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3 Ways to Create Drag-and-Drops with Storyline 360

NicoleLegault1's avatar
NicoleLegault1
Community Member
7 years ago

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 to make decisions and engage with course content, and can be an excellent learning tool when used appropriately. That begs the question, when should drag-and-drops be used?

In my experience, they can really come in handy when you want your learners to:

Storyline 360 offers a variety of ways to create drag-and-drop interactions. Let’s have a closer look at three easy techniques.

Graded Quiz Slides

Storyline 360 offers 11 graded question types, two of which are prebuilt drag-and-drop interactions. The nice thing about Storyline’s graded question slides is that they’re superquick and easy to set up since you don’t have to create a single trigger. All you have to do is select the type of drag-and-drop question you want—matching or sequence?—and insert your content.  

View a Storyline 360 Matching Drag-and-Drop Quiz Slide

View a Storyline 360 Sequence Drag-and-Drop Quiz Slide

Matching activities are great when you want learners to make a connection between several items, for example an event and the date it occurred. Sequence is great for having learners identify the order of a process or task.

Freeform

Freeform slides let you convert any regular slide into a graded drag-and-drop quiz slide in a few clicks. Freeform slides are a really powerful tool because they allow you to completely customize every single aspect of your slide and drag-and-drop interaction. Freeform is perfect when you want to create a drag-and-drop that is not a matching or sequence activity, for example, to sort incorrect and correct items or to match non-text items such as shapes or images. Here are some examples of customized drag-and-drop interactions created using Freeform slides:

View a Freeform Gamified Drag-and-Drop

View a Freeform Placing Drag-and-Drop Activity

To create a freeform drag-and-drop interaction, insert a new slide and click the “Convert to Freeform” button on the “Insert” tab of the Storyline 360 ribbon. Select the drag-and-drop option, then click Insert. Storyline will automatically create a graded drag-and-drop quiz slide, and will even add the “Submit” button and the feedback layers. You will be presented with “Form View,” where you can assign your drag items and your drop targets.

Storyline 360’s Drag-and-Drop Freeform Form View

When you’re in Form View, you’ll notice that there are options available to you in the ribbon.

Options available in Drag-and-Drop Freeform Form View

A few things you can do here: shuffle the answers, assign a results slide, and assign the number of attempts learners have. Above all, the one key feature you need to know about is the “Drag & Drop Options” button.

Drag & Drop Options

Knowing about these options can save you a ton of time and headaches. These options give you flexibility when you’re tweaking your drag-and-drop interaction to work just the way you want it. Need your drag items revealed one at a time? No problem! Do you want to allow multiple items onto one drop target? Just check the box. These options will let you customize your drag-and-drop interaction to behave just the way you want.

Triggers

There’s one more, little-known, way to create a very simple, ungraded drag-and-drop interaction by using a single trigger. You’ll need at least two objects on your slide to make this work. The “When” drop-down menu in the Trigger Wizard offers two options:

These Drag Drop Events are available in the Trigger Wizard

By using either of these options in a trigger with two objects from your slide, you can create a very simple drag-and-drop interaction. However, you can’t customize that interaction in any way and it can’t be graded. For that reason, it’s typically recommended to use the freeform drag-and-drop interaction, which is superpowerful, graded, and offers many options for customization.

In Sum

Creating drag-and-drop interactions with Storyline 360 is intuitive and easy, no matter which method you choose. Go ahead, build your own drag-and-drop interaction so you can see for yourself how quick and easy it is. Let me know how it turns out in the comments below!

Want to try something you learned here, but don’t have Articulate 360? Start a free 30-day trial, and come back to E-Learning Heroes regularly for more helpful advice on everything related to e-learning. If you have any questions, please share them in the comments.

Published 7 years ago
Version 1.0
  • BertSnow's avatar
    BertSnow
    Community Member
    Can I find the examples shown as Storyline files, so I can see how they were done (The Canadian Geography in particular). Thanks!
  • Hello. Can you give me instructions on how to complete the "match items" example - the one where you match the tree names with the scientific names? I can create something similar with squares or other shapes but the shapes in this example that I want to duplicate are not shape options. I am using Storyline 360.
  • Never mind. I was trying to create a "Freeform Question" as opposed to a "Graded Question". It would be nice to be able to change the color of the matching boxes in the "Graded Question" for a "Matching Drag-and-Drop".
  • MagaliWouters's avatar
    MagaliWouters
    Community Member
    Hello Nicole! I'm just starting to work with Articulate for my new job and i'm loving it :D.

    In the example "Place items or objects" above there is a button "How am I doing" where you can see the result you should have. How can I build this? Can't find it in the explanations above.

    Thanks in advance for the feedback
  • DavidBullock's avatar
    DavidBullock
    Community Member
    Hello Nicole, I am trying to improve on a previous version of a drag and drop where there are just two large boxes which ten labels need to be correctly placed in. The boxes are large and currently the dragged labels just get piled one on top of the other. I was trying to use the large box as the drop zone but have a particular section within the two large boxes for each label, so all labels can be seen when placed. Honestly, I haven't a clue how to start. Any suggestions?
  • ATusenius's avatar
    ATusenius
    Community Member
    Hi there,
    I am trying to create a drag and drop interaction, but only a couple of the answers need to be dropped. The rest can stay untouched. The build-in drag and drop only allows draggable items if a drop target is defined. Is there a way to create a drag and drop where only a couple of items need to be dropped on a target?
  • GregGarner's avatar
    GregGarner
    Community Member
    Hi,

    I'm wondering if anyone can help me here. I have a drag and drop activity I've designed for 508. I have everything working properly but I have one question that I can't seem to figure out. I have my drop objects set with states that show correct or incorrect when dropped in the appropriate target. Once dropped into the targets (right or wrong) is there a way to make the tab order ignore those and go onto the ones that have not yet been dropped? Under the states, I've unchecked the accessibility option, but it keeps picking these options up when tabbing even though they've already been moved... any ideas?
  • How do I create a Drag and Drop in way that it should accept only if right choice is dropped.