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Creating Custom Menus in E-Learning #358: Challenge | Recap
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Create a Custom Table of Contents to Help Learners Navigate Through the Course
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Today’s authoring tools make it easier than ever to customize how the menu looks and where it’s placed in the course player. But there will be times when designers want to move beyond the default menu options and design their own course menu.
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While DIY menus take longer to design and implement, they’re worth the time if they help learners get more from their training. And that’s what this week’s challenge is all about.
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Moving Beyond the Default Player Menu
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Storyline’s menu options on the Player Properties window allow you to control how the player menu appears in your published course. This is a classic table of contents–style menu that provides all the functionality most courses need.
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Using a Table of Contents Style Menu
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When you want even more control over your menu design’s fonts, colors, graphics, bookmarking, and types of menu information, you’ll need to create everything yourself. The good news is: tools like Storyline make this really easy!
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Challenge of the Week
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This week, your challenge is to share an example of a custom table of contents menu. You don’t need to build out a real project this week. Use placeholder slides and content to allow more time for your custom table of contents menu.
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Share Your E-Learning Work
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\n- Comments: Use the comments section below to share a link to your published example and blog post.
\n- Forums: Start your own thread and share a link to your published example..
\n- 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.
\n- Social Media: If you share your demos on Twitter or LinkedIn, try using #ELHChallenge so your tweeps can track your e-learning coolness.
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New to the E-Learning Challenges?
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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.
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Learn more about the challenges in this Q&A post and why and how to participate in this helpful article.
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Last Week’s Challenge:
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Before you visualize custom menu ideas, check out the creative ways course designers use interactive graphs and charts from last week's e-learning challenge:
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Interactive Chart and Graph Examples RECAP #357: Challenge | Recap
Welcome to the challenges, Chris. I like how you created a slide to test the project's variables. That's a great idea for troubleshooting variables. Here's a link to your project in this week's recap:
https://community.articulate.com/articles/custom-menu-navigation-in-elearning-design#ChrisDigitalWelcome to the challenges, Chris. I like how you created a slide to test the project's variables. That's a great idea for troubleshooting variables. Here's a link to your project in this week's recap:
https://community.articulate.com/articles/custom-menu-navigation-in-elearning-design#ChrisDigitalThis was my first attempt at a challenge, and it was great to have something new to work toward. I learned lots doing this.
I've created a basic course with four scenes, introduction, two content modules and an assessment.
The introduction must be completed first, then the content modules can be completed in any order.
A trigger on the first slide of each scene sets the variable for that topic to show it as in progress, so returning to the home screen at any point will show which modules have been started.
Once the content modules have all been completed the assessment is accessible, and once the assessment has been completed, an Exit button appears on the contents page, so users can revisit content or simply exit the course.
A variables button on each slide lets testers view the values of variables at any point.
With more variables and triggers it would be possible to return learners to the last slide they visited in each topic when they click again on the topic title, but it feels as if I'd have to put a variable adjustment trigger on every single slide and then a trigger for each possible variable value on the content screen. That feels far too unwieldy and offers too much potential for error IMHO. I'd be interested to see if anyone has achieved this in a simpler way.
My first iteration of this used a text box and an icon with various states, overlaid with a hotspot, but I realise that it would be simpler to create a single element based on a text box, with colour icons added to different states of the same element. A lot fewer triggers and a much simpler way of activating links.
https://360.articulate.com/review/content/72e9f32f-d855-4fc6-a783-e7997e20e312/review This was my first attempt at a challenge, and it was great to have something new to work toward. I learned lots doing this.
I've created a basic course with four scenes, introduction, two content modules and an assessment.
The introduction must be completed first, then the content modules can be completed in any order.
A trigger on the first slide of each scene sets the variable for that topic to show it as in progress, so returning to the home screen at any point will show which modules have been started.
Once the content modules have all been completed the assessment is accessible, and once the assessment has been completed, an Exit button appears on the contents page, so users can revisit content or simply exit the course.
A variables button on each slide lets testers view the values of variables at any point.
With more variables and triggers it would be possible to return learners to the last slide they visited in each topic when they click again on the topic title, but it feels as if I'd have to put a variable adjustment trigger on every single slide and then a trigger for each possible variable value on the content screen. That feels far too unwieldy and offers too much potential for error IMHO. I'd be interested to see if anyone has achieved this in a simpler way.
My first iteration of this used a text box and an icon with various states, overlaid with a hotspot, but I realise that it would be simpler to create a single element based on a text box, with colour icons added to different states of the same element. A lot fewer triggers and a much simpler way of activating links.
https://360.articulate.com/review/content/72e9f32f-d855-4fc6-a783-e7997e20e312/review 
