Even before I started working at Articulate, I made it a goal to answer five questions each week in the e-learning community. It’s a great way to connect with others, especially beginners, and offer some help as they’re learning.
However, for me, it’s a great way to stay on top of the tools as it forces me to think through the software in different contexts. It enables me to play around with different ideas and production techniques.
Here are three recent tutorials that I created to answer some questions in the community. The tutorials offer little bonus tips and focus on some production nuances that aren’t always apparent to new users. They’re good if you’re just getting started.
Here are the three files I used for the demos in case you want to look at them and follow along.
E-Learning Tip: Simulate Right-Click Interactions on Mobile Devices
In this tutorial, we review how to go through software training on a mobile device when the software simulation requires the user to right-click which isn’t possible on a mobile device.
Features demonstrated:
Setting True-False variables to indicate if the user is on a mobile device
E-Learning Tip: Combine Animations to Create Fast-Slow-Fast Animations
In this example, the question was how to make an object slow down when passing through another object and then speed up when it was done passing through.
Building e-learning courses is usually a matter of pulling together the appropriate content, visuals, and some level of interactivity. Most courses I see are linear with some simple interactions like tabs and labeled graphics.
However, there’s a way to make e-learning content and the learning experience more dynamic when using variables. Variables help create custom user experiences such as personalized visuals, conditional navigation, and adaptive learning paths.
The challenge for many e-learning developers (who aren’t experienced programmers) is learning more about variables and how to use them.
Today’s post is a recap of some previous getting started content that introduces the basics of working with variables, a few practice activities, and additional resources.
Also, be sure to check out our upcoming e-learning workshops below. I just added a bunch of new sessions.
Learn About Variables for E-Learning
Here are some previous blog posts that go through the basics of variables and how to use them.
Practice Activities to Learn About Variables for E-Learning
Here are some resources from previous workshops where we learn to use variables in a simple gamified context. There’s a published version with practice files and a series of tutorials that go through each slide individually. If you want to practice using variables and need some resources, this is a good place to start. You’ll only learn to use them when you use them.
E-Learning Community Activities to Practice Using Variables
Here some recent challenges to practice using variables in real-world contexts. Even if you can’t participate, look at some of the examples shared by community members.
Here are some community tutorials that show how to use variables in Storyline 3 & 360.
Articulate 360 subscribers can always sign up for the 4-part webinar series. Our next series starts April 22. We go through the basics and answer your questions.
If you haven’t used variables before, now’s a good time to get started. If you do use variables, what do you find to be the most common use cases in your projects?
Between the blog posts, community interactions, workshops, and webinars one of the most frequently asked questions is how to get started with e-learning or become a better e-learning developer.
I’ve written about this in several previous posts that cover how to build your skills, create your personal brand, and maintain a portfolio. You can find previous posts and a really cool interaction below.
How to Build Your Skills
Here’s a list of some of the posts on personal development.
I built a simple sorting interaction to show how to work with sliders and variables for a workshop. It’s a fun and simple interaction so I cleaned out the data and made it so it can work as a template. It’s yours to use as you wish.
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