Stop Answering Questions. Start Redesigning Them.
This week's E-Learning Heroes challenge dropped a fascinating artifact in our laps: the 1912 Bullitt County Schools eighth-grade final exam. And everyone's first instinct was the same: could I pass this thing? And honestly — maybe not. There's a grammar question asking students to write a single sentence containing four specific grammatical elements simultaneously. There's compound interest math done by hand. There's a civics question — "What is the proper basis of civil government?" — with no word limit, no rubric, and apparently no fear of what a fourteen-year-old might actually write. It's a fascinating artifact. And the obvious eLearning move would be to modernize it into an assessment. Swap the open-ended questions for multiple choice. Add a scenario. Slap on some feedback. Done. I went a different direction. What if the learner was the designer? Instead of asking people to answer the 1912 questions, we asked them to redesign them. Pick a question. Tag the instructional design strategies you'd apply — scenario-based, cause-and-effect, perspective-taking, transfer task, twenty options in total. Watch a live compatibility meter tell you whether your combination is a strong pairing or a bit of an overcrowded mess. Then get feedback: a scorecard rating your approach on cognitive load, authenticity, and transfer potential, plus a specific strength, a push-it-further nudge, and one genuinely hard reflective question to sit with. And at the end — a before/after reveal comparing the original 1912 question to an expert redesign, so you have something concrete to react to, agree with, or argue against. The whole thing runs in a single HTML file embedded in Rise via a Code Block. No frameworks, no dependencies. Why this framing works Most eLearning about instructional design is passive. You read about Bloom's taxonomy. You watch someone explain cognitive load theory. You take a quiz about it afterward. This puts you in the seat. You make a call — I'm going to apply scenario-based learning and cause-and-effect framing to this arithmetic problem — and then you get a mirror held up to that decision. The compatibility meter alone has a way of making you pause and ask whether you're building a coherent design rationale or just stacking strategies because they sound good. The 1912 exam is the perfect raw material for this because the questions are so far from modern practice that every design decision feels deliberate. You can't default to habit. You have to think. Give it a try below and let me know — which question did you pick, and did the compatibility meter surprise you? Built with Articulate Rise 360 and Claude by Anthropic. Stop Answering Questions. Start Redesigning Them.Share Your Force-Filled Star Wars E-Learning Templates and Examples #262
Star Wars Quizzes, Games, and Activities #262: Challenge | Recap Challenge of the Week This week, your challenge is to share a Star Wars-themed interaction. You can design any type of interaction you like as long as it’s related to Star Wars. Here are a few ideas to help you get started: History of Star Wars timeline Who shot first? Star Wars leadership styles Star Wars quizzes Build a droid game Star Wars name generator Last Week’s Challenge: Before you force your way through this week’s challenge, check out the creative ways your fellow challengers use interactive dials and knobs to build infographics in e-learning: Using Dials for Interactive Infographics #261: Challenge | Recap Wishing you a force-tastic week, E-Learning Heroes! 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.Share Your Instructional Design Quizzes and Learning Activities #277
Instructional Design Quizzes and Interactions #277: Challenge | Recap Formative vs. summative? Pedagogy vs. andragogy? Formal vs. informal? Flipped classrooms? Bloom vs. Gagne vs. Werner? Huh?!? When you’re first getting started in e-learning, it’s easy to be confused — and daunted — by the terms floating around the online training industry. It’s hard to sift through the theories, styles, and expert opinions to get to the heart of what you really need to know. It doesn’t matter if you’re new to e-learning or you’ve been building online training for years. One of the best ways to learn something is to teach it. And that’s why this week’s challenge is all about crowdsourcing instructional design interactions! Challenge of the Week This week your challenge is to create a quiz or learning activity on an instructional design principle, model, researcher, or theorist. You can create any type of quiz or practice activity you like. Go with the timeless multiple choice or true-false questions, or create something more playful using a custom quiz. You can make the quiz as simple or challenging as you like… Just keep it fair and practical. Share Your E-Learning Work Comments: Use the comments section below to share a link to your published example and blog post. Forums: Start your own 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 back to your posts so the great work you’re sharing gets even more exposure. Social Media: If you share your demos on Twitter or LinkedIn, try using #ELHChallenge so your tweeps can track your e-learning coolness. Last Week’s Challenge: Before you dive into this week’s learning challenge, check out the screencast walkthroughs of popular challenge examples: Video Walkthroughs of E-Learning Examples RECAP #276: Challenge | Recap Wishing you an educational week, E-Learning Heroes! 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.Blurred Backgrounds in E-Learning Course Design #366
Blurred Backgrounds Effects in E-Learning #366: Challenge | Recap Challenge of the Week This week, your challenge is to share an e-learning slide, demo, or design comp that features blurred backgrounds. Try to include before-and-after examples to show how your background graphics transformed your original slides. Bonus: Share your backgrounds as a separate asset or download. We'll post a blurred backgrounds round-up to share your bundles of blurred goodness in a few weeks. Share Your E-Learning Work Comments: Use the comments section below to share a link to your published example and blog post. Forums: Start your own 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 back to your posts so the great work you’re sharing gets even more exposure. Social Media: If you share your demos on Twitter or LinkedIn, try using #ELHChallenge or #ElearningChallenge so your tweeps can track your e-learning coolness. 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. Last Week’s Challenge: Before you dive into this week's challenge, take some time to check out the interactive video examples your fellow challengers shared over the past week: Interactive Video in E-Learning #365: Challenge | RecapWelding Theory Course
We created a game called "Connected to Welding" (in Brazilian Portuguese) so that students, in the welding technician course, could test their knowledge of shielded metal arc welding (SMAW) in a fun way. In the game, the student is guided by a supervisor woman who will be attentive to everything that will be done. This supervisor will also be the character who will instruct them in the tutorial. Game home screen 1. Initially, the student must check the Welding Procedure Specification (WPS), which, as the name suggests, are the specifications and guidelines to be followed for welding; 2. Subsequently, the student must select the Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), which must be used by the worker; 3. Selection of supplies: the welder must bring, in addition to the welding machine (inverter), to perform the welding and cleaning after completion; 4. Choose which type of coated electrode should be brought, which is defined in the Welding Procedure Specification; 5. Correctly connect the cables to the inverter, paying attention to which cable will hold the electrode, which will be attached to the metal flame, and their respective polarities; 6. Also, according to the specifications (WPS), calibrate the amperage of the inverter so that the weld does not pierce the metal sheet, nor is it too weak; 7. Once the weld is complete, it's necessary to clean the debris (slag) left in the process; 8. The last phase is the diagnostic stage, where the student will be presented with an image of a weld with problems. They must point out what problems were presented and why the weld presented such problems. I know it will be difficult to understand, as the vast majority of platform users are English-speaking, but I hope you appreciate the interactivity and the graphic design. Link to the game. Thanks for watching.Using Vector Graphics to Design E-Learning Courses #545
As course designers, you know that coming up with new design ideas can be a challenge. With so many free stock photos, videos, and AI-generated images out there, you'd think things would be easier, right? But the real challenge isn’t finding design assets. It’s using them in a way that doesn’t look like every other cookie-cutter course out there. This is where setting some creative limits or constraints can actually help. For example, you could use a single vector illustration as the foundation for your entire course. It might sound impossible, but it can lead to some surprisingly creative results. Let me show you an example so you can see how it works. How to Become a Good Leader Andrzej's example is one of my favorite examples of this technique. Using a stock illustration, he built a six-slide course template from the individual elements. Take a look at the following example to see how his final project turned out. View project | Download | Andrzej Jabłoński Ex Uno Plura At first glance, you might see just one image, not the many smaller pieces that make up the illustration. To work with these parts, open the file in a graphics program like PowerPoint or Illustrator. Open the vector file (.ai, .eps, or .svg) and ungroup it to select the individual shapes you want to use. Depending on how complex the illustration is, you might see a lot of layers. I like starting with the smaller elements since they’re easier to select. You can then select, group, and export these elements to use in your course design. Now you have everything you need to create the visual elements for your e-learning template. 🏆 Challenge of the Week This week, your challenge is to build a simple interaction or course starter template in Rise or Storyline using just one illustration. Be sure to include a screenshot or a link to the stock graphic you used, so others can learn from your example. 🙌 Share Your E-Learning Work You put in the effort, now make sure your work gets seen: Personal blog: If you have a blog, please write about your example from this week’s challenge and share the link with your submission. Social media: Please share your examples on LinkedIn and mention both David & Articulate using the #ElearningChallenge tags so we can help promote your work. Support your peers: With the new submission format, you can comment directly on each example. Try leaving helpful feedback on at least three projects this week. Community forums: Feel free to cross-post in the forums to give your work even more visibility. 🙌 Last Week’s Challenge: Before you break apart this week’s challenge, check out the accordion examples your fellow challengers shared over the past week: Accordion Interactions for FAQs in E-Learning #544: 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.
