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

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 are a lot of debates about how, if and when to use music in e-learning. I'll use it in a client project if the content isn't too heavy. For example, one of my clients (in New Berlin, WI--close to you?) is a promotion/event company and that team insists on being entertained (High DIs). They even give me "walk-up music" when they provide an overview to a course. They spend more time choosing their walk-up music than writing their introductory comments. But another one of my clients is a finance organization and they find the music distracting (High SCs). I always keep the audio button on the player so people can turn the audio down. Another consideration is that audio on the master layers in Storyline is glitchy. If you want to loop music on the intro page it doesn't always work. It would be great to be able to play one track through an entire story--you have to do a code work-around to make it work, and I'm not competent enough to mess with it.

That was probably more than you expected! Have a good week and I look forward to seeing your challenge.