Storyline 360: Publishing a Course for LMS/LRS Distribution
If you’re using a learning management system (LMS), a learning record store (LRS), or both to distribute and track e-learning content, you’ll want to use the LMS/LRS publishing option in Storyline 360. Here’s how. Enter Title, Description, and Folder Location Enter Additional Project Info (Optional) Adjust the Player Properties and Quality Settings Choose to Publish a Slide, a Scene, or the Entire Course Choose Reporting and Tracking Options Publish Distribute Your Published Course Step 1: Enter Title, Description, and Folder Location Go to the Home tab on the ribbon and click Publish. When the Publish window appears, select the LMS / LRStab on the left. Enter the Title the way you want it to appear in your published output. (If you have a title placeholder on the first slide, the title defaults to the text entered in that title placeholder. If you don’t have a title placeholder on the first slide, the title defaults to the name of your project file. You can change the title of your published course here without affecting the name of your project file or the title placeholder on the first slide.) The maximum length for a project title is 80 characters; the maximum length for each output folder name is eight words. Use the Description field to define the purpose of your course. It won’t appear in your published output. Use the Folder field to choose where you want to publish your course—for example, your computer desktop. Click the ellipsis button (...) to browse to a location. Storyline 360 will create a new folder in that spot with all the files needed to operate your course. Tips: Always publish to your local hard drive. Publishing to a network drive or a USB drive can cause problems with your published output. After publishing to your local hard drive, upload the output to your LMS, LRS, or both for testing and distribution. Install the November 2021 update or later for Storyline 360 to send results to an LRS. Learn more. Step 2: Enter Additional Project Info (Optional) Click the ellipsis button (...) next to the Title field todefine additional project information. Currently, this information is for your reference only. It won’t be visible in your published output. The Title and Description fields are the same as those on the Publish window (see the previous step). The image below the Title fieldisthe course thumbnail. By default, Storyline 360 uses an image of the first slide in your course, but you can choose a different image. Just click the hyperlinked text below the image, then select a different slide or clickPicture from Fileto choose an image on your hard drive. You can enter values for the Author, Email, Website, Duration, Date, Version, and Keywords (separated by commas) fields. The Identifier is a unique string of characters assigned by Storyline 360 that your LMS/LRS uses to identify your course. If you’re republishing a course that’s already in your LMS/LRS, don’t change the value in this field. When you’re finished customizing the project information, click OKto return to the Publish window. Step 3: Adjust the Player Properties and Quality Settings Use the Properties section of the Publish window to make last-minute changes to your course player and quality settings. The Player property shows the name of the player currently assigned to your project. (The player is the frame around your slide content.) To make adjustments to your player, click the player name to open theplayer editor. The Quality property lets you choose adaptive or static video quality and control the compression settings for audio clips, static videos, and JPG images. The quality settings default to whatever you used the last time you published a course. To change them, click the Quality property, make your adjustments, and click OK. There are now two video quality options. Select Adaptive to automatically adjust the video quality (high, medium, or low) to the learner’s internet speed and prevent buffering. Learn more. Choose Static to deliver videos with the same quality to all learners, which could cause buffering. Drag the Static slider to change the video compression. Note that higher values give you higher-quality output but also larger file sizes (which means longer download times for learners with slow connections). Lower values give you smaller file sizes and faster download times, but the quality will be lower as well. Drag the Audio Quality slider to adjust the compression settings Storyline 360 uses for audio. Mark the Optimize audio volume box to normalize audio throughout your course for consistent volume across all slides. Tip: If your course audio already has consistent volume, you can speed up the publishing process by unchecking this option. Drag the JPG Quality slider to adjust the compression settings Storyline 360 uses for JPG images. Click Reset to standard optimization to use the default settings: adaptive video quality, audio bitrate of 56 kbps, and JPG image quality of 100%. Step 4: Choose to Publish a Slide, a Scene, or the Entire Course By default, Storyline 360 will publish your entire course. However, you can now choose to publish a specific scene from your course or even just a single slide. This is helpful when you want to publish multiple courses from the same project file. Just click the Publish property, then choose the entire project, a single scene, or a single slide. Step 5: Choose Reporting and Tracking Options Click the Reporting and Tracking button to open the following window, where you can choose how your LMS/LRS reports and tracks learners’ progress. Click the LMS tab in the upper left corner, then choose a standard from the Report to an LMS drop-down. Ask your LMS administrator if you’re not sure which standard to use. Storyline 360 supports cmi5, xAPI (Tin Can API), SCORM 2004, SCORM 1.2, and AICC. Complete the fields in the LMS Course Information section with these tips in mind: The course Identifier is a unique string of characters assigned by Storyline 360 that your LMS/LRS uses to identify your course. If you’re republishing a course that’s already in your LMS/LRS, don’t change the value in this field. If you choose xAPI and need to change this value, avoid special characters and spaces. For SCORM, the LMS Lesson SCORM Information section displays in addition to the LMS Course Information section. The values in the Title and Identifier fields default to the course title. If you have a title placeholder on the first slide, the Title and Identifier fields default to the text entered in that title placeholder instead. This Identifier appears in the imsmanifest.xml file for your course. The file uses a digestible name for the course Identifier, the unique string of characters assigned by Storyline 360. If you’re republishing a course that’s already in your LMS/LRS, don’t change the values in these fields. For xAPI, the following fields display: Activity ID: Your LMS and LRS use this value to identify activities in a course. The unique string of characters in the reference is the same as the value for the course’s Identifier (see above). If you need to change this value, use a valid URN (Uniform Resource Name), then upload the published course to your LMS/LRS for proper testing. Launch URL: If you plan to host the content on a server that’s separate from your LMS, you must enter the full URL for the story.html file. Language Code: This field isn’t mandatory, but you can enter a supported language code to change the language of the tincan.xml file. If you’re unsure, leave this field blank to set the language value in the tincan.xml file to und (undetermined). For SCORM and AICC content, choose your LMS Reporting option. This is the wording you want your LMS to display for learners’ statuses in reports. (This option isn’t available or necessary for cmi5 or xAPI content.) If you plan on reporting to an LRS as well, click the LRS tab on the left side of the window. Mark the box to Report to an external LRS, then choose one of the following options in the section called LRS Configuration. Learn more about LRS support. Supplied at launch: Select this option when you don’t want to store authentication credentials in your Storyline 360 project file or when you need the option to update the LRS endpoint or credentials without republishing the project. Learn more about supplying credentials at launch. Manual: Select this option to enter the LRS endpoint and credentials right in Storyline 360. The configuration details will be stored in your project file, and you’ll need to republish the project if you change them later. Learn more about the manual option. Click the Tracking tab on the left side of the window and chooseany combination of the following options.You can choose one, two, or even all three tracking options. Whichever option a learner completes first is the one that gets reported to your LMS/LRS.Learn more about tracking multiple completion criteria. When the learner has viewed# slides: Mark this option to trigger course completion when learners view acertain number of slides. You can choose a percentage or a fixed number. Then decide which slides get counted—all slides or just those with slide numbers.Learn more about tracking slides viewed. When the learner completes a quiz: Mark this option to track learners based on their quiz results. You can let Storyline 360 keep track of multiple quizzes and send results to your LMS/LRS for the first quiz each learner completes.Learn more about tracking quizzes. (This option will be grayed-out if your course doesn’t have any result slides.) Using triggers: Mark this option to track learners based oncourse completion triggers you added to your course. (This option is grayed-out if your course doesn’t have any completion triggers.) Click OK to save your changes. Step 6: Publish When you’re finished making selections, click the Publish button. When the publishing process is complete, you’ll see the Publish Successful window with several follow-up options. View Project This launches the published course in your default web browser. However, it’s best to upload the published course to your LMS/LRS for proper testing. Email This opens a new email message with a zipped file of your published course attached. This option is helpful if you need to send your course to an LMS/LRS administrator for deployment. FTP This opens a window where you can enter your FTP credentials and transfer your output to a server. Zip This creates a zipped version of your course files in the same location where your course was published. This is the most common choice when you publish for LMS/LRS. Upload the zipped course to your LMS/LRS. Open This opens a file viewer where you can see the files Storyline 360 just created. There will be multiple files and folders for a published course. Tip:If your LMS requires you to identify the file that launches your course, point to index_lms.html . Step 7: Distribute Your Published Course Now that you’ve published your course, it’s time to upload it to your LMS/LRS. The steps for this are different for each LMS/LRS. Contact your LMS/LRS administrator if you need help uploading, launching, or tracking content.How to Troubleshoot Your LMS with SCORM Cloud
If you’re like many e-learning developers, your LMS has prompted numerous head-scratching (or head-banging) moments. Perhaps your course won’t play or resume in your LMS, or it isn’t tracking properly. Job number one: identify the problem. And to do that, we recommend a handy tool called SCORM Cloud. SCORM Cloud is an industry-standard testing engine developed by Rustici Software, an organization that knows a lot about SCORM and helped develop its successor (xAPI/Tin Can API). It supports all LMS specs—AICC, SCORM 1.2, SCORM 2004, xAPI, and cmi5—and it’s free, making it an ideal LMS troubleshooting superhero. (You can create an account here.) In this article, we’ll show you how to use SCORM Cloud to test your project, from zipping your content to verifying tracking. Here we go! Step 1: Zip Your Content First, publish your course for LMS and create a zipped file of the published output. If you’re using Storyline 360, Presenter 360, Quizmaker 360, or Engage 360, you can do this by clicking on the Zip button in the Publish Successful window. If you’re using Rise 360, export your Rise 360 course as a cmi5, xAPI, SCORM, or AICC package and save it to your computer. If you’re testing AICC content, see this article for special instructions. Step 2: Upload Your Published Output Log in to SCORM Cloud, then click Add Content and select Import a SCORM, AICC, xAPI, or cmi5 package. Then click Browse, find your Zip file, and click Open. Finally, click on Import Course. SCORM Cloud will upload your course and take you to the course home page. Step 3: Create an Invitation It’s possible to launch your course directly from the course home page, but opening it that way doesn’t mimic a true learner experience and results won’t show in LMS reports. That’s why we recommend clicking Share and then Invite. That will open up another window. Here, click on Create Invitation. This will generate an unguessable URL that you can use yourself or share with others. For an extra layer of security, you could also choose the Private Invitation option. Step 4: Test Your Course Copy the URL into the address bar of a new browser window. Enter your email address and name. Your results will be tracked under these credentials. Then, click on Ok. Now take me to my training. At this point, test your course and attempt to reproduce the problems that prevented it from behaving as expected in your LMS. Watch for display problems of any kind, make sure your content suspends and resumes as you’d expect, and keep an eye out for unexpected behavior in general. When you’re done testing, exit the course and confirm that your score and status are displayed correctly. Step 5: Verify Tracking Now that you’ve tested your course as a learner would experience it, you can review the SCORM Cloud reports for accuracy. To do so, return to the course details page, click Reportage, then drill down into the available reporting data. Tip: If your course details page is no longer open, just return to your course library and click the course name. What’s Next? If your course works properly in SCORM Cloud but not in your LMS, open a support case with your LMS provider to troubleshoot the issue. They’ll know how best to help with LMS-specific problems. If your Articulate content doesn’t play, resume, or track correctly in SCORM Cloud, submit a case to our support team so we can take a closer look. Be sure to include a copy of your project file so we can try to reproduce the problem. Need more help troubleshooting? Check out these other resources: The Secret to LMS Debugging Learning More About Your LMS: Suspend Data and Resume Behavior If you have any other troubleshooting suggestions, share your thoughts with us and other community members in the comments below. And if you’re tired of spending time troubleshooting your LMS, try Reach 360. Our frictionless LMS is integrated with Articulate 360 apps, so you can publish directly and be confident that everything will work as expected. It’s fast and hassle-free!A Quick Introduction to SCORM
SCORM is one of those e-learning terms you probably hear all the time. But you may not know that it’s an acronym for the Sharable Content Object Reference Model—and yep, that’s a mouthful! Here’s what you need to know about it. SCORM is a standard for making sure e-learning courses and learning management systems (LMSs) can communicate with each other. It includes a set of technical specifications that ensure e-learning courses can report information to an LMS, relaying whether the learner completed the course, how they did on a quiz, and so on. Basically, if authoring software can export content that’s SCORM-compatible, you’ll be able to use it in a SCORM-compatible LMS. Originally sponsored by the Department of Defense to make sure different e-learning courses created by various developers would work on all their LMS platforms, SCORM quickly became the software standard for the whole industry. But it’s not the only one out there. AICC and TinCan (also known as xAPI) are other standards widely used in the e-learning industry. Creating SCORM-Compatible Content with Articulate Software If you use Articulate authoring tools, it’s simple to publish courses to conform with the SCORM standard. You can find those details here: Storyline 360 User Guide Tips Storyline 3 User Guide Tips Rise 360 FAQs Studio 360 User Guide Tips And we’ve got tons more resources on working with LMSs to help you master this terminology: Find more details on making sure your Articulate courses will work with your LMS in this guide. See how you can troubleshoot LMS issues with SCORM Cloud. And find out even more about LMSs in this detailed series. If your current LMS is clunky, hard to use, or difficult for learners to access, then check out Reach 360 from Articulate. This fast, flexible, frictionless LMS simplifies every part of getting great training out to the people who need it. And because you can publish your courses to it directly from Rise 360 and Storyline 360, it takes no extra work at all to ensure your course and Reach 360 communicate with each other perfectly.Learning More About Your LMS: Resume Behavior and Suspend Data
Have you ever run into a situation where your course doesn’t pick up where you left off when you view it more than once on your LMS? Or maybe it does, but you’d prefer it start over from the beginning? The way your course responds when it’s relaunched is called the resume behavior. If your course isn’t resuming as desired, you’re probably wondering what’s going on and how to fix it. In this article, we’ll help you figure that out. How Do I Control the Resume Behavior? First, let’s examine our options. If you’re using Storyline 360, Presenter 360, Quizmaker 360, or Engage 360, you can choose from three resume options: Prompt to resume If learners previously viewed part of the course, this option displays a prompt, asking learners if they want to pick up where they left off. Always resume This forces your course to open at the place where learners left off. They won’t see a prompt; it just happens automatically. Never resume This forces your course to always open at the beginning, even if learners completed part of the course previously. They won’t see a prompt. If you’re using Rise 360, the course will always resume from where the learner left off. How Does Resume Actually Work? As a learner makes his way through a course, a compressed chunk of information—called suspend data—is sent to the LMS after each slide. This suspend data describes everything about the current state of the course, including the learner’s responses, navigation history, object states, variable values, interaction results, and more. When the learner opens the course again, it asks the LMS where they previously left off. The LMS sends the suspend data back to the course, and the course uses it to resume at the same point and in the same state as before. Why Do Courses Fail to Resume? A few things could get in the way of the resume communication process: You exceeded the suspend data limit. Your LMS might be imposing limits on suspend data. Older LMS specs, such as SCORM 1.2, have outdated restrictions on suspend data. We recommend publishing for the latest edition of SCORM 2004, xAPI (Tin Can API), or cmi5. See these articles for more information: Storyline 360 Rise 360 Studio 360 You’re in a cross-domain environment. If you’re hosting AICC content on a different server than your LMS, you may experience a cross-domain conflict. See this article for solutions. (Note that this doesn’t apply to Rise 360 courses.) You already completed the course. The resume feature might not work as you’d expect after you meet the completion requirement. Most LMSs consider a course to be in review mode after the tracking requirement has been met. In review mode, resume data is no longer sent to the LMS, which prevents learners from accidentally changing their course status from Complete back to Incomplete. See this article for more information. (Note that this doesn’t apply to Rise 360 courses.) Can I Examine Suspend Data? Enable LMS debug mode to watch your suspend data flow back and forth between your content and your LMS. By doing so, you can verify that the data returned by your LMS upon resume is the same data that your content sent upon suspend—a common point of failure. To help you avoid exceeding suspend data limits (see above), we compress suspend data. As a result, the suspend_data string in an LMS debug log isn’t human-readable. You won’t be able to decipher what it means, but you can see if the data sent to the LMS matches the data that comes back from the LMS. Doesn’t My LMS Need to Read Suspend Data? No. Only the course itself needs to be able to decompress and read suspend data. The LMS just functions as a handy place to store suspend data between attempts. The Bottom Line Now that you have a better understanding of how resume behavior works, you should be able to troubleshoot these issues more easily if you run into them. Need more help troubleshooting? Check out these other resources: How to Troubleshoot Your LMS with SCORM Cloud The Secret to LMS DebuggingA Quick Introduction to LMS and LRS Standards
There are a few common reasons why folx go looking for information on Learning Management System (LMS) or Learning Record Store (LRS) standards. If you’re one of them, maybe you’re doing your due diligence to make sure your course will work with a specific LMS or LRS. Or maybe you’ve come across some cryptic references to e-learning standards (cmi5 is what exactly?) and want an easy-to-understand explanation. No matter what brought you here, you’re in the right place. This article is all about giving you the plainspoken lowdown on LMS/LRS standards and why they’re important. Along the way we’ll unpack a few acronyms (specifically, AICC, SCORM, xAPI, and cmi5) and give you a little history lesson, too. Ready? Let’s get to it! What are LMS/LRS standards and why do we need them? Organizations use LMSs and LRSs mainly to track learner data like course completions and quiz scores. As you can imagine, there are lots of different ways to share data between digital systems. Without an agreed-upon process, your course could end up sharing data in a way that your LMS or LRS can’t understand. This is where LMS/LRS standards come in. Each standard (AICC, SCORM, xAPI, cmi5) is essentially a shared language for communicating with an LMS or LRS. Having standards ensures that, no matter the authoring app or LMS/LRS you’re using, information can be shared without any fuss or complicated coding. If you’re using an LMS that’s integrated with your authoring app—like Reach 360 is with Storyline 360 and Rise 360—you don’t have to worry about these standards because your course files and LMS all work together automatically. And if you have an Articulate 360 subscription, don’t forget that it now includes the Reach 360 Starter plan, so you can use it to share training with up to 300 learners a year at no additional cost! However, if you’re using an LMS/LRS that isn't integrated with your authoring app, you need to know which standard to publish to. In the world of e-learning, there are four common standards: AICC, SCORM, xAPI, and cmi5. Let’s take a closer look at each one. AICC The oldest e-learning standard, AICC (which stands for Aviation Industry Computer-based Training Committee), was created in 1988 to ensure that aviation training could be designed, delivered, and evaluated across various computer-based training platforms. Eventually, the specs in the AICC standard became popular outside the aviation industry. The AICC dissolved in 2014 due to declining membership and the rise of other e-learning standards. Although the AICC standard is no longer evolving, it’s still fairly common for authoring apps and hosting platforms to be AICC-compliant. Many organizations have useful legacy training content that was originally published as AICC, so they look for LMS platforms that allow them to host that content and authoring apps that allow them to maintain that content. Before the AICC dissolved, the committee started working on a new standard called cmi5, which I’ll highlight in just a bit. SCORM SCORM, which stands for Shareable Content Object Reference Model, was released in 2001. Despite its age, it’s still an industry standard that defines how to package course content so that LMSs can recognize it and extract information about learner activity. The SCORM standard in all its iterations has proven to be a catalyst for broad adoption of e-learning. However, as we saw with AICC, standards need to continuously evolve to meet the ever-changing landscape of modern technology—like cloud computing and mobile devices. While SCORM specifies how courses and LMSs should communicate, it does so in ways that are a bit out of date. Another common complaint about SCORM is that it only tracks a limited amount of information about learner activity—like completion, scoring, and quiz interactions. If authors want to track more detailed information about the learner experience—like which links learners clicked or if they tend to get stuck in a specific part of the course—they can’t. Ultimately, these limitations gave rise to the creation of xAPI. Learn more: A Quick Introduction to SCORM xAPI When xAPI came out in 2013, it was billed by many as a replacement for SCORM. Unlike SCORM, which only tracks how learners interact with courses on an LMS, xAPI tracks a broader array of learning activities and experiences across a wide variety of platforms—from mobile apps, video games, and Virtual Reality/Augmented Reality training simulators to enterprise systems like talent management and help desk applications—using an LRS. In theory, this allows e-learning pros to track almost anything, anywhere, opening up tons of possibilities for gathering and analyzing more meaningful and performance-oriented data. However, in practice it can be complicated to implement, since you have to manually define everything you want to track and how. Not to mention that very few systems outside of the Learning and Development (L&D) industry have adopted this standard or are even aware of it, so the tracking possibilities aren’t quite as extensive as you might think. Learn more: An Introduction to xAPI cmi5 Although cmi5 sounds like the name of a Star Wars droid or a top-secret espionage organization, it’s far less exotic. Cmi5 is the most recent e-learning standard, released by ADL after the AICC dissolved. To create cmi5, they basically took xAPI and added rules specific to e-learning content to make it easier for course authors to set up. In short, like xAPI, cmi5 tracks and records learning experiences wherever and whenever they happen—course creators just don’t have to do as much mental gymnastics to get it to work. For this reason, many e-learning pros tout it as the preferred option for tracking, calling it the best of both worlds. More Learning Does all of this sound like an L&D version of Goldilocks and the Three Bears? If AICC is out of date, SCORM is too constrained, and xAPI lacks definition, does that mean the cmi5 standard is just right? In case your head is spinning, here’s a table that recaps the basic use cases for each of the four standards: Standard LMS or LRS? Use Case AICC LMS Legacy e-learning courses with basic tracking needs like completion, scoring, and quiz interactions. SCORM LMS E-learning courses that don’t require tracking beyond completion, scoring, and quiz interactions. xAPI LMS and LRS Learning experiences that extend beyond e-learning courses and require highly detailed, customized tracking—via an LRS. Note that xAPI was designed to record general experiences, with a light focus on e-learning content. cmi5 LMS Learning experiences that extend beyond e-learning courses and require highly detailed, customized tracking—via an LMS. Note that cmi5 includes special functions specifically tailored to e-learning content. I don’t know about you, but I take comfort in knowing that our industry has a rich history of evolving standards. For almost thirty years, L&D folks have been working hard to create and iterate standards that give practitioners the tools they need to help their orgs keep pace with today’s learners. Want to learn more about the hosting platforms that use these standards? Here are a few resources to check out: All About Learning Management Systems (LMSs) An Introduction to LRSsStoryline 3: Publishing a Course for LMS Distribution
If you're using a learning management system (LMS) to distribute and track e-learning content, you'll want to use the LMS publishing optionin Storyline 3. Enter Title, Description, and Folder Location Enter Additional Project Info(Optional) Adjust the Player Properties and Quality Settings Choose to Publish a Slide, a Scene, or the Entire Course Choose Reporting and Tracking Options Publish Distribute Your Published Course Step 1: Enter Title, Description, and Folder Location Go to the Home tab on the Storyline ribbon and click Publish. When the Publish window appears, select the LMS tab on the left. Enter the Title the way you want it to appear in your published output. It defaults to the name of your project file. (Changing the title won't affect the name of your project file.)The maximum length for a project title is 80 characters. Use the Description field todefine the purposeof your course.It won't appear in your published output. Use the Folder field to choose where you want to publish your course—for example, your computer desktop. Click the ellipsis button (...) to browse to a location. Storyline will create a new folder in that spot with all the files needed to operate your course. Important: Always publish to your local hard drive. Publishing to a network drive or a USB drive can cause problems with your published output. After publishing to your local hard drive, upload the output to your LMS for testing and distribution. Step 2 (Optional): Enter Additional Project Info Click the ellipsis button (...) next to the Title field todefine additional project information. Currently, this information is for your reference only. It won’t be visible in your published output. The Title and Description fields are the same as those on the Publish window (see the previous step). The image below the Title field will be the course thumbnail in the Articulate Mobile Player library. By default, Storyline uses an image of the first slide in your course, but you can choose a different image. Just click the hyperlinked text below the image, then select a different slide or click Picture from File to choose an image on your hard drive. Enter values for Author, Email, Website, Duration, Date, Version, and Keywords if you'd like. The Identifier is a unique string of characters assigned by Storyline that your LMS uses to identify your course. If you're republishing a course that's already in your LMS, don't change the value in this field. When you're finished customizing the project information, click OK to return to the Publish window. Step 3: Adjust the Player Properties and Quality Settings Use the Properties section of the Publish window to make last-minute changes to your course player and quality settings. The Player property shows the name of the player currently assigned to your project. (The player is the interface learners see around the perimeter of your course.) To make adjustments to your player, click the player name to open the player editor. The Quality property lets you control the compression settings for audio clips, videos, and pictures. The quality settings default to whatever you used the last time you published a course. To change them, click the Quality property, make your adjustments, and click OK. Choose Standard if you want to use the default settings: optimal video quality of 5, audio bitrate of 56 kbps, and JPG image quality of 100%. Choose Custom if you want to define your own quality settings. Drag the slider for any of the three values to change the compression. Higher values give you higher-quality output but also larger file sizes (which means longer download times). Lower values give you smaller file sizes and faster download times, but the visual and audio quality will be lower as well. Tip:The image compression setting only affects JPG files. Mark the Optimize Audio Volume box to normalize audio throughout your course for consistent volume across all slides. Tip: If your course audio already has consistent volume, you can speed up the publishing process by unchecking this option. Step 4: Choose to Publish a Slide, a Scene, or the Entire Course By default, Storyline will publish your entire course. However, you can now choose to publish a specific scene from your course or even just a single slide. This is helpful when you want to publish multiple courses from the same project file. Just click the Publish property, then choose the entire project, a single scene, or a single slide. Step 5: Choose Reporting and Tracking Options Click the Reporting and Tracking button to open the following window, where you can choose how your LMS reports and tracks learners' progress. Click the Reporting tab in the upper left corner, then choose a specification from the LMS drop-down. Ask your LMS administrator if you're not sure which spec to use. Storyline supports xAPI (Tin Can API), SCORM 2004, SCORM 1.2, and AICC. Complete the fields in the section called LMS Course Information and, if you're publishing for SCORM, the section called LMS Lesson SCORM Information. The Identifier is a unique string of characters assigned by Storyline that your LMS uses to identify your course. If you're republishing a course that's already in your LMS, don't change the value in this field. If you choose xAPI and need to change this value, avoid special characters and spaces. If you choose xAPI, you'll see a field called Launch URL. Enter the full URL for the story.html file if you plan to host the content on a server that's separate from your LMS. In the LMS Reporting section, choose the wording you want your LMS to display for learners' statuses in reports. (This section isn’t available or necessary for xAPI content.) Click the Tracking tab on the left side of the window and choose one of the following options: Track using number of slides viewed: Mark this option to trigger course completion when learners view a specific number of slides. Track using quiz result: Mark this option to track learners based on their quiz results. If your course has multiple quizzes, choose the one you want to track. (This option will be grayed-out if your course doesn’t have any result slides.) Click OK to save your changes. Step 6: Publish When you're finished making selections, click the Publish button. When the publishing process is complete, you’ll see the Publish Successful window with several follow-up options. View Project This launches the published course in your default web browser. However, it’s best to upload the published course to your LMS for proper testing. Email This opens a new email message with a zipped file of your published course attached. This option is helpful if you need to send your course to an LMS administrator for deployment. FTP This opens a window where you can enter your FTP credentials and transfer your output to a server. Zip This creates a zipped version of your course files in the same location where your course was published. This is the most common choice when you publish for LMS. Upload the zipped course to your LMS. Open This opens a file viewer where you can see the files Storyline just created. There will be multiple files and folders for a published course. Tip:If your LMS requires you to identify the file that launches your course, point to index_lms.html. Step 7: Distribute Your Published Course Now that you've published your course, it's time to upload it to your LMS. The steps for this are different for each LMS. Contact your LMS administrator if you need help uploading, launching, or tracking content.Getting Started With Microlearning—6 Common Questions Answered
Microlearning is a buzzed-about approach that even people outside the learning and development field might have heard of. But for all that talk, it’s not always clear what this term really means. If you’re looking for some answers, we’ve got them! That said, you might want to grab a snack beforehand, because when it comes to understanding microlearning, some of the best analogies involve food. 1. What exactly is microlearning? Think of your typical robust e-learning course as a hearty meal. It’s got a lot of different things to offer, and if you’re famished, it’s likely just what you’re looking for. But it also takes a lot of time to prepare and eat. And if you’re just a little peckish, it could be way more food than you actually want. Microlearning, on the other hand, is like a simple snack. It’s focused on just one item you can take it in quickly, and if you just need a nibble, it hits the spot. And as with a snack, you can combine multiple microlearning courses to make something more substantial—think tapas for learning. When people need to make online training, they often gravitate to the full-meal style for courses. And there is a time and place for that approach. But often your learners just need a little learning snack that quickly solves a problem and is easy to fit into a busy workday. That’s where microlearning comes in! 2. Is microlearning just training that’s short? Being bite-size is just part of the recipe. That’s because being short doesn’t automatically equal a good learning experience. Think about taking a one-hour video lecture and cutting it into twelve five-minute chunks. It’s going to be awkward to watch because it wasn’t designed to be viewed in small segments. And it’s still going to take an hour to get through. Good microlearning, on the other hand, is purposefully designed around the strengths and weaknesses of a short format. It breaks information or skill-building content into small, easy-to-consume bits, typically with each one laser-focused on achieving a single learning objective. With microlearning, creators refine the content to only what someone needs to cover that objective—nothing more, nothing less. To double down on efficiency, designers also focus on paring down copy as much as possible without losing clarity, and using multimedia and interactions when they’re the faster or clearer way to explain something. 3. What makes it effective? When it comes to learning, microlearning has lots of things going for it. The short length makes it feel approachable: When you give learners focused, easily consumable bites of content instead of a thousand-slide mega-course, getting through the content feels achievable instead of overwhelming. Being bite-size also makes it bingeable: Have you ever sat down to nibble on a few chips and then accidentally eaten half the bag? It’s easy to lose track of how much you’re consuming when you’re taking it in in small bites. While that’s sometimes annoying when you’re snacking, it can be a big plus when it comes to learning. Since well-designed microlearning content is easy to ingest, learners might inadvertently binge more content than they would have in longer courses. It respects learners’ time: Professional development is important, but often difficult for people to fit into a busy schedule. So providing a streamlined version of the content they need without any filler or bloat is a powerful way to make learners feel you respect their workload. It’s easy to use in the moment: Splitting up learning into smaller, more targeted chunks makes it easier for learners to find exactly what they’re looking for in their moment of need. Learners can log on, find information quickly, and immediately apply it on the job. 4. How short does my microlearning need to be? While you might see numbers like “under ten minutes” or “under five minutes” floated around, there’s actually no agreed-upon standard for how short something has to be to count as microlearning. That ambiguity is one thing creators can find frustrating with the concept of microlearning. It also means team members and stakeholders might not realize they’re all working off of different definitions. Instead of focusing on time, a better guideline is to have each microlearning experience you create focus on a single, targeted learning objective. That will naturally guide your content toward being bite-size. 5. If it works so well, should I always use microlearning? Microlearning is useful for a lot of situations. But no single format works best in every situation. Microlearning can be a good fit if the information makes sense in small segments and it’s easy to see ways to break your content down into chunks. For instance, this approach would work well if you needed to teach people how to put together a few quick party snacks. But if the topic needs a longer, deeper dive to explain, separating that content into short pieces will make it harder for learners to wrap their heads around. Think of trying to teach an in-depth course on French cooking. Most dishes are complex enough that a short lesson wouldn’t get the job done. And even if you could make that work, the breadth of the course topic would lead to an almost unmanageable number of mini-lessons. In that case, it’s easier to give learners longer-form lessons that cover each dish from start to finish. 6. Do I need to use a specific medium or app to create microlearning? Not at all! You can use whatever medium—or mix of mediums—works best for your content and learners. And there’s no special app you need to buy to make something micro either. That said, with the popularity of short-form content, some apps have added functionality to make it easier to create—like the new Microlearning feature in Rise 360. So keep an eye out for how your tools can help speed up microlearning design and development. Wrap-Up Microlearning is a buzzy term. But once you get past the hype, it’s easy to see situations this approach is well suited for. Want more ideas for how to use microlearning in the real world? Check out these tips and examples: 3 Tips for Creating Effective Microlearning Courses 4 Advantages of Microlearning (With Customizable Examples!) 8 Business Use Cases for Microlearning Rise 360: Interactive Microlearning Infographic Rise 360: Illustrated Landlord Pet Guidelines Rise 360: Food Industry Microlearning Have an additional example of microlearning that you think works particularly well? Be sure to share it in the comments. And don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn, and come back to E-Learning Heroes regularly for more helpful advice on everything related to e-learning.
