Honorable Mention winners of Articulate Storyline Guru Contest dazzle as they teach

Our next group of Articulate Storyline Guru Contest Honorable Mention winners shows how a spoonful of smart design can make dense information easily digestible, supremely navigable, and remarkably enjoyable. Learn about planets or safe-cracking in Enders Design’s Enders Collection course, or get down and dirty with eVision Design’s Recycling course. Brush up on domestic geography in NuggetHead Studioz’s U.S. State Capitals course and GanTek Multimedia’s State Facts course, or nurture your inner alchemist in Elearning Laboratory’s The Periodic Table course. In all of these, you’ll see extraordinary Articulate Storyline work packed with facts that may even land you a trivia crown.

View The Enders Collection

If you’re curious about what’s possible in Articulate Storyline, then take Mike Ender’s whirlwind tour. His winning entry includes six demos that showcase a dizzying number of Storyline features. Mike has so impressed us over the years, we recruited him to join the Community team here at Articulate! You can reach out to Mike anytime on E-Learning Heroes.

Mike strings together his demos with a quest to find Captain Smiley. On your mission, you wind through an assortment of modules that run the gamut from informational to downright goofy. A planets demo, featuring trigger-powered tabs and animated content, brushes up on your space savvy. An interactive map exercise gets you acquainted with New York State counties. And a safe-cracking challenge tests your thievish skills by asking you to guess the secret variable-driven safe code. Through it all, variables also keep track of your “smiley count” to unlock a surprise section—a visit with “Disco Dave,” where you try keyboard-controlled poses and expressions to bust a move!

Why six diverse demos? Mike explains: “Building these demos, I realized that Storyline gives me the power to create virtually anything. But what I didn’t know at the time is that Storyline also dramatically cuts down development time too. The power-packed, intuitive features bring so many efficiencies to course design.” One thing’s for sure: Mike sure put Storyline through its paces in this fun and whimsical bundle!

View Recycling

Sure, you sort your plastics from your trash … but what do you do with your coffee grounds and banana peels? Even if you’re “green savvy,” you’ll uncover environmentally friendly tips in eVision Design’s soup-to-nuts Recycling course.

Smart design masks the volume of information packed into this course. Embedded audio and video—rather than tomes of text—keep navigation tidy and streamlined. Designer Darla Wigginton notes, “We had long waited for a product that would give us a way to develop more engaging courses. Storyline fulfilled this hope in every regard and inspired us to create the type of engagement we envisioned. Honestly, Storyline surpassed our expectations.”

Interactive quizzes test how well you can apply what you learn. Our fave? The activity that challenges you to sort a heap of discards into the garbage, compost, and recycling streams. Who knew cleaning up could be so much fun? Thanks, eVision Design!

View U.S. State Capitals

Still haunted by the rote memorization of states and capitals in elementary school? Whether you remember them or not, U.S. State Capitals by NuggetHead Studioz makes learning, or relearning, your states and capitals a heck of a lot more interesting than it was using old-school flip cards. It’s a game, it’s a challenge, and it’s downright fun.

Opening with heartland Americana images and rippin’ music holds promise: this is no ordinary day at school! Choose a section of the country and plunge right into the states quiz, where you pick a state’s capital to rack up points. A bell ding and a green checkmark tell if you’re right, a buzz and a red X tell if you’re wrong, and all the while, variables accumulate your score. They even keep track of states you’ve browsed, which change color, and states you have yet to explore. Storyline’s variables, states, triggers, and slide layers features work hard to keep you engaged while you learn.

Designer Kevin Thorn conceptualized the course to showcase unique ways to score learners. “Initially I wanted to explore how Storyline handles accumulative scoring,” he says. “Using the power of variables, I was able to build a scoreboard to carry scoring from any of the scenes and track the progress.” NuggetHead Studioz, you’ve sure scored a big hit turning a dreary memorization task into a fun activity. Nice job!

View State Facts

Next up is another fresh take on U.S. geography, State Facts by GanTek Multimedia. One glance at Old Glory waving to crisp Fourth of July music sparks your patriotic interest and makes learning your states and capitals a matter of national pride. Bring on the apple pie, ice cream, and baseball!

An easy navigation menu offers you a choice of Study, Puzzle, or Challenge sections. Choose Study and swirling animated markers reveal fun facts about each state. Click on any marker and a lightbox arms you with all the facts you’ll need for the meanest pop quiz—including audio of each state’s song! Try the drag-and-drop puzzle to build your knowledge of geography, then go to the Challenge quiz (our fave) featuring slick animated questions that transition in and out on a timeline. And don’t forget to bring your “A” game: Storyline uses variables to keep track of your scores in the background.

Now, here’s the twist: designer Steve Gannon didn’t set out to learn states and capitals with his course—he developed it to learn about Storyline! “The best way to learn a new software tool is to jump in and try it out for a practical purpose. I really wanted to leverage Storyline’s features, including triggers and variables, the timeline, drag-and-drop functionality, and others. A simple U.S. states tool for elementary-school children fit the bill and Storyline, of course, was certainly up to the challenge. I learned so much during the development process!” We bet that even the sharpest geographer will learn something new about U.S. states in this course—and about Storyline, too!

View The Periodic Table

Do you remember feeling daunted looking up at the large, wall-mounted periodic table during science class? Well cringe no more: The Periodic Table by Elearning Laboratory opens up the world behind the numbers and symbols on the chart.

A foundation of Storyline’s slide layers, states, and variables features make it possible for the course to go deep on information without feeling cumbersome or difficult to navigate. A whopping 7,000 triggers power the table to reveal lightboxes with more layers and embedded web links. “What started out as an exploration of Storyline’s features became a desire to push the limits a bit—and Storyline managed all that content beautifully!” recalls designer Phil Mayor. “I was impressed that it could not only handle the demo, but also helped me create a great-looking educational tool.” Certainly, we were impressed with the way this course packs so much depth into a single slide. Way to go, Elearning Laboratory!

A big thanks to all of our Articulate Storyline Guru Contest winners for demonstrating Articulate Storyline’s simplicity and power in such innovative, delightful ways.