Here’s some content that spans the past decade or so of rapid e-learning. Originally, the interactive scenario started as a PowerPoint file that was published with Articulate Studio to demonstrate how to create simple branched scenarios in PowerPoint.

Interactive Scenario: PowerPoint

Click to view the interactive scenario create with PowerPoint

Since PowerPoint is linear and doesn’t offer tracking logic, it requires a lot of slides to create the illusion of movement and branching complexity. The slide number increases exponentially with each additional choice and gets to a point where it’s not manageable.

In those cases, PowerPoint isn’t the best solution for interactive courses.

Interactive Scenario: Storyline

The same content goes from 154 slides in PowerPoint to just 18 slides in Storyline. That’s a dramatic decrease in slides and the production time required to create an interactive scenario. It really shows off the power of Storyline and why it’s so well received as a preferred authoring tool.

Interactive Scenario: Rise 360 Content Blocks

When we launched the Rise 360, I wrote about the new approach to rapid e-learning. Rise 360 is form-based so the authoring process is different than PowerPoint or Storyline.

I played around with how to convert the PowerPoint scenario into Rise 360, a completely different type of tool. Here’s the first attempt using content blocks.

Click here to view the interactive scenario using content blocks in Rise 360.

Interactive Scenario: Rise 360 Scenario Block

The content block scenario works, but with the scenario block in Rise, I am able to create something that is visually more in line with what I want and it’s a lot easier to build. Here’s an example of the same content in the Rise 360 scenario block.

Click here to view the interactive scenario using the scenario block in Rise 360.

Interactive Scenario Resources

• In a previous post, I showed how I created the menu design for the interactive scenario using PowerPoint.
• Here’s a tutorial to learn more about the scenario block where I used some of this scenario for the demo.
• I am doing a free webinar on May 21, if you want to learn more about the scenario block. If you can’t make it, register and you’ll get a link to the recording to watch at your leisure.

It really is interesting to see the evolution of rapid e-learning through this scenario content. It started with PowerPoint, passed through Storyline, and now it’s part of Rise 360.

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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.

• Download here (3 MB)

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
• Use variables to simulate right-clicking
• Showing/hiding objects based on variable values

Click here to view the tutorial on YouTube.

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.

Click here to view the tutorial on YouTube.

Features demonstrated:

• Create motion paths
• Set options
• Apply relative start points
• Relative animation
• Alignment

E-Learning Tip: How to Keep Objects Persistent and as the Top Layer

In this tutorial, we look at how to ensure that the custom course navigation is always on the top layer and not hidden when going to other layers.

Features demonstrated:

• Launch layer based on timeline
• Create persistent layers on top of other layers
• Use empty layers to trigger and redirect

Click here to view the tutorial on YouTube.

I usually do 5-10 of these tutorials every week. If they interest you and you want to see more, let me know.

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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.

• The Case for Variables in E-Learning: what are variables and why use them?
• Simplifying Variables for Better E-Learning: understand the types of variables and common use cases.
• Consistency in Production: Naming Variables for E-Learning: learn how to name variables for easier management.
• How to Save Time When Using Variables in Your E-learning: time-saving tip using variable references to verify that the variable is tracking properly.
• The Answer to the Community’s Number 1 E-Learning Question: every day some sort of derivative of this question is asked in the community. Get your answer here.
• Here’s an Easy Way to Troubleshoot Courses with Variables: build a way to quickly access and manage variable values during the course production and testing process.

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.

See a published example.

• Download the practice file here.

Tutorials

• Set up and overview (6:50)
• Slide 1.2: create a personalized badge (18:18)
• Slide 1.3: create conditional menu navigation (16:16)
• Slide 2.2: include progress indicators (17:26)
• Slide 3.2: add a timer (20:38)
• Slide 4.2: create risk and reward (17:09)
• Slide 5.1: ways to manage and test variables (24:16)
• Slide 7.1: how to set variables for testing (15:36)

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.

• Using Text Variables to Capture and Display Learner’s Name #222 

• Using Random Number Variables to Create Dynamic E-Learning #188

• Share Your Tips for Getting Started with Storyline’s Variables #2

Tutorials to Learn About Variables for E-Learning

• 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?

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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.

Click here to view the demo.

• Download the template here.

Tutorial: Interactive Sort Activity

Here’s a YouTube tutorial that walks through the template and explains how to customize it.

A few things you’ll learn:

• Customizing the slider
• Animation-based triggers
• How to customize the sorting activity

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As mentioned previously, I like to take part in the community’s e-learning challenges. They’re great to practice ideas and learn more about using the e-learning software.

In a recent e-learning challenge, we were asked to create a demo module and use the 2019 Pantone Color of the Year (which is Living Coral). This came at a good time, as I was pulling together some content for a workshop and wanted to show a few different ideas around color in a course’s visual design. The examples below go from subtle to “in your face.”

Visual Design Tip: Make Everything Greyscale & Use One Accent Color

One tip we share often is to make everything greyscale. And then select a single accent color. One benefit is that it tends to make the screen content look a bit more elegant. And the accent color really pops. And it gets rid of a lot of conflicting colors and helps direct the eye.

Click here to view the example.

In the example above:

• Converted the car interior image to greyscale
• Used the Pantone color for the label markers
• Used a color schemer to create a second color to complement the Pantone accent color

Often less is more, and in this case getting rid of color in the image and working with one (or two accent) colors really makes them pop and it cleans up the visual design.

Visual Design Tip: Use Silhouettes and Bold Colors

This other example is a bit more bold and in your face and it’s create to draw attention. I’d use it sparingly, but it’s great for making key points or title screens. And it’s easy to do.

Click here to view the example.

Silhouettes are easy to create from people and objects. They work best with strong contrast. I like them because their ambiguous which comes in handy for people imagery.

• Create a bold background color
• Insert a character
• Adjust the brightness and contrast settings to create either a white or black silhouette.

Check out some of the other Pantone 2019 challenge entries. If you don’t participate in the e-learning challenges, you should. You’ll learn new things and be amazed at what others create and how different everyone is in approaching the same challenge.

If you do participate, write a post and share what you learned or a technique you used to build it.

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“Help, I need to update my course, but I don’t have the source file. All I have is a link!”

This is a common issue. Here’s a solution that may work for you and it’s generally easy to do.

In a previous posts, we looked at how to copy text from old Flash courses and how to transcribe them using into new slides.

How to Convert the Course to HTML5

The secret to all of this is screen capturing your old e-learning courses. You can do what I am going to show with a number of tools. For example, Storyline has a screen capture feature where you can bring in one screen at a time. That works fine for smaller courses.

For this demo, I am going to use Screen2Gif because it works well for this demo that has a lot of slides, it’s easy to use, and it’s free.

View the detailed tutorial on YouTube.

Below are the basic steps. The video above has more detail. Essentially, we’re going to capture the old course screens, bring them into PowerPoint as images (because we can do a simple batch import), and then we’ll import the PowerPoint slides into Storyline.

Once inside of Storyline you can add interactive elements and additional content.

Basic Steps for Converting the Old Course

• Determine the original course slide resolution. Don’t include the player; just the slide. Most courses are usually 4:3 or 16:9.
• Create a PowerPoint file at the same resolution as the course images.
• Create a Storyline file at the same resolution as the PowerPoint file.
• Go through the course using a screen capture application. This will capture all of your course screens. If you have interactions, you’ll go through those as well. You want a copy of every possible screen. Just click on everything clickable. I’d even go through the quizzes, just so you have the screens. You can use that content later.
• Review the screens you captured and get rid of duplicates.
• Save the separate frames captured as image files.
• Batch insert the screen capture images using the album feature in PowerPoint. I like to force them to fit the slide. That way I don’t need to do any adjustments. Things should be aligned.
• Import the PowerPoint slides into Storyline.
• From there, it’s a matter or making some edits and adding interactions, quizzes, and whatever else the course requires.
• For example, you could take the screen for a tabs interaction and combine them into one slide with layers for each tab. Then add hotspot triggers to the layers.

Example: Course Converted to HTML5

I created an example course using the steps I outlined above. For the demo, I copied the old course screens and created new slides Storyline. Then I published in HTML5. It only took about 10 minutes and considering the time spend, looks pretty decent.

It’s definitely a good solution for a lot of the old compliance training that needs to go from Flash to HTML5, or if you need to update a course and don’t have the source files.

Click here to view the example HTML5 course.

Obviously, the best solution is to rebuild the course from scratch. That works fine if you have a handful of courses. But if you have dozens (or hundreds) that need to be converted to HTML5, then this is a viable solution for many of those courses.

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Many of you have to convert old Flash courses to HTML5. All you have is the published course but not the original source files. It’s easy enough to extract the media (like images and video) from the published output. But adding text from the old course isn’t as easy because most Flash courses don’t allow selecting text to copy and paste. And who wants to spend hours retyping the text?

Here are a couple of simple ways to copy the text from old Flash e-learning courses that you can add to updated HTML5 e-learning courses without having to retype everything. This works whether you’re using Storyline or Rise.

Use OneNote to Convert Text from Image for Flash to HTML5 Courses

Many of you have OneNote. It’s a great application included in the Microsoft Office products. OneNote has a screen capture feature and the option to copy text from the captured image.

• Play the old Flash-based course and capture screens using OneNote’s screen clipping feature (or insert an image captured from some other application).
• Right-click on the image to copy text from the picture.
• Once you have the text copied, paste into your new slide.
• Watch the tutorial on YouTube.

Use ShareX to Convert Text from Images for Flash to HTML5 Courses

ShareX is free and works great. I use it quite a bit to do screenshots for uploading to various image sites. It also has an OCR feature where it can pull text from an image that can be copied and pasted into a new slide.

• Choose text capture (OCR).
• Select the course slide.
• ShareX extracts the text from the image.
• Copy and paste the text into the new slide.
• Watch the tutorial on YouTube.

Those are two free to low-cost options to quickly get the text from previous e-learning courses.  Many of you already own OneNote, and if you don’t, you can always use the free ShareX application to do your screen grabs and OCR text conversion. Once you have the text, it’s easy enough to copy and paste it into your new course.

Obviously, this is still a bit tedious, but it is an easy way to get the text from your old e-learning courses when you no longer have the source files or original content.

I hope that helps.

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Developing the content and flow of an interactive branched scenarios is one thing. Creating the visual structure is another. In today’s post we’ll look at some key considerations when building scenarios and come up with a simple storyboarding process to help think through the scenario design and layouts.

Branched Scenarios: 3C Model

Years ago, I introduced the 3C model to build interactive scenarios: challenge, choices, and consequences. It’s a simple model to help think through the content requirements. It starts with challenging the learner’s understanding through some sort of contextual and real-world situation where decisions need to be made. Give them some choices to make. And the choices produce consequences.

The consequences can be simple with immediate feedback or the 3C model can be compounded where each consequence produces another challenge and branches indefinitely. Of course, it’s hard enough to get your subject matter expert to give you ten good multiple-choice questions, let alone provide all of the content and nuance to build a complex branched interaction. I prefer a simple scenario structure.

Branched Scenarios: Visual Structure

A branched scenario starts with a blank screen. And from there, we add the scenario structure. But what exactly is it that we need and how do we design the screen layouts?

Let’s start with what needs to be on the screen. Here are a few of the main onscreen components that make up many branched scenarios:

• Background: the background (or environment) is an easy way to establish context. I usually look for a single image that helps do that.
• Characters: generally speaking there are actors in the scenario. Sometimes they can be implied and don’t need to be onscreen. For example, looking at an email or text message implies that someone in the scenario is viewing it. Or perhaps, the learner is the character. However, in many cases, the scenario actually features characters. Is it one or more? How do you show back and forth conversation?
• Challenge: the screen consists of some text that presents the situation and challenge. That text needs to go somewhere. Does it go up, down, left or right? Is it there to start, or does it get exposed when the user does something like click a button?
• Choices: once the challenge is presented, the learner has to make a decision. That usually means there’s an assortment of choices and then some sort of button (or other interaction) to make the selection. Where will that be on the screen?
• Consequences: each choice usually includes some sort of feedback. It could be all of the feedback or perhaps an alert that the decision has created a new challenge. In either case, how is that displayed?

Branched Scenario: Simplify with a Storyboard

As you review the list above, it becomes apparent that there’s a lot to put on the screen. In workshops we usually create a blank slide and then a box to represent all of those things above. Then we play around with layouts to see what we can get onscreen. After that, we explore different ways to move the content offscreen and use triggered actions to expose the content.

There’s a lot that makes up the scenario layout. The image below represents some common scenario layouts.

Of course, there are all sorts of ways to structure a scenario. Keep in mind not everything needs to go on one screen. You can use layers and lightboxes to expose additional content. Mouseover interactions are great to expand information without requiring that the person leave the current screen.

One way to get started is to create three blank slides: one for each part of the 3C model.

• Challenge slide: set up the scenario by adding visual context and all the supporting text. You’re not writing War and Peace. Keep it short and get right to the point.
• Choice slide: determine how many choices the person will have. Also determine if you will present ancillary options. For example, you may want some links to talk to team members or contact HR for more assistance. What will those look like, where will they be placed on the screen, and what does the content look like?
• Consequence slide: what feedback needs to be displayed? Is it just text? Will there be a character?

Once you have the three elements on separate slides, it’s easier to see what you have to expose during the scenario. From there you can begin to assemble the screen. Some people create cheats. For example, create a “folder” that can be placed on a different slide or layer. The folder is a good metaphor and fits a lot of contexts. It’s also a nice visual that can hold a lot of content. It allows you to get rid of character images, buttons and a lot of the other clutter that you have using a single slide.

In a previous post, I simplified the process by suggesting that you use a visual container. The container adds context and holds the text. That’s one option. But there are a lot more. The key is to determine what you need first using the three slides. And then from there play around with ideas on what to add to the screen and what to expose later and when to expose it.

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Do you need to be an e-learning programmer to build e-learning courses?

A lot has changed with e-learning over the past decade or so. As noted before, it used to require a team of people that usually included someone with some programming skills. However, as the rapid e-learning market emerged, the need for programming skills virtually disappeared. That’s great because it opened the industry to a lot of people and organizations.

The challenge though is that while you don’t need to be a programmer, it is still good to know a little about some basic programming. For example, one question we see quite a bit is how to use web objects in Storyline or embed content using the embed block in Rise. Often this involves using an iframe or some other simple web page. For the most part, it’s straightforward. But sometimes it means tweaking the embed codes provided by some services.

Because many people come to the industry without this type of experience or a background in programming, it’s a good idea to have access to some resources and tools. Today, we’ll look at a few places to go for quick help.

E-Learning Programmer: HTML Basics

W3 Schools: I recommend this site quite a bit. There’s a lot of good info, tutorials, and ways to test code on your own.

• Learn to create a basic web page to use for local web objects in Storyline. Often, I create simple pages with resource links and then link to them locally. This allows the html page to become part of the published course.
• Learn to work with iframes and embed codes in Rise. Embed codes can be tricky sometimes based on what the source site provides. Often there’s a lot of gibberish that needs to be removed. The more you know about the iframe basics, the better off you’ll be.
• Here’s a good resource from David Tait on using iframes in Storyline.

Like many of you, I’m no programmer, so I lean on this site to learn to do basic tweaks to some of the code I need to modify for my courses.

E-Learning Programmer: JavaScript Basics

Some of you may think that JavaScript is some sort of note you write to pass to your local barista. That’s OK. Because this post is for you.

Again, you don’t need to be a programmer to build great e-learning. The authoring software does all of the heavy lifting. However, using JavaScript does extend what you can do with the software and adds a lot more customization and functionality. Thus, knowing a little can go a long way. This is especially true with Storyline because on the Storyline side it’s just a matter of adding a trigger to execute some code pasted in the trigger. But it does mean, you have some code and you know at least what to do with it to get the results you want.

Here are some examples from the community to get ideas on how to leverage JavaScript in your e-learning courses.

Here are some good resources to learn JavaScript for free:

• Introduction to JavaScript
• Free Code Camp
• Guru99
• EdX JavaScript

You don’t need to be a programmer but having some basic understanding of the code that can extend what you do in your e-learning courses is a good idea. Are there other free resources for learning code that you’ve used? If you do use JavaScript in your Storyline course, what are ways you’ve used it?

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There’s a lot that goes into building interactive scenarios. Obviously content is king and critical to building a branched scenario that is both engaging and effective. One key part of the scenario construction is establishing context. The good thing is that a single image often suffices to establish the scenario context.

The free stock images I shared recently are perfect for building interactive scenarios and establishing visual context.

• Free illustrated scenario backgrounds
• Free office scenario backgrounds

I’ve had a few questions on how to set up the slides using the scenario images, so I’ll show a couple of easy ways to use them.

Interactive Scenarios: Create Multiple Layouts

You can create as many layouts as you like in the master slide. Thus you can create a scenario slide with dozens of layouts and save it as a template. Anytime you want to build a scenario, start with the scenario template and it saves you from looking for the images and inserting them into the slides. Everything’s already there and ready to go.

Here’s a quick tutorial to show how that works.

Click to view the scenario tutorial.

Interactive Scenarios: Create Multiple States

Another reusable option is to insert a background image and then establish a number of states for that image. You can set any state as the initial state and never have to access the other states. And if you want to be clever, you can use triggers to dynamically switch the background from one environment to another using a single image.

Here’s a quick tutorial that show how to set up the background states and dynamically change them with triggers.

Click to view the scenario tutorial.

There are advantages to each method:

• Working from the master slide means that the background image can be applied universally to the layout and impact all of the slides that use the layout.
• Working with image states on the slide level gives you more control over the background and how it’s used with triggers specific to that slide.
• There’s no reason you couldn’t apply the image states to the layouts which would mean fewer layouts. The layouts can be swapped using triggers and variables.

Key Point: it’s easy to get lost in building complex scenarios which can consume a lot of production time. I always work from the perspective of keeping production simple and as reusable as possible. And with Storyline 360, you can share with your co-workers using the team slides feature.

Inserting the images into a file and saving it as a template will save you lots of time and means you won’t have to dig around looking for the images. They’ll always be right at your fingertips.

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A while back I shared some free illustrated backgrounds that you can use for your branched scenario courses in e-learning. Those worked great for the classic illustrated characters.

I’ve been working on interactive scenarios for a few upcoming workshops and created some background images that we’ll use to build interactive branched scenarios. As you can see below, the backgrounds work well for the modern illustrated characters as well as with the photographic characters.

The free download includes the original images as well as a folder with images cropped to 16:9 so they fit perfectly in 16×9 slides.

Bonus Tip for Branched Scenario Images

One way to use the images, is to create a course file and insert all of the backgrounds on different layouts in the master slide. This way you can have one starter file for those interactive scenarios and then dynamically select the layout when creating new slides. Here’s a tutorial that shows how to create templates for reusable interactive scenarios.

Free Downloads

Here are links to download the backgrounds to use with your branched scenarios.

• Original scenarios for classic illustrated characters: Storyline file and PowerPoint file.
• Office scenarios for modern and photographic characters: download
• Branched Scenario Background Images – Hallways

I hope you can use them in your courses and for your branched scenarios. If you do, let me know.

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Between the workshops I run, blog emails received, and helping in the community, I get to see hundreds of e-learning courses. A common issue for many courses is transitioning from sharing content to helping people use the content to make the appropriate decisions.

Many course developers focus on making the content interactive, which is good. But much of the interactivity is novel or exists at a very basic level. What tends to be missing is the more complex decision-making interactivity.

The challenge is how to move past rote facts and get to a place where the learners can practice making the kinds of decisions they’d  make in the real world.

Interactive E-Learning 101

There are some core building blocks for interactive e-learning:

• provide relevant content that fits in context to their real world
• instead of pushing content, getting them to pull it
• create ways to explore the content
• challenge them with decision-making activities or scenarios

We’ve discussed many of these things in previous blog posts.

“What If?” Scenarios

The one thing that could add to this pursuit is to provide more “what if” scenarios:

“What happens if I do this? Or what happens if I choose this other option?”

I was thinking more about this the other day as we were presenting on how to use variables in one of our webinars. Variables allow the learner to do something that can be tracked. And then use that information to provide feedback unique to the learner’s experience. They’re perfect for creating this type of training.

• Challenge the learner to analyze all of the available information and form some sort of hypothesis.
• And then create the means for them to apply it and see what happens.
• Provide the appropriate feedback based on the results.
• Let them make adjustments and test it again.

The obvious reason why we don’t do more of this in our courses is that it takes more time to build. The reality is that most clients seem satisfied with basic click-and-read type content. And building more complex interactivity takes time, especially if we want to do it right. It also means more nuance to the way we package the course content. This wouldn’t work if all of the decisions to be made are very obvious.

Another challenge is that we tend to be in this somewhat nonsensical tracking and quizzing mode where it seems we’re less concerned with the actual learning and more concerned with course completion. In that world, there’s little room for testing ideas. And once the course is completed, it’s usually locked down by the learning management system. Thus it’s not even a great resource for reviewing later.

Creating these types of “what if” scenarios won’t work for all courses and content. And they do take more time and skill to build. However, they can enhance the learning experience and make the courses more engaging.

What types of courses do you think lend themselves to this type of training? And how would you set up the scenarios and process to test ideas?

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