I am producing a detailed technical course, 30+ lessons, that are heavily text based in Word. I am really excited about learning/converting to Storyline to make the course more engaging (audio/video etc.). Does anyone know a) a way to convert/import Word directly including font and formatting as a base document, or b) a Storyline template that utilises substantial text?
I have viewed the excellent samples, but none are quite suitable, the closest I guess is PowerPoint '13: Sleek & Serious Tabs.
I started in Storyline doing a whole course conversion as well. Now a little bit further down the road, having now done a range of courses and visualisations - here are a few of the pointers I have vowed to use in my next whole accredited training course build.
Given the volume of information in a technical vocational/high ed course I would recommend:
- not trying to walk learners through every bit of information;
- instead categorise information into what to show on slide; interaction / activities: assessments; job aids; background reading; etc
- this way you can try to speed up your build by using some consistent templates / styles for each type. For example spend more time on the activities / interactive elements; make sure your quizzes and assessments are robust and real; use templates for critical content that is revealed to the learned (ie such as by using something like the PowerPoint '13: Sleek and Serious Tabs design); and then include background information, articles, textbook style info that you want to make available to students (but don't have to walk them through) by using a 'cheap' format that saves some of your build time.
- for the background style information that you currently have in a Word doc format - I would suggest considering using the 'Insert: Scrolling Panel' option.
It may seem that just dropping (some) chunks of information into the course in Word doc format is against good course design (I originally thought this). However, I found that:
1. building to a budget / time constraint for a whole course (mine was a one-year FTE course) with bells and whistles on every page was challenging; and
2. that with accredited whole course elearnings, the norm is really still quite low, so that by using different build standards for different types of content, the course can still end up at very high overall standard.
Hope some of these thoughts prove relevant to your course. Good luck with your build.
Thank you very much for your response and sorry for the delay in getting
back.
Some good advice there paticularly about the walkthrough bit. The first
few chapters are literally walk throughs to create an efficient working
environment that will benefit the learners for the rest of their careers -
leaving out the interesting (boring/pointless) stuff. But from there the
hand holding will need to drop off sharply as suggested, otherwise I might
as well do a "how to book".
Insert scroll might just be what I was looking for. I will play aorund with
that and see what happens!
3 Replies
Hi Jon
I started in Storyline doing a whole course conversion as well. Now a little bit further down the road, having now done a range of courses and visualisations - here are a few of the pointers I have vowed to use in my next whole accredited training course build.
Given the volume of information in a technical vocational/high ed course I would recommend:
- not trying to walk learners through every bit of information;
- instead categorise information into what to show on slide; interaction / activities: assessments; job aids; background reading; etc
- this way you can try to speed up your build by using some consistent templates / styles for each type. For example spend more time on the activities / interactive elements; make sure your quizzes and assessments are robust and real; use templates for critical content that is revealed to the learned (ie such as by using something like the PowerPoint '13: Sleek and Serious Tabs design); and then include background information, articles, textbook style info that you want to make available to students (but don't have to walk them through) by using a 'cheap' format that saves some of your build time.
- for the background style information that you currently have in a Word doc format - I would suggest considering using the 'Insert: Scrolling Panel' option.
It may seem that just dropping (some) chunks of information into the course in Word doc format is against good course design (I originally thought this). However, I found that:
1. building to a budget / time constraint for a whole course (mine was a one-year FTE course) with bells and whistles on every page was challenging; and
2. that with accredited whole course elearnings, the norm is really still quite low, so that by using different build standards for different types of content, the course can still end up at very high overall standard.
Hope some of these thoughts prove relevant to your course. Good luck with your build.
Regards Christine
Hi Christine,
Thank you very much for your response and sorry for the delay in getting
back.
Some good advice there paticularly about the walkthrough bit. The first
few chapters are literally walk throughs to create an efficient working
environment that will benefit the learners for the rest of their careers -
leaving out the interesting (boring/pointless) stuff. But from there the
hand holding will need to drop off sharply as suggested, otherwise I might
as well do a "how to book".
Insert scroll might just be what I was looking for. I will play aorund with
that and see what happens!
Many thanks, Jonathan
Good advice
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