3 Ways to Create Drag-and-Drops with Storyline 360
Are you looking for a way to make e-learning courses more dynamic and engaging? Look no further than drag-and-drop interactions. Drag-and-drop interactions give your learners the opportunity to make decisions and engage with course content, and can be an excellent learning tool when used appropriately. That begs the question, when should drag-and-drops be used? In my experience, they can really come in handy when you want your learners to: Sort correct and incorrect items (view an example) Order the steps in a process (view an example) Match items (view an example) Place items or objects (view an example) Storyline 360 offers a variety of ways to create drag-and-drop interactions. Let’s have a closer look at three easy techniques. Graded Quiz Slides Storyline 360 offers 11 graded question types, two of which are prebuilt drag-and-drop interactions. The nice thing about Storyline’s graded question slides is that they’re superquick and easy to set up since you don’t have to create a single trigger. All you have to do is select the type of drag-and-drop question you want—matching or sequence?—and insert your content. View a Storyline 360 Matching Drag-and-Drop Quiz Slide View a Storyline 360 Sequence Drag-and-Drop Quiz Slide Matching activities are great when you want learners to make a connection between several items, for example an event and the date it occurred. Sequence is great for having learners identify the order of a process or task. Freeform Freeform slides let you convert any regular slide into a graded drag-and-drop quiz slide in a few clicks. Freeform slides are a really powerful tool because they allow you to completely customize every single aspect of your slide and drag-and-drop interaction. Freeform is perfect when you want to create a drag-and-drop that is not a matching or sequence activity, for example, to sort incorrect and correct items or to match non-text items such as shapes or images. Here are some examples of customized drag-and-drop interactions created using Freeform slides: View a Freeform Gamified Drag-and-Drop View a Freeform Placing Drag-and-Drop Activity To create a freeform drag-and-drop interaction, insert a new slide and click the “Convert to Freeform” button on the “Insert” tab of the Storyline 360 ribbon. Select the drag-and-drop option, then click Insert. Storyline will automatically create a graded drag-and-drop quiz slide, and will even add the “Submit” button and the feedback layers. You will be presented with “Form View,” where you can assign your drag items and your drop targets. Storyline 360’s Drag-and-Drop Freeform Form View When you’re in Form View, you’ll notice that there are options available to you in the ribbon. Options available in Drag-and-Drop Freeform Form View A few things you can do here: shuffle the answers, assign a results slide, and assign the number of attempts learners have. Above all, the one key feature you need to know about is the “Drag & Drop Options” button. Drag & Drop Options Knowing about these options can save you a ton of time and headaches. These options give you flexibility when you’re tweaking your drag-and-drop interaction to work just the way you want it. Need your drag items revealed one at a time? No problem! Do you want to allow multiple items onto one drop target? Just check the box. These options will let you customize your drag-and-drop interaction to behave just the way you want. Triggers There’s one more, little-known, way to create a very simple, ungraded drag-and-drop interaction by using a single trigger. You’ll need at least two objects on your slide to make this work. The “When” drop-down menu in the Trigger Wizard offers two options: These Drag Drop Events are available in the Trigger Wizard By using either of these options in a trigger with two objects from your slide, you can create a very simple drag-and-drop interaction. However, you can’t customize that interaction in any way and it can’t be graded. For that reason, it’s typically recommended to use the freeform drag-and-drop interaction, which is superpowerful, graded, and offers many options for customization. In Sum Creating drag-and-drop interactions with Storyline 360 is intuitive and easy, no matter which method you choose. Go ahead, build your own drag-and-drop interaction so you can see for yourself how quick and easy it is. Let me know how it turns out 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. If you have any questions, please share them in the comments.299Views0likes31CommentsHow are You Using Drag-and-Drop Interactions in E-Learning? #468
Using Drag-and-Drop in E-Learning#468: Challenge | Recap If there’s one e-learning interaction that belongs in every instructional designer’s toolkit, it’s drag-and-drops. Drag-and-drop interactions are a fun way to engage learners and encourage them to interact with the screen. They’re also one of the most flexible interactions you can create. So, whether you’re designing straightforward question slides or custom freeform slides, drag-and-drop interactions are one of the best ways to get learners to stop, think, and interact with the content. And that’s what this week’s challenge is all about. 🏆 Challenge of the Week This week, your challenge is to share a drag-and-drop interaction to show how they can be used in e-learning. You can use any authoring tool you like and make it as simple or custom as you have time for. Note: Since Storyline’s drag-and-drop interactions aren’t currently keyboard accessible, they can create serious barriers for learners who rely on keyboard navigation or use screen readers. Check out the following on-demand training for some ideas on creating accessible drag-and-drops: How to Create an Accessible Drag-and-Drop Interaction in Storyline 360 🧰 Resources User Guide Storyline 360: Drag-and-Drop Questions Related Challenges: Drag-and-Drop Practice Activities#380:Challenge|Recap Drag-and-Drop Sorting Activities#439:Challenge|Recap Webinars: How to Build Drag-and-Drop Interactions in Storyline 360 5 Ways to Customize Drag-and-Drop Interactions 6 Ways to Customize Drag-and-Drop in Storyline 360 Discover six creative techniques every course designer needs to know to customize their drag-and-drop interactions in Articulate Storyline 360 View on YouTube ✨ Share Your E-Learning Work Comments: Use the comments section below to link your published example and blog post. Forums: Start a newthreadand share a link to your published example. Personal blog: If you have a blog, please consider writing about your challenges. We'll link to your posts so your great work gets even more exposure. Social media: If you share your demos on Twitter or LinkedIn, try using#ELHChallengeso your tweeps can follow your e-learning coolness. 🙌 Last Week’s Challenge: While you're dragging through the ideas for this week's challenge, check out the 360° image interactions your fellow challengers shared over the past week: Using 360° Images in E-Learning RECAP #467: Challenge | Recap 👋 New to the E-Learning Challenges? Theweekly e-learning challengesare ongoing opportunities to learn, share, and build your e-learning portfolios. You can jump into any or all of theprevious challengesanytime you want. I’ll update the recap posts to include your demos. Learn more about the challenges in thisQ&A postand why and how to participate in thishelpful article.200Views0likes136CommentsTutorials: Create Custom Drag & Drop Exit Animations in Storyline 360
From Quick Tips: Episode 97. This quick tip comes from a community member who asked how to create a drag and drop interaction where the object changed sizes when selected and then disappeared when dropped on the target. Learn to build a drag and drop interaction Modify states when an object is selected Trigger an exit animation when an object is dropped on a target Recommended Resources Storyline User Guide📒 How to Build Drag-and-Drop Interactions in Storyline 360📺 5 Ways to Customize Drag-and-Drop Interactions 📺 How to Create an Accessible Drag-and-Drop Interaction in Storyline 360 📺 Upcoming Webinars You can join our monthly Quick Tips webinars and view previous episodes on our training page.99Views0likes0Comments23 Ways to Use Drag-and-Drop Interactions in E-Learning #468
Drag-and-Drop in E-Learning RECAP #468: Challenge | Recap This week’s challenge asked course designers to show how they’re using drag-and-drop interactions in e-learning. Jonathan Hill Example | Jonathan Hill | Website | @DevByPowerPoint Ron Katz Example | Download | Learn more | Ron Katz | Website sebastien daubert Example | sebastien daubert Thierry EMMANUEL Example | Thierry EMMANUEL | Website Rosemary Trahan Example | Rosemary Trahan Jodi M. Sansone Example | Jodi M. Sansone | Website | @jodimsansone Walkabout Learning Example | Walkabout Learning Nichole Codrington Example | Nichole Codrington Tamara Häfeli Example | Tamara Häfeli eLearn Dev Example | Learn more | eLearn Dev Angela Thomas Example | Angela Thomas Jesse Wu Example | Jesse Wu | Website Alex Milyaev Example | Learn more | Alex Milyaev Ron Katz Example | Download | Template | Learn more | Ron Katz | Website Courtney Roberts Example | Courtney Roberts Kate Golomshtok Example | Kate Golomshtok | Website Thaddaeus Smith Example | Thaddaeus Smith | Website Gülsüm Güneşen Yıldız Example | Gülsüm Güneşen Yıldız Hilla Schlegel Example | Hilla Schlegel Phezulu Dhlodhlo Example | Phezulu Dhlodhlo Sabrina Sgoda Example | Sabrina Sgoda David D Example | David D Samuel Apata Example | Download | Samuel Apata | Website | @afrostem New to the E-Learning Challenges? The weekly challenges are ongoing opportunities to learn, share, and build your e-learning portfolios. You can jump into any or all of the previous challenges anytime you want. I'll update the recap posts to include your demos. If you have a blog, please write about your challenge example. I'll add links to your blog post so your examples get even more exposure. And for those who share your demos on Twitter or LinkedIn, please include #ELHChallenge so your network (and Articulate!) can track your e-learning coolness. Share Your Drag-and-Drop E-Learning Examples! The drag-and-drop challenge is still open! If you have one or more ideas you'd like to share, please jump over to the original challenge and post your links in the comments section. I'll update this recap page to include your examples.99Views0likes0CommentsEverything You Need to Know About States in Storyline 360
The states feature in Storyline 360 is incredibly powerful. States allow you to alter the appearance of objects based on the learner’s actions. To illustrate this, take a look at the GIF below: See how the formatting of the buttons changes as I hover, and then again when I click on them? And did you notice that once I’ve clicked on the top three buttons, a fourth one appears? These formatting changes are made possible thanks to the states feature in Storyline 360. But this is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what’s possible with states. Let’s do a breakdown of this super-powerful feature to help you better understand how you can use states in your courses: Built-In Object States Custom Object States Drag-and-Drop States Character States Built-In Object States When you click on an object, open the States panel and click on the New State icon. You’ll notice that there are already a few built-in states: The great thing about these built-in states is that when you add them to objects in Storyline 360, most of them work automatically—without any triggers. Let’s take a look at how prebuilt states work and how you might want to use them in your courses. Normal This is what your learners see by default if they don’t interact with the object in any way. This state is created automatically when you insert an object. Any formatting that you apply to your object is automatically applied to the Normal state. Here’s a cool pro tip: you can actually add objects to the Normal state instead of adding them to your slide! There are many situations where this technique can be useful. For example, if you’d like to create a custom button by combining several objects, you’ll want to add the secondary objects to the Normal state instead of grouping them, because states can’t be added to a group of objects. To add objects to the Normal state, simply select an object, open the States panel, click on Edit States, select Normal, and insert the objects, as shown in the GIF below: As you can see, adding the icon to the Normal state instead of adding it to the slide itself allows you to interact with both the rectangle and the icon as if they were a single object. From here, you can add whatever other states you’d like! Speaking of, let’s take a look at the next prebuilt state. Hover This is what an object looks like when a learner moves their mouse over it. Adding a Hover state is a great way to signal to learners that an object is clickable. It’s up to you what formatting you apply to an object. Here’s an example of a Hover state that simply changes the fill color to a lighter shade of blue: Down The Down state appears when the learner is actively clicking on an object. This signals to the learner that their action is working. As always, the design of this state is your call. In the example below, the Down state simply changes the fill color to a darker shade of blue: Selected When you’ve added the Selected state to an object, it’ll appear when the learner clicks. If they click on the same object again, it’ll go back to the Normal state (unless they’re part of a Button Set). This state is great for interactions where you want learners to see which objects they’ve selected. Here’s an example of a couple of rectangles to which I’ve added Selected states with glow formatting: If you want to create an interaction where learners are supposed to select a single object from a set of options, you’ll want to use this state in combination with a Button Set, which automatically changes the state of a Selected object to Normal when the learner selects another object in the set, much like how radio buttons work in multiple choice questions. Here’s the same example you see above with a button set applied to the three rectangles: Visited Like the Selected state, the Visited state appears automatically when the learner clicks on an object. However, unlike the Selected state, which turns on and off automatically when learners click on the same object multiple times (unless they’re part of a Button Set), once the Visited state is activated, the only way to turn it off is by adding a trigger. This is because the purpose of the Visited state is to show that an object has been clicked on in the past, not to show that it’s currently selected. The Visited state is super-useful when you create custom menus or click-and-reveal interactions because it allows you to give learners a visual reminder of the buttons they’ve already clicked. Here’s an example of how that works: Disabled The Disabled state allows you to temporarily prevent an object from changing states or activating a trigger when learners interact with it. Unlike the other prebuilt states we’ve seen, you need to add a trigger for this state to work, unless you’ve set it as the initial state for an object. When the Disabled state is activated, nothing will happen when learners try hover, click, or drag that object. The Disabled state is useful in many situations. For example, if you’d like to create a custom menu that requires learners to view the different sections of your course in a certain order rather than allowing them to view the content in the order of their choosing, you can use the Disable state to unlock one button at a time, like in the GIF below: Notice how when I hover over the buttons, nothing happens? The Hover state doesn’t appear and the hand cursor doesn’t appear, making it clear that I can’t click on them. If you’d like to build a menu like this but are short on time, hop on over and download this template. Hidden As you may have guessed, when the Hidden state is activated, the object is invisible. Like the Disabled state, you need to add a trigger to activate this state unless you’ve set it as the initial state for an object. The Hidden state could be useful if you wanted to hide the quiz button until the learner completes all the sections of the course, as shown in the GIF below: Before we move on to Custom Object states, here’s another pro tip for you: if you’re creating states for an image, you can quickly create a series of states for it by bulk-importing image files. Find out how in this tutorial: Inserting Pictures as States. Custom Object States In addition to these prebuilt states, you can create an unlimited number of Custom Object states that can look and work any way you want. Adding a Custom Object state is super-easy! Simply select the object, open the States panel, click Edit States, and type the name of your Custom Object state, as shown in the GIF below: Once you’ve created your Custom Object state, go ahead and format it any way you’d like. Then, add a trigger to that object to show that state whenever you’d like it to appear. There are tons of situations in which it can be useful to create Custom Object states. One example would be to create different versions of the same object that appear as the learner interacts with a slider or a dial, as shown in the GIF below: To create the example above, I inserted a bunch of Custom Object states and changed the height of the rectangles in each one. Check out the screenshot below to get an idea of what my states look like: This is just one example of a situation where you might want to use Custom Object states—there are plenty of others! Let your imagination run wild. Drag-and-Drop States When we were looking at prebuilt states earlier, you may have noticed that at the bottom of that drop-down list there was another category of prebuilt states: the Drag-and-Drop states. As their name suggests, these states were specifically designed to be used with drag-and-drop interactions. They allow you to give the learner visual feedback as they’re interacting with the exercise. There are three Drag-and-Drop states. Let’s take a closer look at each one. Drag Over If you add this state to a draggable object, the learner will see it when an object is dragged over a drop target. If you have multiple drop targets, this state will be applied no matter which one it’s dragged over. Take a look at this GIF to get an idea of what that could look like: Instead of adding this state to a drag item, you could add it to your drop target(s). Here’s what that looks like: No matter which option you choose, the objective is the same: to give the learner a visual cue that they’re dropping the object onto a drop target—without letting them know if their answer is correct or incorrect. Drop Correct and Incorrect States The remaining two states are generally used together. The Drop Correct state is what your learner will see when they drop an object on the correct drop target, and the Drop Incorrect state is what they’ll see if they drop an object on the incorrect drop target. By default, these states won’t appear until the learner clicks on the Submit button, like in the GIF below: This is a great way to let learners know which answers they dragged to the right and wrong spots, instead of simply telling them they didn’t drag them all to the right spot. If you want the Drop Correct or Drop Incorrect state to display right away, simply go to the drag-and-drop options and uncheck the box marked Delay Item Drop States until Interaction Is Submitted, as shown in the GIF below: Once you’ve unchecked that box, your interaction will work as shown below: This option is great for practice exercises, where the score doesn’t matter. Pro tip: Did you notice that in addition to changing the color of the draggable items for the Correct and Incorrect states, I added icons to indicate whether they were correct? It’s a good practice to avoid using color alone to indicate correctness; this enables people who have trouble distinguishing colors or who come from cultures where green and red don’t indicate Correct and Incorrect to be able to understand. Character States Did you know that the illustrated characters in Storyline 360 come with a dozen prebuilt states? Well, now you do! There’s a prebuilt state for each of the 12 facial expressions included with each illustrated character. So if you want your character to suddenly look angry or disappointed, you don’t have to build out those states—they’re already there! All that’s left to do is insert an illustrated character and set up a trigger to change the state. Wrap Up And there you have it—you know everything there is to know about states in Storyline 360! Well, maybe not everything, but pretty close. If you want to dig even deeper, check out these great resources: Adding and Editing States Definition of Built-In States Want to try something you learned here, but don’t have Articulate 360? Start a free 30-day trial. And subscribe to our newsletter to get the latest product updates, e-learning examples, and expert advice directly in your inbox.99Views0likes28CommentsUsing Tabs Interactions in E-Learning #448
Using Tabs Interactions in E-Learning#448: Challenge | Recap Tabs interactions are one of the most popular interactions in e-learning. They’re super flexible and come in all shapes, sizes, and designs. The reason tabs are so popular is that they let your learners explore groups of content without having to leave the current slide. No need to jump around between different slides or scenes. 2022 tabs examples | 2023 tabs examples And for course designers new to e-learning or just getting started with Articulate Storyline 360, tabs interactions are a fantastic way tolearn Storyline’s core building blocks: slides, states, layers, and triggers. We use tabs-style activities all the time to teach Storyline in our workshops, webinars, and tutorials. And tabs interactions are what this week’s challenge is all about! 🏆Challenge of the Week This week, your challenge is to share an example that shows how tabs interactions can help organize and group related content in e-learning. New users Keep it simple if you're new to Storyline—don't worry about fancy visuals or conditional interactivity for now. Instead, focus on inserting objects, adding button states, shape tools, formatting, and alignment. It's all about understanding Storyline's building blocks: states, layers, triggers, and slides. Experienced users For the seasoned pros, try kicking it up a notch. Try using conditions to trigger actions when your learners click all the tabs. Experiment with conditional events on each slide layer. Create animated tabs using the new emphasis animations. Share Your Project Files! It’s no secret community members love freebies! It’s also no secret that the challenges are one of the most visible ways course designers get their work in front of the community. If you’re up for it, please consider including a download along with your example this week. 🧰 Resources If you're looking for more information on how to use and build tabs interactions, we've got you covered. Below you’ll find articles, downloads, and past challenges that'll help you get started. Articles Step-by-Step Guide to Creating a Tabs Interaction in Storyline A Beginner’s Guide to Designing Effective Tabs Interactions 7 Tabs Downloads to Help You Create Compelling Click-and-Reveals in Storyline E-Learning Challenges Creating Tabs Interactions in E-Learning #401: Challenge | Recap Webinars How to Build Tabs Interactions in Storyline 360 ✨ Share Your E-Learning Work Comments: Use the comments section below to link your published example and blog post. Forums: Start a newthreadand share a link to your published example. Personal blog: If you have a blog, please consider writing about your challenges. We'll link to your posts so your great work gets even more exposure. Social media: If you share your demos on x or LinkedIn, try using#ElearningChallengeso your peeps can follow your e-learning coolness. 🙌 Last Week’s Challenge: Before you get started on this week’s tabs interaction, check out the creative examples from last week’s spotlight masking challenge: Draggable Spotlights in E-LearningRECAP#447:Challenge|Recap 👋 New to the E-Learning Challenges? Theweekly e-learning challengesare ongoing opportunities to learn, share, and build your e-learning portfolios. You can jump into any or all of theprevious challengesanytime you want. I’ll update the recap posts to include your demos. Learn more about the challenges in thisQ&A postand why and how to participate in thishelpful article. 📅 Next Week’s Challenge Challenge #449(02.09):Emphasis animations. You've been asking for this, and now it's here! Show us how you're pulsing, shaking, teetering your slide objects to life. Challenge #450 (02.16): Using Themes, Templates, & Slide Masters. Another basics challenge, only this week we're looking at under-the-hood features to help us work faster in Storyline 360 and PowerPoint. Rise 360 users can show their before-after examples using themes and block templates. Got an idea for a challenge?Are you interested in doing a webinar showcasing how you made one or more challenge demos? Or do you have some comments for your humble challenge host? Use this anonymous form to share your feedback:https://bit.ly/ElearningChallengeForm.97Views0likes116CommentsA Behind-the-Scenes Look at How I Designed This Gamified Quiz
Have you ever wanted to create a gamified quiz, but didn’t know where to start? Or maybe you had a few ideas, but felt a little intimidated and decided to save it for a rainy day...that never came? I feel you. I’ve been there. But guess what? I went for it! Here’s how it turned out: Click here to view the interactive version and download the template. And if I can do it, you can too! In this article, I’m going to walk you through my design process so you can see how I got from an idea to a finished product. Let’s dive in! Coming Up with the Concept One of the hardest parts of gamifying your e-learning course is deciding which game elements to add. There are so many options it can be hard to decide which ones to focus on. There’s no right or wrong answer, but, as always, it’s important to keep your learning objectives and target audience in mind. Since I didn’t have an actual project to tackle, I tried to imagine a situation in which it may be beneficial to gamify a course. Then it came to me! What if I created a quiz for learners who need to memorize a bunch of information—vocabulary words, for example? When it comes to memorization, one thing that can be helpful is repetition. That’s why people use flashcards, so they can run through them over and over, remembering more and more each time. But repetition can also be boring, so why not make it fun? With that in mind, I decided to incorporate the following things: Question banks. I wanted to help commit the answers to long-term memory by randomizing and spacing out the questions and not simply using short-term memory to recall the order. A countdown timer. I wanted to create a sense of urgency and excitement, but also to encourage learners to trust their gut and go with their first instinct rather than overthinking it. Extra time. I added extra time to the clock to reward learners for correct answers and to give them more time to think about subsequent questions. An incentive to try again. Instead of forcing learners to get a perfect score to move forward, I wanted to entice learners to beat their previous score, so I set up a system of stars. Learners only need one star (or 10 correct answers) to pass, but if they want to earn two, they need to get 15 correct answers, and to earn all three stars, they have to get a perfect score. The hope is that learners who only get one star will want to try again until they get two or three stars. Levels. I broke the game up into levels that unlock as they go to give learners a sense of achievement. Sound effects. I embellished the game with sound effects to give it a more playful feel. Now that you have some insight into the ideation process, let’s take a look at how I decided on the design. Designing the Graphics Since my gamified quiz is intended to be a template, I wanted to stick to a simple design that could be used for a broad range of topics and could easily be adapted to fit any company’s brand guidelines. I decided to go with a bright, colorful palette to give it a fun vibe. Initially, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to use a background image or not, so I just left the background white. Here’s what my first draft looked like: But I wasn’t 100 percent satisfied with this first version. The font didn’t feel “fun” enough and all the gray made for visuals that were a little too “blah,” so I started brainstorming ways to improve upon my design. When I’m looking for inspiration, I often try searching Content Library 360 to see if anything jumps out at me. And sure enough, I stumbled upon an illustration of a sky with a big cloud and it just clicked—that’s it! What better way to give my game a lighthearted vibe? After I added the background, things started falling into place. I swapped out the gray for a darker shade of blue, to match the sky, and replaced the boring font with this fun, game-inspired one. Now I was getting somewhere! Here’s what my second version looked like: But something still didn’t feel right. I decided to see what it would look like if the pathway followed the outline of the clouds, to give it a more integrated, cohesive look. Once I was happy with the main menu slide, I created the question slides along the same lines, changing the colors for each level. At this point, I was feeling pretty good about my graphics, so I started thinking about sound effects. Choosing Sound Effects To really give my quiz a game-like feel, I decided to add some sound effects. I was careful not to go overboard, which would distract from the learning experience. Here’s what I landed on: A theme song. I wanted something to play at the beginning and end of the game as well as on the results slide to set the tone for the course. I wasn’t sure exactly what I wanted it to sound like, but I was imagining something a little retro to fit with the graphic style I chose. Correct/incorrect sounds. I thought it would be nice to find sound effects to signal to learners whether they’ve answered a question correctly or incorrectly. I wanted something that was short—so it didn’t get annoying—and unambiguous—so learners wouldn’t be left wondering what it meant. A “time’s up” sound. Finally, I wanted to find another short tone to signal when the time runs out on the clock—like an alarm or a buzzer. With that decided, I started my search. First, I headed over to this list of websites with free sound effects. After looking at a few options, I concentrated my efforts on freesound.org since it’s easy to navigate and the licensing terms for each download are clearly laid out. From there, I started trying out a few keywords—like game, theme song, right, wrong, alarm, buzzer—and gave each one a listen. To include my sound effects in my template, I made sure to choose sound effects that were licensed under Creative Commons 0—so I could use and redistribute them freely. That narrowed down my options, which actually made it easier to choose. If you’ve never used sound effects in your courses before, check out this article for advice on using them effectively: Tips for Using Sound Effects in E-Learning. More Resources Hopefully you found this sneak peek into my design process useful! If you downloaded the template and need some help customizing it, be sure to check out this how-to article, where I walk through how to do that:How To Customize This Storyline 360 Countdown Quiz Game Template. If you want to dig deeper into the concept of gamification and how to apply it to your e-learning courses, check out these helpful articles: Gamification Techniques: How to Apply Them to E-Learning Gamification: How and Why Does It Relate to E-Learning? 5 Visual Design Tips for Gamified E-Learning And here are a couple of gamified course templates in case you’re short on time: Randomized Board Game Dice Quiz Game E-Learning Battleship Game Crossword Puzzle Game Not finding what you’re looking for? There are tons more where these came from! Hop on over to the downloads hub to browse all the Storyline templates. 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).93Views0likes14CommentsHow Can You Use This Motion Path Tip in Your E-Learning Projects? #445
Using the 0px Motion Path Trick#445: Challenge | Recap Happy New Year, E-Learning Heroes This week's challenge is a bit off the beaten path compared to what we usually do. Instead of diving into a popular feature (sliders,dials,variables) or a common interaction (tabs,timeline,accordion), we're zooming in on a more unique, lesser-known use of a feature. Think of this as a sandbox challenge. Check out this example and see what I mean. Sugary Drinks by Annabelle Grew Why is this interesting? Aside from the creative concept and visual design, what really grabbed my attention here is the approach Annabelle took to put this whole project together. Typically, drag-and-drops are set up with just a fixed number of draggable objects, right? That's perfectly fine if you're dealing with, say, under ten items. But here's where it gets juicy: imagine you've got dozens of objects, and you want them all to be draggable. Now, the standard move would be to create individual objects for each drag item. But let's face it, this method works, but it can make editing and managing the slide a real challenge. That's why knowing your tools can really help save you time and work quicker. How does it work? There's only one drag object in the project. The drag cube has a motion path with alength of 0 pxand a duration of .10 seconds. Each time the sugar cube is dropped on the target, the trigger tells the sugar cube to move its motion path. Because the motion path is set to0 px, it resets the sugar cube to its default starting position of the sugar cube. Brilliant, right? It's not just about what you create but how you create it that can make all the difference. And that's what this week's e-learning challenge is all about! 🏆 Challenge of the Week This week, your challenge is to share an example that uses the 0px length motion path trick. You can recreate an existing example or play with ideas that show potential uses for this technique. Two More Examples Reset an Object's Position In this example, Ron used the0 px motion pathin a way that's not just about duplicating objects. Instead, it's used to play multiple audio clips from multiple objects. The 0 px motion path resets the object's position after the learner drops the object on a single target. Ron's got adetailed forum postwhere he breaks down how he built his project. Casualty Incident Response by Ron Katz Drag-and-Drop RAID Storage Calculator I put together this example nearly five years back, right around the time we kicked off ouronline webinars. I've always been a fan of Drobo and especially liked their interactivecapacity calculator. The project file is available for download and if you want to see how it works. Drag-and-Drop RAID Storage Calculator Video Tutorial of the 0 px Motion Path Technique ✨ Share Your E-Learning Work Comments: Use the comments section below to link your published example and blog post. Forums: Start a new thread and share a link to your published example. Personal blog: If you have a blog, please consider writing about your challenges. We'll link to your posts so your great work gets even more exposure. Social media: If you share your demos on Twitter or LinkedIn, try using #ELHChallenge so your tweeps can follow your e-learning coolness. 🙌 Last Year's Challenge: Before you tackle this week’s challenge, check out the colorful examples your fellow challengers shared in last year’s Pantone Color challenge: Pantone Color of the Year 2024RECAP#444:Challenge|Recap 👋 New to the E-Learning Challenges? The weekly e-learning challenges are ongoing opportunities to learn, share, and build your e-learning portfolios. You can jump into any or all of the previous challenges anytime you want. I’ll update the recap posts to include your demos. Learn more about the challenges in this Q&A post and why and how to participate in this helpful article. Got an idea for a challenge?Are you interested in doing a webinar showcasing how you made one or more challenge demos? Or do you have some comments for your humble challenge host? Use this anonymous form to share your feedback:https://bit.ly/ElearningChallengeForm.83Views0likes112CommentsHere’s How You Can Create and Customize Freeform Drag-and-Drop Interactions
If you’re looking to add some interactivity to your next e-learning project, you might consider designing a drag-and-drop interaction. Drag-and-drops are a nice way to make your learner stop, think, and engage with the content: perhaps to order the steps in a process, match terms, or place items where they belong. Storyline newbies might be wondering how to build and customize a freeform drag-and-drop interaction. Let me walk you through the steps you can follow. Step 1: Design Your Slide Let’s say you want to build an interaction on the topic of Canadian geography. You want learners to place various Canadian cities in the appropriate place on a map. The first thing to do is design how the slide will look. You need to add all the items you want to have on your slide, including the objects you will use as drag items and drop targets (both key to creating a drag-and-drop interaction). Drag items are the objects that you actually click and drag on the slide, whereas drop targets are the areas on the slide where you drop the drag items. In the example below there is a black rectangle with a title across the top of the slide, an image of a map of Canada in the background, and rectangle shapes that are used to create drag items (the names of the cities) and drop targets (locations of the cities on the map). You’ll also notice the use of star shapes to indicate the exact placement of the city on the map. So far, the slide looks like this: Right now this is a static slide. It has a default Next and Prev button, and if you preview it, nothing happens. You can’t click on the cities and drag them to their spot on the map ... yet. Step 2: Convert to Freeform To take this from a static slide to an interactive drag-and-drop, click the “Convert to Freeform” button that’s available on the Insert tab of the Storyline ribbon. When you click the Convert to Freeform button, Storyline presents you with options for the type of freeform slide to create. For this example, select “Drag and Drop.” Select “Drag and Drop” to create a drag-and-drop interaction. Once you’ve converted a static slide into a freeform drag-and-drop slide, a few things happen. First, you’re presented with what’s called “Form View,” which looks like this: Form View is where drag items and their corresponding drop targets are assigned. A few other things happen when you convert a static slide to a freeform slide, which you can see when you switch over to “Slide View.” The slide no longer has a Prev and Next button, but instead now has a Submit button. Storyline also automatically creates Correct and Incorrect feedback layers for the slide. (You may choose to leave the default feedback layers as they are, or you can pop into the Feedback Master to customize the look and feel of those layers.) Once you hit Convert to Freeform, the slide has a Submit button, as well asCorrect and Incorrect feedback layers. Step 3: Assign Drag Items & Drop Targets Next, pop into Form View to assign which objects are drag items and drop targets. It’s super simple to do; just choose the drag item in the left column and select the corresponding drop target in in the right column. There’s even a handy slide preview in the right-hand panel that shows you which object you’re selecting, to minimize room for error. Once you’ve assigned your drag items and drop targets, Form View looks like this: Tip: Naming the drag items and drop targets makes it easy to ensure you have selected the correct corresponding objects. Step 4:Preview Your Interaction Now your drag-and-drop interaction should be working. You can hit the Preview button to see how it looks and check for any unwanted behavior: View this demo in action The interaction is working, but you might want to change a few things to improve the learner experience: The Incorrect layer doesn’t provide any tips or indications about which drag items (if any) were placed in the correct drop zones and which weren’t. You can drop the drag items anywhere on the map, even outside of the drop targets. You can drop more than one drag item in a drop target. Notice the learner gets no feedback about which answers are right or wrong. Also, learners can place drag items outside of drop targets, which looks messy. Let’s look at how you can customize this freeform drag-and-drop interaction to make it work the way you want it to. Step 5: Add Drag-and-Drop States to Your Drag Items First, you can address the issue of not providing feedback to learners about which questions are right or wrong by using Storyline’s custom drag-and-drop states. These states are a quick and easy way to give your learners feedback about their choices. To add these states, simply select your drag item objects and click the “Add State” button in the States panel. You’ll notice these three options are available under the dropdown when you create a new state: There are three drag-and-drop states available. The three states available are: Drag Over State: This state determines how an object looks when it’s being dragged over any drop target Drop Correct State: This state determines how an object looks when it’s on the correct drop target Drop Incorrect State: This state determines how an object looks when it’s on an incorrect drop target Once you’ve added your custom drag-and-drop states to one object, you can use the Format Painter to quickly apply those identical states to your other drag items. Now your learners will know which drag items are right and wrong when they click Submit. Step 6:Customize with Drag-and-DropOptions To further customize your drag-and-drop, head over to the Design tab of the Storyline ribbon: Tip: There’s more than one Design tab; select the one that is on the far right. On this Design tab of the ribbon you’ll notice a button called “Drag & Drop Options.” Click on this button to reveal this window: Here, you have lots of options and features to customize how your drag-and-drop will function. Let’s run through them here: Drag Item Options Return item to start point if dropped outside: Any drop target: Select this option to make the drag items return to their start point if the learner does not drop them on one of the targets you’ve assigned in Form View. A correct drop target: Select this option to make the drag items return to their start point if they are not dropped on the correct target. Reveal drag items one a time: In certain cases you may not have the space to put all of your drag items on the slide. This option allows you to reveal your drag items one at a time (here’s an example). You can even decide in what order to reveal them. Drop Target Options Snap dropped items to drop target: This option allows you to specify how the drag item reacts when you place it on the drop target. You have the following options: Tile Stack random Stack offset Snap to center Free Allow only one item in each drop target: Pretty straightforward, this option makes it so that only one drag item can be in each drop target at the same time. If you drop a second item in the drop target, the drag item that’s already on the drop target will be returned to its starting point. Feedback Delay item drop states until interaction is submitted: This option uses Storyline’s custom drag-and-drop states, which are mentioned in the previous step. By default, when you’re using these custom states, they will only be displayed once the learner clicks the Submit button. You can, however, change this by de-selecting the “Delay item drop states until interaction is submitted.” With this option de-selected, the drag-and-drop state (either Correct or Incorrect, depending on their choice) will appear as soon as the user drops the drag item on a target, not after they click the Submit button. With all these options available, you can make a few quick edits to change how this interaction works. Select “Return item to start point if dropped outside: any drop target” to prevent the learner from being able to leave a drag item anywhere on the slide besides a drop target Select “Allow only one item in each drop target” to prevent the learner from placing more than one drag item in a drop target Let’s look at how this example works with those changes in effect: View this demo in action This interaction is a lot smoother now, and you’re providing the learner with valuable feedback about which answers they answered correctly and incorrectly by using the drag-and-drop states. You could even take this a step further and give the learner unlimited attempts so they can keep trying until they’ve got all the cities in the correct spots. This is helpful from an instructional design standpoint because you don’t want to leave a learner hanging, unsure of the correct answers. Here’s how the interaction would work with unlimited attempts: View this demo in action Did you notice that the learner gets to keep trying until they get it right? This leaves them with no doubt about the correct answers. Hopefully this example helps you understand how to create freeform drag-and-drops, and how you can customize them with the drag-and-drop options available in Storyline. Do you have tips of your own for creating freeform drag-and-drop interactions? If so, let me know 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. If you have any questions, please share them in the comments.70Views0likes8CommentsDrag and Drop
Drag and drops are a common type of interactivityused in e-learning. A drag and drop interaction typically consists of drag items (the objects that are dragged) and drop targets (the zones the dragitemsare dropped on).A drag and drop interactioninvolves moving the cursor over adrag item, selecting it, and moving it toa drop target. Drag and drops also work on mobile devices by using a finger to move the drag items. Learn More: 3 Design Tips for Creating Effective Drag-and-Drop Activities 3 Ways to Create Drag and Drops With Storyline 360 How to Create Freeform Drag-and-Drop Interactions in Storyline 36065Views0likes0Comments