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Learning Articulate Storyline
Learning Articulate Storyline

Learning Articulate Storyline: You don't need any programming skills to create great e-learning material with Storyline. This book will get you up to speed with all the super user-friendly features of the tool, making you a proficient e-learning author in no time.

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Learning Articulate Storyline

Chapter 2. Adding Content into your Story

When you begin a new project in Storyline, you are presented with a single scene and a single blank slide within the scene. Think of this as a blank canvas; one that you design and configure in any way you see fit to create an awesome learning experience for those taking your course.

That said, not everything you create will need to be a one-off original that begins with a blank canvas; there are always constraints of time and budget that limit how far you can take things. Storyline's built-in templates, while not the focus of this chapter, will be leveraged in the exercises in this chapter, to quickly add content to your story so that you can focus your effort on customizing rather than creating from scratch.

In this chapter you will learn:

  • How to work with the Timeline
  • How to insert and format slide content
  • More about working with slides and Story View
  • To control the design of your story through master slides, backgrounds, colors, and...

Working with the Timeline

The Timeline lists all of the objects, or content, that is present on a slide and is used to arrange and animate objects as well as control slide duration.

The Timeline tab appears in the Timeline, States and Notes panel directly below the slide when in Normal View as shown below:

Working with the Timeline

If you can't see the Timeline, then perform the following steps:

  1. Click on the small arrow in the lower-right corner of the slide stage to display the Timeline, States, and Notes panel.
  2. Click on the Timeline tab to display the Timeline.

The Exercise 1 – Workplace Compliance file, created in Chapter 1, Creating a Story, contains a combination of text, graphics, and placeholder content. A listing of the slide objects appears in the Timeline, as shown in the previous image.

Here are a few things you should know when working with the Timeline:

  • You can turn the visibility of objects on or off. You may find yourself doing this when objects are positioned in similar locations on the slide...

Inserting content into a slide

Inserting shapes, text, and other objects onto a slide is similar to when using Microsoft Word, Excel, or PowerPoint. For example, to add a rectangle shape to a slide, select the Insert tab and click on the Shape option to choose a rectangle shape, and click-and-drag the slide to insert, position, and size the rectangle.

Inserting content into a slide

Once you have objects, images, text, or other content on a slide, you can format them in a familiar way as you would with Microsoft Office products:

Inserting content into a slide

You also use familiar mouse gestures when working with slide objects:

Inserting content into a slide

Here are some common adjustments you might make to a Storyline shape:

  • Change Shape: This is handy if you'd like to change an object to another shape, for example, a textbox that is a box into a circle.
  • Quick Styles: This is an easy way to change the fill color, font, outline, and effect of a shape. The color choices depend on the current design theme (design themes are covered in more detail later in this chapter).
  • Shape Fill...

Working with slides

It's easy to expand content in your story by inserting new slides. You can do this from the Insert tab by selecting Insert Slide.

There will be several options; in each case click on the thumbnail image in the template, basic layouts, quizzing, screen recordings, or import to insert a slide into the project.

You have control over how this is inserted; into the current location in the current scene, in the same way as how it is set up in the template (it can be a single slide or a slide within a scene) or as a slide in a new scene in the existing project.

Here's a brief description of each Insert New Slide options:

  • Templates: These are a great way to leverage and reuse content. There are templates that come pre-packaged with Storyline, templates that can be downloaded from the Articulate community, or templates that you've created.
  • Basic Layouts: These show options that are available based on existing Slide Masters and slide layouts within the project that&apos...

Customizing slide design

Storyline offers several features to help you customize the design of your project. Templates such as the Desktop Overhead come with specific colors, fonts, backgrounds, and slide layouts. All of these components can be edited to enable you to create your own unique variation or you can create your own original template from scratch.

Here are three features useful for customizing slide design:

Slide Masters

Storyline Slide Masters function the same way as they do in PowerPoint and they can save a lot of time by eliminating unnecessary duplication of effort. The idea of a Slide Master is that you can design and build content and activities you know will be used for multiple slides and you do this just once in the Slide Master. You then apply that master layout to one or more slides in the story. When a change is needed, instead of editing multiple slides, all you need to do is edit once in the master slide and let Storyline apply this to all slides that are using that...

Adding animations and transitions

Storyline includes entrance and exit animations that are a subset of what is available in PowerPoint. Animations are easy to add to any object on a slide and are useful for creating emphasis and subtle motion to slide content. This is particularly true when used in combination with Slide Transitions that animate the transition from one slide to another using a variety of video-like effects.

Tip

Animations are fun but practice restraint when it comes to using animations in your e-learning courses. With fonts, colors, and sounds, a little goes a long way. You'll want to use these animations strategically and sparingly for greatest professional emphasis and effect.

Slide Transitions can be accessed from the Animations tab in Normal and Master Slide Views. Animations cannot be accessed from Story View.

Here's how to add an animation to an object on a slide:

  1. Select the object you wish to animate.
  2. Click on the Animation tab.
  3. Choose an Entrance Effect (there...

Previewing your work

Once there are a few slides in place, you may wish to take a quick look at how things are shaping up. You can preview the current slide the current scene of or the entire story (shortcut key is F12) by clicking on the Preview button from the Home tab.

Previewing not only shows the slide content but also shows the default navigation including next and back buttons and the menu. Though the buttons and options are there, some may not work if you are previewing a single slide. For example, the next button will not display the next slide. This would only happen if you are previewing a scene or the entire project.

Preview shows the Player interface surrounding the slide content. This can be customized by changing colors, fonts, and options such as menu visibility, location, and volume control. Customizing the Player is covered in Chapter 10 , Publishing your Story

Previewing your work

Follow along…

This last exercise will finalize our first draft of Exercise 2 – Workplace Compliance...

Summary

This chapter covered the basic formatting tasks and expanded our course with new slides and scenes. If you have used PowerPoint in the past, you may have noticed how similar Storyline is; a lot of its basic features work just like they do in Microsoft Office.

It's always good practice to save your work often. With Storyline you can also preview your work frequently to make sure that animations, object placement, and formatting styles look and behave the way you expect. The Preview function in Storyline is speedy and it's an amazing timesaver; checking as you go makes for fewer changes at the end.

You're already discovering how much you can do in Storyline without being a designer or developer. It takes a lot less effort to make an e-learning course look good and even less to make it interactive. Just remember to keep your work simple and focus on how to use the tool to best educate those who will be taking your courses. In the next chapter we'll explore how to...

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Key benefits

  • Leverage Storyline's no-programming approach and its wide range of features to rapidly create media-rich, high quality content and sophisticated interactions
  • Bring content to life with intelligent and responsive learning and create a customized learning experience
  • Optimize production workflow by easily importing, reusing, and sharing content, as well as editing layouts and interactions

Description

Storyline is an authoring tool packed with out-of-the-box features that don't require any special knowledge to operate. That's right; this is a programming-free zone! E-learning authoring is no longer limited to developers; the doors are now wide open for subject matter experts with their content, writers with their storyboards, and designers with their media to work in conjunction with developers to collectively create some very cool e-learning projects. "Learning Articulate Storyline" introduces the powerful and easy-to-use features that are changing the landscape of e-learning development. You will learn about the new paradigms and features that set Storyline apart from other development tools. You'll gain insight into how you can best leverage your skills and some best practices when working with Storyline. Storyline rocks! And you're about to discover why. The aim of this book is to help you bring content to life in interesting and engaging ways, customizing the learner experience, allowing for hands-on participation, and optimizing your production processes to streamline your efforts. This book will help you enhance your skills and become an accomplished e-learning author and Storyline user.You'll work on several different projects, all created from scratch by you as you work through this book. Each task focuses on a set of complementary topics to complete the project. You'll be up and running building your first project within 10 minutes of starting this book and will add content, animate it, and control object and slide behavior to complete your first project. You'll then move on to more advanced topics to incorporate media elements, quizzing, and scenarios, then conclude by publishing your projects.When you finish this book you will be able to confidently create shining examples of e-learning done the right way, and it is this skill that will set you apart from the crowd.

Who is this book for?

If you're an e-learning developer, writer, designer, subject matter expert, or all or any one of these, this book is for you. This book is not just for novices, but also for seasoned developers, transitioning from PowerPoint and Articulate Studio '09, and for those who are already working with Storyline.

What you will learn

  • Learn the concept of a story and basic startup configuration tasks
  • Build content for a story, and learn how to format, animate, and template content
  • Learn how to change the behavior of slide objects through states and triggers - the basics of interactive content development
  • Discover how to bring a story to life by adding and editing characters, narratives, and captions
  • Use layers to help organize slide content, and transform static content into responsive content using variables
  • Learn how to create basic scenarios that take the learner down a different path depending on how they respond to a question or prompt in your story
  • Create quizzes that test learner comprehension using a variety of quiz question formats, scoring, and tracking
  • Learn how to enhance the usability and increase engagement for your e-learning projects by incorporating media including audio, video, screen recordings, and web objects
  • Customize the player and publish standalone or LMS-tracked projects for delivery on the web, tablets, and mobile devices
  • Learn how to optimize your work during production to streamline development by re-using and sharing elements, objects, and templates

Product Details

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Publication date, Length, Edition, Language, ISBN-13
Publication date : Jul 26, 2013
Length: 298 pages
Edition : 1st
Language : English
ISBN-13 : 9781849694223
Vendor :
Articulate Global

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Product Details

Publication date : Jul 26, 2013
Length: 298 pages
Edition : 1st
Language : English
ISBN-13 : 9781849694223
Vendor :
Articulate Global

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Table of Contents

13 Chapters
1. Creating a Story Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
2. Adding Content into your Story Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
3. Adding Interactivity Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
4. Adding Characters and Audio Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
5. Extending Slide Content Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
6. Using Variables to Customize the Learning Experience Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
7. Creating Learning Paths Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
8. Testing Learner Knowledge Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
9. Adding Visual Media to a Story Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
10. Publishing your Story Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
11. Rapid Development Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
A. Appendix Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Index Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

Customer reviews

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Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Half star icon 4.3
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3 star 13%
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Saugata Oct 01, 2014
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
It's the most organized guide for people wishing to optimize their learning curve.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
Tom Hall Oct 01, 2013
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
I find this how-to book to be very useful for both beginner and intermediate developers wanting to get the most out of Storyline. The lessons flow really well and cover all the basics. All steps worked as written, so I did not get lost in trying to complete a task.
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Owlsfan Mar 02, 2020
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Book arrived on time and on good condition, exactly as advised. Thank you.
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S. Skinner Aug 16, 2013
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
More than a book, this is a step-by-step tutorial that teaches all about the use of Articulate Storyline, from the very basics for non-experienced users, to advanced interactions and publishing. The book builds skills gradually until it covers all Storyline's features. All steps are illustrated with simple and yet very effective images, which makes it even easier to read and follow. It also includes practicing examples for all features. The book is so well organized, that even if I was already an intermediate user, it was easy for me to jump to my specific areas of interest and use it as a reference guide. Great tool for Articulate Storyline users!
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Lauren Aug 16, 2013
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Stephanie Harnett's new text Learning Articulate Storyline is a welcome addition to the too-few resources that are currently available regarding this excellent development tool. A tome of almost 300 pages, it's well worth the price. Small items like having a clickable Table of Contents makes navigating the text a breeze, and her descriptions of options are extremely detailed. In fact, I can't think of an item she's missed! A key feature of the text are the clear and well remarked screen captures; the addition of text, arrows and callouts makes perfect sense for speeding up rapid development. Chapters such as Creating Learning Paths and Adding Visual Media to a Story are good reads, as are other more arcane issues such as how to resize the interaction size so that it plays on a range of OS-agnostic devices. Even the Appendices provided a wealth of information and were worth going through. When was th last time you did that with a reference book?
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