Articulate Storyline is an incredibly powerful e-learning authoring tool, but much of its functionality goes untapped—not for long!
As you read through this book, you'll get hands-on experience creating some pretty cool interactions that go beyond the basics of Storyline. You’ll quickly find out just how easy it is to create crowd-pleasing, advanced e-learning elements that build on the basic concepts of Storyline.
Storyline is near and dear to my heart, and once you begin developing in it, I'm confident that the reasons why will become apparent. Acting as a one-stop-shop for e-learning authoring, you no longer need to work across authoring tools to create elements such as interactive video, software simulations, or high-quality audio.
This book takes you beyond the basic concepts of Storyline, allowing you to learn ways of bending the program to your will! Working through the chapters, you will be amazed with some of the things you create—not realizing how powerful Storyline is. By the time you finish this book, you'll be running to show off your e-learning talent to all of your colleagues, and you'll be the Storyline sensei of your office!
With relevant exercises, this book aims to provide you with tons of opportunities to get down and dirty with Storyline, testing out new concepts and applying Storyline features in a variety of contexts.
Chapter 1 , Before You Begin , provides some best practices for development, allowing you to enhance your efficiency. You will learn methods for effectively structuring projects for optimal organization, and ways in which you may streamline your development process.
Chapter 2 , Refresher of Key Concepts , takes you back to basics by providing an overview of key concepts.
Chapter 3 , Creating a Content-Rich Story , explores some of the more advanced aspects of adding content to your story, such as working with properties and using each content type to its fullest potential. Some Storyline 2-specific content will be discussed as well as some helpful tips and tricks.
Chapter 4 , Engaging Your Learners with Interactivity , shows you how to do some cool things to make your stories more interactive. Discussing some Storyline 2-specific functionality such as motion paths and new animation options, as well as button sets, markers, and zoom region "hacks".
Chapter 5 , Using Variables, Conditions, and JavaScript , explains how you can leverage variables, conditions, and JavaScript to create some really neat interactions in Storyline. You will be provided with walkthrough-style examples and plenty of exercises. You will learn how to personalize stories and create some more advanced variable-based interactions, and then you'll learn how to use some simple JavaScript to really wow your users!
Chapter 6 , Assessing Learners , focuses on convert-to-freeform question creation, programming, and troubleshooting, emphasizing the development of feedback masters.
Chapter 7 , Preparing to Publish Your Story, explains how to customize the player and prepare your stories for publishing. Some sections will identify how to move past the basic look and feel of a non-customized player to create a truly unique learning experience. Various publishing options will be discussed, as well as how to troubleshoot some common publishing issues.
Chapter 8 , Becoming More Creative, provides you with some ideas for harnessing your inner creative to do cool things in Storyline.
Appendix, Streamlining Your Development, focuses on how you can streamline your Storyline development by using some productivity-boosting functionality.
To ensure you reach your full potential in following along with this book, it is recommended that you have the following:
An Articulate Storyline 1 or Articulate Storyline 2 license or trial (preferably Articulate Storyline 2)
Some creativity
Refer to Articulate's website for a full list of hardware requirements recommended for operating Articulate Storyline.
This book is for anyone experienced in using the basic functions of Articulate Storyline who are yearning to learn more. It's designed to provide a brief overview of key concepts and to help you refresh your knowledge of common functions, while teaching you how to push Storyline to the limit!
In this book, you will find a number of text styles that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning.
Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: "These filenames will be managed within a spreadsheet, housed within the main 200>Media folder."
New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, for example, in menus or dialog boxes, appear in the text like this: "You can also use STORY VIEW to plan out the movement of existing scenes."
A block of code is set as follows:
if (document.body){
document.body.background = "BGImage.png";
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