Forum Discussion
Are We Designing for Learning or Just Adding More Clicks? 🤔
I love the idea of teaching with Scenarios and reinforcing what they don't know when they get the challenge wrong, but Storyline doesn't make it easy to do this unless you use their preset graded questions or freeform questions and results slides. Triggers and variables get tricky to keep up with. If you add a path choice (clinical vs non-clinical) to make the material relevant for their role, it gets even harder to keep up with. Storyline's player menu can't branch along with the learner. It presents both paths. Now you have to know JavaScript to customize a menu, so the learner only sees the slides that pertain to the path they chose. What if they do poorly on the scenarios that you're trying to keep score of? Do we let them go back and start all over again? What if you decide to let them redeem themselves by answering quiz questions at the end? Now we have to track two assessments and ignore the questions in the path they did not choose. Instead of focusing on the material and creating the scenarios, we're busy researching how to make all this happen with limited knowledge of variables and coding. If this indeed is the best teaching and learning formula for e-learners, why aren't authoring tools better equipped with templates to support this?
Why aren't authoring tools "better equipped with templates to support this"? Consider how many types of scenarios there could be, with different numbers of potential responses and different numbers of slides the user might visit based on the chosen response. Add in the option to retry everything or only what they missed. Oh, and add multiple paths based on the user's role. How does anyone program a "template" for that?
As I've said in other posts, it helps to map out what you want to do before you start developing. In other words, "focusing on the material and creating the scenarios" is the vital first step. That helps determine the complexity of the programming.
For the easiest scenario building, graded-question and results slides are, in essence, the templates, especially when tracking is needed. So it makes sense to use those. And the slides could be designed however you want using Freeform questions. Those actually allow for quite a bit of customization while still taking advantage of built-in functionality.
I also think it's worth it to learn how to use variables and trigger conditions, because those provide the real power in Storyline.
Yes, JavaScript would be needed to customize the built-in Menu based on a chosen path. Personally, I wouldn't show the built-in Menu in that type of course. IMHO, the built-in menu isn't all that helpful when there is a lot of branching and custom navigation.
FYI, here's my post about branching paths in Storyline. It includes a file that demonstrates and explains how to use variables for branching. It also links to a comment with details about how to customize the built-in menu if desired.
BTW, I do sympathize with how difficult all this can be. When I started in eLearning (back when it was known as computer-based training), there were specialists for each part of the job. At a minimum, a team would include a writer/ID (that was me), a graphic designer, and a programmer. Often, there was also a program manager to oversee the logistics. And, of course, the SMEs. When authoring tools like Storyline came along, lots of folks became a team of one...