Excited! Wary... Curious? ~Anxious~ - Encouraging use of Storyline
Jan 29, 2014
Hello Storyline Community!
I'm the excited, wary, curious, and anxious new user of Storyline (and BOY am I impressed, too) but I have a group of talented people that I need to help settle on a single emotion - MOTIVATED!
I'm a tinkerer and I love to play with software tools and see what neat things I can do to give my eLearning some much needed oomph, but I work in a RAPID eLearning world that is still deeply entrenched in the old recorded delivery of PowerPoint days. Many would love to change, but the rapid development timelines are not getting any shorter and free time is something you get when you decide to ignore your family for a few days after work.
We produce a variety of content with a heavy focus on some technical products (data communications and networking) and related positioning and customer engagement. My dedicated and talented people are ready to make the change but they are OVERWHELMED with the possibilities! It's the same reason I've never picked up scrapbooking... waaaaaaay too many choices and time consuming "research" for just the right way to present my memories!
Here's my ask: what are some suggestions for ways to make my team feel less intimidated and overwhelmed by the limitless creative potential of Articulate Storyline? I want them to do more than simply import PowerPoint slides, but I don't want them to feel they need to spend a week, or even several full days, exploring the myriad choices available to them. I want them to start small and simple then gradually expand their Storyline vocabulary as they master some useful fundamentals.
The tutorials on here are simply spectacular and the advice from the Heroes and other participants has been beyond helpful, but if I were to send my team on the same scavenger hunt I've conducted, they'd quit after 5 minutes. I need to spoon feed until they are ready for some solid Storyline food!
What does the hive mind recommend? A select few tutorials on basic topics? A template with only a couple of features included? We had some well-intended internal training that did not hit the mark, so I need to take a new and comforting approach.
I anxiously await your words of wisdom!
Your new Storyline convert and potentially cult-like devotee - Lori Greenberg
(P.S. - I'm officially head over heels for Storylion. MORE STORYLION PLEASE, BRUCE GRAHAM!)
3 Replies
Hi Lori.
Welcome to the community. I would suggest to focus on learning Storyline a piece at a time. If you limit the options, it might not feel so intimidating to your team. For example, on your next course just focus on simple drag and drop options and nothing else. Next try out variables. After that, try to combine the two. It's like choosing a vehicle. It could be overwhelming if I gave you a list of all vehicles in production right now. But if I break it down to trucks, cars, or SUVs, , and then once you've chosen what type, the list could be broken down further. You could take the same approach to this as you would any course. Break it down to the simple tools first and then move on to the advanced (fun) stuff.
Giving your team members small challenges might also help to motivate them to learn the software. Showing them what you can do with it may also motivate them to try new things. That's what happened in my team. I showed them what could be accomplished with the software we use and it motivated them to try it out too.
Don't forget that there are some courses available on Lynda.com as well. One of them produced by our very own Daniel Brigham.
Lori, sounds like you are the one who takes the initiative to learn new technology and you are attempting to motivate your folks. I try to get my coworkers excited about cool content by creating simple templates to help get them started and then by showing examples of how I created or made an action work, just like here and I direct them to some of the tutorials here also. I find that most folks do not know the capability of power point much less engage or storyline. Dropping documents into Power Point is easy, making a creative, engaging e-learning course takes imagination and vision. Examine your team and determine who is creative and who is not then try teaming a creative person up with a not so creative person. Jerson it right on with give your team a small challenge project, I did a sticky note challenge; Create a 5 minute program on the use of sticky notes, thats about as simple of a subject as one could pick.
Explain to the audience of why sticky notes are so great to use.
Show example of how sticky notes are used.
Good Luck
HI Lori,
I just wanted to welcome you to the Heroes community and I love your enthusiasm, and think it must be contagious among your colleagues! Dane and Jerson have offered some great thoughts here and I'd also thinking that providing your team some templates would also help them get started - I often find that the most daunting portion - looking at a blank white slide and thinking, gosh where do I begin?!
Good luck and please let us know if you need anything else!
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