I cannot seem to find where I can add or have page numbers to display within the slides themselves. Some presentations we do not display the "menu tab', thus we will need am alternatively to display page numbers/ date/ revision numbers and other header type information.
Vinayak, when I moved from the main line into deeperinteractions, I did not include page numbers. I’m relying on the reviewers togive me the title of the interaction at that point (not the greatest solution,but it’s a start.)
Location identification was much easier to do in Flash where youcould code it into the structure to grab the paths, scenarios, question numbers or answer numbersin ActionScript, and then just display whatever you wanted whenever you wanted.I suspect that if you draw out your course in Visio or OmniGraffle, you can trackthose paths, scenarios and questions, and possibly create separate variablesfor whatever you need (Path 3, Page 2, Question5), but I’m not sure how easy itwould be to translate all of that into variables that actually work in SL. Iwasn’t forced to go to that depth in mine, so I didn’t waste the time. I’mwondering if it might also be possible to add a variable that makes it easy to toggleyour page number identifier on layers so that you could have it turned on forQA review and either leave it on or turn it off afterward based on the needs ofyour users, but I didn’t explore that option.
In my case, putting five buttons on the main screen for our audienceto move through is the wrong solution because our learners don’t know how tomove a mouse, nor do they know how to click a button. All of the tech conceptsand neural pathways that we have accumulated/built and taken for granted arebeing taught one step at a time in this training in a logical and a *somewhat* sequentialorder with a combination of photos, illustrations, video, software simulation,text and quizzes inside of short lessons.
As I mentioned, in my project, the deeper interactions are notpage numbered. I have simple interactions (ex: teaching how to use checkboxesand radio buttons) either placed directly on one screen that can have a pagenumber, or divided out in such a way as to be reached through separate links tointeractive quizzes on an external menu (separately titled as a quiz or game).That allows our learners to move along at their own speed, and skipover basic info they don’t want or need, and doesn’t throw too much at the truenewbies in such a way that they might immediately hit a roadblock, cognitiveoverload or have their emotional fears kick in, thus requiring teacherintervention.
This does fly-in-the-face of many of the things I did incorporate e-Learning. It’s easy to design an interface for a corporate engineeror accountant. You don’t have to stand next to them with your hand on the mouseand show them how it relates to the mouse pointer. After spending timevolunteering in an ESL computer lab, I have become a much more humble andcompassionate geek. Just because we can do something, doesn’t mean we should.In my case, I have been collaborating with some highly-qualified Adult BasicEducation instructors who need page numbers for QA reviews by multiplenon-technical reviewers, and also to meet certain needs for their very, very non-technicalend users. Granted, I could have told them, “No,” but that first QA review (w/onumbering) was much more painful for me -- and also for the reviewers/SMEs whoare not experienced technical reviewers. It’s often as important to balance yourbudget as it is to create an effective solution. And, we have to keep in mind thatour true audience is not limited to just the end user and therefore build in the userexperience while considering the needs of all of our audience members,including:
-Project Sponsor and Stakeholders
-Development Team (include yourself here)
- All Reviewers (internal and external)
-End Users
-Future Development Team - these are the existing team members who willhave forgotten the details of the project a year from now, and also theunidentified people who will have to support this project in the future…and weknow how much developers love to thoroughly document their software code!
While offering training to reviewers is necessary, andgiving them succinct examples of how you want them to describe their changes is critical to QA success, we all know that the QA comments still too frequently come backwithout the level of detail we need. If the reviewer asks me to change the elephant,and I have elephants sprinkled throughout my training in different paths, differentscenarios, and questions -- or perhaps it’s my embedded video of a elephantthat needs to be changed -- I am then wasting my time and theirs going back tomy reviewers to find out exactly which elephant needs to be changed. In mysituation, the reviewers can easily enter the ‘page’ number along with their elephantchange description into a Google spreadsheet. It may not always get me to theexact location, but at least I’m close.
If the term ‘page number’ bugs people, think of it more as GPSfor your training, regardless of what we call it. Not having a reasonably succinctlocation identifier also presumes that the original designer/programmer willforever be the person who makes updates to your training, or that the coursewas so completely and accurately documented that you can come back to it nextyear when you have to make updates yourself. Code gets passed off to new peopleall the time. Fortunately SL provides the convenient story view -- which Ilove. But for the new developer who comes along down the road and is told to “changethe elephant to a water buffalo” it’s so much faster (and thus less of a budgetdrag) for them to fix if they’re told that this question is buried in the quiz linkedto from p. 17…or Path 17/Question 3/…or GPS location 17:3. ..A rose by any othername…
I love what Articulate has put together in SL for softwarethat links relatively simple interactions. I also see its limitations. I wouldn’trecommend it for a full-blown simulation, but it is quick and easy for so many trainingpurposes. If you need real in depth simulation, Flash or the new ZebraZapps mightbe a better choice albiet with a higher learning curve. I’ve also foundCaptivate to be cleaner on software simulation than SL’s software sim, but I’m forcing myself to use that feature in SL to see if I can at least learnto like it as it would save me the trouble of having to embed the sims as web objects.
I can’t help but wonder if the SL development team went through the same line of discussion that we’re having in this forum and decided that itwas too much of a headache to provide some sort of a location identifier thatdoesn’t lose its place, so they crossed that feature from the list.
Keep in mind, hiding content behind buttons is more engagingthan a page-turner, but it’s a long way from real simulation. It’s important toknow when clicking a button to display content is sufficient, and when you reallyneed a higher-end solution. But also consider the needs of your completeaudience and try to make it as effective and still budget and user-friendly forall parties involved.
Bruce - I admire your ideology in pushing established thinking. My needs are not quite as lofty.
I need to be able to add question numbers so that when giving learners feedback we can refer them to a specific question number.
When one of my trainers suggests a change they can refer me to a specific number - not "we need to change that question about that thing - I think its about halfway through."
When analysing trends I need to be able to say "50% of the learners got question 25 wrong".
Am I missing something? Having question numbers would appear to be a fundamental feature of any assessment. Look at all the workarounds that are starting to appear - written by the community. If there is a technical reason for not being able to number slides/questions then that is fair enough but to deny the user a basic function in a quest to challenge the established order seems odd.
I would just put "Question x" in the Title of the Quiz Slide - would that not suffice for those purposes?
When giving learner feedback in the past, I have, very often, said something along the lines of "So - how many of our staff were correctly able to identify the 29 points of our Mission Statement?" (or similar...). That negates the use of question numbers.
I am beginning to feel a little isolated in my thinking here
I have been incredibly fortunate throughout most of my career to have been able to think, plan and perform outside of the proverbial box, being comped (in many cases) with actually coming up with innovative concepts. I have been allowed to play "Let's pretend we can't do this any more ...", and influence with the resulting ideas.
This is just one of those things that, personally, I just have no issue embracing and evangelising about. That said, I DO realise that many people have organisational structure and expectation that does not allow them (yet...), to embrace change in this way, and for those purposes, some sort of built-in numbering convention is important.
I am not sure of the best way forward here, however, if there do have to be numbers, I agree that a "workaround" should not have to be the de-facto way of achieving this.
Thank you for your quick response. No doubt that innovation and the ability to challenge paradigms are critical to continuous improvement.
However, isn’t it my responsibility to go to my bosses and challenge their set thought patterns with a strategy that I have devised, thought through and believe in rather than because functionality is missing from our software platforms?
I have an idea for how to number questions and slides. For questions an option could be added to the Results Slides Properties. There is currently a column to Include in the reporting, another column to assign and manage question numbers could go here. There could be a similar option for slide numbers on the Player Properties that could sit in the Topbar Left section that does not do much at the moment.
Bruce thanks for a thought provoking discussion. Being part of the Articulate community was an unexpected benefit of purchasing Storyline.
The numbering is actually pretty easy to setup. The flexibility of manual numbering lets you setup your numbering with slide clusters as well, so it does offer advantages. This is a quick process. Probably less than 5 minutes for a 50 screen module.
Create two number variables. One called totalPages and one called currentPage. Set the totalPages default value to whatever value you want to have as your max.
On your master slide create a text object and enter this into the object %currentPage% of %totalPages%
On each slide you want to register a change in the page value, create a trigger. The trigger should adjust the value of a variable to X where X is the page number. You can copy and paste this trigger to your pages and adjust the value easily from the story view.
I have a solution (and thanks so much to Gerry for the link to the instructions for turning off the nav.) My challenge is that I'm a consultant creating digital literacy training for people who have never used computers. My audience includes seniors, ELL students, and many people of all ages who have found themselves unemployed and lacking the tech skills needed to find a new job.
Since technology and language literacy are both issues for many of my learners, I'm using a minimalist approach on the navigation and on-screen text. I have been using a combination of Engage, Captivate and Flash for development which has worked well, but I wanted to try out Storyline to see if it would work better than combining the other three...I believe it will. Although the paging is important in order to eliminate the menu (visual overwhelm for my learners,) and still let reviewers and teachers be able to provide me with succinct feedback.
I'm attaching a Word doc here that details how I set up custom navigation buttons and added in automatic page numbering to eliminate the need to hard code the page numbers.
Regards,
Laura
That works well. Problem is: what if you use forced navigation. Restricted navigation. Then, if you clic the "next button", it may not advance, sure, but it sure does adds 1 to the textbox.
Thank you so very much for the well written instructions on page numbering. This will work if the Storyline course is linear and the user never deviates from the sequenced presentation. If there is any type of branching or non-sequential hyperlink to another page the logiic will continue to advance +1 page or -1 page. The Menu option tab can this be avoided. The Menu option has a numbering option assigns numbers that are not affected by nonconsecutive page jumps. I too prefer a reference on the slide as you present, unfortunately if the learner jumps out of slide sequence the value of the numbering variable gets lost. I would prefer not to use the screen real estate on the side menu but it is the only way to avoid this in the current version of Storyline. Thank you again.
Page / slide numbers are better suited for linear learning experiences, and Laura's method is a great workaround for labeling slides using variables. For non-linear experiences, however, a % of completion indicator is more practical. I use a numerical variable variable similar to Laura's approach, but trigger it with "visited" states of objects and layers - this way, the % is not affected if the learner revisits a slide. The caveat is that it is not perfectly precise, since the values must add up to 100 and the value for each slide would have to be a whole number or you will end up with decimals (i.e. 83.33%). The workaround for that is assigning values only to certain slides instead of all slides. If my story has 120 slides, then each represents ~0.83%, so I assign a value of 5 to every 6th slide (#6, 12, 18....). 120 / 6 = 20. 20 x 5 = 100 =
I am creating a few quizzes. Our company likes the user to know how many questions s/he has completed already out of the total number of questions. Usually we accomplish this by simply inserting a textbox and adjusting the number for each slide. However, due to technical issues with the custom app we had made to play the quizzes, we have had to set the questions to be generated randomly. Therefore, the numbering we usually do won't work.
I tried using the variable workaround that Laura posted, but ran into the following issue: if a user clicks "submit" without first selecting an answer, the user is reminded to answer the question and then must click submit again. This throws the numbering off. We have not been able to find a way around this. We would like to be able to create a trigger where the variable is adjusted when the interaction is submitted, but that option is not available, nor is there an option to create a trigger based on two conditions (at least not the conditions we are looking for).
If you have any advice please let me know. Thank you!
This is all very interesting. From the dates of the postings, I see that I'm way behind. Allow me to solicit your collective wisdom for a problem related to this numbering issue.
I need a way that the student or other viewer can uniquely identify a slide for a question, comment, suggestion, or blooper. What unique identifier is available for this purpose? Any ideas?
That's a good question. How many slides do you anticipate needing unique identifiers? For quick and dirty, you could just add a small graphic on the screen, add a new SlideID layer, and have the Scene number and Slide Number pop up when the user mouses over the graphic. That will get pretty exhausting if you have a lot of slides, or anticipate changing, adding or deleting any. If that's the case, you might use the same approach and hard code the scene number, but then use a variable to display the slide number.
There are a few different ideas you could implement, including what Laura has mentioned. Probably the easiest option is to use Storyline's built in menu option which you can include the numbering there automatically. If you don't want to use the menu, you could also set it up to show a variable (say "SlideNumber" ) on each slide, and add an additional trigger to add 1 to the value of "SlideNumber" at the start of the timeline for each slide. If you users are able to use the previous and next buttons, you'll need an additional trigger to subtract 1 when the user clicks the previous button to keep the number set up and you'd also want to set each slide's revisiting properties to "resume saved state" so that the variable doesn't increase based on the revisit alone.
Technique elaborated by Ashley fails if you provide a menu using which user can jump directly to a certain page. Ideally I believe a page number feature is something that is generally expected from any rapid development tool. I also agree that page numbers should be avoided and user should be given a free to roam and hang around kind of design in course ware but there are some clients who strictly insists on page numbers and then you are in a catch if you are using Storyline.
I use a setup object on each slide to update variables for page title and page number pretty frequently. Folks think this is a lot of work. While this would be a nice feature to have built in, I don't find this method to be all that much work. Updating page numbers when a page is added or deleted is a little bit of a pain but it's still only a few seconds for each slide once you get it established.
See the attached file for an example and description. The beauty of Story View is you can update variables on the base timeline, including within objects. The setup object in this story sets a couple of variables and neatly contains the stuff I set for each slide. Add some variable references to text objects on your master slide and you have a nice clean way to update the display of these values throughout your project.
Thanks Steve for sharing your page number example here, I'm certain it'll be helpful to other community members.
Vinayak, if you'd like to see page numbers in a future version of Storyline I'd suggest that you submit a feature request so that your thoughts get directly to our Development team.
We also would like a simple page number for the slides and will have to put them in manually. We are not looking for live buttons for these page numbers. We need them in case a student needs help with a specific slide and calls the HelpDesk. They can then reference the slide # (like a page #). We don't want to have to create a live link that changes when you click Next or Previous. Looking forward to this feature in the future, but for now we will have to go into more than a thousand slides and manually enter the page number. Sure hope we don't have to insert slides in the middle and then have to renumber all those slides too!!
Jeez, this thread again? Since Storyline obviously has a way to track slide and scene numbers based on the menu, why not just let your users have access to those variables? Why not let your customers decide what is right for their projects?
Based on this thread, you're not alone in that thought. So the best thing to do right now is share your thoughts in the form of a feature request as well as those go on to our product development team for review and to look at including in future versions of Storyline.
I agree with you, Randall. I'm new to Storyline and I purchased it believing it to be a very easy-to-use but powerful authoring tool---and in many ways it is. But I have to admit I've been surprised at how it lacks several of what I would consider to be very basic common sense features---including this example of missing your typical page/slide numbering option.
The Menu sequentially numbering all the slides is nice, and especially in providing the user a way to jump to whatever slide they want to (if allowed). I also like being able to hide the menu or place it on the Topbar Right or Topbar Left, where remains hidden until you click on the "Menu" text. But apparently there is no Trigger command for displaying the menu, so you can't assign it to a custom button---thus limiting the layout options to what they've provided. If they would have all essential Storyline controls/features able to be activated by triggers, there would be much more design flexibility.
I'll send in a feature request for page numbering as well; meanwhile if there has been any new developments on this I'd be interested.
67 Replies
Hi Matt
I do get this. It will be a long time coming, however, I have seen too many people in our industry that just roll over and say "Yes!".
The client is not always right - and sometimes we need to stand up and be counted.
The client MAY get what they want, but they are not always right.
Bruce
Bruce,
This is AWESOME! Thanks
Vinayak, when I moved from the main line into deeperinteractions, I did not include page numbers. I’m relying on the reviewers togive me the title of the interaction at that point (not the greatest solution,but it’s a start.)
Location identification was much easier to do in Flash where youcould code it into the structure to grab the paths, scenarios, question numbers or answer numbersin ActionScript, and then just display whatever you wanted whenever you wanted.I suspect that if you draw out your course in Visio or OmniGraffle, you can trackthose paths, scenarios and questions, and possibly create separate variablesfor whatever you need (Path 3, Page 2, Question5), but I’m not sure how easy itwould be to translate all of that into variables that actually work in SL. Iwasn’t forced to go to that depth in mine, so I didn’t waste the time. I’mwondering if it might also be possible to add a variable that makes it easy to toggleyour page number identifier on layers so that you could have it turned on forQA review and either leave it on or turn it off afterward based on the needs ofyour users, but I didn’t explore that option.
In my case, putting five buttons on the main screen for our audienceto move through is the wrong solution because our learners don’t know how tomove a mouse, nor do they know how to click a button. All of the tech conceptsand neural pathways that we have accumulated/built and taken for granted arebeing taught one step at a time in this training in a logical and a *somewhat* sequentialorder with a combination of photos, illustrations, video, software simulation,text and quizzes inside of short lessons.
As I mentioned, in my project, the deeper interactions are notpage numbered. I have simple interactions (ex: teaching how to use checkboxesand radio buttons) either placed directly on one screen that can have a pagenumber, or divided out in such a way as to be reached through separate links tointeractive quizzes on an external menu (separately titled as a quiz or game).That allows our learners to move along at their own speed, and skipover basic info they don’t want or need, and doesn’t throw too much at the truenewbies in such a way that they might immediately hit a roadblock, cognitiveoverload or have their emotional fears kick in, thus requiring teacherintervention.
This does fly-in-the-face of many of the things I did incorporate e-Learning. It’s easy to design an interface for a corporate engineeror accountant. You don’t have to stand next to them with your hand on the mouseand show them how it relates to the mouse pointer. After spending timevolunteering in an ESL computer lab, I have become a much more humble andcompassionate geek. Just because we can do something, doesn’t mean we should.In my case, I have been collaborating with some highly-qualified Adult BasicEducation instructors who need page numbers for QA reviews by multiplenon-technical reviewers, and also to meet certain needs for their very, very non-technicalend users. Granted, I could have told them, “No,” but that first QA review (w/onumbering) was much more painful for me -- and also for the reviewers/SMEs whoare not experienced technical reviewers. It’s often as important to balance yourbudget as it is to create an effective solution. And, we have to keep in mind thatour true audience is not limited to just the end user and therefore build in the userexperience while considering the needs of all of our audience members,including:
-Project Sponsor and Stakeholders
-Development Team (include yourself here)
- All Reviewers (internal and external)
-End Users
-Future Development Team - these are the existing team members who willhave forgotten the details of the project a year from now, and also theunidentified people who will have to support this project in the future…and weknow how much developers love to thoroughly document their software code!
While offering training to reviewers is necessary, andgiving them succinct examples of how you want them to describe their changes is critical to QA success, we all know that the QA comments still too frequently come backwithout the level of detail we need. If the reviewer asks me to change the elephant,and I have elephants sprinkled throughout my training in different paths, differentscenarios, and questions -- or perhaps it’s my embedded video of a elephantthat needs to be changed -- I am then wasting my time and theirs going back tomy reviewers to find out exactly which elephant needs to be changed. In mysituation, the reviewers can easily enter the ‘page’ number along with their elephantchange description into a Google spreadsheet. It may not always get me to theexact location, but at least I’m close.
If the term ‘page number’ bugs people, think of it more as GPSfor your training, regardless of what we call it. Not having a reasonably succinctlocation identifier also presumes that the original designer/programmer willforever be the person who makes updates to your training, or that the coursewas so completely and accurately documented that you can come back to it nextyear when you have to make updates yourself. Code gets passed off to new peopleall the time. Fortunately SL provides the convenient story view -- which Ilove. But for the new developer who comes along down the road and is told to “changethe elephant to a water buffalo” it’s so much faster (and thus less of a budgetdrag) for them to fix if they’re told that this question is buried in the quiz linkedto from p. 17…or Path 17/Question 3/…or GPS location 17:3. ..A rose by any othername…
I love what Articulate has put together in SL for softwarethat links relatively simple interactions. I also see its limitations. I wouldn’trecommend it for a full-blown simulation, but it is quick and easy for so many trainingpurposes. If you need real in depth simulation, Flash or the new ZebraZapps mightbe a better choice albiet with a higher learning curve. I’ve also foundCaptivate to be cleaner on software simulation than SL’s software sim, but I’m forcing myself to use that feature in SL to see if I can at least learnto like it as it would save me the trouble of having to embed the sims as web objects.
I can’t help but wonder if the SL development team went through the same line of discussion that we’re having in this forum and decided that itwas too much of a headache to provide some sort of a location identifier thatdoesn’t lose its place, so they crossed that feature from the list.
Keep in mind, hiding content behind buttons is more engagingthan a page-turner, but it’s a long way from real simulation. It’s important toknow when clicking a button to display content is sufficient, and when you reallyneed a higher-end solution. But also consider the needs of your completeaudience and try to make it as effective and still budget and user-friendly forall parties involved.
Bruce - I admire your ideology in pushing established thinking. My needs are not quite as lofty.
I need to be able to add question numbers so that when giving learners feedback we can refer them to a specific question number.
When one of my trainers suggests a change they can refer me to a specific number - not "we need to change that question about that thing - I think its about halfway through."
When analysing trends I need to be able to say "50% of the learners got question 25 wrong".
Am I missing something? Having question numbers would appear to be a fundamental feature of any assessment. Look at all the workarounds that are starting to appear - written by the community. If there is a technical reason for not being able to number slides/questions then that is fair enough but to deny the user a basic function in a quest to challenge the established order seems odd.
Hi Tim,
I would just put "Question x" in the Title of the Quiz Slide - would that not suffice for those purposes?
When giving learner feedback in the past, I have, very often, said something along the lines of "So - how many of our staff were correctly able to identify the 29 points of our Mission Statement?" (or similar...). That negates the use of question numbers.
I am beginning to feel a little isolated in my thinking here
I have been incredibly fortunate throughout most of my career to have been able to think, plan and perform outside of the proverbial box, being comped (in many cases) with actually coming up with innovative concepts. I have been allowed to play "Let's pretend we can't do this any more ...", and influence with the resulting ideas.
This is just one of those things that, personally, I just have no issue embracing and evangelising about. That said, I DO realise that many people have organisational structure and expectation that does not allow them (yet...), to embrace change in this way, and for those purposes, some sort of built-in numbering convention is important.
I am not sure of the best way forward here, however, if there do have to be numbers, I agree that a "workaround" should not have to be the de-facto way of achieving this.
Bruce
Hi Bruce,
Thank you for your quick response. No doubt that innovation and the ability to challenge paradigms are critical to continuous improvement.
However, isn’t it my responsibility to go to my bosses and challenge their set thought patterns with a strategy that I have devised, thought through and believe in rather than because functionality is missing from our software platforms?
I have an idea for how to number questions and slides. For questions an option could be added to the Results Slides Properties. There is currently a column to Include in the reporting, another column to assign and manage question numbers could go here. There could be a similar option for slide numbers on the Player Properties that could sit in the Topbar Left section that does not do much at the moment.
Bruce thanks for a thought provoking discussion. Being part of the Articulate community was an unexpected benefit of purchasing Storyline.
Regards,
Tim
Hi, Tim -
The numbering is actually pretty easy to setup. The flexibility of manual numbering lets you setup your numbering with slide clusters as well, so it does offer advantages. This is a quick process. Probably less than 5 minutes for a 50 screen module.
Check out this example to see it in action:
http://community.articulate.com/forums/p/13541/83370.aspx#83370
Hi Laura. Thanks for the Word doc with instructions - it's exactly what I needed fro my project
That works well. Problem is: what if you use forced navigation. Restricted navigation. Then, if you clic the "next button", it may not advance, sure, but it sure does adds 1 to the textbox.
Thank you so very much for the well written instructions on page numbering. This will work if the Storyline course is linear and the user never deviates from the sequenced presentation. If there is any type of branching or non-sequential hyperlink to another page the logiic will continue to advance +1 page or -1 page. The Menu option tab can this be avoided. The Menu option has a numbering option assigns numbers that are not affected by nonconsecutive page jumps. I too prefer a reference on the slide as you present, unfortunately if the learner jumps out of slide sequence the value of the numbering variable gets lost. I would prefer not to use the screen real estate on the side menu but it is the only way to avoid this in the current version of Storyline. Thank you again.
You're absolutely right, Karen. This is just a very basic linear solution. It won't work in all cases.
Page / slide numbers are better suited for linear learning experiences, and Laura's method is a great workaround for labeling slides using variables. For non-linear experiences, however, a % of completion indicator is more practical. I use a numerical variable variable similar to Laura's approach, but trigger it with "visited" states of objects and layers - this way, the % is not affected if the learner revisits a slide. The caveat is that it is not perfectly precise, since the values must add up to 100 and the value for each slide would have to be a whole number or you will end up with decimals (i.e. 83.33%). The workaround for that is assigning values only to certain slides instead of all slides. If my story has 120 slides, then each represents ~0.83%, so I assign a value of 5 to every 6th slide (#6, 12, 18....). 120 / 6 = 20. 20 x 5 = 100 =
Hello-
I am creating a few quizzes. Our company likes the user to know how many questions s/he has completed already out of the total number of questions. Usually we accomplish this by simply inserting a textbox and adjusting the number for each slide. However, due to technical issues with the custom app we had made to play the quizzes, we have had to set the questions to be generated randomly. Therefore, the numbering we usually do won't work.
I tried using the variable workaround that Laura posted, but ran into the following issue: if a user clicks "submit" without first selecting an answer, the user is reminded to answer the question and then must click submit again. This throws the numbering off. We have not been able to find a way around this. We would like to be able to create a trigger where the variable is adjusted when the interaction is submitted, but that option is not available, nor is there an option to create a trigger based on two conditions (at least not the conditions we are looking for).
If you have any advice please let me know. Thank you!
Is there a way to insert a question counter when using a question bank with randomized questions?
Hi Valentino! Would the suggestions in this thread help you out with what you are asking? Just let me know. Thanks and have a great day!
This is all very interesting. From the dates of the postings, I see that I'm way behind. Allow me to solicit your collective wisdom for a problem related to this numbering issue.
I need a way that the student or other viewer can uniquely identify a slide for a question, comment, suggestion, or blooper. What unique identifier is available for this purpose? Any ideas?
OBTW: Happy New Year!!!!!
Happy New Year, Skip.
That's a good question. How many slides do you anticipate needing unique identifiers? For quick and dirty, you could just add a small graphic on the screen, add a new SlideID layer, and have the Scene number and Slide Number pop up when the user mouses over the graphic. That will get pretty exhausting if you have a lot of slides, or anticipate changing, adding or deleting any. If that's the case, you might use the same approach and hard code the scene number, but then use a variable to display the slide number.
Hi Skip and Happy New Year to you as well!
There are a few different ideas you could implement, including what Laura has mentioned. Probably the easiest option is to use Storyline's built in menu option which you can include the numbering there automatically. If you don't want to use the menu, you could also set it up to show a variable (say "SlideNumber" ) on each slide, and add an additional trigger to add 1 to the value of "SlideNumber" at the start of the timeline for each slide. If you users are able to use the previous and next buttons, you'll need an additional trigger to subtract 1 when the user clicks the previous button to keep the number set up and you'd also want to set each slide's revisiting properties to "resume saved state" so that the variable doesn't increase based on the revisit alone.
Technique elaborated by Ashley fails if you provide a menu using which user can jump directly to a certain page. Ideally I believe a page number feature is something that is generally expected from any rapid development tool. I also agree that page numbers should be avoided and user should be given a free to roam and hang around kind of design in course ware but there are some clients who strictly insists on page numbers and then you are in a catch if you are using Storyline.
I use a setup object on each slide to update variables for page title and page number pretty frequently. Folks think this is a lot of work. While this would be a nice feature to have built in, I don't find this method to be all that much work. Updating page numbers when a page is added or deleted is a little bit of a pain but it's still only a few seconds for each slide once you get it established.
See the attached file for an example and description. The beauty of Story View is you can update variables on the base timeline, including within objects. The setup object in this story sets a couple of variables and neatly contains the stuff I set for each slide. Add some variable references to text objects on your master slide and you have a nice clean way to update the display of these values throughout your project.
Thanks Steve for sharing your page number example here, I'm certain it'll be helpful to other community members.
Vinayak, if you'd like to see page numbers in a future version of Storyline I'd suggest that you submit a feature request so that your thoughts get directly to our Development team.
We also would like a simple page number for the slides and will have to put them in manually. We are not looking for live buttons for these page numbers. We need them in case a student needs help with a specific slide and calls the HelpDesk. They can then reference the slide # (like a page #). We don't want to have to create a live link that changes when you click Next or Previous. Looking forward to this feature in the future, but for now we will have to go into more than a thousand slides and manually enter the page number. Sure hope we don't have to insert slides in the middle and then have to renumber all those slides too!!
Jeez, this thread again? Since Storyline obviously has a way to track slide and scene numbers based on the menu, why not just let your users have access to those variables? Why not let your customers decide what is right for their projects?
Hi Randall,
Based on this thread, you're not alone in that thought. So the best thing to do right now is share your thoughts in the form of a feature request as well as those go on to our product development team for review and to look at including in future versions of Storyline.
I agree with you, Randall. I'm new to Storyline and I purchased it believing it to be a very easy-to-use but powerful authoring tool---and in many ways it is. But I have to admit I've been surprised at how it lacks several of what I would consider to be very basic common sense features---including this example of missing your typical page/slide numbering option.
The Menu sequentially numbering all the slides is nice, and especially in providing the user a way to jump to whatever slide they want to (if allowed). I also like being able to hide the menu or place it on the Topbar Right or Topbar Left, where remains hidden until you click on the "Menu" text. But apparently there is no Trigger command for displaying the menu, so you can't assign it to a custom button---thus limiting the layout options to what they've provided. If they would have all essential Storyline controls/features able to be activated by triggers, there would be much more design flexibility.
I'll send in a feature request for page numbering as well; meanwhile if there has been any new developments on this I'd be interested.
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