I am currently developing a course which has a menu at the beginning. Rather than forcing people to work through the course in a linear fashion I'd like them to be able to pick the order they want to work through through the topics. They do however need to work through ALL of them but I am not sure how to do this. It would be very cool to be able to show them which topics they have completed when they return to the main menu too. Any idea how I could do this please?
Phil's suggestion and James' BLOG are helpful. The issue in presenter (out of the box) would be that you would need to create completely different paths for each possible set of decisions the learner may take. So, more than a couple of menu options, would make even a small module consist of a lot of slides. Granted, these slides would duplicates of the other paths, for the most part, but still a lot of slides to keep up with.
Here are couple of work arounds to consider:
1. You could experiment with building the entire module in QuizMaker and the submit all at once feature, using the Question List as your Navigation Bar. There is no rule that says QuizMaker has to ask questions. You would want to redesign the text on your player, but it is a possible option.
2. You could also consider using the Tab Interaction in Engage for a small module. Let the tabs be your menu. Separately, you could build slides in PPT, add your Narration, Synch, Publish. Then grab the SWFs from the published folder and insert those as Videos in each Tab. It could be an interesting solution.
3. You could use Secret Codes throughout your Module - one in each section. Then the final Quiz uses a series of "Fill-in-the-Blank" questions asking them to enter their codes. The learner has to know the codes to answer the questions. Guru Award winner, Kevin Thorn, experimented with this when he built Mission Turf.
I am using branching in the self-paced modules I am creating. They are pretty simple and straightforward - 2 to 3 sections in each module. It's not branching scenarios, just letting the learner deciding the order in which they want to view each section. At the end of each section, I have a knowledge check that I created in Quizmaker.
This is what I want to know: 1. Is it possible to force learners to view all topics and 2. complete each Quiz before they complete the module using Articulate as is/"out of the box"? Phil above says it is not possible out of the box with more than three options, so it seems like he is suggesting it is without have to program anything if you have three options or less. If so, how?
I set each Quizmaker file's properties to allow the user to leave the quiz only after they have complete it and then last question in the quiz to take them back to the main menu (a duplicate slide of the main menu slide with no audio), so that seems to address part II of my question.
I read Ron's suggestions above and the only one I can apply at this point to the modules I am currently working is #3, which I can do. I found Kevin's module Ron recommends, but I was wondering if there is another way. I can't find out whether our LMS says it's been completed because we're still learning how to tell it what we want it to do.
Hi Rachel! Yeah, it's true that currently, it's a challenge to give learners their choice of viewing multiple sections in any order, while still incorporating a "gated" concept that prevents learners from moving forward till they've completed all 3 sections. Ron's suggestions above are good ones; probably the easiest approach is to use Engage as the "container" for your 3 sections of content. This way, you can allow them to view any section of the Engage interaction in any order, but you can set up the properties of the Engage interaction in a way that requires learners to visit all sections of the interaction before they can move on.
Can you tell us a little more about the content of your 3 sections? Maybe we could suggest some Engage interactions that would be particularly useful for your situation, and you could give that a whirl?
Course 12 Breast Cancer slide 8 uses it, I can let you have it, I wont pretend it is user friendly though and you need access to flash to change a a tiny bit of Actionscript
Thanks for your responses! I like the idea of using Engage (or Quizmaker for that matter) to contain all the content in a module (I think it was in one of Jeanette's tutorials in Screener that she said that some developers use Quizmaker solely to develop whole modules). I'd love to see some examples of that design/development approach. The catch at this point with the module I am working on is that I need to finish the project by early next week, so I'm hesitant to transfer everything over to Engage interactions. I'm also using a lot of PP's animations. Phil, thank you for providing the login. Yesterday when I clicked on your link from your post in June it didn't work. I'll check it out this weekend. For my current modules (there's three which compile a course) I am working on, I think my only option is using the secret codes approach.
The secret code idea is a great approach too. Maybe once you're done with your current deadline, you could give us a peek at your course, and we could toss around some ideas for how you might package something similar in Engage?
I thought of a simple solution to keeping branching and a secret codes slide in the module I am working on (it's one of three in a course) - put a link on the Main Menu slide (I have two Main Menu slide/the second is a duplicate without audio) to the secret codes slide (the last slide in the module) thereby giving a "path" to the end. I have an explanation in the narration on the first main menu page that explains the set up.
10 Replies
not possible out of the box with more than three options, you can do this using flash variables James at elearning enhanced has an example on his blog
here is an example of what we did see slide 11 http://moodle.mylearningspace.me.uk/file.php/28/moddata/scorm/52/index_lms.html
you just need to login as a guest
The coulored images of the women are clickable and when you finish the section (green continue button) the section is ticked
Phil
Phil's suggestion and James' BLOG are helpful. The issue in presenter (out of the box) would be that you would need to create completely different paths for each possible set of decisions the learner may take. So, more than a couple of menu options, would make even a small module consist of a lot of slides. Granted, these slides would duplicates of the other paths, for the most part, but still a lot of slides to keep up with.
Here are couple of work arounds to consider:
1. You could experiment with building the entire module in QuizMaker and the submit all at once feature, using the Question List as your Navigation Bar. There is no rule that says QuizMaker has to ask questions. You would want to redesign the text on your player, but it is a possible option.
2. You could also consider using the Tab Interaction in Engage for a small module. Let the tabs be your menu. Separately, you could build slides in PPT, add your Narration, Synch, Publish. Then grab the SWFs from the published folder and insert those as Videos in each Tab. It could be an interesting solution.
3. You could use Secret Codes throughout your Module - one in each section. Then the final Quiz uses a series of "Fill-in-the-Blank" questions asking them to enter their codes. The learner has to know the codes to answer the questions. Guru Award winner, Kevin Thorn, experimented with this when he built Mission Turf.
Just some thoughts.
Hi
Thanks so much for your suggestions - very useful and helpful.
I am using branching in the self-paced modules I am creating. They are pretty simple and straightforward - 2 to 3 sections in each module. It's not branching scenarios, just letting the learner deciding the order in which they want to view each section. At the end of each section, I have a knowledge check that I created in Quizmaker.
This is what I want to know: 1. Is it possible to force learners to view all topics and 2. complete each Quiz before they complete the module using Articulate as is/"out of the box"? Phil above says it is not possible out of the box with more than three options, so it seems like he is suggesting it is without have to program anything if you have three options or less. If so, how?
I set each Quizmaker file's properties to allow the user to leave the quiz only after they have complete it and then last question in the quiz to take them back to the main menu (a duplicate slide of the main menu slide with no audio), so that seems to address part II of my question.
I read Ron's suggestions above and the only one I can apply at this point to the modules I am currently working is #3, which I can do. I found Kevin's module Ron recommends, but I was wondering if there is another way. I can't find out whether our LMS says it's been completed because we're still learning how to tell it what we want it to do.
Here's the link to Kevin's module:
http://www.articulate.com/blog/find-out-why-kevin-thorn-earned-the-2010-silver-guru-award/
Thanks to anyone who can help me on this.
-Rachel
Hi Rachel! Yeah, it's true that currently, it's a challenge to give learners their choice of viewing multiple sections in any order, while still incorporating a "gated" concept that prevents learners from moving forward till they've completed all 3 sections. Ron's suggestions above are good ones; probably the easiest approach is to use Engage as the "container" for your 3 sections of content. This way, you can allow them to view any section of the Engage interaction in any order, but you can set up the properties of the Engage interaction in a way that requires learners to visit all sections of the interaction before they can move on.
Can you tell us a little more about the content of your 3 sections? Maybe we could suggest some Engage interactions that would be particularly useful for your situation, and you could give that a whirl?
You could also make it feel like they have a choice and unlock each choice as they complete the last using three different menu screens
I do have a flash widget that will do this, see
login is student, Password is UCtest
Course 12 Breast Cancer slide 8 uses it, I can let you have it, I wont pretend it is user friendly though and you need access to flash to change a a tiny bit of Actionscript
Hi Jeanette and Phil,
Thanks for your responses! I like the idea of using Engage (or Quizmaker for that matter) to contain all the content in a module (I think it was in one of Jeanette's tutorials in Screener that she said that some developers use Quizmaker solely to develop whole modules). I'd love to see some examples of that design/development approach. The catch at this point with the module I am working on is that I need to finish the project by early next week, so I'm hesitant to transfer everything over to Engage interactions. I'm also using a lot of PP's animations. Phil, thank you for providing the login. Yesterday when I clicked on your link from your post in June it didn't work. I'll check it out this weekend. For my current modules (there's three which compile a course) I am working on, I think my only option is using the secret codes approach.
The secret code idea is a great approach too. Maybe once you're done with your current deadline, you could give us a peek at your course, and we could toss around some ideas for how you might package something similar in Engage?
Yes, that sounds good, thanks!
I thought of a simple solution to keeping branching and a secret codes slide in the module I am working on (it's one of three in a course) - put a link on the Main Menu slide (I have two Main Menu slide/the second is a duplicate without audio) to the secret codes slide (the last slide in the module) thereby giving a "path" to the end. I have an explanation in the narration on the first main menu page that explains the set up.
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