How to Copy Blocks from One Lesson to Another in Rise 360
Have you ever built a course in Rise 360 and realized, later on, that some of the content in one lesson would work great in a different lesson? Or maybe you want to reuse the same content structure? I’ve been there! Luckily, it’s super easy to copy blocks from one Rise lesson to another, thanks to the blocks template feature. Here’s how it works. 1. Open the Blocks Library The first thing you’ll want to do is navigate to the lesson that contains the block you want to copy and open up the block library. You can do that either by clicking the plus sign (+) between two blocks … … or by clicking All Blocks in the blocks shortcut bar. 2. Create a New Template Next, select the templates tab in the block library and click the New Template button. 3. Select the Blocks to Copy Then, select the block or blocks you want to copy by clicking the checkmark for each one. 4. Save Your Template Next, click Save, name your template, and click Save once again. 5. Insert Your Template Finally, navigate to the lesson where you’d like your copied block to go, open up the blocks library, and select your template. Wrap-Up Et voilà! It’s that easy. With blocks templates, you can copy blocks from one lesson to another within the same course and copy blocks to lessons in other courses; you can even share your blocks with members of your team if you have an Articulate 360 Teams subscription. It’s super handy! Want to try block templates out, but don’t have Rise 360? Start a free 30-day trial of Articulate 360. And subscribe to our newsletter to get the latest e-learning inspiration and insights directly in your inbox. You can also find us on LinkedIn and X (Formerly Twitter).Coming Soon: Articulate AI (With Video!)
Exciting news: We’re working on some AI features that’ll help amplify your creativity and accelerate course creation. Check out this short video for a quick preview of what’s in store: We hope you’re as excited as we are about these upcoming features! Subscribe to our newsletter to get the latest product updates directly in your inbox. If you have questions, please share them in the comments.How to Customize the Review Quiz Experience in Storyline 360
With Storyline 360, it’s easy for learners to review their answers to a quiz and see how they did. By default, there’s a Review Quiz button on the result slide that takes them back through the quiz, where they’ll see a “correct” or “incorrect” banner across the bottom of each question. But often, learners want to know more than just whether or not they got a question right—they want to understand why. So why not tap into that teachable moment by providing some additional helpful content during the quiz review? With Storyline 360, you can do just that! And it’s super easy. In this article, we’ll walk you through how to enhance your quiz review with question-specific content like remedial help, supplemental tips or links, movies, text, images, and audio. Here we go! 1. Open the Question Editor First, open your question slide and click the Form View button above the trigger panel to open the question editor. 2. Add Text to the Post-Quiz Review Field At the bottom of the question editor, you’ll see a field called Post-Quiz Review. In that field, enter some text. When text is present, Storyline automatically creates a new layer on your question slide called Review. This layer is what learners will see if they choose to review their quiz. 3. Customize the Review Layer Next, click on Slide View to see the review layer you’ve just created. From there, you can customize it with whatever content you want learners to see during the quiz review—for example, audio, video, or imagery. Wrap-Up & More Resources Now that you know how to customize the review layer, you can transform a standard quiz review into a content-rich experience that’ll help your users extend their learning! And it only takes a few minutes. Pretty cool, right? And if you’re looking for more tips on making top-notch quizzes, check out these helpful resources: How to Match Question Types with the Skills You’re Testing How to Write Good E-Learning Quiz Questions How to Write Plausible Incorrect Answer Options for Quiz Questions 4 Ways to Use the New Quiz Tracking Features in Storyline 360 Want to try something you learned here, but don’t have Articulate 360? Start a free 30-day trial, and come back to E-Learning Heroes regularly for more helpful advice on everything related to e-learning. If you have any questions, please share them in the comments.Engineering Journal: Demystifying 64-Bit Storyline
I’m Jesse Taber, engineering manager for Storyline 360, here with the first Engineering Product Highlight. My plan is to regularly cover a new or upcoming Storyline enhancement from an engineering perspective to provide technical insights you won’t find in release notes or product documentation. This first highlight is all about 64-bit. In November 2023, we released a 64-bit version of Storyline 360 to public beta that appears in the Articulate 360 desktop app as “Storyline 360 x64.” Since then, we’ve heard a lot of excitement about this new version of Storyline 360—but also some confusion. To address this feedback, I wanted to offer an FAQ that goes beyond the basics covered in the support article about 64-bit Storyline 360. What is Storyline 360 x64, and how does it differ from the version of Storyline 360 I’ve been using? Storyline has traditionally been a 32-bit application. The primary difference between 32-bit and 64-bit applications is the amount of system memory they can use. In Windows, 32-bit applications can access, at most, ~4GB of memory, while 64-bit applications can access far more memory than any modern consumer-grade PC can accommodate. Put simply, the 64-bit version of Storyline 360 can take advantage of the relatively large amounts of memory available on most modern PCs. Does Storyline 360 x64 provide performance improvements? The primary benefit of targeting 64-bit processor architecture is the ability to use more system memory. When Storyline 360 opens a project file, it loads it all into memory. Very large projects, particularly those with many rich media assets, can experience issues opening, saving, and publishing in the 32-bit version of Storyline 360. Projects like this should be much more stable in Storyline 360 x64. Aside from memory usage, most authors will likely see performance on par with the 32-bit version of Storyline 360. While performance improvements were not a primary driver for creating Storyline 360 x64, we plan to invest more directly in performance improvements going forward. Is Storyline 360 x64 a full rewrite of Storyline? No. Storyline 360 x64 comes from the same source code as the 32-bit version of Storyline 360. The difference is that it’s compiled to support 64-bit processors and operating systems. What functionality differs between the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Storyline 360? Because both versions of Storyline 360 share the same source code, their functionality should be identical. However, certain third-party components Storyline 360 uses don’t work with a 64-bit processor architecture. We’re currently working on removing, updating, or replacing those features. For example, the screen recording feature was not available in early builds of Storyline 360 x64 because a third-party component it relies on did not support 64-bit. As of Update 85, however, the screen recording functionality is available in the 64-bit version. The support article about 64-bit Storyline 360 lists the features we plan to remove (deprecate). Storyline 360 x64 is in public beta. Is it okay to use for my day-to-day work? We feel confident that Storyline 360 x64 is stable and suitable for production work. We have been using it internally for months without issue. We have also gotten positive feedback about its stability from several Storyline 360 users who have been using it regularly since it was in private beta. We plan to move Storyline 360 x64 out of public beta and into general availability in the second half of 2024. Most of the remaining work centers around providing a seamless experience for all customers to migrate from the 32-bit version. Because it shares source code with the 32-bit version of Storyline 360 there are no compatibility issues. That means that if you run into problems with Storyline 360 x64, you can always close your project and reopen it with 32-bit Storyline 360. Why did it take Articulate so long to deliver a 64-bit version of Storyline 360? Articulate released Storyline 1 in 2012. At that time, 64-bit processors and operating systems were becoming more popular in consumer-grade PCs, but 32-bit software was still prevalent. In the years that followed, memory got cheaper, which meant more PCs with memory greater than 4GB hit the market. Larger amounts of memory drove the need for 64-bit processors and software that supported them. We opted not to update Storyline 360 to support 64-bit until 2023, which we now realize was a mistake. When we consider the changes we want to make to Storyline 360, we have to weigh the impact that each change will have and the effort required to implement it. We must also consider the opportunity cost of choosing certain changes over others. We believed the effort to make Storyline 360 support 64-bit processor architecture was far higher than the impact it would have on our customers since it wouldn’t bring dramatic performance improvements. The Storyline codebase is over a decade old, and to say it is large and complex would be a gross understatement. Ensuring this code and the various third-party components would work properly in a 64-bit environment was daunting. Customers were also asking for many other features that would need to be put on hold if we committed to the 64-bit work. The team discussed 64-bit support many times in the 10 years that I’ve worked here. Each time, we reached the conclusion that it didn’t make sense. So what changed? Why now? Over the past several years, some of the third-party components that were roadblocks to 64-bit support have been updated or removed through the normal course of expanding and improving Storyline 360. More importantly, some intrepid software engineers on the Storyline team spent their Hackathon—a quarterly event where engineers can work on self-directed projects—proving that getting Storyline to support 64-bit processor architecture was more feasible than previously thought. When Kerry Munz came on board as our CTO, she brought a fresh perspective. She correctly surmised that our customers interpreted the lack of 64-bit support as a signal that we were not investing in Storyline 360. She directed us to prioritize this work as the first of several projects to modernize Storyline 360 and cement our commitment to its future. Will there always be both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Storyline 360 available? The number of 32-bit processors and operating systems actively in use today is extremely low. Eventually, we will only build and ship Storyline 360 in a 64-bit configuration. We’re currently working on a plan to make this transition as seamless as possible for our customers. We’ll share more details when they’re available. Wrap-Up I hope this product highlight has clarified the “what, how, and why” of Storyline 360 x64. If you haven’t already, I recommend trying out the public beta, particularly if you need to work with large or media-heavy projects. And remember to use the “Report a Bug” option at the top right corner of the application window to share any feedback directly with the engineering team. Stay tuned for future engineering journal entries! And please leave a comment below if there are specific topics you’d like me to cover.7 Most Popular Rise 360 Examples of 2022
If you’re looking for course design inspiration, E-Learning Heroes is a great place to go. That’s because our amazing members generously share examples they’ve created with the community, so we can all learn from one another! Here are some of the most popular Rise 360 examples published in 2022, in case you missed them: 1. Implementing WCAG Guidelines for Instructional Designers Refer to this resource created by our very own Community Team to make your e-learning courses more accessible to all learners. 2. Interactive Sales Brochure See how Rise 360 empowers everyone to create gorgeous sales assets like this stunning interactive brochure built by Trina Rimmer. 3. Airline Innovation 101 Learn how to help others proactively bring their ideas to life in this infographic-style e-learning course. 4. Comics-Inspired Empathy Training Combine the storytelling powers of graphic novels and e-learning in this interactive example brought to you by Tracy Carroll. 5. Rise 360: Performance Support Demo This handy example by Allison LaMotte shows how you can easily use Rise 360 to create job aides or quick reference guides. 6. Mocktail Recipes Guide This example by Ron Katz shows how mixing and matching a variety of block types while still using a similar layout for each lesson can help learners easily find what they’re looking for and follow along. 7. Interactive Event Guide Check out this creative example by Bianca Woods to get ideas for building a custom conference app fast with the help of a tool you already have. Wrap-Up We hope these examples will get your creative juices flowing! And if you’re looking for more helpful content from 2022, don’t miss the articles below: A Year of Quick Tips & Tricks from Articulate Training Explore the 65+ Articulate 360 Features We Added in 2022 Your 10 Favorite General E-Learning Articles of 2022 10 Most Popular Storyline 360 Examples and Downloads of 2022 If we missed any other general e-learning articles that you found helpful over the past year, comment below and let us know what they are. And remember to follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn and come back to E-Learning Heroes for more helpful advice on everything related to e-learning. If you have any questions, please share them in the comments.7 Pro Tips for Working with Motion Path Animations in Storyline 360
Animations can be a powerful way to explain a concept, tell a story, or make your content memorable. Storyline 360 has a variety of animation options—including entrance, exit, and motion paths. With motion path animations, you can control how your objects move and bring your ideas to life. Here are some time-saving tips to help propel you forward when working with motion path animations. 1. Rename Motion Paths When you add a motion path animation to an object in Storyline 360, a name is automatically assigned. If you plan on adding multiple motion paths, it’s a good idea to rename each one. This will make it easier to identify which motion path you’re working on when editing triggers. 2. Copy Animations If you plan on using the same motion path animation on several objects, save time by copying the animation from one object to another using the Animation Painter. By double-clicking the Animation Painter, you can apply the same animation to multiple objects one after the other without having to click the Animation Painter over and over again. To turn it off, click it one last time or press the ESC key on your keyboard. Did you know? When you copy and paste an object, any animations you’ve added to the object are also copied over. So if you’re using the same object multiple times, add any animations you want to include before you copy it to save time. 3. Sync Using Cue Points As you build content, you might change your mind about when you want your motion path animation to start. Syncing your motion path to a cue point gives you the flexibility to change the motion path timing without having to edit the trigger each time. All you have to do is drag the cue point along the timeline until the timing feels right, and the motion path will start at the new time. 4. Select the Object Path to Edit To edit a motion path, you can select the start or end point individually using your mouse and drag the point to the desired location. If you have multiple start or end points overlapping each other, you can easily select and edit them without having to hide objects from your timeline. Simply select the line of the object path you want to edit. It will turn bright blue while the other objects and their paths will fade. Then, move the start or end point as needed. Did you know? Another way to fine-tune a motion path is to select the start or end point of one or all of the objects and edit the X and Y coordinates. This is great for times when you need to be super-precise. 5. Change the Easing Option By default, Storyline 360 automatically assigns an ease-in and ease-out effect to your motion paths. This controls the acceleration and deceleration of an animation. If your animation needs to move at the same pace across the screen, then you’ll want to edit the easing direction to none. 6. Orient Shape to Path There might be times when you need to include an object that faces a certain direction as it follows a path—for example, a car making a right turn. By selecting Orient Shape to Path, the object will always face the direction it’s moving, even when it travels on a nonlinear path. 7. Use a Relative Start Point Perhaps you want to create an interaction where the object can move multiple times depending on the learner’s choice. For example, let’s say you created a racetrack and want the learner’s car to move forward whenever they answer a question correctly. Instead of duplicating the object and creating motion paths for each possible outcome, you can select Relative Start Point to move the object along the motion path starting from its current position. For more ideas on how to use this feature, check out this tutorial. Did you know? You can add more than one motion path to the same object and have each begin at the new location of the object based on previous movements. For more ideas on how to use this feature, check out this free Storyline 360 download by Samuel Apata. Motion path animations give you the flexibility to quickly create content that’ll move your learners. What tips do you have for working with motion paths? Share your ideas in the comments below. Want to try something you learned here, but don’t have Articulate 360? Start a free 30-day trial and come back to E-Learning Heroes regularly for more helpful advice on everything related to e-learning.How I Made This Progress Meter in Storyline 360
Including a progress meter in your e-learning course is a great way to give learners visual feedback about how far along in the course they are. Progress meters can take many shapes and forms, but typically you’ll see a bar near the bottom of the slide that fills up as the learner moves forward in the course, like in the animated .GIF below. Click here to see the interactive version. It’s particularly useful to include a progress meter in longer courses, so learners can estimate how much longer they’ll need to finish the course and can then decide whether to finish up or come back later. Orienting learners also helps prevent them from feeling lost or overwhelmed due to having no clue as to where they are in a course. Thanks to slide numbers in Storyline 360, you can create a custom progress meter like the one above by adding a single trigger. Let me quickly walk you through how I created mine. 1. Insert & Format a Slider If you want the progress bar to appear on all your slides, you’ll need to put it on your slide master. To do that, open the view tab and click Slide Master. From there, open the insert tab, click Slider, and select one of the slider options. For this example, it doesn’t really matter which one you choose because of the formatting options you’ll apply later. Next, go ahead and insert a thin rectangle that’s the same length as your slide. This rectangle will be what fills up the progress bar as the learner advances through your course. With your rectangle selected, choose the fill color you want and select No Outline. When you’re happy with the formatting, right-click on the rectangle and choose Export Shape as Picture. Save your rectangle to an easy-to-find location—like your desktop—and give it a name that’s easy to identify. Then, click on the rectangle in your project, go down to the timeline, and click on the eye to hide it. We’ll use it again later, but for now we want to make sure it doesn’t get in the way. Now, select your slider, open the format tab, click Thumb Fill, select Picture, and browse for the rectangle you just saved. The next step is to adjust the size of your slider until the rectangle (or thumb) is entirely off the slide, as shown in the animated .GIF below. If you’ve set it up correctly, the rectangle (or thumb) should be completely off the slide. The part of the track that's on the slide should be empty but take up the entire width of the slide, like in the screenshot below: Once your slider is the right size, you’ll format it to look the way you want. For this example, you’ll choose No Outline for the thumb border ... … and No Fill and No Outline for the track fill and border. Next, unhide that rectangle you used to create the slider thumb. You’re going to use this rectangle to create the outline of the progress bar. For this example, get rid of the fill color and add a gray contour, so it looks like the screenshot below. Then move your slider and rectangle to the bottom of the slide and line them up. You want the rectangle to be slightly taller than the slider thumb—as pictured below—so you might need to adjust the height of your rectangle. Once your rectangle is the right height, center it on your slide. Finally, click on your slider, open the design tab, and change the end value to 100. 2. Create a Trigger Now that your slider is all set up, you’ll need to add a trigger to make it show your learner’s progress. Here’s what the trigger should look like: Note that the object should be the name of your master slide, so it might be different than what you see above. 3. Insert a Hotspot Next, you’ll want to add a hotspot to prevent learners from clicking on the slider and changing its position manually. To do that, simply open the insert tab, click Hotspot, and select the rectangle. Then, right-click on your hotspot and uncheck Show Hand Cursor on the hover option so learners don’t think there’s something to click on. If you’d like, you could stop here! Your progress bar should now be fully functional. However, if you want to take it further, move on to step four. 4. Add a Hover State (Optional) To take your progress bar to the next level, add the exact percentage of the course that’s been completed to the hover state for learners to see when they hover over the progress meter. To do so, open the insert tab, choose Slide Number, and click More in the drop-down menu. Then select Progress through project (or Progress through menu, if you’re using the menu order to number your slides) and click on the place you’d like to insert it on your slide. The percentage will appear in a textbox, like this: From there, you can format the text—change the color, for example—and move it to the exact spot you’d like it to appear, like I’ve done below: To make the hover state work, you’ll need to add a trigger since there’s a hotspot preventing the learner from interacting with the slider. Here’s what that trigger should look like: And that’s it! Now your learners can see how they’re progressing through your course. Here’s what the end result looks like. Keep in mind that this isn’t the only way to create a progress meter. Feel free to get creative! Want to download my file to better understand how I've set everything up? Pop on over to this page. More Resources Want to learn more about the slide number feature? Check out this article for ideas of ways to use this feature and this tutorial for a step-by-step guide on adding slide numbers to your project. If you want to try something you learned here, but don’t have Articulate 360, why not start a free 30-day trial? And be sure to subscribe to our newsletter to get the latest e-learning inspiration and insights directly in your inbox. You can also find us on LinkedIn and X (Formerly Twitter).Level Up Your E-Learning With These Popular Game Templates
Since we’re on the topic of games, let’s start off with a “Would you rather . . .” question. Here we go: Would you rather take a one-hour online test or play a one-hour online game? My bet is that you chose the one-hour game. And that’s no surprise—games are usually fun, whereas tests can be boring or difficult. But they don’t have to be! If you use gamification elements in your content—or even turn the entire learning experience into a game—you can boost learner engagement and drive performance. To help you get your game on, check out these popular game templates that you can download and customize to fit your learners’ needs. Storyline: Vocabulary Guessing Game With multiple choice questions, learners can sometimes simply guess the correct option. If you want a fun way to increase the challenge, try this vocabulary guessing game by Karlis Sprogis instead. By giving learners the number of letters in the word and limiting the number of attempts, you’re appealing to their competitive nature—will they find the correct answer in time? Or will they see the dreaded game-over screen? Storyline: Jeopardy-Inspired Game Show Template Do you need to test learners on multiple topics? This popular game show template by Sarah Hodge is just the thing to turn a boring assessment into a familiar and fun quizzing experience. Storyline: Countdown Quiz Game Want to see how adding game-like elements to your assessments can motivate learners? Then check out this countdown quiz game by Allison LaMotte. The more questions you get right, the more stars you earn, incentivizing learners to retry sections until they get a perfect score. Storyline 360: Angry Words Side-Scrolling Game If your employees communicate often with customers, the last thing you want is for them to wing it. Try teaching learners which phrases are helpful with this word side-scrolling game by Jonathan Hill. Who knew customer service content could be so much fun? Storyline: Codenames-Inspired Learning Game Need to get new employees up to speed on workplace acronyms and terminology? This learning game by Allison LaMotte will help them catch up in no time! By solving clues and looking for similarities, this game makes it fun to define individual terms and see how they all connect. Storyline: Gamified Quiz Template With Timer Need to check if employees can think and act fast? This timed quiz by Sarah Hodge challenges learners to quickly answer questions to prove they have what it takes. Wrap-Up So what are you waiting for? Go ahead and download any or all of these games and gamification examples and customize them to fit your needs. Or, create your own game-inspired project and share it in the comments below! We love seeing new and innovative ways to engage learners. If you need more inspiration, head on over to the weekly challenges, downloads, and examples to see other creative ideas. Want to try building something similar in Storyline 360, but don’t have Articulate 360? Start a free 30-day trial.How I Designed This Immersive Scenario on Prioritizing Tasks
Recently my fellow instructional designers Sarah Hodge and Madison McCartney and I teamed up to prove that there’s always more than one way to present course content. Each of us created a mini-course on prioritizing tasks, using the Eisenhower Decision Matrix as our starting point. In this article, I’m going to walk you through how I got from this: … to this: View interactive version | Download template Without further ado, let’s get into it! Setting the Scene Since I created this project as an example, there’s no real target audience, much less learning objectives. But to make it feel realistic I set some basic parameters to guide my design thinking. Here’s what I came up with: Audience: Novice e-learning project managers Learning objective: Be able to identify tasks, classify them as important and/or urgent, and prioritize them accordingly Coming Up with the Concept Over the years, I’ve seen a lot of great e-learning examples in the E-Learning Heroes community, but a few really stand out to me. One in particular is this time management game by Phil Eagles. I love the way he took a series of simple multiple choice questions and made them into a scenario that feels real and meaningful. And since time management is so closely related to task prioritization, it’s the first thing I thought of when I started brainstorming ideas for my project. I wanted to create something similar—but put my own spin on it. Because I wanted to create a totally custom and immersive scenario, Storyline 360 was the perfect choice for this project. I decided to simulate a desk and let learners identify tasks and prioritize items for themselves. The idea behind this was to emulate real life—where learners have to identify tasks and decide which ones to do first—while also following one of the key principles of adult learning by giving them control over their learning experience. Refining the Scenario Once I had a general idea of what I wanted to do, it was time to iron out the scenario details. I wanted to give learners enough opportunities to practice prioritizing tasks without it feeling repetitive. I included a few different types of tasks—since that’s what it’s like in real life. In the end, I settled on a total of six tasks, including a few emails, a couple of text messages, and a Post-it. As I started to build out my scenario, I ran into some challenges. One of the main issues was that my slide was getting overcrowded. To overcome this challenge and help learners focus on one thing at a time, I divided the process of task prioritization into two parts: Step 1: identify and analyze the tasks to determine how urgent/important they are Step 2: prioritize the tasks based on their level of urgency/importance For step one, I used a series of toggles so the learner can decide if each task is urgent and/or important. Based on their answer, I provide custom feedback. This is how that turned out: For step two, I made a simple drag-and-drop interaction so the learner can decide where each task belongs on their to-do list based on its level of urgency and importance. Here’s what that ended up looking like: Because this project was intended for adults who may have previous experience with the Eisenhower Decision Matrix, I made the explanation walk-through optional, as shown in the screenshot below: Is this how I initially envisioned my project? Absolutely not. To be honest, I don’t think I really had a clear mental picture of what it would look like. Some people can map out their entire project before they even open up the authoring app, while others do better jumping straight into building and get inspired along the way. Both methods are totally fine as long as you always keep your learners’ needs at the center of your design. Designing the Graphics As someone with no formal graphic design training, I can be challenged to come up with ideas for the look and feel of my courses. To find inspiration, I usually start by checking out the examples and templates on E-Learning Heroes as well as the Content Library 360 templates. Even if I don’t find exactly what I need, I usually come across something I can use as a starting point. Personally, I find that starting with a template is less intimidating than starting from a blank slide. And even if the final result ends up looking completely different than the original template, having something to start with helps me channel my ideas and inch closer to a place I feel good about. So, once I knew that I wanted to create an immersive scenario, I headed straight to E-Learning Heroes to look for templates I could use as a springboard for my design. A quick search for “desk” led me to this template, which I thought was perfect: Download Template After opening the template, I made some adjustments and played around with different color options. Here’s what my first version looked like: There’s nothing wrong with the way this looks, but—as I mentioned earlier in this article—it was at this point I realized there wasn’t enough room on the slide to allow learners to both identify and prioritize tasks in one spot. Splitting the activity up into two parts gave me more screen real estate to work with. Around this time, I also decided I wasn’t sure about the mint green wall and wanted to give white a try . . . . . . but I wasn’t totally sold on that either. I also felt lukewarm about the way the desk looked and decided to incorporate some texture. This is what the next version looked like: Wondering how I created the wood texture? I did a Google search for “flat design wood,” inserted one of the images I found onto my slide master, and then used the curve tool and shapes in Storyline 360 to achieve a similar effect. This is what it looks like behind the scenes: I was pretty happy with the way this looked, but when I started adding other objects to the screen, I realized they didn’t stand out enough against the dark blue background. That’s when I settled on the design you see in the final version: I went through a similar process for the other slides in my project, so I thought I’d share the different versions with you as well. . . . and here’s the final version. You’ll notice that in the final version I pulled in the computer screen from the previous slide to tie it together a bit more. I also changed the size of the boxes to make it all fit on the screen. As I was working on my core content slides, I also started to pull together my title slide. Since my other two slides used a flat design style, I wanted to stick with something similar. I found this simple slide template in Content Library 360 and used it as a starting point: I didn’t want to include characters, so I deleted those and changed the color of the background to match the dark blue I was using at the time. After taking out the characters and changing the color, I felt like the slide was too minimal. It was missing something, so I sat and thought about how I could incorporate more visual interest. That’s when I had an idea: what if the title slide was a view of the desk from above? And since we’re talking about prioritizing tasks—and many people write their to-do lists in a notebook—I thought that might make sense and look nice. So I went back to E-Learning Heroes for some inspiration and ended up finding this spiral notebook template: Download I imported it into Storyline 360 and made a few adjustments to make it all come together. Here’s what it ended up looking like: As you can see, graphic design isn’t always a straightforward process. It doesn’t necessarily go from zero to perfect in one fell swoop. In many cases it’s an iterative process involving incremental changes until you’re happy with what you’ve got. So the next time you’re feeling stuck and unsure about your design, try doing what I did and search E-Learning Heroes or Content Library 360 for a template you can use as a starting point. Then, make small changes here and there. Eventually you’ll get to a place where you feel good about your design. More Resources Hopefully you’ve found this inside look at my design process interesting and insightful! Remember, it’s okay if your first draft isn’t perfect. Design (whether it’s instructional or graphic) is a process, and it often takes trial and error to get it to where it needs to be. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that! If you enjoyed this article and are looking for more insight into what goes on in the minds of instructional designers as they’re creating courses, be sure to check out these articles: How I Designed This Personalized Decision Matrix How I Designed This Interactive Dial Matrix A Behind-the-Scenes Look at How I Designed This Gamified Quiz Want to try building your own immersive scenario in Storyline 360, but don’t have Articulate 360? Start a free 30-day trial, and come back to E-Learning Heroes regularly for more helpful advice on everything related to e-learning. If you have any questions, please share them in the comments.Choosing the Right Publishing Option for Your Storyline 360 Project
As you’re putting the finishing touches on your first Storyline 360 course and getting ready to hit Publish, you might be wondering: which publishing option should I choose? Great question! The answer can vary based on where you’re at in the course creation process and how you plan to give learners access to your course. In this article, we’ll take a look at all the possibilities and how to decide which one to choose. Review 360 This publishing option will upload your course to Review 360, the handy web-based review app that’s included in your Articulate 360 subscription. Choose this option when you want to share your course with your stakeholders to get their feedback and approval. Head on over to the tutorial to walk through how to publish to Review 360 step by step: Publishing a Course to Review 360. If you’ve never used Review 360 before, definitely give it a whirl! It makes the whole review process run so much more smoothly. You can learn even more about Review 360 and how it saves you time and hassle in these articles: 3 Ways Review 360 Is a Big Gift for Course Developers. 4 Time-Saving Ways to Use Review 360 Web If you’d like your learners to access your course via your company’s intranet or a website and you don’t need to keep track of their progress or record a quiz score, this is the option for you. If you do need to track learner progress or results, check out the LMS/LRS publish option below. For more details on publishing your course for the web, check out our tutorial Publishing a Course for Web Distribution. And once you’ve published a web version of your course, learn more about uploading it to your website: How to Share an E-Learning Course on Your Intranet or Internet Website. Wondering about mobile? Don’t worry! Our web output works on mobile devices automatically. Learn more here: Publishing a Course for Mobile Devices. Video If you want to upload your project to a video hosting site like YouTube or embed it in a Rise 360 course as a video, this is the publishing option you’ll want to choose. This option can be super useful if you’ve used Storyline 360’s animation features to create a short explainer or a course teaser to entice your learners, for example. When you choose to publish your project as a video, you’ll end up with an .MP4 file that you can upload anywhere that file type is supported. But keep in mind that the .MP4 format doesn’t support interactivity, so you’ll want to design your project accordingly. Check out this step-by-step tutorial for more information: Publishing a Course to a Video File. LMS/LRS If you’re using a learning management system (LMS) to deliver and track your courses, this is the publishing option you’ll want to choose. It’ll allow you to create a SCORM, AICC, API, or CMI5 package that you can then upload to your LMS. It also gives you the option to track your courses with a learning record store (LRS)—perfect for when you have xAPI-enabled learning experiences. Check out this article for all the publishing details: Publishing a Course for LMS/LRS Distribution. And, of course, our LMS/LRS output also works on mobile devices automatically. Find out more here: Publishing a Course for Mobile Devices. Word If you need a printable version of your course—to distribute as a handout or provide a transcript for accessibility purposes, for example—this is the option for you. In the past, some people used this option to share content with reviewers, but now that we’ve got Review 360, we hope that’s a thing of the past! If it’s still your present, you might want to read this article: Still Publishing to Word for Your SME Reviews? Here’s How & Why to Transition to Review 360. And for more information about publishing to Word, head on over to the tutorial Publishing a Course to Microsoft Word. Wrap-Up Hopefully this article has helped you identify the publishing options that make the most sense for your Storyline 360 project. Still have questions? Please share them in the comments below. And be sure to follow us on Twitter and come back to E-Learning Heroes regularly for more helpful advice on everything related to e-learning.
