E-Learning Heroes - Advice and ideas from the Articulate Community

Hello All,

I'm working on a string of courses and each one of them needs to have a FAQ. I was looking for some more ideas on how to build something like this or make it better. I only have Storyline so I can't import an Engage interaction I don't have and can't build (although it would make it alot easier from what I've seen).

How do you incorporate FAQ's into your Storyline projects? Here's what I've come up with so far.

Rick,

Personally, (and you may have missed it...), I would just use the built-in Storyline FAQ interaction.

Bruce

Thanks for the reply Bruce!

I was going for something like I saw in one of Tom's demos:

where the answers to the questions seem to 'slide' out. Maybe I'm trying to be to fancy about it. I'll take a look at the one included with storyline and see if it suits my purpose.

Any other feedback on how others handle FAQ in thier courses is greatly appreciated!

Rick

You can always animate the Layers/Answers in the SL, have them fly in and out when buttons are pressed.

Bruce

I have not looked at Tom's demo, but it looks like he is using one of the standard Engage interactions in the pic you have posted.  If you have Engage (and don't need the course to run in iOS or html5) you could always create the FAQ using the Engage interaction and then  create a custom player tab and have the FAQ open in a lightbox.

Thanks for the reply Nancy! Unfortunately I don't have Engage, so I'm trying to figure out ways to simulate the functionality of that product. i've only been playing with storyline for about two weeks now and I can definately say that I know way more today then I did that first day. These forums are awsome and I've picked up alot from them.

Bruce: I tried the built in FAQ Interaction in Storyline and, of course, it works, but it seems to take up quite a bit of real estate. Although it does give me more ideas of ways I can use different aspects of Storyline to accomplish different things. Learn something new everyday!

Hi Rick, I wonder if you could try a combination of my solution and the one Bruce gave you if you are worried about the real estate.  Use the built in FAQ template but have it open in a lightbox when a user clicks on a custom player tab or just a button that you have placed on the slides.

Rick;

I used the scrolling panel to do one.  It allows for easy updating.

The submissions come through to a google docs form then I answer them and add a new line and lightbox the slide.

Here is a link to the faq.

Tim

Tim,

A whole 'nother level just opened up to me! Thank you for the example & the inspiration!

Somewhere, during the design phase, the question of user feedback came up and I didn't have a good answer. Your FAQ is just what I was looking for (I think).

I have so much to learn.

Rick

Markers might be another good alternative for an FAQ. You could add the FAQ content directly to a marker label rather than creating a separate layer for each answer. Here's a quick published example of an idea, using your original file. Source file's here.

Hi Tim, cool example!

Could you make a Screenr on how you did that? I think more people would be interested to see how you set it up.

I just tried Tim's techniques and found it really easy to set up with google docs & web objects! I didn't even know I was capable of that!

Jeanette: I'm still playing around with the markers to see if I can get the 'look' I'm going for.

I saw something somewhere that said "You don't know what you don't know."

This little exercise with the FAQ has shown me jsut how true that is (for me at least).

Thanks for all the input so far!

Rick

Jeff;

I would love to do a screenr or even share my files and I will when I can but I am away from high speed internet for a few days.  I cant even watch a screenr let alone make one right now on dial up speed.

Tim

haha, Tim we'll eagerly await your return to the online world

I stopped in the office for a couple of minutes so here is the story file.  I cut out some slides with videos etc to bring the size down but you will get the idea of how it was made anyway.

Tim

Thanks, Tim! Thanks, Everyone!

I have played around all week with all of these great ideas and this is what I came up with. If you publish it you can see the full functionality of the google forms!

Nice work, Rick! And I really like the way you made the menu in the lower-left with the hotspot. Super creative and functional!

Thanks for the encouragment, Jeanette! I credit the following for what you see in the story file:

Hot-spot Menu

Ron Price:  http://www.articulate.com/support/kb_article.php?product=st1&id=bqkbyjxpn7nh

Google Docs as Web Objects

Tim Hillier: http://training.mdambulance.com/moodle/mod/resource/view.php?id=605

FAQ Template

Bruce Graham: for pointing out the FAQ Interaction Template

Simulated tooltips

Screenr (where I initially got the idea): http://www.screenr.com/pfn8

Thanks for all the great ideas!

What a fantastic thread! Thanks for all the examples and files everyone. My head is buzzing with the Google docs insert. You all rock

Ditto Natalia! 

And great work Rick - I'm pretty new to Storyline myself, and I really appreciate that you posted your questions and results - very inspirational!!!

Thanks Diana!

The more ideas people are exposed to, the more creative they can be (IMHO)!