Are you looking for a way to make e-learning courses more dynamic and engaging? Look no further than drag-and-drop interactions. Drag-and-drop interactions give your learners the opportunity ...
Published 7 years ago
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Thanks for posting these, Nicole. I'm a fan of drag-and-drop interactions - so many creative possibilities! But there's one reason I've limited my use of them in Storyline. Maybe you can help with the problem I've encountered: no partial credit.
Forgive me for using one of the interactions you posted above as an example. I'm not picking on you - as far as I can tell, this is how Storyline handles drag-and-drop, and it perfectly illustrates what I'm talking about. Faced with seven steps to put in order, I might mistakenly switch the order of steps 3 and 4. But I've placed steps 1, 2, 5, 6, and 7 correctly.
I'm pretty close - I'm 71% correct! But the only feedback I get is, "nope, that's not right." So I start juggling steps, but blindly: I don't know which (or even how many) items are already in the right place. Maybe I'm close, or maybe I got all of them scrambled; I simply don't know. I keep moving things and hitting SUBMIT, but I get the same feedback again and again and don't know if I'm warmer or colder in my hunt for the right order. My irritation blooms. I grow bitter. I lose faith in humanity, take it out on my dog, and drink more than I should. (OK, it's not THAT dramatic. But it IS frustrating.)
In the past, I worked with my Flash developers to write code that would provide partial credit so that when the learner clicked SUBMIT, the correct answers triumphantly stayed in place and the misplaced items slunk back to their starting points to be re-sorted and reattempted. And the feedback could be varied appropriately (and instructively). ("Ooooo, you're so close! Remember ____, and try again!" vs. "Dude. Start the module over. You're not even in the ballpark.")
But if that's possible in Storyline, I haven't uncovered the secret dialog box yet! My only salvation has been to limit the attempts to just a couple, or (unfortunately!) just figure out some other, less frustrating interaction to use instead.
Do you know the answer?
Forgive me for using one of the interactions you posted above as an example. I'm not picking on you - as far as I can tell, this is how Storyline handles drag-and-drop, and it perfectly illustrates what I'm talking about. Faced with seven steps to put in order, I might mistakenly switch the order of steps 3 and 4. But I've placed steps 1, 2, 5, 6, and 7 correctly.
I'm pretty close - I'm 71% correct! But the only feedback I get is, "nope, that's not right." So I start juggling steps, but blindly: I don't know which (or even how many) items are already in the right place. Maybe I'm close, or maybe I got all of them scrambled; I simply don't know. I keep moving things and hitting SUBMIT, but I get the same feedback again and again and don't know if I'm warmer or colder in my hunt for the right order. My irritation blooms. I grow bitter. I lose faith in humanity, take it out on my dog, and drink more than I should. (OK, it's not THAT dramatic. But it IS frustrating.)
In the past, I worked with my Flash developers to write code that would provide partial credit so that when the learner clicked SUBMIT, the correct answers triumphantly stayed in place and the misplaced items slunk back to their starting points to be re-sorted and reattempted. And the feedback could be varied appropriately (and instructively). ("Ooooo, you're so close! Remember ____, and try again!" vs. "Dude. Start the module over. You're not even in the ballpark.")
But if that's possible in Storyline, I haven't uncovered the secret dialog box yet! My only salvation has been to limit the attempts to just a couple, or (unfortunately!) just figure out some other, less frustrating interaction to use instead.
Do you know the answer?
Hi Greg! Thanks for posting your question. A few features that could help you achieve exactly the customization you're looking for would be 1) variables and 2) drag-and-drop states. Are you familiar with these handy features?
For example, take a look at this example (included in the above article)
http://articulate-heroes-authoring.s3.amazonaws.com/Nicole/Demos/Drag-Drop-CanadianGeo/DD-CanadianGeo-output/story_html5.html
This Freeform drag-and-drop makes use of the drag-and-drop states that are built into Storyline. You can read more about them here:
https://community.articulate.com/articles/3-cool-ways-to-use-storyline-states
Notice how when you click the submit button for that interaction, the ones that are incorrect turn red? That's a way you can provide partial feedback to your learners. I can do this so that when learners click submit they know which steps are correct, and which are wrong.
It's really all about how you want your interaction to work. You can customize the drag-and-drop interaction as much as you want by adding more triggers to the submit button that display more/less custom captions & hints and information to your learners depending on how they answered the question. The possibilities really are endless with Storyline! But diving deeper into variables and drag-and-drop states is probably your answer here.
Hope this helps!
For example, take a look at this example (included in the above article)
http://articulate-heroes-authoring.s3.amazonaws.com/Nicole/Demos/Drag-Drop-CanadianGeo/DD-CanadianGeo-output/story_html5.html
This Freeform drag-and-drop makes use of the drag-and-drop states that are built into Storyline. You can read more about them here:
https://community.articulate.com/articles/3-cool-ways-to-use-storyline-states
Notice how when you click the submit button for that interaction, the ones that are incorrect turn red? That's a way you can provide partial feedback to your learners. I can do this so that when learners click submit they know which steps are correct, and which are wrong.
It's really all about how you want your interaction to work. You can customize the drag-and-drop interaction as much as you want by adding more triggers to the submit button that display more/less custom captions & hints and information to your learners depending on how they answered the question. The possibilities really are endless with Storyline! But diving deeper into variables and drag-and-drop states is probably your answer here.
Hope this helps!
- Well THAT was fast - thanks for getting back right away! This is helpful. I hadn't gotten to the Canadian geography example when I wrote - the sales example sparked me because it illustrated a frustration I've had with designing DnD interactions so I just started typing!
I'm off to go play with Freeform. Thanks for guiding me!
(correcting a URL above - it got an extra ")" at the end that leads us astray) https://community.articulate.com/articles/3-cool-ways-to-use-storyline-states- You're very welcome Greg, thanks for leaving a thoughtful and detailed comment. I'm sure others in the community share the same very thought that you did and also didn't know about the drag-and-drop states. They are a little known feature. You might want to stay tuned because this article was actually just 1 in a series of 4 articles I'm writing all about Storyline drag-and-drops. I'm also going to dive deeper into Freeform slides and how to use & customize them (including mentioning the drag-and-drop states) and I will also have a few other articles that explore other drag-and-drop features and also general design tips for creating d-and-ds. And thanks for letting me know about the typo in the URL ! Fixed it :)