Forum Discussion
Flow Chart activity
Hello All: I am seeking advice/inspiration for a flow chart activity. Before submitting this, I checked out previous discussions, but many are 5-8 years old.
The flow chart is a display of cause and effect. The students will not get to choose, but they will see the outcome of a decision. There are over 20 shapes/arrows and I am looking to alleviate 20+ triggers. Is there a different solution rather than reveal the outcomes with triggers or states? Can this be addressed with true/false variables? If so, how? Just trying to think outside the box (pun intended)!
Attached is the before and after screenshots.
As always, thank you in advance.
Hi Debra,
You said that the students won't be choosing anything, so will the flow chart need to reveal itself on its own, or is there some interaction that you'd like your students to do?
Hello. Thanks. To clarify, there are no decisions (yes/no), but the students must click each box to reveal the consequence. I was thinking of handling the reveal in either two ways: Option 1: Start with only the six initial boxes (left). Each box would be clicked one at a time to reveal the consequence. This would be very tedious (for me and the student). Option 2: What if I start with all the boxes displayed but make every box opaque (or hidden) except the six on the left. As they click each box, the information would be revealed. I don't know if this makes sense. Do you have another thought? Many thanks.
First, as I read your latest post, Option 1 and option 2 are the same.
As far as tedium, Instructional Designers are paid the big bucks to do tedious work to make learning easier for learners. :) It goes with the territory. Personally, I like the idea of the learner taking a specific action to indicate they are finished with this data and are ready to move on to the next.
Here are a couple of ideas that may get you started. The difference is that when boxes are revealed on slide 1, they are persistent, while those on slide 2 can be clicked again and hidden.
OK. I was looking for alternatives. 20+ triggers to display boxes seems tedious. I was wondering if a true/false variable could suffice, but I don't know if that is a viable option or how to construct it. Just trying to think outside the box (as it were). ;)
Variables don't actually do anything. Think of them as a sticky note that tells you what happened somewhere or somewhen else in the project. You still have to create all the triggers to make something happen.
Think of them this way:
I got home last night, and the cat insisted he had not been fed all day, and was STARVING. I hadn't been there all day, so I didn't know, and my wife was off to her quilting party, so I couldn't ask her. Fortunately, she left a note on the counter that said "I fed the cat", so I knew not to feed him again.The note she left me is the variable. I couldn't see her feed the cat, but I could see the note and know what went on while I was gone. Storyline is just like I was. One slide has no way of knowing what happens on another slide, but it can read a message left for it in a variable, and know what the learner did on another slide, provided you, the developer used those actions on that other slide to change the contents of a variable.The cat got pretty insistent, so I gave him a snack, crossed out her message, and wrote, "He's also had a bedtime snack", and went to my meeting.The note is the variable. Everybody can see it, and it never changes unless you, the author, create a trigger to change it.My wife is getting older (I'm not, just she), and takes a bunch of medicines. She puts them in one of those little plastic gadgets with seven boxes. Every night, (if she remembers :) ) she looks in the box for that day. If it is empty, she knows she has taken her pills that day.The pill box is the variable. She can't always remember everything, but if the box has pills in it, she knows to take them.Variables are designed to be seen everywhere, but not heard (much like small children of a previous generation). SL cannot multi-task, so only one slide at a time can be active. SL has no memory, so when a slide becomes active, it can't know what went on while it was hibernating. That's why variables were invented. Each slide can look at the note (variable) and by seeing what is on there now, it can know what went on somewhere else, or some other time. I couldn't hear my wife write the note, but I can read it and know what went on at home while I was not there.Excellent explanation. @Walt. I guess the answer is triggers. I will try to make it interesting. Many thanks. Debra
- You're welcome. PIAWYC (Pass it along when you can).
