How did you learn Storyline? What were your pain points?
Apr 28, 2015
I'm going to be training on Storyline soon, and I wanted to put together something that would get learners started quickly but effectively.
If you're currently learning Storyline, I'd love to hear your answers too!
So I had a few questions :) answer as many or as little as you want:
- How did you learn Storyline? (I know a lot of our answers will be "I just started working in it!" but did you have a specific project you needed to build and/or were there people around you who could help?)
- Besides any initial "getting started!" tutorials, which tutorials were the first ones that you specifically looked up?
- What were some of your initial pain points? and/or what did you want to be able to do quickly and didn't know how to?
- What were some of your aha! moments? (For example, one of mine was button sets weirdly)
- What did your first project look like?
- How much did you use Storyline until you felt comfortable enough with it to put it down on your resume with confidence?
Thanks all!
BONUS ROUND! Follow up questions:
What do you wish you knew sooner? This doesn't necessarily need to be a "pain point" - just something where you were like, "oh! I can do that in Storyline?" or similar. For example, mine was probably cue points :)
What resources have you used to become "advanced" in Storyline? Or perhaps, how advanced are you trying to go?
What came first: Instructional Design or Development? Were you an instructional designer that wanted to start developing, or were you a developer first? I started with Storyline myself, and learned instructional design along the way.
31 Replies
I have to say that we started out with Articulate Presenter here, and then upgraded to Storyline. I was sort of stumbling my way through the program, learning on the fly, using the help and support functions here, but what really turned the corner for me was attending a three-day workshop hosted by a third party (let me know if it's OK to call them out by name, because I'm itchin' to give 'em a serious plug - their training was fantastic for me!).
How did I learn Storyline: I started with engage which to me was almost like PowerPoint, then we got storyline and now storyline 2. I pretty much learned on my own by watching every tutorial I could find, there wasn’t anyone at my company using anything like storyline.
First Tutorials: Timeline, States, Triggers
Initial Pain Points: I would have to say states, I was like how did they do that! I am still learning states, I watched a tutorial experiment about rotating and moving shapes using state combinations and animations. When I first started I focused on the time line and how I could move things around in it. I realized how easy it was……big smile here.
Aha Moments: The hide button for each object you place on a slide, such a big help when a lot of things are placed on one slide that are hidden and appear when cued. Getting an object in the right spot on a busy slide can be crazy, but hide everything else and it’s a breeze, plus you can run the slide and just watch the object you’re focused on run through its animation. Oh and the object lock button.
My First Project: I think my first project was building a video player that included a menu slide where you could choose the video you wanted to play.
Getting Comfortable: I would say three months
Knew Sooner: Variables, Complex Triggers
How Advanced: my background is maintenance and we have a bunch of equipment and controllers for operation and testing of high voltage devices. Me… like a dummy LOL said wouldn’t it be cool to create a test equipment simulation in storyline. Now I am working on a project where I created what I call a virtual controller that opens and closes a high voltage device, the controller has a rotating information screen that changes and many other features, lights, buttons, sequencing, etc. so I copied a picture of the real controller, recreated the user interface in storyline, now it’s a matter of logic programing to make it mimic the real thing. Oh yeah fun stuff! Slide layer a plenty, complex trigger and a jillion variables. Here is an example of complicated, I created an interface slide that I placed buttons on it that operate variables that affect things on the controller. Maybe I will post it if I can figure out how. I want the instructor to be able to interact with the controller changing scenarios while the student is in the eLearning program.
What Came First: we do it all at my company
I definitely agree with Point 2 Daniel!
How did you learn Storyline? I actually started in presenter, there were lots of teasers about storyline on the forum prior to it's release and when it came out I downloaded the trial and played around.
Which tutorials were the first ones that you specifically looked up? No idea here I was already a forum lurker so probably everything and anything that was available.
What were some of your initial pain points? Just getting used to the different layout. Getting my head around states, layers and triggers and the best methods for using them probably took a while too.
What were some of your aha! moments? Once I started to work out how to get multiple triggers to work with one another to do some really cool things.
What did your first project look like? First project was actually huge, working with other ID's (although I wasn't yet an ID myself) to turn a 3 day face to face workshop into a blended learning 1 day workshop, 20+ workbooks and 20+ e-learning modules. I was the LMS administrator (aka IT guy) so was tasked with building the actual modules from the content given... And that's where it all began lol
How much did you use Storyline until you felt comfortable enough with it to put it down on your resume with confidence? Was at the job for about 3 years before I moved on so had no need to until then.
I think the best way to learn is to have real projects. This way you HAVE to get it done and figure out how to make things work to achieve the results you need...
Not sure if I am too late to add this and can't remember if there is anything derogatory in the document (! hopefully not :) ) but I am an IT Systems trainer who dabbled with Storyline 2 for simulations and put together a relatively comprehensive file about my experiences.
I hope you all find this useful.
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