Quizzing: multiple dropdown boxes per slide?

Mar 15, 2013

Dear community

I received the job to transpose an existing quiz from Captivate (6) to Storyline. I have several type of questions I could not transpose 1-on-1 and had to find ways around the "limitations" or rather differences of Storyline.

One type of question I simply don't arrive at a usable solution is the multiple dropdown boxes per page question type. The user has to select the correct suggestions from a couple of dropdown boxes. Within Captivate this question type is closely related to fill in the blank, just instead of a user input you can give suggestions as a dropdown box. Captivate allows virtually unlimited blanks on a slide. I cannot replicate this in any way, as Storyline only accepts 1 dropdown box per page. Please see the screenshot below to get an idea of what it looks like now and where I would like to get at.

Any suggestions...? Thanks in advance, of course.

20 Replies
Christine Hendrickson

Hi Joël,

Correct, this isn't currently a built-in option in Storyline. However, one option would be to use multiple questions on one slides. There are a few discussions on this topic that you may want to check out. Keep in mind they are not specific to the Drop-down quiz type, but the methods may still help you out.

Numeric Question with Multiple EntryFields

Multiple text fields on a single quiz slide [SOLUTION]

There's also a knowledge base article that may help:

Articulate Support > How to evaluate multiple fill-in-the-blanks on the same slide

Another option may be to create a free form quiz and simulate the appearance of a drop-down menu for each field you'd like to use. 

I hope this helps! Good luck with the project If you're able to set this up, I'm sure others would appreciate any tips or advice for this type of quiz setup.

Thanks!

Joël Brandes

Oh, I like those kind of treats a lot 

Jokes aside, I had a certain presentiment that I'd have to do it this way. Thank you very much for the answers and suggestions nonetheless. It's just that I took the easiest slide on purpose to demo my problem. I have slides with much more complexity and this would lead to quite a time overhead for just creating those slides. I did already do a math quiz slide where users have to sum up a row of values. In the end, for this in principle simple type of slide, the trigger editing required to reach this is massive, you may see yourself:

 And there's still plenty of way to scroll left in the trigger editor. You may pardon me for asking, but is there no simpler or easier way to reach the originally requested result? I just don't know Storyline enough to think of ways and tricks to get where I would like to.

Greetings

Antony Snow

Hi Joel,

I may be missing something here but looking at the first example you provided, I have managed to replicate this in Storyline using a Matching Drop-down.

In my instance, I wanted the learner to select an appropriate type of bird feeder and match it to an image of the bird food you would put in it. When I created the interaction, I simply left the 'Choice' column blank and entered the feeder types I wanted to be included in the drop-down list in the 'Match' column. Once inserted, I re-positioned each drop-down (the 'correct' list entry is automatically displayed so you can see where it should go) under the appropriate image on my slide.

I don't know if this is of any help to you? 

Joël Brandes

Ok, the matching drop-down approach did not work as I need several drop-down menues with different content. They may - coincidentally - have the same content, based on the question, but usually they don't.

With - again - a lot of trigger work I seem to have gotten it to work using inspiration from this forum thread: http://community.articulate.com/forums/p/20264/112881.aspx

You may have a look on how/what I did using the story file attached below. Note the check boxes, they of course will be hidden in the final quiz, are there for debugging purposes.

While this works, it is very complicated to set up, time consuming and especially prone to creator error. I can imagine messing such a slide up at some point in time at 4:55pm, 5 minutes before going home... Does anyone have any ideas how the creation process of such a slide could be improved as in simplified as well as sped up?

Thanks in advance for your participation, brainstorming and any ideas.

Antony Snow

Hi Joel,

I looked at your file last night and now that I have seen what you are trying to achieve, I can now see why my suggestion of using a matching drop-down won't achieve what you are trying to do - sorry.

As you require 3 drop-down lists that contain a mixture of answers (which isn't built-in to Storyline) I will bow to Rebecca and Christine on this - it may not be a simple solution, but it does at least work.

If you do manage to find a more elegant way of building this type of interaction, it would be great if you could share it.

Brian Glover

Hi folks, I'm in the same predicament as Joël... I'm using Storyline 3 and I need to embed multiple dropdown menus within one paragraph, so the learner can select the correct word from each dropdown to make the paragraph complete.  Again, as Joël states, this would take mere minutes in Captivate, but I can't seem to figure out how to do this in Storyline, even with a freeform slide.   Can anyone point me to a step-by-step tutorial? Anything? 

Alyssa Gomez

Hey Brian!

This tutorial should spark some ideas: How to Create a Drop-down List Interaction.

If you're open to using another type of interaction, try creating a fill-in-the-blank instead of using dropdown menus. Simply add blank spaces in the paragraph where learners can drag and drop words from a bank. You could use a freeform drag-and-drop slide to design this interaction. Would that be an option? 

jiue ase

This information has been superb. I am operating in Storyline 3. However, the URL + question string link does now not work if I have a video (wmv or mov are the formats we are the usage of) inserted on the slide, see more detail. Any guidelines on how to get the URL + query string to paintings with a video?

Eric Santos

Hi Christian,

Good question; I'm happy to help with this! You can change the highlight color for the dropdown menu options by editing the Custom 2 color in the Storyline Theme Colors, as shown below.

customizing theme colors

You can use this article for reference:

If you require any further information, please let me know!