Saved state of a gateway slide

Hi jessica,

Have you tried using variables to acomplish what you need ?

Depending on the variable content you can change the states of your pilarswhen the timeline of your gateway slide starts

Geert

Hi Geert,

I have not tried that yet, nor am I very familiar with variables. 

Does the variable have to be on the same slide? Or is it possible for the variable to be a separate slide, such as the last slide in the preceding section?

Hi Jessica,

have look at this tutorial on variables

http://community.articulate.com/tutorials/products/working-with-variables.aspx

Cheers

Geert

Hi Jessica,

Another thought that may work without variables, but I'm not sure what you've tried already. I'm thinking:

Gateway Slide is set up so all the pillars, except pillar 1, are set to initial state: disabled (and you could format disabled as grey so Learners would have the visual cue). Might be easier to insert pillars as buttons so they already have all the states.

• Pillar 1 on the Gateway slide links to Section 1
• Pillar 2 on the Gateway slide links to Section 2
  Pillar 2 has a trigger set so that it is changed to normal when the timeline starts on the Gateway slide if Pillar 1 has been visited.
• Pillar 3 on the Gateway slide links to Section 3
  Pillar 3 has a trigger set so that it is changed to normal when the timeline starts on the Gateway slide if Pillar 1 and Pillar 2 have been visited.

Section 1 has "X" number of slides

• The last slide on section 1 has a Home button for the Learner to get back to the Gateway

Section 2 has "X" number of slides

• The last slide on section 2 has a Home button for the Learner to get back to the Gateway

Would that work?

I would use variables, the visited state shows that the button has been clicked not that they viewed the slides, visited would work if the is only one slide after your menu, but more than one really should use variables to track this. 

Thanks for feedback, Phil. I keep forgetting about this caveat. Would appreciate if you can confirm or correct my "understanding". Maybe then I'll remember. First, is this how you'd set it up with variables?

For the sake of clarity here, I'll call the buttons on the Gateway, left to right, Cats, Dogs, Goats.

Gateway Slide

The Dogs and Goats buttons are set to an initial state of disabled. Each button links to a section on its topic.

Variables

Create 3 T/F variables, set to False: Cats, Dogs, Goats.

On the last slide of the Cats section, adjust the Cats variable to true when the timeline starts.

Do the same for the Dogs variable on the last slide of its section.

State Change on Gateway Slide Buttons

Change the state of the Dogs button to normal when Cats=True

Change the state of Goats button to normal when Cats=True and Dogs=True

And what you're saying about states vs. variables is:
If

• there is more than 1 slide after the gateway
  and
• States are used for setting the buttons  normal
  Learners can click the buttons, e.g., the Cats button, and then go back via the Previous button without visiting all the slides in each section, e.g., the Cat section

Instead if

• there is more than 1 slide after the gateway
  and
• Variables are used for setting the buttons to normal
  Learners must visit the last slide in each section; clicking PREV and going back to the menu would result in the [Dog, Goat] button still being disable

And finally, a question: If the menu is displayed, couldn't Learners bypass multiple slides in a section in any case, simply by jumping to the last slide? Or, is the problem that I'm not setting this up correctly?

TIA!

Or if you want a solution without variables, just create five slightly different versions of the menu slide. One at the beginning with only pillar 1 active, one that comes after section 1 with only pillars 1 and 2 active, etc. 

Hi Rebecca

You are right the menu would break this structure, but the menu breaks most branching scenarios.

The file I have attached shows how I would create it, i have only one slide after each because I rarely use the visited state for this type of menu, I dislike the way it changes before the slide jumps

There are a couple of other things in there as well, i use this slide when I teach variables so it show s a visited menu and then a variable menu.

Thanks, Phil. I'll check it out later today and compare and contrast. Appreciate your taking the time ...

Thank you for the feedback everyone.

Rebecca, your initial idea was what I have been trying to do in the first place but whenever I clicked the button to return to the gateway, the next pillar would never activate, regardless of the triggers I used. 

I meant have to use Sasha's suggestion but will look at Phil's file first