I want to add a button in a quiz that learners won't get penalized for clicking. (Storyline 360)

Oct 07, 2019

Greg Brown
By Greg Brown

I have a software simulation quiz I created in Storyline 360, where users have to click on hotspots in order to get the correct answer. Everything works as it should, except I created an "Instructions" button for users to refer to as they progress through the simulation. When clicked, this shows the instructions layer, which lists what users need to do, and then users can close it by clicking the "Close" button that appears on that layer. That all works great.

The only problem is, if you click on that "Instructions" button, the quiz considers that a "click" in a wrong place, so it marks that step as wrong. 

Does anyone have any ideas about how how to tell Storyline, "Do the trigger for this button, but ignore it for testing purposes?" Would having the trigger ALSO jump to the current slide "reset" the slide in a way, so it doesn't count the click as an error?

Also, I did a little research and now know I can also recreate (perhaps more efficiently) the instructions effect by using lightboxes, or even adding the instructions slide to the menu, but I try to stay away from menu controls as much as possible for a cleaner look when publishing in Rise. Also, making the instructions button trigger a lightbox instead of a layer didn't fix the problem of the quiz recognizing the click as an error.

Thanks!

6 Replies
Greg Brown
over 4 years ago10/08/19 at 2:57 pm (UTC)

Hi Leslie,

Thanks for getting back to me. I had to come up with another solution as there was a tight deadline, so I ended up moving the lightbox link to the instructions into the topbar of the player, which does not count as a click since it is outside of the story window. 

I can pretty quickly recreate the issue though, so I'll put together an example project and share that via your link. In the meanwhile, I'm still hoping someone has had some experience with this or has an idea or two about how to get around it, as unfortunately using the topbar in the player creates a huge border around the entire story window, effectively making the content of the eLearning 25-30% smaller than it would be other wise (see screenshots attached for comparison).

Greg Brown
over 4 years ago10/09/19 at 9:02 pm (UTC)

Thanks for following up, Katie--I did receive Gerald's email (I missed it yesterday, so thanks for mentioning it here), and his solution worked great for my lightbox hint! Just in case anyone else asks this question and wants to know what the answer was, the trick was:

1. Add a layer that is shown at the start of the timeline.

2. That layer contains the button for the hint/instructions/whatever.

3. Make sure the box that prevents the base layer from being interacted with is unchecked. This is the key step: it allows the "hint" button layer to be "on top" of your quiz slide, so when the button is clicked, the base layer doesn't register an erroneous click, but the base layer can still be interacted with.

4. If you set up a lightbox slide, that's it; you're done. If you set up a layer with the hint on each slide, then you need to include a "show hint layer" trigger on the layer that happens in addition to closing the layer to return to the base layer. Otherwise when you return to the base layer the hint layer will be gone.

I realize now this probably isn't as helpful out of context, but just in case anyone else has this question, I hope this helps.

This discussion is closed. You can start a new discussion or contact Articulate Support.