Create E-Learning Like a Pro: How To Build Your First Studio ’13 Course

Whether you’ve recently purchased Articulate Studio ’13 or you’re trying out a free 30-day trial, you might wish you could get a little guidance with your first project. We know it can be intimidating when you’re new to a software tool—or, in this case, a whole suite. The good news is, the tools in Studio ’13 are all extremely easy to use. By following these simple steps, you’ll be able to create awesome e-learning courses in no time.

Create a Simple Course Using Presenter

The first important thing to understand about Articulate Presenter is that it is a PowerPoint add-in. This means you’re still working in PowerPoint, but an additional tab (labeled Articulate) lets you add new features and publish your course to various output formats.

The best way to get started is to create a few simple content slides that contain some text and multimedia. Try your hand at creating a branched scenario by using hyperlinks to link from one slide to several others. Once you’ve got a few content slides in your queue, play around with the Player features … maybe even try branding it with your organization’s logo and custom color scheme.

Record a Personalized Screencast with Replay

Once you’ve got a bit of content in your project, consider adding in a screen recording to demonstrate a process or show off an application. Articulate Replay is the awesome tool designed to help you create screen recordings in no time at all.

The Replay tool lets you play your videos as multiple “tracks,” which makes it easy to create image-in-image recordings featuring both the screen recording and the webcam recording. This can help you create more personalized videos that include the presenter’s image rather than just his or her voice.

Once you finish a screen recording in Replay, you can add it directly to your Presenter project by using the Publish to Articulate Presenter option in Replay.

Create an Interaction for Your Learners with Engage

At this point in the process, your first Studio project is off and running. Now take a hard look at your content. Could you spice it up, or include additional interactivity? Articulate Engage is the perfect way to do that. It offers you 20 pre-made interactions, which are the easiest way to add click-and-reveal content to your projects.

To create your own interaction, simply launch Engage and choose the type of interaction you want to build. All you need to do is drop in your text and media and adjust your color scheme. Then, you can easily add your Engage interaction directly to your Presenter project by selecting the Publish to Articulate Presenter option.

Add a Quizmaker Quiz to Your Project

Once you’ve got a solid course that contains all of your required content, you’re probably wondering how to assess whether your learners retained any of their new knowledge. The best tool for that is Articulate Quizmaker ’13, since you can choose from 25 question types.

Try building out a simple quiz to get started. Customize your questions, response options, and your feedback layer to match the look and feel of your project. Once you get the hang of it, try turning a regular slide into an interactive quiz with the Convert to Freeform quiz tool. When your quiz is ready, you can pop it into your Presenter course by selecting the Publish to Articulate Presenter option in the publishing panel.

Now hop back over to Presenter and assess whether the whole course fits together. Make any final edits or adjustments before you publish your final result. And voila! You’ve pulled together your very first Studio ’13 course, using elements from each tool.

Do you have any best practices or tips to share about building your first course with Articulate Studio ’13? If you do, please leave a comment below, and let others learn from your experiences!

You can always sign up for a fully functional, free trial of Articulate software. And don’t forget to post your questions and comments in the forums! We’re here to help. For more e-learning tips, examples, and downloads, follow us on Twitter.