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E-Learning Challenges
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Rebuild This Interactive Timeline #13

DavidAnderson's avatar
12 years ago

Interactive Timelines #13: Challenge | Recap

This week’s challenge idea comes from community member David Baker who shared a really cool timeline example in the E-Learning Heroes forums.

There’s a lot going on in this interactive timeline. The timeline is a menu slide that branches to different events. It features colorful rollovers and menu items that shift and expand when clicked. 

View the interactive timeline

Challenge of the week

This week, your challenge is to rebuild Big History Project’s interactive timeline.

This is our first challenge where everyone is working from the same source project. The tool you use to recreate this project will impact your design considerations. For example, the dynamic menu effect is not possible with most tools. You’ll want to capture the essence of the effect, whichever tool you choose.

Recreating existing projects is a great way to practice your course design and technical skills.

Discussion questions

Along with your project, share some insights about how you approached your project.

  • How long did it take you to build your demo?
  • How did you approach your design and development? Did you sketch out the project? Or did you jump right in and start building?
  • What was the biggest challenge you encountered?
  • Would you do anything differently?

Provide feedback

This is a good opportunity to practice evaluating and critiquing projects. Because everyone’s working from the same starting point, it’s easier to spot differences between projects and provide constructive feedback on another user’s project. Here are a few ideas to get you started:

  • What do you like about the demo?
  • What did they do really well?
  • Is there a tip or suggestion you would offer the designer?
  • What did you learn from the demo?

Tools

You can use Articulate Storyline, Articulate Studio ’09, or Articulate Studio ’13, to show and share your interactive timeline.

Last week's challenge

Before jumping into this week’s timeline challenge, check out the timeless examples your fellow community members shared in last week’s interactive infographic challenge:

Have an great timeline this week, E-Learning Heroes!

Even if you’re using a trial version of Studio '13 or Storyline, you can absolutely publish your challenge files. Just sign up for a fully functional, free trial, and have at it. And remember to post your questions and comments in the forums; we're here to help. For more e-learning tips, examples, and downloads, follow us on Twitter.

Published 12 years ago
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  • Entries are never late, David! You have a really nice design style going. Thanks for sharing the template, too! I'll update the timeline challenge recap to include your demo and template.

    Thanks, David!
  • Here's my entry. I didn't look at anyone else's first since I didn't want to be influenced in any direction - but I took a look just now and enjoyed them all very much!

    - How long did it take to build? Not sure, but I'd guess maybe 6 hours or so.
    - How did I approach it? I did a sketch on paper first to make it easier to organize and build.
    - The hardest part? I chose to create it using Storyline's native animation and image-creation capabilities, so maybe the only hard part was to remind myself that it was a good interpretation and to not to get caught up in trying to re-create every detail of the original.
    - Would I do anything differently? I don't think so. Given the amount of time I had to work on it, I'm pretty happy with it. :)

    Here it is: http://jackievannice.com/challenge_timeline/story.html
  • Well done, Jackie! Six hours seems like a fair amount considering the level of detail you captured.

    Is this type of challenge valuable? Was it fun? I like deconstructing projects for many reasons. I'm curious to know what you guys think.
  • Thanks, David!

    I'm sure it would have taken less time if this were the sort of thing I was knocking out every day. To answer your questions:

    -Was it valuable? Definitely:
    1. It was a great exercise in thinking through how something could be built in Storyline, and kind of a confidence-builder since the mechanics of it worked out as I'd planned. I've had a lot more trouble engineering things that look far simpler than this!
    2. It was a great exercise in creating something unlike what I normally do. Getting practice at creating a piece in a particular style and within pretty narrow parameters is good preparation for real-world challenges, too.
    3. It was a good exercise in letting go of wanting it to be identical to the original and realizing it still looks pretty darned good working within the capabilities of the software.

    - Was it fun? If this weren't a catch-up challenge for me, where I've given myself less time than usual to work on it, I'd probably have had a blast taking time to play with it and refining the end result a lot more. So it was fun to have done it, but it would have been even more fun if I'd felt like I had more time. (Good reason not to get behind on challenges!) :)
  • Amazing design Jackie! I LOVE it! You gotta throw this up on Pinterest.