Using Subtle Animations and Transitions in Your E-Learning Courses #201

Using Animation in E-Learning #201: ChallengeRecap

Animations and transitions are an effective tool to draw focus and attention to an area of your slides. Used appropriately, animations can help learners visualize relationships for more success grasping and applying course material.

Challenge of the Week

This week, your challenge is to share an example of practical entrance and exit animations for slide content in e-learning.

New Entries Only!

The focus this week is on using animation effects for emphasis in your presentation design. In earlier animation challenges, we focused on educational animations, storytelling, characters, and drawing effects.

Because this week's challenge is narrowly focused on animating slide content to give the course elements a sense of movement, I’m asking that you only share new examples that have not been posted in previous challenges.

Where can I find starter content?

If you’re looking for content to animate and you’re an Articulate 360 subscriber, feel free to use a handful of Content Library templates. They're a perfect starting point for your animation wizardry!

For those of you who aren’t working in 360, you can grab several free templates from our downloads hub. You're more than welcome to mix and match templates for this week's entries.

Share Your Source Files!

It’s no secret that community members love freebies! It’s also no secret that the challenges are one of the most visible ways course designers get their work in front of the community. If you’re up for it, please consider including a download along with your example this week.

Animation Challenges

Animation and Transitions in Storyline 360

Share Your E-Learning Work

  • Comments: Use the comments section below to share a link to your published example and blog post.
  • Forums: Start  your own thread and share a link to your published example..
  • Personal blog:  If you have a blog, please consider writing about your challenges. We’ll link back to your posts so the great work you’re sharing gets even more exposure.
  • Twitter: If you share your demos on Twitter, try using #ELHChallenge so your tweeps can track your e-learning coolness.

Last Week’s Challenge:

To help you transition into this week’s animation challenge, take a few moments to check out the lightbox examples your fellow challengers shared over the past week:

Using Lightbox Slides in E-Learning #200

Using Lightbox Slides in E-Learning #200: Challenge | Recap

Wheel wishes for an animated week, E-Learning Heroes!

New to the E-Learning Challenges?

The weekly e-learning challenges are ongoing opportunities to learn, share, and build your e-learning portfolios. You can jump into any or all of the previous challenges anytime you want. I’ll update the recap posts to include your demos.

160 Comments
Jodi M. Sansone

What Breed Is Right For You? Subtle Version: https://chilp.it/b29015a Not-So-Subtle Version: https://chilp.it/2e2ddfb Download File: https://chilp.it/bfeaaba I had to think about what "subtle" meant. I think it means understated, but effective. I heard David Anderson say once in an Articulate Live session (haven't plugged it in a while) "If it moves, it gets noticed," so how do you draw attention to something without being annoying? So I played with my story--a subtle version and a not-so-subtle version. Same file, different animations, aided by some audio. This is a simple, flat-art 3 slide story. It combines recent challenges: glossary and lightboxes. Special thanks to Ridvan Saglam who linked me to Melissa's javascript full screen /background code. And I used a c... Expand

Ryan Derber
Jodi M. Sansone

Hi Ryan, Well, that's how I interpreted the challenge and I'm sure there will be a lot of other ways to do it. As for sound effects and audio, the short answer to your question is that I have a couple go-to places. Both are pay services. For things like clicks, timers, generic music I normally check AudioBlocks first--recently I needed some underwater sounds for my Aquarium examples and the sound of a tire being flipped. If I need something like a newscast background or something offbeat I use SoundDogs. At minimum I always try to use a click because I like the audio reinforcement to signal that you just touched something. I'm always in search of the perfect click. As for the music, n this challenge I used audio background music just to entertain myself--from Itunes. There a... Expand

Ryan Derber
Jeffrey Riley
Taylor Tomanio
Ryan Derber
Jodi M. Sansone
Nancy Woinoski
Jeffrey Riley
Lijun  Cui
Katie Davis
Ridvan  Saglam