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Final checks and export options.

Overview

Name of explainer: Final checks and export options

Creative theme: Creating elearning

Software used: Articulate Storyline

User level: BEGINNER to INTERMEDIATE

This is explainer 8 of 8 in this series

This series includes:

Create and save a Storyline project
Create a title slide using text and images
Add an interactive button and preview the project
Embed a YouTube video and publish the project
Add text-to-speech narration and timed animation
Embed an interactive 3d object and import music
Add quiz question slides and a results slide
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?

It’s good practice to leave time at the end of your project to review your product fully and check for glitches and issues such as poorly named slides or scenes and any non-working buttons or other issues with interactions. Ideally, ask another person or team to check the project as you’re probably ‘too close’ to your work to see minor errors.

Storyline offers more export options than you might expect, including publishing to a USB stick and even creating handout documents in Microsoft Word format.

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

Our Immersive Technology elearning package is complete!

Where to next?

We’ve focused on Storyline’s main functionality for this series. To take your project to the next level you’ll want to gain familiarity with the following:

LAYERS are used to display assets ‘on top of’ the current slide (including text / images) when a specific condition is met. You may have noticed our RESULTS SLIDE uses separate layers to display a ‘passed’ or ‘failed’ message depending on the student score. Here’s the SUCCESS layer:

…and here’s the FAILURE layer:

Discover more about Storyline layers.

STATES can be applied to most assets to change how they look based on a current user interaction. For example, our ENTER button on the first slide has the following states automatically applied:

Though the difference in colour is subtle, you can see that when a user hovers their mouse over the button it adopts a lighter blue colour. You can edit all these states or delete them if you don’t want them. Be careful not to over-use colour states as it can be distracting to users when colours ‘flash’ unnecessarily. As always, a balance must be struck between improving your visuals and ensuring accessibility remains high.

Discover more about Storyline states

VARIABLES are used to store information. As your project develops you are likely to need them. Variables can store anything from a student name to the number of times a quiz has been attempted. When we added the quiz questions and results slide, Storyline automatically created the variables Results1.ScorePoints and Results1.PassPoints as shown below, to determine whether to show the SUCCESS or the FAILURE layer:

Discover more about Storyline variables.

We wish you every success developing engaging interactive elearning using Storyline!

Notes and updates

There are no notes or advisories at this time. This video explainer was last updated in June 2023. This page was last updated in June 2023.

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.