Client wants progress bar

May 03, 2011

Hi,

Appreciate if someone could help me come up with a solution.

My client was previously using another publishing tool which gave him a progress bar and learners could keep track of where they are in the course (i.e. 30% done, 60% done and so on).

We have created a course for them which has close to 100 slides and almost all are set to 'Advance by User'

Each slide has timed animations.

There is NO voice.

If I just go ahead and publish the course Articulate presenter shows the time as 5 minutes on the top left hand corner, which is not reflective of the time a learner would ideally take to browse through a 100 slide presentation.

How can I create a sense of progress, progress-bar, time-left etc?

Please help.

6 Replies
Phil Mayor

Hi Sameer

You can build your own progress bar on the slide and just increment it each slide, I am sure Jeanette has done a screenr and template for this

You could also put a progress meter into the side bar, now you could write an AS progress meter that automatically updates, or you could create your own swfs t(in ppt) hat increment by one each time you click next,and insert into every slide side bar

You could add a swf into the articulate logo that increments each slide

Finally you could do something in a custom skin, I am sure some other people will have other things you could do

Phil

Tom Kuhlmann

I added a progress bar on this demo I did for the blog.  All you have to do is put an image on the slide to represent the progress.

http://www.articulate.com/community/blogdemo/Security_Deconstruction/player.html

I'd do this.  Divide your slides into chunks.  Let's say you have 100 slides.  So you can create 10 chunks.  At the start of each chunk, you are 10% further along in the course.

Then create a master slide for each chunk. On the master slide, place the progress bar.  Then assign the master slide to the appropriate slide.

Sameer Hasan

Thanks a lot guys.


Tom, screen real estate is valuable and I'm afraid I cannot take away the bottom part of the screen to factor in the progress bar.

The client wants to make the learners finish the module within 60 minutes.

Do you think I could some how add a 'silent' audio track to emulate the same (while keeping in mind that almost all slides are 'Advance by User')?

Will that work?

Tom Kuhlmann

You can do what you want as far as the size of the progress meter.  Kevin Thorn's Guru example used a few different metering ideas to indicate progress.  He used rank increase as you progressed and also included ways to collect items to fill the back pack.  He also had very clear sections you unlocked as you advanced. 

Going back to the original question, using the side menu panel and creating a clear indication of progress with the colors also is a progress meter and will satisfy that the people know how far they are in the course.  I like the way Prometheus did it in the Pallet Jack demo.  Strong contrast with the black panel, visited slides become orange, current slides are white.

Bill Harnage

A couple of thoughts on this...

I understand real estate is always valuable for us developers, but there's not even enough room to spare 10-15px at the bottom? You can place objects over top of it as long as the user (and client) understand what the bar is for and you don't cover it completely throughout the course.  As Tom mentioned you could then stretch it  at 10% chunks.

If there is no narration, how are you gauging the course is completed in 60min?

Also, as mentioned, changing the menu title/page color is a great way to display progress as well as displaying the slide count in the seekbar bar.

HTH

Kevin Dowd

Okay, what am I missing here?  You can't have the progress bar at the bottom if you have engage and/or quizmakers interactions in the course; right?

In the Kevin Thorn example above he has a progress meter at the bottom and engage slides, but is that a custom skin?

I'm currently developing a course that is full of clicky clicky bang bang, for basically they go back to a menu screen after each slide.  Horrible design, don't know why I did it to begin with, but now I want to take it out the useless clicking and keep the advantages of the linear design.  I thought having a progress tracker somewhere would be a great way to do this, but can't figure out how to do it with the engages and quizmakers.

I'm already using both the logo and presenter panels and I couldn't code my way out of a paper bag.

Any thoughts/ideas?  Thanks!

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