To Storyline or not to Storyline

Hi Niall, and welcome to Heroes..

Whilst Storyline CAN use PowerPoint "Click and Drag", it does not have to.

Storyline is a blank canvas - you can (within reason), build what you want.

You may need to build different products for PC and iPad consumption - that is the nature of the current mobile beast.

Have a look at http://community.articulate.com/forums/t/28530.aspx for example as inspiration for "non-slide".

Hope that helps get you started, and once again a warm welcome to the Heroes Community.

Bruce

"The main reason is a concern with developing another elearning course that is based around the Powerpoint/click the next slide approach. In the past I have used Adobe Captivate and found it to be a nightmare to build and edit. Having tried Storyline it is leaps and bounds better. But I keep coming back to the same niggling issue I have... slide based elearning content."

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I don't think Storyline is inherently a "click the next slide" tool.

The design of a Storyline course is not bound by a slide, it is bound by the designers creativity and mastery of the tool.  I have seen quite a few Storyline created courses that feel nothing like a slide show.  On the other hand, I have (sad to say) built many slide shows because of time constraints.

Welcome to the community Niall

First, I think you need to break yourself out of the "click to next slide" thinking about eLearning. There are tons of very creative examples in the community that make the content very engaging that you forget it is a slide to slide presentation. Use inspirations from games, movies, other interactions to create something new with storyline. We will be holding competitions here soon, so comeback often to get inspirations from some of the entries.

About mobile development for eLearning, I believe we haven't really scratched the surface yet. Development for desktops, mobile devices (tablets), and smartphones should all be approached differently. Just like the earlier days with websites, designers had to create different sites for each product so that it displayed correctly, I think we have to do the same approach. I'm of the opinion that a training course developed for the desktop cannot have the same effect on a smaller mobile device (smartphone).  Currently there is no single software solution for elearning development that can effectively create training on a mobile device, at least nothing that I have found.

About delving into a new Storyline project, I would say just to dive in. Get into the software and explore what it can really do. Start off small. Look at some of the great samples and templates that this community has put forward and try to recreate it.

Hi Niall

Welcome, Storyline is another tool in your armoury.  I suppose your question comes down to instructional design and the functional design of your course/project.

I personally hate scrolling anything it irritates me, I consider it a personal failure if I need to add in a scrolling panel.  You can use storyline for building slide, next slide courses or you can use it to build almost app quality learning tools.

I hate using my courses as an example but I built a Periodic table that was only one slide.

At the moment Storyline really only supports HTML5 in Safari/chrome and the iPad but it is getter better, in my opinion it is probably the best of the bunch at HTML5 at the moment.

To build non-linear courses takes more design work and more effort but is worth it.

I absolutely love this demo this original posting (unfortuantely not this one) had javascript to scroll the page through the page as you went through the scenario, I really wanted to do something like this when I worked for the Cancer Network.

This isnt storyline but could very easily be built in Storyline.

I suppose my point is, if you set out to build slide based learning that is what you will get, if you set out to build something else Storyline should be able to build it.

Hope this helps a little.