Storyline to create problems random problems for science example

Mar 17, 2014

I have been using Storyline to support my teaching of AP Physics B, AP Physics C, Physics, Chemistry and Biology for about a year. Storyline the best and worst of products. With time you can make it do the impossible with JavaScript on the backend. I constant hit problems with subscripts (superscripts work) working in the Question Banks (but you can not copy text in) but not on main pages. So you skip back a few decades and make the subscripts a smaller font (i.e. New Times Roman 14 font with 9 font subscripts). Even when you used any of the built in font tools it fails for subscripts when you publish for main pages though it is retained in Question files. If you publish to CD then it can be made to work like a dream. I am trying to replace a half million lines of code I generated several decades ago with a product that allows anything I want. Storyline is the closest product so far without out coding line by line. I am going to share a sample for others to help them along. This is in general copyrighted materials so it is just for getting your creativity kicked off. See attached file. My problem at the moment is publishing to a web site. One time I can get the JavaScript to work with HTML5/HTML then not. I could take some clues here. By the way this is a rather simple example, but it will give you the idea. Storyline is so close to being a premier educational development tool, I hope we can fix for find a work around for a few critical things. I would like to hear from other experienced educators trying to the same thing.

Hope this helps someone. Let me know it you can not get the file to work.

Victor

2 Replies
Ashley Terwilliger-Pollard

Hi Victor and welcome to Heroes! 

It sounds like there are a few different issues you're experiencing, so I'll try to address each of them. 

I'm not proficient enough in Javascript to take a look at your code and know what could be causing any issues in it, but I did want to remind you that there is a great article here with some Javascript best practices.   I did test publishing your course and you can view it here, in case that will help you determine where the issues with Javascript are occurring and any differences between what you see when publishing.  

In regards to the subscript or superscript, you'll see the tool on the tab as below:

Although when working in areas such as the Notes field, you'll need to use the method Insert -> Symbol to include a subscript or superscript. As for adding questions, you don't see that same tab until the question is created, and then you can go into those individual text boxes to add the subscript/superscript. You can copy and paste in text, but it will not retain the superscript/subscript once added to the Question editor. 

Victor DeAlmeida

Thanks for your reply.

I realize that the copy and paste does not work anywhere in the application for subscript or superscripts. But in the Question editor you can manually correct subscripts and they stick on compile. On the main pages they are converted back to normal text on compile.

Will subscrips work better for the Myraid Pro font on the regular pages? I did not try a Myriad Pro font, but I used this process for all the different Articulate fonts, Times New Roman, and Arial and for all them on the standard page they show up during developemnt just fine, but when you compile the subscripts are converted back to standard text. In the boxes available for developing questions it does not disapear. I always edit for or type directly in the textboxs when building them. Subscripts just do not work correctly in general. There are a number of posts saying this same thing out there, one in particular suggested that the teacher make images of correct text and post them. But that would not work for something that changes constantly. I have seen you Javascript best practices months ago which shows some of the limits. That is not in general an issue except that you can not get the Javascript to work (in general) with an HTML5 or HTML compile on most servers or even independent divices. That is somewhat an issue with the host more than the Articulate application. The CD compile can be made to work on Apple laptops but the Javascript will fail. This is an Apple issue and even if the computer is set to allow Javascript it will not.

I am not having problems publishing my courses. I have been doing this for most of a year.

My purpose in posting anyting was to show other teachers that there is great power in the Articulate world. Most teachers never produce problems with random number generators shich allows them to product one problem instead a half dozed fixed problem of the same type with a random selector.

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