Best Practices?

Hi, Don.

I'm seeing some nice conversations here and here regarding course length.  To summarize, it looks like Gerry and Gabe are making the following specific recommendations:

• There is no hard limit on the number of slides, but for usability, it is recommended that you stick with something more manageable (somewhere around 30 slides), even breaking it up into multiple presentations.  The length of your presentation has a causal relationship with the endurance of the learner.  


• Flash has a maximum number of frames of 16,000.  At 30 fps, that translates to 8:53, at 20 fps, that translates to 13:20, and at 15 fps, that translates to 17:00.  These slide lengths are far higher than recommended best practices of 30-60 seconds per slide (for reasons of both usability and network load).


• There have been reports of folks who've experienced slow expanding menus when using levels in long presentations.  This is likely content-specific.


• You'll find a helpful article here from eLearn Magazine on how long an e-learning course should be.

I personally have no experience with extremely lengthy courses, so I'm hoping some of the other experts will weigh in on this topic.

Good Luck!

Of course the last time I cited a Storyline KB article to you, it was proven to be in error and you were correct, so I'm a bit gun shy even proffering this . . 

Hi Don.

There aren't any steadfast rules around course length and some industries have strict requirements regarding the length of the course. That being said, think about your own personal experiences sitting in front of a computer. When you are in a classroom for a couple of hours it is relatively easy to be engaged as you are experiencing a real environment that potentially stimulates all five of your senses. Now a human being sitting in front of a computer has very little stimulation. They have audio and visual stimulation coming from a relatively tiny screen sitting right in front of their face. How long do you think you could sit in front of a computer taking the course you are working on in one sitting before your ability to absorb the material decreased?

I have always thought that the threshold is somewhere around 30 minutes. If you are planning on doing something longer, if it makes sense, break it up into smaller segments.

There is no hard rule as to the number of scenes or slides really since a slide can vary greatly in length so I wouldn't even worry about that. I think the right number of slides is however many you need to effectively communicate the information to the end-user.

A large Storyline course is built out of many pieces and is designed to be played back in low to high bandwidth environments so I wouldn't be too concerned about that either.

There shouldnt be a problem with load times, storyline only loads three slide at a time,

I would try an split it because

If you are running through an LMS you may hit the limit for the amount of data being stored if you use resume

You may have to spend a lot of time on navigation to ensure the user does not get lost

Do you expect the user to complete it in one sitting, as Justin says this is really about 8 mins before the user gets itchy feet.

If you dont expect them to complete it in one setting why does it need to be one course.

That said Storyline should function well with large courses, and if you need to build it you can

Phil

Thanks for the AWESOME feedback guys!  I am looking at creating something different than a traditional course.  I am looking to create more of an "app like" structure that will allow the user to navigate to different areas; therefore users will not complete the whole "course" in one setting.  I am thinking it will be better to split the project into multiple courses as suggested earlier, mainly for easier navigation.

Here is a link to what I have begun to build to help clarify what I am trying to do

http://www.fitsolutionllc.com/exercise/story.html

(Only the "Monday" button is available to advance slide until I complete my overall design)

Thanks again for all the help guys!

Nice job, Don! I really like where you're going with that. Keep us posted

Don,

Interesting application!  I can just see it on mobile devices in gyms across the country...

Michael

Peter and Michael,

Thanks for the kind words  I have a long way to go, but Storyline is making it soooo much easier!!!

Don

Think you are right on that one, I think, could be wrong () the spinning disk initiates the project and loads three slides ahead, then once started it does the rest.  I also understand that Storyline also preloads any branched slides as well as the next two slides

And, yes, most, but not all of the course did preload after launch--when Storyline got to where the assets were needed, they got drawn from cache.  However, a few things did not preload, especially MP3 files (the narration).  One JPG also did not preload.  Curious . . .

Wonder why not everything preloads?