All About Lightboxes in Storyline 360
Whether you’ve designed a website or simply done your fair share of web surfing, you’ve probably run across lightboxes. They’re often used to display content (particularly images or video on photography websites) while dimming out the web page background. The lightbox feature in Storyline 360 works similarly. Triggering content to be displayed in a lightbox allows the slide of your choice to appear in a pop-up window over the current slide, which is dimmed. Here’s an example: Click here to explore the interactive version and here to download the template. A lightbox allows you to show learners additional content without navigating away from the current slide, which could cause them to lose their spot in the course. This can be especially helpful for stuff like bibliographical references or links to external resources. It’s also great for navigation instructions, a table of contents, or any other supporting assets that need to be available throughout the course. Let’s walk through how to add lightboxes to your Storyline 360 course so your learners can start reaping the benefits of this powerful feature. How Do Lightboxes Work in Storyline 360? In Storyline 360, you can trigger any slide (or series of consecutive slides) to open in a lightbox. The size, placement, and appearance of the lightbox is prebuilt for you, to make it super simple. This includes a red X button that closes the lightbox window automatically when learners click. These features make it quick and easy for you to create a consistent user experience. However, the trade-off is that you can’t customize these lightbox settings. If you’re looking for more control over the size, placement, or appearance of your lightbox content, you can always create your own pseudo lightbox effect using slide layers. To read more about how to do this as well as the pros and cons of this approach, check out this forum discussion: Lightbox Change Size? Pro Tip: When designing content for use in a lightbox, keep scale in mind. The scale of objects on your content screens (e.g., text, buttons, images) will be about 75% of the original slide size. Triggering the Lightbox Once you’ve created content slides for your lightbox, what’s next? To get your content into a lightbox, you’ll need to add a trigger. You’ll find the Lightbox Slide option under the action menu in the Trigger Wizard. Once you’ve selected Lightbox Slide, you’ll need to tell Storyline 360 which slide(s) to open. From the Slide drop-down menu, select the slide you want to appear inside your lightbox. If you’d like a series of slides to be lightboxed (e.g., for a media gallery), you’ll find it’s easier to place those slides into their own scene. That way you can simply select the first slide in that scene from the Slide drop-down and check the Navigation Controls box to allow learners to move forward and backward within that scene of lightboxed slides. You can also use your own navigation buttons, but your learners may find the size of Storyline’s default navigation controls a little easier to see and use. Pro Tip: To keep learners from getting confused, be sure to remove any custom on-slide Forward/Backward navigation buttons or arrows from your lightboxed slides if you’ll be using the default player navigation controls. Once you’ve selected the slides you want to appear in the lightbox, it’s time to tell Storyline 360 when to trigger this effect. From the When drop-down menu, simply select the option that fits your needs. For example, when the user clicks. Next, select the associated object. For example, in the screenshot below, the action to open the lightbox should happen on Slide 1.3 when the user clicks on the Previous button. If you’re using the built-in navigation buttons in Storyline 360, you can also trigger the lightbox to open when the user clicks on buttons built into the player, like Next, Previous, or Submit. Lightboxes can also be triggered to open from a slide or slide layer. Finally, you need to decide whether there are any specific conditions or criteria for launching the lightbox. For instance, what if you only want the learner to be able to access the lightbox after they’ve clicked on all the buttons on a slide, like in the example below: You can specify any conditions to be met by adding conditions to the trigger in the Trigger Wizard, as shown above. For more details on trigger conditions, check out this tutorial: Adding Conditions. Adding a Lightbox to the Course Player It’s one thing to make a lightbox available on a single slide, but what if you want lightboxed content to be accessible throughout your course? No problem! Storyline also gives you the ability to add a lightbox to the course player as an additional tab. Here’s how. From the player properties, select the Features tab. Under the Player Tabs section, click Add New (the blank paper icon): In the Trigger Wizard panel, enter a name for your new tab in the name field—for example, “Contact” for a slide with contact information. This name is what learners will see in the player, so be sure to choose something that makes it obvious what kind of information learners will find there. In the action field of the Trigger Wizard panel, select the lightbox trigger and then choose the content slide(s) you’d like to open up. Just like adding a lightbox to a slide, you can specify conditions for triggering this lightbox effect from the course player. When you’ve finished entering the information for your new tab, click OK. In the adjacent Storyline player preview, you should see your newly added tab. To make sure that your lightbox is functioning properly, simply preview your project and click the newly added tab on the course player. Resources Hopefully this comprehensive look at lightboxes has given you some new ideas for using them in your courses. For even more lightbox design inspiration, check out these helpful resources: How Are You Using Lightbox Slides in E-Learning? 3 Subtle Ways to Integrate Navigation Instructions Storyline Template: Lightbox Tabs Storyline Template: Integrated Navigation Instructions What creative uses have you discovered for lightboxes? Leave your ideas in the comments below or share them with the E-Learning Heroes community. Want to try lightboxes out for yourself, but don’t have Storyline 360? Start a free 30-day trial of Articulate 360, 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.3 Ways to Use Rise 360 Themes to Tailor Your Projects
Rise 360 is the perfect authoring app for quickly creating beautiful, inherently responsive, and engaging courses. And it just got even better, thanks to Rise 360 themes. You can now choose from a variety of gorgeous new looks created by award-winning designers to give your existing Rise 360 projects a brand-new look and feel if you’d like, and make your new Rise 360 projects feel more custom. With options for cover pages, navigation, lesson headers, colors, fonts, buttons, and more, Rise 360 themes give you loads of creative possibilities for making a course feel unique. You can customize courses for your topic, help learners focus on content by controlling the navigation experience, reinforce your company’s brand identity, and so much more. To give you a peek at some of the many ways you can use Rise 360 themes to transform your projects, I’m sharing three ideas you can steal for your Rise 360 projects—but there are almost infinite possibilities! 1. Quickly customize Rise 360 course templates I love saving myself some time by using the real-content templates included in Rise 360. Since they’re ready-to-go courses, most of the time I use them as is. But with Rise 360 themes it’s easy to give real-content templates a whole new look and feel in just a few clicks. Before After Before After I think this Sexual Harassment Prevention Training template already sets the right tone, thanks to its course cover photo, which hints at the gravity of this weighty workplace topic. But with Rise 360 themes, I was able to easily customize the appearance of this template to give it my own, sleeker look while still aligning with the seriousness of the subject matter. I transformed the course cover page with a split right image layout using the Rise theme, added a dark gray accent color to keep things grounded and neutral, and then selected a fresh font—Be Vietnam—to give it a modern edge. And by choosing smaller lesson headers with a background color to match the course accent color, I gave the lessons a uniform appearance that pushes the content front and center. I love how these small but mighty changes make this template feel more custom—and it only took a few tweaks to make it my own. 2. Focus learners’ attention with compact navigation When it comes to sharing critical information, it’s helpful to minimize distractions so learners can focus entirely on the content. This Emergency Response Plan course shares crucial details with employees about preparing for and responding to life-threatening workplace events. Before After Before After The course does an excellent job of parsing information into easy-to-understand, bite-sized pieces with the accordion block, so learners aren’t overwhelmed with too much content. But I wanted to focus learners’ attention on this critical content even more. To do that, I selected a split right image layout using the Apex theme for the cover page. To further enhance the course’s appearance, I also switched things up to a bold and easy-to-read font—Poppins. Within the course, I wanted to make sure that learners weren’t distracted by too many elements on the screen, so I chose the overlay navigation menu that learners can view only when needed. I also went with smaller headers and hid the lesson count labels. Once again, little changes like these can add up to a lot more visual space within each lesson. This means learners can focus their attention on the most important elements of the course. 3. Make your courses look more on-brand Most companies have style or brand guidelines—the consistent design choices they use to reflect their unique persona. In many organizations, the style guide also applies to internal content, including e-learning courses. And in this Style Guide course, learners are introduced to the essential design elements they should use when creating content to represent the organization. Before After Before After Because there are so many theme customization options available in Rise 360, you can design a course that fits right in—no matter how specific your branding guidelines. To transform the course cover and bring this style guide to life, I chose a centered image layout using the Horizon theme, a green accent color, and an on-brand font pairing—Oswald & DM Sans. I wanted to further reflect the brand guidelines once learners dive into each lesson, so I added a branded sidebar navigation menu, floating navigation buttons with an accent tint, and designed lesson headers using an image reflective of the organization. Thanks to these choices, I’m not just telling learners how to properly reflect the organization’s unique style in their content, I’m also showing them. Wrap-Up Hopefully, these examples made you as excited about Rise 360 themes as I am! Being able to customize templates to match course topics, improve the learner experience, and reinforce brand identity are just a few of the many ways Rise 360 themes can help you transform your Rise 360 projects—but there are tons more options to explore. How do you see yourself using Rise 360 themes in your organization? Share your ideas in a comment below. To learn more about customizing your course’s design, check out these articles: Make Over Your Rise 360 Course in 4 Easy Steps With Themes Why & How to Tailor Content to Different Audiences The Color Effect: How Your Palette Affects Learners Does Your E-Learning Course Need a Menu? Finding Fonts That Fit Your E-Learning Want to try out Rise 360 themes, 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.3 Subtle Ways to Integrate Navigation Instructions
Are you looking for ideas for incorporating navigation instructions into your courses in a way that’s helpful and effective, yet not too in-your-face? You’re not alone! That’s a common challenge that many instructional designers run into. To help you out, we’ll walk you through three tried-and-true design approaches. 1. Make instructions available in the course player Explore interactive version | Download the template One easy way to get navigation instructions out of the learner’s way, while still making them easily accessible throughout the course, is to add them to the course player. And with Storyline 360, it’s super easy to do that by adding a custom player tab that opens a slide in a pop-up window, called a lightbox. 2. Build in a time-sensitive prompt Explore interactive version | Download the template If you feel like your course interface is intuitive enough that most learners don’t need any hand-holding, but want to make sure those who do will still get help if they need it, you can design instructions that automatically pop up if the learner hasn’t made a move in a while—since that might mean they don’t know what to do next. This solution helps you give those learners a gentle nudge in the right direction. 3. Give learners the ability to opt in or out Explore interactive version | Download the template Whether you’re creating a course for new employees who might not be familiar with your course interface or you’ve redesigned it and want to help folx get acquainted, this option can be a great way to offer a helping hand to those who need one while empowering savvy users to dig right in to your great content. Wrap-Up Now you’ve not only got three great options for incorporating navigation instructions into your course, but you also have some free templates you can adapt to fit your needs in just minutes. Helping your learners navigate your course doesn’t get any easier than that! And if you’re looking for more instructional design tips and tricks? Check out these resources: 6 Things Video Games Can Teach You About Writing Engaging Scenarios 3 Tips for Designing Courses on Topics You Don’t Understand Proof There’s Always More Than One Way to Present Course Content And remember to subscribe to our newsletter to get the latest e-learning inspiration and insights directly in your inbox. You can also find us on LinkedIn and X (Formerly Twitter). And if you have questions, please share them in the comments.Best Practices for Clear and Simple E-Learning Navigation
While navigating an e-learning course, have you ever become stuck on a slide, unsure of what to do or where to click? If so, you were the victim of poorly designed e-learning navigation. E-learning courses must have simple and straightforward navigation that doesn’t leave learners guessing their next move. Illuminate the path for your learners with these tips for creating crystal-clear course navigation. Offer a course navigation tour One of the easiest ways to make your course easier to navigate is to provide a tour or brief explanation within the first few slides of your course. It can be as simple as textboxes with instructions or arrows that point out the buttons learners need to click to advance. If there’s a help button, a way to exit the course, a glossary, or any other navigational waypoints, you should point those out as well. If you can, make the navigation tour optional; no one likes having to click through tutorial slides every time they take a course. But make sure it’s readily available for learners who need a little extra help to get comfortable with your course. Provide one clear way forward Eliminate redundant navigational elements. Learners get confused when there are multiple ways to do the same thing on a single slide. For example, if there’s a Next button in your slide navigation controls and a Continue button on the slide, which should they choose? Pick one and remove the other, then keep that navigation consistent throughout your course (see the next tip). When there’s only one path to take, it reduces frustration and avoids “What do I do next?” moments. Don’t be afraid to include text callouts, but if your learners have to rely on them to navigate your course, you need to make revisions. Be consistent with layout and placement A clear and consistent navigation layout helps your learners make quick decisions about where to go next in your course. Don’t make your learners go on a scavenger hunt! Your navigation links should be in the same place on every slide. For consistent positioning, use the player’s built-in navigation controls or the slide master for buttons and links that appear across multiple slides. This ensures elements don’t move around from one slide to the next. Use short and descriptive titles Content is easier to digest when it’s presented in short, direct messages that don’t need to be deciphered. Label your navigation icons and links clearly. Use action verbs to indicate what the user is going to do. For example, “Start Quiz” is a clear and immediate call to action, whereas “Click Here to Begin the Lesson One Quiz” might be accurate but is harder to parse. Let learners know where they stand Learners can become disoriented and discouraged when they don’t have any progress markers. Give the folx taking your course a clear way to view their progress. If that’s not an option, make sure you provide them with periodic updates (say, after they’ve completed a lesson) to show them how far they’ve come and how much content they’ve yet to complete. Progress motivates and can stoke interest, especially during long courses. Test your navigation thoroughly Click through your course in every way possible. Try every button and link. Test every navigation path your learner could potentially follow. Fix linking errors you find along the way. Don’t be afraid to second-guess your earlier design decisions. A slide can look perfect at first, but then, as your course grows around it, you realize it’d be better to have it reset instead of resume. Course navigation is organic and needs to be flexible to accommodate your evolving content. Before you publish and share your course with learners, enlist a few colleagues who’ve never seen the course to do a thorough navigation walkthrough. Note where they hesitate or get stuck, then use your observations to make improvements. Wrap-Up These tips will help you design clear navigation for your e-learning course that’s easy for your learners to use. Keep in mind, learners who don’t have to worry about navigating your course can focus on its awesome content! If you found this article helpful, please follow us on Twitter and come back to E-Learning Heroes regularly for more practical advice on everything related to e-learning. If you have any questions, please share them in the comments.5 Visual Design Tips for Gamified E-Learning
Whether you’re trying to spice up your e-learning by adding a dynamic element like a branching scenario, or you’re designing a complex and immersive interaction, good content design is undeniably the foundation for creating a great learning experience. But at the end of the day, having great content that’s well written and structured is only half the battle; you also need strong visual design to connect the dots for your learners. This is particularly true for gamifying e-learning. That’s because many of the fundamental game design elements identified by Dr. Karl Kapp—engagement, mastery, autonomy, and progression—are more compelling (and effective) when the visual design of your project rises to the occasion, plunging learners into the experience and supporting them as they achieve the goals of the course. So how can you make sure your visual design is enhancing your great content and not distracting from it? Here are five tips to keep in mind: Tip #1: Look to Your Content to Help You Find a Visual "Hook" Just like a writer uses words to give their material a “hook”—that little something that entices the reader and pulls them into the story—your content can help you come up with a visual or a motif that draws your audience into the learning experience. Check out one example of using creative visuals to "hook" your learners in The Bicycle Thief, by Nancy Woinoski. In Nancy’s interpretation of the detective genre, she uses a colorfully illustrated treatment to grab learners and bring them into her story. Instead of the edgy vintage feel so often associated with detective stories, Nancy's subject matter is a little more playful, with a visual treatment to match. Drawing inspiration from your content can help you identify familiar visual hooks and then narrow in on a distinct interpretation of those motifs. For more pointers on applying game elements and techniques to your e-learning, check out Gamification Techniques: How to Apply Them to E-Learning. Tip #2: Add More Visual Cohesion with Typography When it comes to creating a cohesive visual design, don’t stop at graphics! Above and beyond conveying information to the learner, typography plays a huge role in conveying the mood and personality of your design. Have a fun, lighthearted subject? Consider using fonts that complement the mood with a whimsical or casual flair. Script or handwriting fonts are great examples of fonts you can use for conveying a more relaxed mood. Exploring a more serious topic? Stick with fonts that are less decorative and more clean and straightforward in their styling, like Open Sans (a sans-serif font) or Rockwell (a serif font). For one example of coordinating font personality with the subject matter, take a look at this gamified grocery-themed drag & drop download. It uses an easy-to-read handwriting font, Patrick Hand, as body text and combines it with a more stylized scripted font, Pacifico, for headings. These two fonts not only complement the grocery store theme by referencing the trend of grocery store chalkboard art, but they also scale well and are pretty easy to read. This brings up an important caveat when choosing typefaces: readability always trumps style. The initial typeface I chose for my body text was a little more elaborate and less readable than I wanted, so I ended up replacing it with Patrick Hand. If the typeface you’ve fallen in love with just doesn’t scale or is too hard to read, you may be better off using a less stylized font, or reserving that more stylized choice for accent text. Tip #3: Design Consistent and Intuitive Navigation With all of the lovely visuals you can use to bring a more game-like feel to your e-learning, it can be easy to lose sight of basics like navigation buttons. But buttons need love, too! Having clear and intuitive navigation is especially important for gamified e-learning because it’s often nonlinear, which means clicking the “Next” button probably isn’t going to move you through the course. And, added to the increased navigational complexity of gamified e-learning is the visual complexity that a richer design brings. All of that visual input can leave learners feeling overwhelmed or confused about where to click. So how do you create a visual design with navigation that’s styled to be on-theme, consistent, and intuitive? Try using contrast and repetition. Contrast Creating contrast in onscreen elements is important because it helps learners distinguish between screen objects. In short, contrast is all about catching the learner’s eye. You can create contrast in many different ways, including varying the sizes, weights, or styles of text to denote hierarchy and add emphasis. You can also create contrast with color or hue to draw attention to specific onscreen objects or text, as I’ve done in the Creative Tabs template example below. Repetition Repetition is all about repeating elements so the learner doesn’t have to put a lot of thought into finding or figuring out how to interact with objects like navigation buttons. For instance, style navigation buttons or icons in a way that’s similar to the rest of your graphic elements and then stick with that styling throughout the course. You can also save learners from having to hunt for where to click by placing navigation buttons in the same spot throughout the course. For an example of both contrast and repetition of navigation, check out this job interview simulation created by Nicole Legault. I love how Nicole chose to use a grayscale background to make her interviewer, Erica, stand out. And using contrast also makes the progress meter at the bottom pop (more on that in a moment ...). She also cleverly placed everything on the left so that within the first few screens, you’ve established a mental rhythm of sorts, instinctively directing your attention to the left for the next piece of feedback or to see more choices. Using stylized, consistent, and intuitive navigation is one of the easiest things you can do to create a more cohesive and immersive experience for learners. If you’d like to learn more about it, David Anderson wrote a fantastic article, 3 Essential Visual Design Concepts, that walks through all of the basics. Tip #4: Use Interactive Video When it comes to pulling learners into a setting or a situation and allowing them some free rein to explore and maybe even experience the consequences of their choices, it’s tough to beat the emotional impact and engagement of interactive video. It’s one of the best visual design tools in your gamification arsenal! That’s because in typical e-learning courses, video is more often used as a way to lecture learners rather than engage them in a conversation or an activity. But with interactive video, you can introduce a cast of characters, set the stage for an activity, or let learners choose their own adventure and learn from their mistakes along the way. The creative possibilities are endless. Check out three clever ways you can use interactive video in this free download. Tip #5: Visually Show the Learner's Progress As I mentioned at the beginning, one of the foundational elements of gamification is progression. A visual indicator of progress helps learners see how they’re doing and how much further they have to go before achieving mastery. You can see this concept on display in this delightfully animated example from Steve Andrews. By using game elements like a time limit and a question count to show the learner their progress, this engaging quiz makes identifying your own unconscious bias a fun and motivating experience. What are your e-learning visual design challenges? Share them with us in the comments and we’ll chime in with some community brainpower! And while you’re at it, follow us on Twitter and come back to E-Learning Heroes regularly for more helpful advice on everything related to e-learning.Does Your E-Learning Course Need a Menu?
If you’re an e-learning developer, you’ve likely grappled with the following question at some point: Does my course need a menu? The e-learning menu is usually a sidebar or panel that displays a list of the lessons included in the course. It often appears on the left-hand side of the screen by default, just like the image below, and whether to add one is a question many e-learning developers ask themselves at some point during the course creation. This Rise 360 course displays a menu on the left-hand side. Typically the menu can be used to navigate from one lesson to another; however, this is often a setting that can be controlled or turned off, if need be. Whether the menu is visible by default, or even if it’s used at all, are a few of the design considerations you’ll want to make. You can ask yourself the following questions to pinpoint whether you need a menu in your course. Is your course content-heavy? If the course you’re creating has a lot of content, learners are more apt to benefit from a menu. Reason being, the menu helps learners feel in control of where they are in the learning experience, and lets them track how far they have left to go. If you’re designing a brief course that takes a few minutes to complete, the learners are less inclined to need updates on their progress. However, if the module is long and has many lessons, learners might appreciate the ability to check in with the menu, to see how things are advancing and how many lessons are left. Can learners navigate freely? Depending on the type of course you’re creating, learners may or may not be able to freely navigate through your lessons and content in any order. In many situations, having free/unlocked navigation is a great way to go, as it encourages and allows learners to explore content in any order and doesn’t restrict them. However, if you’re building compliance training, you might be inclined to lock down your navigation, effectively making your learners view each lesson or each piece of content before they can move forward. Why? In certain situations, organizations are legally required to deliver compliance training and need to be able to prove that employees viewed all of the content. Controlling the menu by either hiding it completely or restricting its navigation is one step you can take to ensure compliance requirements are met. This Storyline 360 course displays a locked menu, meaning learners can’t navigate using the menu. Can learners see lesson titles? One more thing to consider when you’re deciding whether to include a course menu: is it okay for learners to see the titles of the lessons? In certain cases, you might find that the learner’s ability to see the names of lessons could give away critical information. For example, during a quiz, the learner might be able to look at the names of past lessons for clues about the answers. These are all considerations to keep in mind as you design your next learning experience. I’d love to hear any other thoughts or feedback you have about using a menu in your e-learning course. Please let me know in the comments! Follow us on Twitter 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.3 Tips to Create User-Friendly E-Learning Navigation
Have you ever completed an e-learning course that was tricky or downright confusing to navigate? Maybe you didn’t know which object to click on, or you couldn’t figure out how to move forward? If this is the case, you’ve been the victim of bad course design. One very important aspect of course design is setting up the navigation, which is how learners advance from one slide or screen to the next. Ideally, you want to create a learning experience where learners advance seamlessly, without pausing to wonder what to do next. Here are a few helpful tips to get you there. Consider Your Project Requirements Your project requirements will frequently dictate how you set up the navigation in your course, so you’ll want to have a discussion with your stakeholders to determine those early on. Depending on the type of training you’re creating, you might design it with “open navigation,” where learners can navigate freely through the lessons or content. This is commonly used when you’re building a course with lessons that don’t need to be viewed in a specific order. If you’re building training for compliance or legal reasons, you might be more inclined to “lock down” the navigation, so to speak, and force the learners to view the content in a predetermined order. You might also set up your courses so learners can’t navigate forward until all the activities in a lesson have been completed. This is sometimes necessary for auditing purposes, to be able to legally prove that a learner has viewed every piece of content in a course. Generally it’s considered a best practice not to “lock down” courses unless you really have to. It tends to be a better learning experience when the learner has control over the experience and can click freely through the materials. Be Clear About the Next Step One of the best ways you can make your navigation intuitive is to provide clear direction to your learners about what they are expected to do. Label your buttons with action verbs, such as “Click to Continue” and “Submit Question,” so learners know exactly what will happen when they interact with that object. On the whole, you want to avoid creating navigation that is so complex that you need to provide instructions for them. However, it might not hurt to provide simple instructions to your learner here or there. A line that says “Click the button to continue” or “Flip the card to view more information” can be a super-helpful prompt. If you feel there’s any room for confusion, include simple instructions for your learner. Have It Reviewed One of the best ways to identify whether people are able to intuitively navigate your course is to get someone to provide feedback. Ask a trusted reviewer to click through your course with a focus on navigation. Ask them some specific questions such as “Were you ever confused about where to click or where to navigate to next?” to get insights about how they did. Based on the feedback they provide, you might want to make some tweaks. Creating user-friendly e-learning course navigation is easy to do if you follow these simple yet effective best practices. Do you have any tips of your own for designing intuitive course navigation? Let me know in the comments! Follow us on Twitter 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.How to Create a Cool Menu Button Nesting Animation Effect with Storyline
One thing I love about Articulate Storyline is the extensibility of its built-in animations. I recently created a navigation example with a menu button that animates to reveal more choices. The GIF below gives you a feel for the effect, but you can also take a closer look at the example. I thought I’d share a tutorial on how I built it. The menu button presents a nice, subtle effect when a user interacts with it. Creating the Shapes To begin, I created the overall design of the circles, colors, labels, and shadows. The menu icon has a plus sign in the center, with each of the three menu items showing the numbers 1, 2, and 3, respectively. We’ll link to specific layers in a minute. Once I was satisfied with the designs, I duplicated the menu icon (“+”) and removed all design aspects such as fill and shadow. This new invisible shape will act as the base object for the menu items and will be the animation source for the three buttons. Here's a useful tip: When it comes to stacking objects on the screen, I like to label the objects on the timeline so I can identify and select objects more easily later on. Nest Objects Within a State After I created the invisible base object, I cut and pasted the three menu buttons into the invisible menu animation circle’s “normal” state. With a click on DONE EDITING STATES, I linked my objects together as one group, making it easy to apply entrance and exit animations, as well as growing and shrinking effects, to the invisible menu animation shape. I also set its initial state to “hidden,” so the animation does not automatically occur. Now here’s a cool thing: even though I’ve only applied the animation effect to the invisible base object, Storyline automatically includes the effect on the nested objects, treating them as part of the base object. Let’s switch over to the timeline to look at the adjustments I made there. First, I shortened the timeline so its length does not drive the duration of the exit animation effect—if it did, the three buttons would disappear when the timeline ended! Additionally, in order to make the animation appear and disappear behind the menu icon rather than in front of it, I placed the shape containing the animation below the icon on the timeline. TIP: For a slower animation, like the standard 0.75-second animation setting, ensure the timeline is set to at least 0.75 seconds in length and create an invisible shape on top of the icon that eventually disappears, but prevents users from clicking the icon prior to the end of the timeline. Create a Variable Next, I needed to enable the animation effect based on the user’s interaction, so I created a few triggers to execute based on the value of a single variable. The variable I created is a true/false variable with a default value of false. In its default state, the menu items will exit or not be visible; when true, the menu items will enter. Triggers and Hotspots My first trigger toggles the value of the variable between true and false based on whether the learner clicked the menu item to activate the entrance or exit animations. Then I created two other variables that change the state of the invisible menu animation shape to a “normal” or “hidden” state, which makes the actual menu animation occur. Now it’s time to link the three exposed menu items to each of their corresponding layers. I created an additional layer containing only hotspots atop the location of the menu items, and linked each of the hotspots to their appropriate layer. To wrap it all up, I needed to add two triggers to the base layer. One trigger will show the hotspot layer and the other will hide the hotspot layer based on the toggling of the variable. That's it! My example already had some additional layers with entrance effects on objects that appear to show the layer’s presence, but that’s the only difference. Now that you’ve seen the basics of nesting shapes with animations and adding triggers and variables, you can use animations in fun ways within your courses. Try some in your next project!3 Ways to Embrace Constructive Failure in Your E-Learning
I was chatting with an e-learning designer about her struggles to get her boss to let her design something other than click-and-read e-learning. She summarized her challenge like this: “I work in a highly regulated, high-accountability environment. We design e-learning that makes it as easy as possible for people to pass the quiz. So how can I convince my boss to let me do something more creative or performance-oriented when passing the quiz is all anyone cares about—and failure is never an option?” Sound familiar? When it comes to learning topics with a strong performance component—things like proper hand-washing technique or customer service skills, for instance—merely forcing learners to pass a quiz isn’t enough. What learners need are opportunities to fail. Why fail? Because failure is both an unavoidable and powerful part of the learning process. When I say “failure,” I'm not talking about destructive failure that erodes someone’s self-confidence or leads to career stagnation. I’m talking about the kind of failure that opens up opportunities for further instruction and lays the foundation for learning. So how do you talk to your boss about the positive aspects of failure when you’re in an environment that characterizes all failure as inherently bad? Here’s some food for thought. Position Constructive Failure as a Good Way to Manage Risk People shy away from taking risks because failure is a possible outcome. But avoiding risk entirely isn’t realistic, nor does it foster the kinds of behaviors that spur individual or organizational growth. A more sustainable approach is to manage risk—a task where e-learning shines. That’s because e-learning designed with performance in mind encourages folks to explore and take risks in a predictable environment where there is less accountability. It gives people a safe place to practice applying their skills in a way that’s minimally destructive and less public, while giving an opportunity to intervene with some constructive support in the form of contextual feedback that tells people what they did well and where they need to improve. In short, e-learning that embraces a bit of “safe” failure gives your organization a smart way to help learners identify their mistakes and correct them in training, before they surface on the job. Talk About Learning As a Process Some organizations act as though learning is an event—something to be controlled in order to achieve the successful outcome of a passing score. But passing a quiz may only be a measure of someone’s ability to take a test, not necessarily of their ability to perform a critical task. If your organization is obsessed with quiz scores, start talking about learning as a dynamic process made more complex by the fact that it’s both highly iterative and highly individual. In other words, learning and growth happen when we give people safe environments to practice—which generally consists of an attempt, (potentially) failure, feedback, and then trying again. Address Your Own Failure Fears No one enjoys the prospect of failure—even “constructive” failure—including e-learning designers! But to really embrace learning as a process you need to face and overcome your own fear of e-learning failure. Here are some practical tips for doing just that. Set expectations and provide clear, achievable objectives. Afraid that learners aren’t motivated to take your course? People are more engaged and motivated when you demonstrate the relevance of training. Show them why they should care about the course right from the start. Explain what it is they’ll learn and how this new knowledge or skill will make them a better version of themselves. Present the objectives in a way that speaks to learners and make sure each one can be achieved within the technical confines of e-learning. Write focused, relevant, and compelling content. One common design fear is that learners will simply tune out because the content you’re sharing is dull. But just because the content is boring doesn’t mean you can’t do things to make it more engaging. For starters, focus on keeping your content concise, relevant, and compelling. Transform passive reading into interactive exercises or illustrate the significance behind dull policies and procedures with a real-life story. For more great ideas for avoiding boring training, check out this article 3 Ways to Avoid Designing Boring Compliance Training. Put more trust in learners. Our own fear of design failure often manifests itself in the form of e-learning courses full of features like locked-down navigation, narrated on-screen text, or a 100 percent passing score, all in place to keep people from “cheating” or “skipping ahead” or to make sure they “get all of the information.” Why so much distrust of learners? Sometimes it’s part of your organization’s culture, but that doesn’t mean you’re powerless to nudge the conversation in a new and more trusting direction. Some ideas for putting a little more trust in learners include: Giving learners the option to test out of topics—or to skip the quiz altogether if it’s not a mission-critical training topic. Swapping out passive lecture and reading for more challenging decision-making scenarios. If you’re creating a course that doesn’t have a lot of performance expectations tied to it, demonstrating respect for their time and intelligence by keeping content short and easy to digest. Finally, be clear on when people are being scored vs. when they’re practicing. Afraid your learners are confused about your expectations? Nothing erodes the circle of e-learning trust faster than an e-learning bait and switch. Take pains to clearly communicate which activities are for practice and which are for a grade. For some more targeted pointers on designing compelling interactions, check out this handy (and free) eBook. Ready to Learn More? Failure is only a true fail when you don’t learn and grow from it. So if you’re continuously building your e-learning skills, look no further than E-Learning Heroes for help. Start by sinking your teeth into these related articles: 9 Ways to Encourage the Adult E-Learner by Tom Kuhlmann 4 Instructional Design Tips to Create Awesome E-Learning Scenarios by Nicole Legault 10 Tips for Becoming a Better Designer by Yours Truly And if you’re looking for some more ideas or guidance from fellow designers, you'll find a lively network of helpful peers to learn from in our Building Better Courses forum. How are you helping your organization embrace constructive failure? Share your experiences in the comments below. And don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and come back to E-learning Heroes regularly for more helpful advice on everything related to e-learning.5 Most Common Elements of E-Learning
When it comes to e-learning, almost all courses are made up of the same basic components. Whether you’re creating a simple micro-learning or a complex branching course, you’ll probably have text, images, other forms of multimedia, and buttons that help learners interact with your content. In this article, we’ll tackle the five most common elements of e-learning along with best practices for using each one. Text The text content of your course is arguably the most important, as in most cases it’s the primary way you’ll share information with learners. But if you’ve ever taken e-learning that was too text-heavy, you know firsthand it can be a real turnoff! That’s why it’s best to use text in moderation. Write clearly and concisely and only include information learners absolutely need to know. It’s also superimportant to check your course for spelling, grammar, and punctuation before you finalize and publish it. Having someone else review your project with a fresh set of eyes is helpful because they’ll see details that you might skip over out of familiarity. The last thing you want is for a misspelling or incorrect usage of a word to confuse your learners and distract them from focusing on what’s most important: your content. Get your e-learning writing in tip-top shape with these helpful resources: Top Tips for Writing for E-Learning Personalization Principle: Speaking to Instead of at Your Learners 4 Impactful Ways to Boost Your E-Learning Writing Skills 5 Tips to Improve Your Technical Writing Skills 7 Tips for Writing Effective E-Learning Scenarios Images In some cases, replacing text with images can help you streamline your course content and enhance the learning experience. That’s because a well-chosen image can often communicate key messages more quickly and effectively than text. On top of that, visually appealing courses help boost learner engagement. To ensure your images are making an impact, take time to choose quality images that are both relevant and meaningful. Avoid using images just for the sake of having them in your course. Only use images if there’s a real instructional value. For every graphic or image you insert, think about the purpose it serves for the learner. If it’s not boosting learner engagement or reinforcing the key skills you’re trying to teach, reconsider whether you should include it in your course. Start curating the perfect graphics for your e-learning with these helpful articles: Your Ultimate Guide to Choosing Graphics for E-Learning How to Choose a Background for Your E-Learning Course The Art of Combining Illustrations and Photos in E-Learning Guide to Creating Illustrations in PowerPoint for People Who Don’t Know How to Draw Video Similar to images, videos are a handy way to capture attention and present information visually. However, their combination of imagery, motion, and audio can add clarity to some concepts and help capture stories and nuances in a more exciting way. Videos are also useful if you want to demonstrate a complicated process. Sometimes it’s easier to learn a new system or job assignment by watching someone perform the task rather than simply reading a list of steps. You can even take your e-learning up a notch with interactive videos. By incorporating quiz questions or providing additional information, you can engage learners and make sure they’re paying close attention to your video. Explore more ways to incorporate video into your e-learning with these handy resources: 6 Types of Video You Can Include in E-Learning 4 Fun Video Examples to Help You Keep Learners Engaged A Complete Guide to Creating Videos for E-Learning 4 Easy Tips for Writing Great Training Video Scripts Audio Another way to enhance the learning experience is by adding audio to your courses. Audio in e-learning can take many forms. It could be as simple as subtle sound effects or as extensive as complete course narration. Used effectively, audio can draw learners in and help focus their attention on the course content. But be careful not to overdo it. Too many sound effects can be distracting—or, worse, overwhelming—to learners. And if your course narration simply repeats the text that’s already included on-screen, you could lose learners’ attention quickly. Similar to the approach you take with course text and imagery, always evaluate whether the audio you’re adding to your course enhances the learning experience. If it doesn’t, you might be better off skipping it. Get expert advice on how to intentionally use audio in e-learning with these essential articles: Audio Basics for Online Course Design 5 Ways to Use Audio in E-Learning 6 Things to Consider When Using Audio in E-Learning Our Top Resources for Using Audio in E-Learning Buttons Whether it’s a “Prev” and “Next” button or a menu that lets learners click through the various sections of the course, you need to give learners a way to interact with your content. While often neglected, the way you design your buttons and other navigational elements can be just as important as the information you present. That’s because if learners don’t know how to move forward, they’ll waste time and energy trying to figure out how to interact with your content instead of trying to understand it. For this reason, it’s important to ensure that course navigation is clear and obvious to learners. They shouldn’t have to click around to find the right way forward or wonder what they need to do next. Clearly label and identify all navigation items in your course, and include callouts or instructions for anything that isn’t inherently intuitive. Find best practices for making e-learning course navigation simple and straightforward: Best Practices for Clear and Simple E-Learning Navigation 3 Tips to Create User-Friendly E-Learning Navigation 3 Subtle Ways to Integrate Navigation Instructions Tips for Designing Buttons That Scream “Click Me!” Wrap-Up If you follow the guidance outlined in the helpful resources included above, you’ll be well on your way to creating engaging, effective e-learning courses in no time at all. And next time you’re taking an online course, keep your eyes peeled for these five basic elements of e-learning. Chances are, you’ll spot them in just about every course you take. Do you know of any additional e-learning elements that we forgot to include in this list? If you do, please leave a comment below—we love to hear your feedback! Follow us on Twitter 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.
