Starting the course

Received this question from a Storyline user and thought it would be a good one for the community:

"My beginning slide in Storyline starts by itself - I want the user to be able to click to start the presentation. The rest of the module the user is able to click through. Guessing this is a simple answer but I'm missing it."

By default, Storyline content begins playing as soon as the course is launched. I guess the assumption is, in most cases the learner has already clicked something (a link, or a launch button in their LMS, etc.) to get started, so we don't make them click again once the course launches. However, if you'd like to create that effect, here's an easy way:  Make a duplicate of your first slide by going to Normal View, select the slide thumbnail,. and press Ctrl+D on your keyboard. Now you have 2 copies of the same slide at the beginning of your course. On the first one, remove all narration, animations, etc. so that it's static.  This way, when the learner launches the course, they'll see the static slide at the beginning. To view the course they'll need to click the Next button on the player. (Or, if you've opted to remove the built-in player controls, you'll need to insert an on-slide button which allows them to advance to the next slide.) 

Another common thing that developers do is, rather than create an exact duplicate of their first content slide for the beginning of the course, they'll just create a completely different slide with a welcome message or the like. And maybe some on-screen text indicating that the learner can click Next when they're ready to start.

Anyone else have other thoughts to add about how this could be handled differently?