Storyline 3: Publishing a Course for LMS Distribution

If you're using a learning management system (LMS) to distribute and track e-learning content, you'll want to use the LMS publishing option in Storyline 3.

1. Enter Title, Description, and Folder Location
2. Enter Additional Project Info (Optional)
3. Adjust the Player Properties and Quality Settings
4. Choose to Publish a Slide, a Scene, or the Entire Course
5. Choose Reporting and Tracking Options
6. Publish
7. Distribute Your Published Course

Step 1: Enter Title, Description, and Folder Location

1. Go to the Home tab on the Storyline ribbon and click Publish.
2. When the Publish window appears, select the LMS tab on the left.
   
   
3. Enter the Title the way you want it to appear in your published output. It defaults to the name of your project file. (Changing the title won't affect the name of your project file.) The maximum length for a project title is 80 characters.
4. Use the Description field to define the purpose of your course. It won't appear in your published output.
5. Use the Folder field to choose where you want to publish your course—for example, your computer desktop. Click the ellipsis button (...) to browse to a location. Storyline will create a new folder in that spot with all the files needed to operate your course.
   
   Important: Always publish to your local hard drive. Publishing to a network drive or a USB drive can cause problems with your published output. After publishing to your local hard drive, upload the output to your LMS for testing and distribution.

Step 2 (Optional): Enter Additional Project Info

Click the ellipsis button (...) next to the Title field to define additional project information. Currently, this information is for your reference only. It won’t be visible in your published output.

1. The Title and Description fields are the same as those on the Publish window (see the previous step).
2. The image below the Title field will be the course thumbnail in the Articulate Mobile Player library. By default, Storyline uses an image of the first slide in your course, but you can choose a different image. Just click the hyperlinked text below the image, then select a different slide or click Picture from File to choose an image on your hard drive.
3. Enter values for Author, Email, Website, Duration, Date, Version, and Keywords if you'd like.
4. The Identifier is a unique string of characters assigned by Storyline that your LMS uses to identify your course. If you're republishing a course that's already in your LMS, don't change the value in this field.

When you're finished customizing the project information, click OK to return to the Publish window.

Step 3: Adjust the Player Properties and Quality Settings

Use the Properties section of the Publish window to make last-minute changes to your course player and quality settings.

1. The Player property shows the name of the player currently assigned to your project. (The player is the interface learners see around the perimeter of your course.) To make adjustments to your player, click the player name to open the player editor.
2. The Quality property lets you control the compression settings for audio clips, videos, and pictures. The quality settings default to whatever you used the last time you published a course. To change them, click the Quality property, make your adjustments, and click OK.
   • Choose Standard if you want to use the default settings: optimal video quality of 5, audio bitrate of 56 kbps, and JPG image quality of 100%.
   • Choose Custom if you want to define your own quality settings. Drag the slider for any of the three values to change the compression. Higher values give you higher-quality output but also larger file sizes (which means longer download times). Lower values give you smaller file sizes and faster download times, but the visual and audio quality will be lower as well.
     
     Tip: The image compression setting only affects JPG files.
   • Mark the Optimize Audio Volume box to normalize audio throughout your course for consistent volume across all slides.
     
     Tip: If your course audio already has consistent volume, you can speed up the publishing process by unchecking this option.

Step 4: Choose to Publish a Slide, a Scene, or the Entire Course

By default, Storyline will publish your entire course. However, you can now choose to publish a specific scene from your course or even just a single slide. This is helpful when you want to publish multiple courses from the same project file.

Just click the Publish property, then choose the entire project, a single scene, or a single slide.

Step 5: Choose Reporting and Tracking Options

Click the Reporting and Tracking button to open the following window, where you can choose how your LMS reports and tracks learners' progress.

1. Click the Reporting tab in the upper left corner, then choose a specification from the LMS drop-down. Ask your LMS administrator if you're not sure which spec to use. Storyline supports xAPI (Tin Can API), SCORM 2004, SCORM 1.2, and AICC.
2. Complete the fields in the section called LMS Course Information and, if you're publishing for SCORM, the section called LMS Lesson SCORM Information.
   • The Identifier is a unique string of characters assigned by Storyline that your LMS uses to identify your course. If you're republishing a course that's already in your LMS, don't change the value in this field.  If you choose xAPI and need to change this value, avoid special characters and spaces.
   • If you choose xAPI, you'll see a field called Launch URL. Enter the full URL for the story.html file if you plan to host the content on a server that's separate from your LMS.
3. In the LMS Reporting section, choose the wording you want your LMS to display for learners' statuses in reports. (This section isn’t available or necessary for xAPI content.)
4. Click the Tracking tab on the left side of the window and choose one of the following options:
   • Track using number of slides viewed: Mark this option to trigger course completion when learners view a specific number of slides.
   • Track using quiz result: Mark this option to track learners based on their quiz results. If your course has multiple quizzes, choose the one you want to track. (This option will be grayed-out if your course doesn’t have any result slides.)
5. Click OK to save your changes.

Step 6: Publish

When you're finished making selections, click the Publish button. When the publishing process is complete, you’ll see the Publish Successful window with several follow-up options.

View Project	This launches the published course in your default web browser. However, it’s best to upload the published course to your LMS for proper testing.
Email	This opens a new email message with a zipped file of your published course attached. This option is helpful if you need to send your course to an LMS administrator for deployment.
FTP	This opens a window where you can enter your FTP credentials and transfer your output to a server.
Zip	This creates a zipped version of your course files in the same location where your course was published. This is the most common choice when you publish for LMS. Upload the zipped course to your LMS.
Open	This opens a file viewer where you can see the files Storyline just created. There will be multiple files and folders for a published course. Tip: If your LMS requires you to identify the file that launches your course, point to index_lms.html.

Step 7: Distribute Your Published Course

Now that you've published your course, it's time to upload it to your LMS. The steps for this are different for each LMS. Contact your LMS administrator if you need help uploading, launching, or tracking content.