Professional Development

“Please Refresh Us!” Love, Your Online E-Learning Demos

April 17, 2022 By Jackie Van Nice Leave a Comment

I began participating in Articulate’s delightfully addictive E-Learning Challenges more than 8 years ago, and I’ve designed and developed 130+ entries and written posts about each one.

Some entries took the form of images, podcasts, videos, interviews, or Rise interactions – but 100+ of them were in Storyline, and I published and uploaded those demos to my site so you could take them for a spin. Because fun!

Fickle, Fickle Technology

But development tools, online security protocols, web browsers, and mobile devices are constantly changing and unless you’re regularly republishing your e-learning examples, users are probably staring at blank or spinning screens of nothingness where all the good stuff used to be. (Sorry ’bout that.)

My ELH Challenge Entry This Week: No Progress Yet

You Don’t Have Time for This Nonsense

I don’t have to tell you why few (if any) of us regularly republish our examples. It’s a task that gets back-burnered as you get swept into exhilarating new interests and projects.

Why would I voluntarily halt all of that life-giving exhilaration to dig up 100+ dusty source files, upgrade each one to the latest version of Storyline, apply the most current mobile-friendly player, test them, make a variety of adjustments, publish them, and try to figure out how to re-upload the published files in a by-now-completely-altered back-end environment? Wouldn’t it make more sense to see what’s happening on Catfish UK?

The Turning Point: Love Triumphs Over Shadiness

What finally got my attention was a hosting company that had thoroughly lost the plot. It was not looking good, and as the weeks dragged on I prepared for a full salvage operation by going through every post and page on my site to document details in case I needed to reconstruct it from scratch.

The completely unexpected result was that I fell in love with the work all over again. In the initial rush of creating it I never stopped to fully appreciate it. Now I couldn’t be prouder of it or happier that I did it. Even the old cringey stuff. It was time to show it some love.

This Week’s ELH Challenge

This week’s challenge is to design a progress indicator to show learner status. I used this experience to create my entry, using lots of blank demo screens as my progress indicator starting point. You can check it out right here.

Select Image to See My ELH Challenge Entry

More to Come, DON*

I’ve learned a few things while revisiting and updating 100+ samples of my work in Storyline. I’ll be sharing more of that new-found wisdom soon, unless Netflix suddenly puts out a new season of Murderville.

*Depending on Netflix

The Top 5 Reasons I’m Grateful for More than 2 Years of #ELHChallenges

January 10, 2016 By Jackie Van Nice 8 Comments

Click for the Full List of Challenges (Image Credit: Articulate)

When I first heard about Articulate’s ELH Challenges (which may well have been in this post from Tom Kuhlmann) it was clear they’d be a fantastic way to sharpen my skills and get involved in the community – but it still took me until #8 to put in an entry, and until #20 to get hooked.

To date I’ve completed 108 challenges, and although it’s taken a lot of time and effort to stick with them, it’s been life changing. I’m grateful for them every day, and thought I’d pause for a moment to share my top 5 reasons why.

1. Connection with a Vibrant Community

Whether you’re talking about Fearless Challenge Leader David Anderson, who always comes up with unique, creative challenges and sets the enthusiastic, inclusive, and ever-encouraging tone – or the extraordinary range of participants who never fail to share remarkable solutions and ideas along with a great deal of kindness and wisdom – the value of that energy and those connections can’t be overstated.

2. The Chance to Hone My Design Skills

I already had a good sense of my design sensibilities before coming into the challenges, but having the chance to stretch and practice and grow outside of the constraints of client projects was an absolute gift. If not for the challenges, I’d never have had the impetus to create a silly little paper doll slider, a romantic approach to filling out a passport form, an homage to health workers in West Africa, or a way to try different shades of lipstick on George Washington. It would have been unthinkable.

3. The Chance to Push My Software Skills

I think we all have a tendency to go with what we already know when it comes to software – especially when we’re on deadline and need to knock something out. So being challenged to grow and figure out how to do a whole lot more with Storyline (and other software) each week – either because David presented a new technical challenge or because my design ideas were forcing me to do more complex things – was another leap forward.

4. A Pretty Swingin’ Portfolio

No one ever asks to see my portfolio. By the time they contact me they’ve already had the chance to wander through over 100 pieces of my work (most of which are challenge entries), along with written explanations about each one. Once on the phone they can’t wait to tell me how much they loved things like the German drinking game, Big History timeline, or tic-tac-toe game and want to use those ideas in their company’s own courses.

5. A Whole Lot of Work

When other designers ask me where to find work, what companies look for in their ads, or what to put on their résumés – I’m useless. I have no idea. I spend my time designing e-learning projects for clients, working on new Articulate challenge entries, and keeping those entries visible. Because of that, wonderful people at creative companies who need someone to design custom e-learning find me. Many peers will tell you the same, and I wrote about how to get work like this – but only if you want work to come to you in a painless and enormously fun way.

So there you have it! The top 5 reasons I’m incredibly grateful for more than 2 years of Articulate challenges. To be honest, any one of those 5 reasons would have been enough to make participation worthwhile, but together they’ve enhanced my work life beyond measure.

Thank you, Articulate.

How Long Does It Take To Create E-Learning?

January 8, 2016 By Jackie Van Nice 14 Comments

Select Image to Launch Demo

This week’s challenge is to share an instructional design cheat sheet, job aid, or reference you use in your work.

The Idea

The Chapman Alliance Study

I alllllllllways refer to this Chapman study on how long it takes to create e-learning every time someone approaches me about a project. Since that makes it my most-used reference piece by far, I thought I’d translate it into a zippy little interaction that might even be a tad easier to follow than the original.

The Design

Since the study is focusing on hours, I thought it would be smart to build it around the image of a clock.

Once I found a flat design clock I liked, I added Chapman’s three primary levels of e-learning design to the main slide and used layers to animate the hour estimates for each level onto the clock face itself.

After that I used lots of triggers to make the interaction as intuitive and user-friendly as possible, both visually and functionally, and added a lightboxed slide to provide more detail about the study that also links back to the original.

The Result

As much as I love the original info from Chapman, I’ll no doubt point to this one more. If you’d like to see it in action, you can start estimating your e-learning project hours right here!

Making A Simple Voiceover Portfolio

November 9, 2015 By Jackie Van Nice 6 Comments

This week’s Articulate challenge is to put together an e-learning voiceover (VO) portfolio. I don’t do voiceover-only work, but I’ll do VO if a client asks me as part of a design and development project. Can’t hurt to have a few samples!

Voiceover Samples

E-Learning Demo: Game Voiceover

My favorite sample is the Kid vs Cop Spelling Bee I created for a challenge, and it’s what I sound like late at night when I can barely stop laughing long enough to record – in case you have a need for that.

Cop vs Kid Spelling Bee: Select Image to Launch Demo

E-Learning Demo: Sales Voiceover

This intro is the start of a product sales training course to debut a new product line and get staff excited about learning more.

Product Sales Training: Select Image to Launch Demo

E-Learning Demo: Compliance Voiceover

This in the intro to my favorite sexual harassment course.

Sexual Harassment Compliance Training: Select Image to Launch Demo

Audio-Only Demo: Podcasts

Here are a couple of audio-only podcast challenges I completed. They’d give you the best idea of what my voice usually sounds like.

Select Image to See Tracks

David Anderson’s Questions:

1. How would you describe your voice?

The workplace-approved descriptions I can pass along are “expressive”, “reassuring”, and “professional” – and I even got a “velvet voice” not long ago. I’m good at capturing and conveying mood and tone.

2. What’s your recording setup like?

I use an Audio-Technica AT2020 desktop USB mic – seen in this post where I describe my setup and offer some recording tips. I either record directly into Storyline or Audacity – it just depends on what I need.

3. What types of audio editing do you offer?

I remove distracting breaths and ambient noise – but I’ve recorded and edited my voice for a long time and know that if I use too much of a noise gate or overdo post-recording noise removal that I can quickly lose the qualities in my voice that give it the character that people (including me) want. If the end product just ends up sounding like a computer-generated voice, there’s no point in me recording. So I take it easy on noise removal.

How to Go Full-Screen & Lose the Player in Storyline

June 7, 2015 By Jackie Van Nice 10 Comments

This timeline looks like it's floating; just on a black background.

This timeline looks like it’s floating in space.

She doesn't need a frame or player. Do you?

She doesn’t need a frame or a player. Do you?

I love making e-learning look like it’s floating in space without the traditional box-like appearance or standard player, and I guess I’m not alone since I get a lot of questions about how to do it.

This entire interaction is a wheel that seems to spin in space: No player, no frame.

Going Full-Screen

Going full-screen is simple. In Storyline go to Player > Other > Player Size > select “Scale player to fill browser window”. For the Browser Size option select “Display at user’s current browser size”. To get that wide-screen effect I choose Design > Story Size: 16:9.

Important tip about going full-screen: Be sure your content still looks great at full screen. No one wants to see pixelated, stretched, or otherwise tormented images. If you’re going to do it, plan your images accordingly.

This game seems to float because the blue page background matches the slide background.

Losing the Player

To lose the player, the bottom line is you’re going to turn off the player features and either make all of your player elements the same color as your page background or make them transparent. This is what I do:

Player > Features > deselect everything. Player > Colors & Effects > Page Background: I choose the same color as my slide background. Player > Colors & Effects > Color Scheme > Show Advanced Color Editing > Edit Item > Base: I make each of these elements 100% transparent. If you have other player elements (menus, buttons, etc.) that you want to blend in, change their colors or make them transparent using this same menu.

Need More Details?

If you’d like to know more about making your player disappear check out Articulate’s instructions for using a chromeless player. Then set your e-learning free!