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Emily02's avatar
Emily02
Community Member
2 days ago

Filter like Excel inside course

Hello,

I am building a process-based course for people working in a laboratory. There are 9 different machines that are in the process the person has to use. I did the initial storyboarding in Microsoft Excel, because the process isn't strictly linear. For example:

  • Turn on Machine A. It takes 30 minutes to warm up. 
  • Turn on Machine B. Do process 1 and 2. 
  • Turn on Machine C. Do process 1.
  • On Machine B, do process 3.
  • When Machine A beeps, you have 90 seconds to do process 1.

So, when I job shadowed the technician, I wrote out the information in the order he does the work. When teaching someone new, he may want to do the entire process, but he may want to run it machine-by-machine, depending on the learner. 

With Excel, I have a column for the overall step process and another column for the step on a given machine. Filtering makes it easy to toggle between machine specific or full process views. 

For the moment, I'm building it in Rise with each machine as its own lesson. Long term, I think doing this in Storyline and putting some variables on each slide might be a better way to do this. I'm thinking I'd build the process by machine (in each scene). Then I'd rearrange the slides into the process order. The learner could then choose to view as full process or toggle for just one variable to be seen. 

Is there a better way to do this? What haven't I thought of that could make this easier?

advice
Articulate 360
e-learning development
instructional design

1 Reply

  • ThierryEMMANUEL's avatar
    ThierryEMMANUEL
    Community Member
    5 hours ago

    Hello Emily02​ .
    If I understand correctly...
    I wondered if arranging the machine-by-machine process in different scenes would be easy to manage, when you have to jump from slide to slide and scene to scene to see the entire process. I don't think so. 
    I thought about it while making a quick demo.
    I arranged all the machine-by-machine processes in the same scene: it's easier to visualize. Each slide must be clearly named.
    NB: disable the built-in PREV and NEXT buttons on each slide, as well as the swipe actions, to keep a consistent Storyview.
    There is only one TRUE/FALSE variable: run_entire_process. I thought this was the best process for teaching purposes, so the variable is TRUE.
    There is a button to toggle this variable if you want to view the process by machine, so run_entire-process = FALSE
    All you have to do now is create a NEXT button on each slide, which takes you to the slide (next step on another machine) if the variable is TRUE, otherwise to the slide (next step on the current machine) when the learner clicks on the NEXT button.
    (I have followed your chronology of steps)
    NB: For greater immersion, you can trigger a lightbox (for the Machine A process) after a timer (e.g., 1 min showing 30 min) triggered at the beginning of the Machine A “preheating” slide has finished: place it on the base layer. 

    Let us know if this helps. Merry Christmas.