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As an e-learning developer, transforming static text content into something that’s fun and engaging is the cool and creative part of your job. But as with most things in life, it’s also a balancing act: interactions that simply add a few clicks to your course don’t necessarily create a better, more engaging learning experience. The key is to craft activities with a clearly articulated instructional purpose.

Let me show you what I mean. Below is an example I’m sure you’ve encountered before: a big long slide filled with text bullets.

View Before Slides

While this slide doesn’t look bad and the information is correct, there’s just way too much text, and it requires no engagement from the learner. After thinking about how each type of common e-learning interaction (drag-and-drop, click-and-reveal, hover-to-reveal, etc.) could make the material easier to read and absorb, we decided to go with a simple mouse-over interaction that displays the information bit by bit. Here’s the end result:

View After Slides | Download Template

Not only does the slide simply look nicer, but it’s also more inviting since it’s no longer a big, intimidating wall of static text. Let’s walk through how we transformed this static e-learning content into an improved learning experience.

Chunk it up

Large paragraphs of text presented all at once can feel overwhelming to learners. By creating this hover-to-reveal interaction, we broke the content into smaller, more digestible chunks, and presented each one individually. Both actions make it easier for the learner to focus on information and digest it in bite-size chunks.

Streamline content

Before, we had too much content to show all at once, so we had to deliver it over multiple slides. This added unnecessary bulk to the course. By turning this into a hover-and-reveal interaction, we can deliver this content on one slide. Streamlined content helps learners see right away what’s important, without having to read through all the information to decode it for themselves.

Give learners control

In the first version of this slide, the text dumped all the information on the learner at once. They really had no control over the order or amount of content coming at them. It’s a passive, dull, and tedious experience to slog their way through all that information.

But with the hover-and-reveal interaction, learners can interact with the screen to reveal the information at their own pace and in their preferred order. This gives learners a little more control of the learning experience.

More reading

This is just one of the many ways you can transform a static interaction into a more dynamic, engaging experience. If you’d like to learn more about some other ways to brighten up dull content and transform it into a more inviting learning experience, check out some of these helpful articles:

Do you have any ideas on presenting this type of content? If so, let us know in the comments!

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47 Comments
Ross Dewstow
Helen Tyson
Pam Robinson

I concur Helen. I think you missed the entire point of the exercise, Saldiray. It was, to reiterate the title of the lesson, how (she) transformed this static content (using the hover effect). Please remember, it was a lesson on how you can do just that. It displayed a fresh perspective on a common task that most people who create elearning often face. As just an average member of this community I have come to know and love, please keep in mind that some of us in this forum are new to Storyline 2 and need help unlocking the true potential of the tool. Other more seasoned members, may sometimes overthink our design, adding more than is necessary to get our topic across (when less is more). This served both purposes and with a nice design and flow. This was, as a lesson, and in ... Expand