documents, and other files in the cloud that can be manipulated in real time by any invited users. I find that this is an underutilized tool that has numerous applications to facilitate teams of persons working together using a single set of documents. We probably have not thought about incorporating such tools into our e-learning… but why not? Google has now added a new doc type that we in the e-learning field can leverage to use as a survey or data capture tool – Google simply calls it a “form”.

When you log in to Google Documents, click on Create, then click Form.

The form is quite intuitive and easy to set up. You can ask a variety of question types, from short questions – “How long did this training take?”-  to longer questions such as “What ideas do you have for future trainings?”. There are even options for adding multiple choice or Likert scale questions. Besides editing content, you can edit the template, and Google Forms currently comes with 97 different templates that look pretty snazzy.  Responses then get stored into a spreadsheet that the Form owner can access for review.

Incorporating the Google Form into Storyline is simple. Once you have created the form in Google Docs, simply add the URL into a Web Object in Storyline. As with other objects, you can customize the size and location of the Web Object. Once you review the appearance of how the Form appears in Storyline, you can make any changes to it inside the Google Form editor, and the output will change automatically since the link will remain the same.

 

See this Screenr to see how to set this up.

This simple method should help many of us who are looking for simple (free!) feedback tools or wish to survey our users after they’ve taken a course. Another usage might be to have a quick survey after each section so that beta testers can comment on each area of the elearning while it is fresh in their minds. The uses are endless! Let us know in the comments below how you might use Google Docs in your Storyline projects…

Geeks love ‘em.  The rest of us struggle to “get” them.  But beware, for once you come to understand them, there’s no going back.

Now the reality is that even though you may not realize it, you have likely interacted with and even altered variables before.  For example, let’s say you create a quiz in your favorite eLearning program (such as Quizmaker) and you’ve told the program that each question is worth 5 points.

As the learner progresses through the quiz, the score is increasing by 5 points each time the learner correctly answers a question.  The score changes from 5 to 10 to 15 and so on with each correctly answered question.

Well the score is a variable (a value that may change).  The variable (score) starts off at ”0″ and changes as the quiz progresses.  You might think of a variable as a little behind the scenes “assistant” helping you keep track of things in your course.  You give the “assistant” some instructions and then they go off and do their work in the background.  In the case of the Quiz we’ve just mentioned, your little “assistant” has instructions to keep track of the user’s answers and add 5 points to their score every time the user answers correctly.  And remember, you told your “assistant” how many points to add, so even though you didn’t realize it, you were interacting with a variable.

The exciting thing with Storyline is now you get to see behind the scenes.  In fact, you get to create your own little assistants (variables) and put them to work in many varied and different ways.

While this may make sense, the challenge for many of us is the application. What are some tasks that I might have my little assistants do?  What information might I have them track?   Great questions! So let’s take a look at a simple example to get you started.

Suppose that somewhere in your Storyline project, you want a hidden object to appear only after a user has clicked a certain button 10 times.

Easy!  You turn to your loyal assistant and say “Assistant, please do the following: when the learner has clicked button X ten times: please change the state of object Y from hidden to normal”.  And your assistant amiably trots off behind the scenes and starts tracking button clicks.  Okay, so it doesn’t work quite that smoothly. So here’s how we do it in Storyline (now mind you, this may seem like a lot of steps, but once you understand the process, creating these will go quite quickly).  Okay, let’s open up Storyline and start with a blank canvas.

Insert an illustrated character onto your canvas and set the starting state to hidden (you’ll notice that “Bob” is greyed out).

Insert a button onto your canvas.

 

Create a number variable by clicking the X box in the trigger panel.

Once the variable pane opens, click the new variable button, name your variable (I named mine “clicks”), choose “Number” for the variable type, and leave the starting value at zero. Click Okay.

Sweet!  You’ve just created a new little “assistant”.  Of course, you don’t see the “assistant” because it’s hiding there in the background.  But if you click on the insert variable X button again, you’ll see it waiting for you in the variable pane. Now, let’s continue.  We must create some instructions for our little assistant!  Our next step is to tell our little assistant to pay attention to button clicks.  We’ll do this by adding a Trigger to the button on our canvas.

Select the button on the screen and add a trigger (by either clicking the trigger lightening bolt in the ribbon, or by clicking “Add trigger” underneath the button in the trigger pane).

We’re going to tell our assistant to increase by ’1′ every time the button is clicked.  We tell it to perform this by: Action (Adjust Variable).  Which Variable? (Clicks).  What is the Operator? (+Add).  Add what Value?  (Value of 1). When should our little assistant add this value? When the (User Clicks).

So we’ve just told the variable to increase by 1 every time the button is clicked. But now we also have to tell our little assistant to change “Bob” to normal once the button is clicked 10 times. To do so, we’re going to add another Trigger.

Add a new Trigger by either clicking on the Trigger button in the ribbon, or the Trigger Icon in the Trigger Panel.

Now we’re going to program our trigger.  We tell it to perform this Action (Change state of).  Change state On What Object? (Character Bob).  Change Bob To what state? (Normal).  When should I change Bob? When the (Variable changes). When what Variable changes? (Clicks)

So you’ve just told your assistant to change Bob to Normal when the variable called “Clicks” changes, but your little assistant says “when ‘clicks’ changes to what value?”   Under what conditions exactly, should I change Bob to normal? Good question little assistant!  I want you to change Bob to normal when ‘Clicks’ is equal to or greater than 10.

So we’ve got one more really cool step left in the process. It’s called setting up a trigger condition.  We’re going to tell the assistant exactly when to change the state of Bob to normal.

In your trigger wizard pane, you’ll notice “Show Conditions”.  Click on that and we’ll be off and running.

Click the plus sign in the lower right to add a condition.

We’re going to tell our little assistant to change Bob to Normal If (Clicks) is Operator (>=Greater than or equal to) a Type (Value) of Value (10).

Okay, let’s test it out.  Preview your slide and click the button 10 times.  Voila!  Bob appears on the 10th click.  Your little assistant was there in the background tracking your clicks on the button and changed Bob to normal once the variable reached ’10′.  Now, this may seem like a lot of steps, but once your familiarity with the Storyline interface grows, you’ll find that it’s a pretty quick process.

So that’s one example of creating an assistant to keep track of things behind the scenes and give your course some fun capability.  Stay tuned for further posts here at Storyline Authors as we’ll be sharing other ways that these variables come in really handy!

Pictured here is an interaction that explains to learners the process for handling resident checks that are returned for non-sufficient funds (NSF) and the eviction process. On Slide 1 if the learner selects ‘Yes’ they are taken to Slide 2A. If ‘No’ is selected, they are asked about the eviction process and then taken to Slide 2B.

If the learner first chose to go through the NSF process (Slide 2A), when ‘Continue’ is clicked, Slide 2B will open. When ‘Continue’ is clicked on Slide 2B, the learner will be taken to slide 3

To create this interaction:

After the learner completes Slide 1, both Slides 2A and 2B will be seen before continuing to Slide 3. The most important aspect of this process to remember is the order of the actions within the triggers. When the Continue button is clicked, the triggers actions will execute in the order in which they are defined.

This type of interaction can be used to:

(1) Show the learner the consequences of their action and then show them what would have happened if a different choice was made.

(2) Allow the learner to decide which part of a course is viewed first.

Using more than one sound clip in a slide can be done using either of two methods: (1) sequencing – by placing one audio clip after another or (2) trigger execution – by using triggers to have sound play based on learner interactions.  In this article, we are going to take a look at both of these options.

Sequencing
Sequencing (not the MIDI type) is the simplest method that can be used to include multiple audio files on one slide.  To do this, insert multiple audio files either by recording them or by inserting prerecorded sound clips.

After the multiple audio clips have been inserted they can be played at the same time, or they can be sequenced to play one after the other.  To sequence the clips, click and drag one sound clip in the timeline to start after the other one.

Triggers
Triggers can be used to play, pause or stop media.  In this example, we are focusing entirely on audio clips.

On my slide there are two buttons. Two audio clips are in the timeline (not pictured).  One audio clip will play when the “Audio 1″ button is pushed and the other audio clip to play when the “Audio 2″ button is pushed.  To properly create this interaction 4 triggers (2 for each button) need to be created.  Each button needs both a ‘Play Media’ and a ‘Stop Media’ trigger.  This is done to prevent both audio clips from playing at the same time.

What are triggers?

After slides, triggers are the basic building block of Storyline.  Without triggers you will be very limited in what you can achieve.

Where are triggers?

One really great aspect of Storyline, is the way in which triggers are managed via the triggers pane.  This can be found on the right hand side of the screen.  Here you can create new triggers, copy and paste triggers, delete triggers and change the order of triggers (this final option is very important and will be discussed later).  You can paste triggers to multiple objects by copying the trigger then selecting  multiple objects using either the ctrl or shift keys and then pasting the trigger.

What types of triggers exist?

All triggers are set up the same way, and behave the same but there are fundamental differences as to their functions.

The first type of trigger you will see when creating a new project in storyline are player triggers.  In your newly created project the first slide will already have a trigger on the next button that jumps to the next slide. This is a player trigger.  It is important to note that the previous button is not available to add triggers on.

The second type of trigger is a Slide Trigger. Slide triggers are triggers that are set on the slide itself, so they either play when the slide starts or ends.  This is a great place to add a trigger when you need something to happen before a slide loads or when a slide ends.

The third type of trigger are Object Triggers, these triggers are on shapes, characters, buttons, images, markers etc.  Generally a project will have more of these triggers than the other types.

How do I insert a trigger?

Inserting a trigger cannot have been made any easier.  If you insert a button, and then click on that button you will note in the triggers pane (right hand side) that the button has been added to the trigger pane and that an add trigger hyperlink is visible, click this and you will be able to ‘program your trigger’

To add player triggers

The next slide trigger has already been added, but you can always add extra triggers, just click on the new trigger button on the trigger pane and ensure you set it to the next button (see below)

To add Slide level triggers click on the slide in story view and again press the “add new trigger” button on the trigger pane.

How do I ‘program’ a trigger?

The real joy of Storyline, is that there is no programming involved.  By using the triggers you will be able perform complex operations that until now were only available by programming. When you press the insert trigger button you are presented with a dialogue box.

The first option is the action; basically what do you want to do?  You can do many things, which include jumping to a slide, showing a layer, adjusting a variable.  Dependent upon which action you choose the next option will ask what this action refers to.

For example if you choose to jump to a slide, the next action will ask which slide you want to jump to.

The next choice asks “when shall I do this” e.g.  When you click on an object/button, hover over an object or when a state changes.

The final option asks which object or button or slide does this relate to?  If want a trigger to fire when an item is hovered over or clicked on, It is good practice to start the trigger process by first clicking on that object and then pressing the new trigger button.  This will automatically select that object in this step. Otherwise choose the object from the drop down list(you will notice a red square highlights the object to ensure you have the right one selected).

Objects and Triggers

All objects in Storyline can have more than one trigger applied to them.  This way it is possible to build up a complex order of commands.  An interesting feature of Storyline is that if you copy an object, it also copies the triggers associated with that object.  If you have a lot of objects that need the same triggers applied a real timesaver is to build one object with all of the triggers in place and then copy and paste that object.  An example of that can be seen here each individual element is a copy of a single element with all the necessary triggers applied.

Trigger order

The order of triggers is very important as Storyline fires each trigger from top to bottom in order.  If your slide does not work as you expect, the first thing to check is the order of the triggers.  For example any triggers after a jump to a slide trigger will not work.  Storyline makes reordering triggers easy, just click on the trigger that is in the wrong place, and press the up or down arrows on the trigger pane.

 Conditions

Conditions are the final part of using triggers.  The conditions allow you to do complex programming such as IF and ELSE statements. If programming scares you don’t work like everything else Articulate have made this easy and intuitive.

Conditions are applied in the new trigger dialogue

At the very bottom it says “show conditions” click on this and this displays

Here you can add a condition.  A condition means that this trigger will only fire if this condition is met.  Conditions can be set,  based on a variable, an object or a window.  You can also add multiple conditions to one trigger.  These conditions can be  combined using AND (meaning all conditions must apply) or OR (where one or another condition must apply) commands.

Summary

Articulate have made “programming” easy in Storyline by using an intuitive interface, hopefully this has given you a better understanding triggers This article has only scratched the surface of what trigger can accomplish., indeed this  Periodic Table Demo has 8,000+ triggers and is a good showcase of what can be done using  triggers and conditions.

It’s hard to imagine taking a training course without some kind of assessment. Assessments and other graded and ungraded activities are the bread and butter of e-learning solutions. Some tools can make building quizzes, assessments, and graded activities a painful task.

While Storyline’s toolset isn’t perfect, the tool isn’t the limiting factor in the types of questions, quizzes, and activities you can create.  It’s that good and, for the most part, it’s that easy. With Storyline, you’ll be up and running building custom quiz components and graded activities in no time.

OK, let’s say you built a quiz in Quizmaker last year. You want to use all of these Quizmaker questions and don’t want to have to re-enter them into Storyline.You’ve also spent some time in Storyline and you have a few tricks up your sleeve.

 

You want to use the score of this quiz to direct the participant down a remedial path if they score below a certain percentage. In addition, you can see some ways you can improve a couple of the activities in the quiz, so you’ve decided to rework one of the questions. And you want all of this to work on the desktop and iPad versions of the course.

The video and tutorial below quickly run through the process of importing an existing Quizmaker file, customizing a question, and using the score to determine navigation flow. Take your pick, watch the Screenr or scroll below to read and explore the steps at your own pace.

Step by step at your pace (expand all | collapse all)

Select Import Quizmaker from the startup screen or from the Import menu.

Choose the questions you want to import. You can shift click or drag to add questions or select Select All in the upper right portion of the window.

After import, your scene will look something like this. Next we’ll assign the questions to a question bank.

Select the Question Banks tool group from the Home tab. Select the default question bank from the dropdown menu or select Create Question Bank…

The Question Bank dialog will appear but there won’t be any questions in the bank. Select the import hyperlink to assign questions within the story to a question bank.

The Import Questions dialog appears. Select the questions you want to include in the question bank from the displayed list. You can use this dialog box to copy or move questions from scenes or from other question banks.

You can use this same mechanism to randomize content slides as well. Question banks can contain any type of slide content.

The triggers and slide configuration dialog can also be edited within the bank.

Now let’s add a results slide to the sequence. Select the Insert tab from the Story View and pick New Slide. Click Quizzing side tab and the Result Slides tab. Select Graded Result Slide and Click Insert.

Choose the questions you want to calculate results for from the Result Slide Properties dialog. The options side tab provides configuration options for default elements on the slide.

By copying and pasting the Show layer Success trigger, you can leverage the condition applied to the trigger that looks at the Score. Modifying the trigger type to change a variable instead of showing a layer, we can carry the results through the rest of the story and modify the navigation accordingly.

Why would you want to do this?

• To publish your PowerPoint and Presenter projects to iOS-compatible output via HTML5 so that they can play on iPhones and iPads
• To use Storyline’s interactive capabilities to add a higher level of engagement to your PowerPoint projects
• To expand the development process of your project by using features such as branching scenarios, interactive screen recordings and demonstrations, and Quizmaker’s customizable feedback
• To determine the layout and flow of your project by creating multiple scenes (think chapters) and rearranging your slides in order to create meaningful navigation

How do you do this?

When you have your slides inserted into Storyline, you can re-organize them by dragging and dropping between scenes in Story View. (Story View displays the organization and structure of your project and it’s where you can edit your course navigation.) You can create new scenes from the Story View by right-clicking in the open workspace and selecting “New Scene.”

Here’s a video tutorial from Articulate’s Jeanette Brooks, to help guide you with rearranging imported slides.

By default, the three features are selected for publishing for HTML5 and mobile devices. To learn more about mobile output, check out the article Behind the Scenes of Mobile Delivery.

One of the really nice features of Storyline is its support for layers. You might think of them as transparencies that can be overlaid on your base slide. On the transparencies you can place images, sound, and even logic (in the form of Triggers). Each layer has its own independent timeline.

Layers are primarily used to add interaction to your slides. When a button is clicked or the mouse hovers over an object in the base layer, it might trigger the display of a new overlying layer.

If your layer simply shows a static graphic or other image all is well. Every time you display the layer the image will appear. When you hide the layer, the image goes away. In simple presentations, this may be all you need.

Layers have their own independent timelines. This is where the trickiness comes in.

Imagine that your new layer temporarily shows some image or plays some sound. Maybe the layer has its own narration. After the layer’s timeline has completed, there is nothing left on the screen to let you know that it is still active. If you had left some static image on the layer, you would see that. But a transient image or sound comes and goes on its own. You don’t have a clue that the layer is still being shown.

If you later show the same layer again, nothing happens. This can be pretty confusing and difficult to debug. The key is to remember the layer’s timeline. If you show a layer that is already active, nothing happens. The trick is to make sure that this “invisible” layer is closed when execution of the timeline completes. Then, when the layer is shown again, the timeline restarts from scratch and it shows its transient images and plays its audio.

Layers can be explicitly closed by adding a trigger. This trigger’s action would say to “hide this layer when the timeline completes.” Another way would be to click the “gear” icon associated with the layer (in the Layers pane) and check the box (as shown here).

Storyline includes a variety of built in human “characters”. Available as “Illustrated” and “Photographic” you can select expressions and poses for each. These are powerful tools to personalize your presentations and to add implied emotional color. They provide a lot of customization options that are useful when custom or stock photography is not available.

Characters, for example, can be used as on-screen avatars for the course narration, conveying emotion during exercises, helping to give implied user feedback. A lot of different characters are provided and their uses are virtually endless.

Let’s see exactly how to supply emotion to your project using characters and hover triggers. To duplicate this effect in the workspace you will need a character with multiple states and objects with a hover trigger.

Create a slide with two rectangles and an Illustrated Character. Normally such shapes would be transparent (No Fill Color) so that the user feels as if he is clicking on something in the background image. In this example, however, there is a purple rectangle labeled “A” and an orange rectangle labeled “B”.

1. Add two states to the character. (For example, Happy and Worried.)
2. Add a state to each rectangle. (For example, hover.)
3. Create a trigger for each rectangle (as shown below.) These are the actions that occur when they are clicked or hovered over.

Once created you have an interactive slide that responds to the user. Hover over the “A” rectangle and the character looks worried. Hover over the “B” rectangle and he looks happy.

An interaction like this can be used for a wide array of exercises. A few examples include:

• Hide and seek – Items are hidden on screen and have to be searched for. The characters expression changes based on how close or far away you are from selecting the correct item.
• Multiple-choice questions – If a learner had to choose between 2 (or even more) items, the characters expression could change to positive or negative depending on the choices.

I frequently find that the best way to explain a process is through the use of an interactive flowchart. Storyline gives you a wide variety of tools to make a flowchart come to life. I will show you one way to do this with shapes and states.

Let’s start with a simple flowchart created in Storyline with the shape tools. I have created a page containing a series of boxes connected by arrows.

Once you have the chart created, build the target pages where the learner will be taken when the boxes are clicked.

Now comes the fun part. Select the first shape, then click on the Trigger command from the ribbon to associate an interaction with the shape. The Trigger Wizard appears and allows you to choose the action and destination applied to the selected shape.

In this example I chose “Jump to slide”. That slide is the content slide associated with the first shape in the flowchart. Storyline creates the link so that the learner is taken to the content slide when he or she clicks on the flowchart box.

So that the learner can remember which boxes he has already clicked, we invoke another piece of Storyline magic. This is the concept of “States” and involves the status of an object. Among others, it could be “normal” (i.e. not yet clicked) or “visited”.

Change the view on the bottom of the screen from “Timeline” to “State”. This displays the available state options. Click on the copy button to create a duplicate of the Normal state.

Name the new state “Visited”.

Next, change the visual characteristics of the box for the Visited state. A variety of options are available. We’ll keep it simple and just give it a light blue color. Do this by setting the transparency at 50%.

Now, when the user clicks the first box, it will show itself visually different. This alerts the user that he or she has already clicked this box and seen its associated content.

Repeating this simple process for the remaining three boxes completes the flowchart. This flowchart model could just as easily have been a menu or table of contents. The triggers provide the navigation and the states provide the visual feedback.