2025: The Year AI Landed
If you're hearing this message, the machines have won, and Instructional Design is dead as we know it... Hello! For this week's #ELearningChallenge I've created an interactive video portfolio to highlight four projects I built this year with the help of artificial intelligence. Despite the apocalyptic tone, I'm excited about the creative possibilities of generative AI. I certainly couldn't have made this last year. Videos created using Powtoon's AI Text to Video feature and edited with Camtasia. And just like my recent coffee-making demo, this is also fully accessible from the keyboard. Anywhere you see an underlined letter in a button, that key will perform its function. If you're wondering how I changed the colour of the captions from white to black, and back again, to improve legibility during the intro... Code to change captions to white // Stop any existing observer first if (window.captionObserver) { window.captionObserver.disconnect(); } // Monitor for caption changes and force white color window.captionObserver = new MutationObserver(function() { var allCaptionElements = document.querySelectorAll('[class*="caption"], [class*="acc-"]'); allCaptionElements.forEach(function(element) { element.style.setProperty('color', 'white', 'important'); var children = element.querySelectorAll('*'); children.forEach(function(child) { child.style.setProperty('color', 'white', 'important'); }); }); }); window.captionObserver.observe(document.body, { childList: true, subtree: true, attributes: true }); Code to change captions back to black // Stop the white observer if (window.captionObserver) { window.captionObserver.disconnect(); } // Apply black once var allCaptionElements = document.querySelectorAll('[class*="caption"], [class*="acc-"]'); allCaptionElements.forEach(function(element) { element.style.setProperty('color', 'black', 'important'); var children = element.querySelectorAll('*'); children.forEach(function(child) { child.style.setProperty('color', 'black', 'important'); }); }); And yes, AI helped me do this! Sift through the wreckage of my career here: https://bit.ly/elhc534 Oh, and shout out to any fans of SILO.
The Million Dollar Challenge: An engaging and fun gamified quiz
Hello! 👋 I would like to share another project I’ve been working on — The Million Dollar Challenge, a fully interactive, game-based quiz experience that I built with some help from AI. This project is based on a popular gameshow, applying the same mechanics and gameplay to the quiz. With some prompts, guidance, and code generation from AI, here's a game that’s fun, challenging, and suitable for embedding into any course. Just tweak the question and answer choice sets and you'll have a game that could help achieve your course learning objectives. Usability: Easy to Play: One click to start, intuitive question/answer flow. Engaging Learning Tool: Perfect for knowledge checks, gamified assessments, or review activities. Customizable: Swap out questions, tweak prize amounts, change colors, or edit sounds to match your brand. Accessible Interaction: Clear text, large clickable buttons, and visual cues. Give The Million Dollar Challenge a try in this demo and let me know your thoughts on how you can integrate this into your e-learning projects if this is something that you would actually use for serious topics (compliance, safety training) or lighthearted refreshers. If you have suggestions on how to make the game even better, feel free to let me know; would love to know what you think. 🙂Winter Survival
Click here to view the example. This is actually my first E-Learning Challenge! I'm new to using Storyline, so using the challenges for inspiration has helped me learn how to use the platform. For this challenge, I went back to #518 Designing Performance Meters for Learner Feedback. While the design is relatively simple, I learned how to: Create and edit slides and slide layers Create and edit states Create and use variables Create and stack triggers This project in particular helped me gain a better understanding of how triggers stack. After banging my head on the wall for hours, I finally figured out that my “jump to slide X when user clicks Y” trigger was stacked above my “set variable to True when user clicks Y”, meaning that the variable never changed because the trigger above it was fulfilled first and then the slide changed. Such an easy fix for hours of frustration. I’m looking forward to learning more and pushing myself farther in the new year. Any advice the community has for me is greatly appreciated! - Donna WilsonSix Different Foods, Many Different Names
View the Example David's example comparing the size of Germany with different US states inspired this entry. I taught German for many years, and have always been fascinated by the different dialects. In this sample, you can see and hear different ways to say the names of six foods across the German-speaking world.Unleash the Legend!
This challenge gave me the chance to try something a little different. I’ve always enjoyed comics and superheroes, so I built an interaction where learners could select a power and a background using two dials to reveal a matching hero. I put together a quick prototype in Storyline to prove out the idea, then brought the idea into ChatGPT to help me shape the content. I worked through the hero grid, tightened up the descriptions, added flavor text, and refined the overall look and feel. About halfway through, I had the idea to present each hero like a Magic: The Gathering–style card, which gave the whole thing a more collectible feel. From there, it was all about polish: adjusting the instructions, finding the right button label (Unleash the Legend), and even adding some sound effects to give the interaction more punch. This was a fun back-and-forth with ChatGPT — starting simple, then layering on details until it started to feel complete. You can see the final version here: Unleash the LegendA Knight’s Peril at the Gatekeepers’ Stronghold – WIP Adventure in Storyline 360 (WC #531)
Hear ye, noble creators! I bring forth tidings of a quest most curious, still wrought upon the anvil of design. My latest endeavor: a mini-game wherein Sir Cedric, a gallant knight clad in steel, must brave the arcane trials of modern airport security! From glowing departure boards to the stern Gatekeepers (TSA agents in full medieval regalia), this interactive tale blends humor with historical lore. Players shall guide our knight through strange rituals: removing sabatons, revealing potions, and learning the sacred laws of liquids. The work is yet unfinished—many scrolls remain to be inked, and the dragons of logic yet to be tamed—but the vision stands clear: a whimsical union of chivalry and contemporary travel. Join me in this merriment! Share thy counsel, and let us forge a game worthy of both the Round Table and the boarding gate. The Codex of Safe Passage5-Minute Makeovers for E-Learning #532
We updated our menu slides. Originally the buttons just ticked off to show that each section was completed (we used variables at the end of each section that ticked the buttons off on the menu slide). We updated the menu slides to have badges instead that changed from black to coloured badges (using variables at the end of each section that ticked the buttons off on the menu slide). This was to link in with the gamification aspect for staff to collect the badges throughout the course for each section.Learning Science Update
Challenge Submission – Minimal, Review-Friendly AI-Assisted Animation For this challenge, two slides from the Opportunity theme in the content library were selected as a focused demonstration of AI-assisted animation approaches. This submission explores how AI-assisted JavaScript prompting can be used to create effective motion design while remaining easy to review, understand, and reuse across projects. Slide 1 intentionally uses the first AI-suggested JavaScript animation without modification. The goal was to evaluate the quality of a default AI-generated timeline. From prompt to result, the animation was implemented in approximately two minutes, demonstrating how AI can quickly establish a clean, professional entrance sequence with minimal effort. Slide 2 introduces a hybrid animation approach, designed with readability and adaptability in mind: A simple JavaScript entrance animation handles the vertical timeline dots. Text boxes rely on lightweight opacity transitions. Manual time-shifting aligns text entrances with dot interactions. Instead of one complex JavaScript timeline controlling everything, the interaction logic is distributed: Motion is broken into small, understandable pieces. Timing relationships remain visible and adjustable. Reviewers can easily trace how each interaction affects the UI. The resulting experience still feels animated, but the perceived motion comes largely from: Delays and offsets Layer changes Consistent spatial relationships between dots and text This makes the approach easier to follow during review and simpler to apply to similar projects, especially compared to a single, tightly coupled JavaScript animation. The design demonstrates how thoughtful timing and minimal motion can deliver clarity, responsiveness, and polish—without increasing implementation complexity. View project here: #533_AI_Animations.storyWhat happened at Bluff Creek?
Hello! This week, I used Rise's new Custom Block to add extra layers to this microlearning mystery. Can you solve the mystery of what happened at Bluff Creek? As this Beta feature is not yet fully accessible, I needed to hardcode the captions into the videos I used in the Custom Blocks. Otherwise, it was very easy to angle the videos and combine them with shapes, images, and text, to create 'interactive collages' in the Custom Block. Bonus feature I've used Fire Mods from Discover eLearning to add a custom reflection block to the course. (ChrisHodgson​ is a genius!) This allows you to jot down your hunch during the investigation, and then refer back to your notes before the final reveal. Just like Columbo would. The voice of 'Annie' is 'River' from Storyline 360's AI Text-to-Speech. I exported the audio files and added the tinny tape recorder effect in Audacity. The audiovisual elements were made using CCO footage from Unsplash, with a dash of Synthesia, edited in Camtasia. Then I mixed it all together in Rise and... voila! One half-baked mystery. Can you piece together the events of Tuesday, 13th July, 1976? CLICK HERE
