’m sharing it in the Animated Timer ELH Challenge, too, which is a good place to check out if you’re looking for timer ideas.

It would have saved me a ton of time if I could have started with a ready-made timer like this, so I thought I’d share in case it might help you, too.

Tips to Help You Customize It

  1. Download it: Grab it on its download page.
  2. Unlock the shapes on the timeline: I’ve locked them so they stay aligned, but you can expand the grouped images and unlock them.
  3. Adjust the timing as needed: My need was for a 2-minute timer, so I used a yellow animated circle to represent minute 1 and a red one to represent minute 2. You could use the circles to represent other time periods (e.g. – maybe for a 3-minute timer you would add an orange circle between the yellow and the red to show progress) or whatever fits your needs.

See it in Action!

If you’d like to see how I used this timer in my game interaction, you can see that post and demo here or select the image below.

The Game I Made Using This Timer

The Game I Made Using This Timer

Lightboxing Some Art

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Select Image to Launch Demo

Select Image to Launch Demo

This week’s Articulate ELH challenge is to show an example of how lightboxes can be used in e-learning.

An Arty Lightboxed Drag-and-Drop Question

An Arty Lightboxed Drag-and-Drop Question

The Idea

When I think of lightboxes I think of art projects, so art seemed like a good theme.

I also wanted to show how they could be used in e-learning as exporable objects to play with something you may already know about, or to explore something new. (Exploring is always good.)

The Design

I wanted the interaction to be grounded in an art museum, and I pulled the museum image from Storyline 360’s content library. I designed the color palette and general look and feel based on that image.

Feedback in Case of a Chagall and Rothko Mix-Up

Feedback in Case of Any Chagall/Rothko Mix-Ups

The Lightboxes

Each lightbox is a drag-and-drop interaction set to allow you to try again as many times as you’d like. In these examples there are only two possible answers, but I think there’s something about that simplicity that makes them kind of fun to play with. I also included hints on the try again screen, and feedback and a bit more information on the success screen.

Because a lightbox in Storyline only displays at 80% of a regular slide’s size, you’ll want to be sure that your images and text are large enough to be viewed at that reduced size when using them in projects. It also helps to take full advantage of your screen real estate when laying out screen objects.

The Result

It’s simple, but kind of fun! Ready to play with some arty lightboxes? Try them out right here!

A Yummy, Fresh and FREE Tabs Interaction!

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Select Image to Launch Demo

Select Image to Launch Demo

This week’s Articulate ELH challenge is to create a fresh new tabs interaction, so I went outside and picked some inspiration.

The Idea

I wanted to make this a Storyline 360 tabs interaction I could share, so with that in mind I focused on simplicity, functionality, and reusability.

The Design

The Fruity Theme Colors

The Fruity Theme Colors

Colors

I honestly just started with colors I liked and made a color palette from there. To make the template easy to reuse, I saved them as a set of Theme Colors at Design > Colors in Storyline. You can save them down with a different name and/or you can change out one or all of the colors by editing them on that screen.

Images

My theme needed some delicious-looking fruit and veg, so I inserted all of the photos into Storyline from the Content Library. If you swap them out by right clicking and choosing Change Picture, you can replace them with your own images and not lose the animations.

Mangoes in Their Visited State

Mangoes in Their Visited State

Tab States

Selected: There’s no actual selected state, because the color of the selected tab matches the background of the revealed content screen, which I think is a good visual indicator of which tab you’re on. I like using that effect.

Hover: The hover state is a semi-transparent version of the tab’s color. To adjust the color or transparency, select the tab, then States > Edit States. Select the Hover state, right click on it, then select Format Shape > Fill Color. At the bottom of that screen you can adjust the color and/or level of transparency.

Visited: I like more control over my states than the built-in ones can give me sometimes, and to get that control I give them custom names. In this case I called the visited state “checked” because I’ve added a check mark to the tab’s state to show it’s been seen. You can also edit this state and remove or replace the checkmark with any image you’d like. Right now there’s a trigger on the tab’s layer to change the tab’s state to “checked” at the beginning of the layer’s timeline.

Disabled: When on a content screen, I didn’t want the user to see an active hover state for the currently-selected tab. That would be confusing and seem like a sloppy build. To keep it solid I added a transparent disabling shape on the layer and placed it directly over the tab, which effectively disables it from showing its hover state. You could always do this by adding a disabled state along with its triggers, but this is another way to do it.

Making the selected tab the same color as its content screen makes navigation clearer.

Making the selected tab the same color as its content screen makes navigation clearer.

Content Screen States

Each content screen (layer) is set to show its saved state when revisited. Unless there’s a compelling reason to have the animations repeat when revisiting, I’m happier going back to review each screen without waiting for the animations to execute again.

The Fresh Result and Free Download!

Ready for some fresh and fruity tabbed fun? See the demo right here, and grab the free Storyline 360 file on its download page.