Creating elearning: Storyline explainer 3 of 8

Add an interactive button.

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Add an interactive button and preview the project.


Overview

Name of explainer: Add an interactive button and preview the project

Creative theme: Creating elearning

Software used: Articulate Storyline

User level: BEGINNER to INTERMEDIATE

This is explainer 3 of 8 in this series

This series includes:

  1. Create and save a Storyline project
  2. Create a title slide using text and images
  3. Add an interactive button and preview the project
  4. Embed a YouTube video and publish the project
  5. Add text-to-speech narration and timed animation
  6. Embed an interactive 3d object and import music
  7. Add quiz question slides and a results slide
  8. Final checks and export options

The Software

This series of explainers uses Articulate Storyline, one of the most popular elearning content creation tools. It’s part of a suite of programs called ‘Articulate 360’ which also includes RISE (a tool for rapid content creation) and the online review and commenting platform Review 360.

You can download a free 30 day demo of Articulate Storyline from Articulate’s website. This gives you access to a fully-functioning copy of Storyline (though with a reduced asset library of characters, photos and icons).

Over the course of these eight explainers we’re using Storyline to create a simple elearning package including buttons, video and 3d object interactions, before going on to add quiz questions and a results slide and exporting the package for use on the web.

The finished product

This is how our final Storyline project looks at the end of this explainer series. Welcome to an introduction to Immersive Technologies!

Note the version created in the explainers also includes a menu students can navigate. This is switched off in the version above. All embedded videos / animations were tested as working when this page was last updated.

The pre-requisities

This is a BEGINNER to INTERMEDIATE workflow explainer series. Ideally you’ll already be familiar with simple text and image editing.

If you’re new to IT / computing, you may need help downloading and installing the software. Start with a search for ‘how do i install Storyline’ or speak with someone familiar with downloading and installing.

Why would I do this?

Elearning nearly always incorporates interactions for students and clients. Without these interactions, you’re left with a simple slideshow (like PowerPoint).

Basic interactions allow the user to make choices or selections. Storyline buttons can be tapped or clicked to ‘trigger’ a specific action – In this case when the user taps a button labelled ENTER the scene will move on to the next slide.

Once interactions have been added it’s essential to PREVIEW the project to test them. This often means previewing in a web browser (E.g. Chrome or Firefox).

Let’s do it!

Click the play icon to watch this video. Subtitles are available – Click the settings cog at the bottom right for options. You can also watch this video full-screen by clicking the full-screen icon at the bottom right.

Good to know

Where to next?

In this series we add ‘simple’ interactions including clicking a button to move to the next slide. Storyline has numerous other interactions to provide rich interactivity. For example…

You could play a video or sound effect when a user clicks a button:

You could jump to a different scene based on client choice (allowing for branching scenarios):

You could update a variable (for example to track how many times a person has attempted a quiz):

Have a look at the official list of interactive objects.

Remember, this is part of a series of explainers for this software – Join us again for the other explainers in the series 🙂

Notes and updates

There are no notes or advisories at this time. This video explainer was last updated in April 2022. This page was last updated in April 2022.

We at pixels.cool are not responsible for the content of any external webpages or software downloaded from third party sites. Links are included in good faith at the time of writing. All explainer content is compiled in good faith using processes and methods used by the team. Modern software offers users many ways in which to accomplish a single task, and for reasons of clarity we choose not to refer to multiple options. All computer users should run up to date virus / security software at all times to minimise risks of data loss.


This is number 3 of 8 explainer videos in this series. Make sure you check out the others!