Using external web-based content - custom activities, exercises, simulations, etc

Sep 30, 2018

I know almost nothing about using any Articulate product to develop elearning. I'd like to know if I can embed existing web-based elearning content (more on this below) into Storyline, Rise, etc. If so, what are the capabilities and limitations? I'm asking this as a somewhat capable web developer that also happens to be an Instructional Designer.

So what can you tell me? Or can you point me to a product brief or online manual that will tell me the ins and outs of embedding arbitrary web content in an elearning course developed with Articulate?

--- Additional Background ---

I (or rather, we) have a very large library of elearning courses and assets that get served to learners in a custom web-based framework. Everything -- from the "static" course content, to the templated interactivities (quizzes, matching, sorting, scenarios, hyperstories, etc, all configured using XML files), to the custom interactions (activities, exercises, games, simulations) -- is based on pretty low-level html, css, javascript, etc. (And there's some old Flash stuff that's being converted or replaced, often using Adobe Animate.)

A lot of the "objects" we have can run as stand-alone web applications. They often get pulled into a course through an iframe (or could be made to do so if they're currently working in AJAXy fashion). They don't usually communicate very much with the parent frame other than to "unlock the next button".

Here's an example of a custom learning exercise, as described above. It's an old proof-of-concept simulation of 3 different kinds of feedback process control systems. It's not quite correct, it's definitely not pretty, and the instructional design kind of stinks (hey, it was a proof-of-concept)... but it's basically functional and fairly complex under the hood.

Feedback Process Control - 3 Types

This is the kind of thing I'd need to embed in a course. I'm pretty sure Articulate doesn't include features that would let me do a semi-realtime "engineering" simulation like this, but as long as I can embed it into a course, that would be fine.

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Thanks in advance!

Bill

 

3 Replies
Bill Wilson
Michael Hinze

Have you tried using a web object to link to your external content? Here is some info.

Thanks for link, Michael. I had seen that information earlier and concluded that a Web Object was probably the way to do this, but I haven't been able to try it yet. This particular feature is one of our "musts", so I'm trying to figure out what capabilities and limitations it may have before I dive into evaluating Storyline.

My biggest question right now is whether or not a Web Object can communicate with the parent slide, either to pass back information or to execute a function.

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