Tutorial 18: Interactive Courses

May 29, 2019

Viewing this tutorial, I couldn't help but wonder at the trigger programming for the "prompts" (on each of the hotspots).  Can those be set to appear "when the slide first appears" and not "when user mouses over the hotspot"?  In an interactive, step-by-step course, you would assume the learner knows little to nothing and needs to be told to do everything .... so (s)he shouldn't be expected to just run the mouse all over the screen until (s)he stumbles across the hot spot to reveal a prompt.

Based on what I've learned in earlier tutorials, I'm assuming this would be a simple edit in the triggers for the prompts, no?  (I would check for myself, but there don't seem to be the same practice files for this lesson as there are with the first 8 tutorials). 

6 Replies
David Anderson

Hi Allen - 

Yes, you can trigger the slide layers to show captions when the timeline begins but I wouldn't override the default functionality with the Try Mode step-by-steps. The try mode is designed to let the learner practice a series of steps. The mode is ungraded but does provide feedback to the learner when they perform correct and incorrect steps.

For new users who know little or nothing about a process, I'd recommend going with a video on single slide or the view mode step-by-step. Both modes will demonstrate a process or series of steps without requiring the learner to interact with the screen.

Allen Dickerson

To my view, a "try" style course involves giving the student "muscle memory" with a process (usually for software, specifically). You want to both train on the process AND make the student do the work rather than just *watch*. So, it is incumbent upon the course to prompt the student each step of the way (rather than have prompts dependant upon a mouseover at the hotspot).

The other alternative, of course is to simply have a video show all the steps, but then, of course, you lose the desired interactivity and the "muscle memory".

Allen Dickerson

Indeed. When I think about the See/Try/Verify method of eLearning, I envision the "See" version to be a demo or non-interactive video explaining the process; the "Try" version being a prompted, guided version where the learner has to do all the work, to create muscle memory, and the Verify being a graded test version with minimal or no "help"; the user is expected to now know "where to go, and what to do"... although instead of a step-by-step series of "questions", they might be given a higher order level of task, and be expected to know what 10 small tasks are required to perform that higher order task.

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