1 Scene vs Multiple Scenes?

Hi Lisa,

For me, Scenes are a logical representations of grouped thought processes.

In something like a Mind-Map, the whole point is to bring together differing strings of thought, which may bubble-up in a random fashion, into a cohesive whole, however, from a COURSE DESIGN perspective, it would make sense to have all the major branches (for example), as separate Scenes.

Put simply, Scenes make design easier to manage, often their existence is completely and utterly hidden from the user/learner.

Having spent some time with Tony Buzan - the Father of MindMapping, I know that while he completely understands the "randomness of thought", the whole point is to try and bring structure to the thought. once it is structured, it's much easier to deal with - a principal that stands tall and proud in the case of course design.

Bruce

Thanks, Bruce. Great reply!

I see how logically the branches could be their own scenes. I just wasn't sure from a Storyline functionality perspective, what advantage is buys me other than maybe being easier to view in "story view".

I love doing mind maps, and I'm hoping presenting the course with the mind map as a navigational metaphor will be interesting and different for people. 

I'm kinda dealing with this same issue myself, Lisa, and the best thing I can think of is that it's gotta help when you're trying to control branching elements.

I would also imagine that if you have a bunch of blocs of content that you might re-use in other courses, it's probably easier just to save them as scenes and insert them when and where it's necessary.

I'm editing a course I've been playing with that has three objectives. Since I'm a writer by trade, I tend to use writing terms for many of my metaphors. So, in my world, scenes are paragraphs (screens, therefore, may be sentences). The point of this is, though, that when I think about the contents of one of these Storyline files, then I might have five scenes that correspond to the five paragraphs of a basic five paragraph essay:

1. An Intro scene that sets up the learning event
2. Three scenes (just for the sake of argument) that align with the course's three objectives
3. And a conclusion/summary scene.

Now, if you're adding interactions, I'd consider them elements in a scene, but if you're adding an assessment at the end of the course that's a pass/fail sort of thing, I'd see that as its own scene.

Without being all that knowledgeable about the product yet, I'm using this as the sort of basic metaphor for my approach to the tool. Still learning, though, so I may be unnecessarily limiting my conception.

Open to others' views on the concept.

For me, that is their only, but a HUGE advantage. They are the sections of the learning orchestra, they allow me to see what is what, where things are, to see clearly how they are interlinked, and then conduct the inter-relationships between the sections, and the output of the whole orchestra , (ESPECIALLY when I use Story > Expand/Collapse slide views on the Scenes themselves).

Bruce

Thanks, Chris. I think I do something similar to you without thinking about that as a writing metaphor. I generally write the script for each slide before I create the slide, and then I end up making either one slide per sentence, or layers within each slide for each sentence. 

Thanks for asking this Lisa! I had the same question and at the moment my branching scenarios keep going and going (like the energizer bunny) so I think segmenting them into scenes will just make it easier to see them on the screen. I like Chris' explanation of using an intro and conclusion (or quiz for results) as separate scenes too.