Forum Discussion
Calling all Software Simulationists
I am interested to hear how software simulationists manage their captures in a Storyline Story file.
We have never moved over to SL for screencapturing. We record up to 100 captures for a simulation within a product and I have always wondered how people manage that may slides within their .story file.
Do you create Scenes for each of these sims of captures and then launch from a course slide in a Main Scene with the last sim capture returning to the next slide in the Main Scene?
I can't imagine anyone has them all in one Scene as that would be too overwhelming. Or does nobody create complex software simulations with SL?
Cheers.
There are several options here and depending on the stakeholder's requirement I will do one of these.
Option 1. I will build a storyline project on one function. Make sure it works, test and have the stakeholder review and approve. This can now be used as a standalone project. Quick and can be used as a review by learners when needed.
Option 2. Use the above project as a scene and import these slides into a bigger project. I keep it as standalone for changes as needed down the road.
Option 3. Take all my standalone projects and put them in a learning path on the LMS.
A lot depends on your stakeholder's and what they want. In reading your post, I think option 2 will work the best.
Good luck.
14 Replies
I agree with all comments here, as there are multiple ways to make this happen.
Three of us together recently created a "choose your own adventure" type of software simulation where the opening scene includes the 'choose adventure' page which links to 7 different simulations each in their own scene which each lead to a final scene where learners can choose to start over, go on another adventure, or end the adventure. Three of us built simulations and the main architect pulled our Storyline files as scenes into the main file. The main file was large, so we were curious about PC processing power and the time it might take to upload to an LMS. We ended up with approximately 300 slides total across 9 scenes. It worked fine, just took a little longer than usual to upload.
On a related note: If you ever build simulations with screenshots as an image file type then add hotspots on top of them, make sure to lean into the greatness of the Storyline Media Library. Organize Course Media Assets with Media Library in Storyline | Articulate - Community One thing the video doesn't show - in the media library, a visual indicator appears when the media file changed outside of Storyline. This allows you to reimport that file, which then automatically updates all the slides that use that media.
If you opt to build the simulation by allowing Storyline to capture your points and clicks, the hotspots are already built in along with correct/incorrect message layers. Hotspots typically need some adjustments, in our experience.
In your case, I see you build simulations using a different product then pull them into Storyline. I, too, recommend scenes just to keep it organized.
Thanks Andrea. Good to know. Yeah, both SL and Captivate supply the text boxes after the point where you want to click on the item i.e. at the point that selection if highlighted such as rollover text colour change, menu selection etc.
This is the bane of our lives, as we have to move them to the preceding slide. Maybe I should have raised it as a product improvement!! :D Been doing it for years.
Hi Steve,
Great question. Definitely use multiple scenes.
I create very lengthy simulations with multiple steps, including integrations with other systems.
- I start off the course with a high-level "big picture" overview of the complete process.
- For example, perhaps the complete process has 9 "big steps" with multiple individual steps within each.
- I create separate scenes for each of the 9 "big steps" in the process. Scenes make the menu structure much easier to manage.
- At the start of each scene, I show the "big picture" process again, reminding users what they've completed and what's next.
- Creating an easy-to-understand visual for the complete process is essential! Not only do we use the visual in the training, but we also leverage it for job aids, communications, etc.
Hope that helps. Best wishes!
Thanks Debbie. Much appreciated and totally makes sense to have the summary overview before the split into the scenes.
When I've done something like this (and on a large scale as you've described) in the past, I've broken the software functions into scenes for ease of management and maintenance. It certainly makes it easier to make a menu structure where you/learners can jump to the functions/tutorials that are most pertinent to the situation at hand, i.e. you can link them sequentially, have a menu where learners can jump to the function (scene) of most interest, or a combination of these.
Typically I'd capture the Show Me/Try Me into a 'capture' project and then transfer the sequence into the 'live' project. This was useful in my workflow for a couple of reasons:
- I could make sure the sequence was complete without any 'oops' in it (or at least make manual tweeks) before risking any corruption or large-scale slide deletions in the live project. Sometimes it was handy to use this staging post to delete early steps from the sequence that were showing learners stuff that was super-obvious or was a repeat of a step that had been shown in other sequences/software features. In these circumstances I could just insert a standard slide that said 'Enter the demographic data as you would when doing X, Y, Z before completing function Y.' (more eloquently and aesthetically pleasing - but you get what I mean) This saves learners' time and sanity by not covering non-necessary or well known stuff to get to the good bits.
- To help keep things fresh for learners, I'd often do a Show Me AND and Try Me sequence of slides (for the same sequence/software feature) into the 'capture' project and mix and match the slides, maybe using the Show Me frames for the simple, early parts of the sequence and inserting some Try Me frames for some of the more key parts of the sequence. E.g., the learner would passively watch some of the sequence, but then have to interact with (try) the simulated software steps to move the sequence along with some judiciously inserted instructions. I found this was often better than all Watching or all Trying, i.e., Watching everything could be boring, or having the learner ALWAYS enter mundane data into some rudimentary fields was just a pain to them getting to the meatier bits of the simulation.
As a final 'on my soapbox' comment on these kinds of projects, I believe it's always good to include WHEN AND WHY learners might user the sequence/function about to be learned. Many of these kinds of projects that I've seen go to great lengths to demonstrate that, for example, a person's name should be entered into a name field (well, duh!) but there's no context as to when and why a learner might use this function or what the implications of using it (or not) within the system are. For example, have you ever Googled how to do something in Windows and you get all kinds of tutorials on how to use the function but you can't find the @#$%! function in Windows to be able to start doing it yourself! Just my two cents' worth.
Good luck!
PeteB
Thanks Pete. I appreciate the depth you've gone into here. Cheers.
Steve, I do a lot of software simulation. Unlike most people, I don't use Articulates screen capture. I prefer the way Adobe Captivate captured a slide for every click. Articulate saves short videos and a lot of automatic layers that are not to my preference. So, import an image for every click. I always user workflow scenarios to teach the topic which are in separate scenes. The separate scenes for topics makes it easy to set up the table of contents to allow users to jump to a specific workflow. The separate scenes are all in one big continuous workflow.
To Pete's point, you often don't want a whole section to be a Show Me or Try Me. I always use a Release of Responsibility approach. If something is brand new, the user has helpful boxes so they know exactly where to click. The second topic will build on the first. Only new content will have red boxes. If the user clicks in the wrong spot a hint layer displays. Keep in mind the second scene is doing something new, but there is some overlaying content. I want the user to immediately practice what they learned for a different example and build on it. It forces the learner to stay engaged throughout. It may be a bit more tedious recording my simulation separately, but the end product makes it worth it because the end product acts exactly like the software I'm simulating (except for red boxes and hints if a mistake is made).
There are several options here and depending on the stakeholder's requirement I will do one of these.
Option 1. I will build a storyline project on one function. Make sure it works, test and have the stakeholder review and approve. This can now be used as a standalone project. Quick and can be used as a review by learners when needed.
Option 2. Use the above project as a scene and import these slides into a bigger project. I keep it as standalone for changes as needed down the road.
Option 3. Take all my standalone projects and put them in a learning path on the LMS.
A lot depends on your stakeholder's and what they want. In reading your post, I think option 2 will work the best.
Good luck.
Thanks Eric. Good point on all three. Much appreciated.
So Steve, there are a lot of ways to do this. I just finished up a project with 248 slides. I divided them into different scenes on the functions they did. In what I will call the real world I would have divided these into different presentations. But my stake holders wanted it all put into one project. The other nice thing about dividing them into scenes is, you can send just one scene for review.
Cheers Eric. It's good to have confirmation on this. We certainly have more so it would be good to know what the performance is like building all of those sims from within the file.
Or do you produce separately and then bring them into the story file at the end? I doubt anyone does this option, but it would be good to know as I suspect most of our courses would be over 6-700.
We essentially capture the sims in another product, produce the Storyline shell, usually with assessment, then import the captures at the end when ready to share the first draft for review.
Hello SteveBlackwell!
Thanks for reaching out! I'll open this discussion to our fabulous community to share their expertise and experience with Software Simulations in Storyline 360!
In the future, I recommend sharing these insightful questions in our brand-new Exchange Best Practices forum! (You can find this under the Connect tab).
- You can learn more about this update from our Director of Community, Noele_Flowers!
Have a great day, and happy authoring!
Thanks Luciana, I'll check that out. I'm a sometime frequenter of e-Learning Heroes. Cheers
