The blog discusses how Articulate Storyline can be used meet some of the training challenges and develop effective, engaging e-Learning courses.
Articulate Storyline is the most preferred rapid e-Learning authoring tool around the world. The tool was introduced to the market in 2012, and since then, it started creating waves in the e-Learning industry. With each update and release, the tool kept on surprising its users.
Over the past one year, CommLab India has developed over 713 projects using Storyline. In a few instances, inbuilt templates and interactions were used as they were; and in other instances, they were customized with simple triggers and actions, provided by the tool, depending on client requirements. In this post, we shall see some of the challenges that we successfully met using the tool.
Challenge 1: Quick and Cost-Effective Conversions
If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.
– Henry Ford
In a world where the training landscape is changing at a steady speed, we always bump into requirements of training learners quickly – training end-users, when launching a new software, training sales force when launching a new product, or training your employees on new regulations and laws. This is the most important reason to recommend Articulate Storyline; this tool is best for the quick turnaround of projects.
The user interface is clean and easy to understand for anyone who uses PowerPoint. It is the tool with a perfect balance of power, versatility, and ease of use. Even if you have limited technical skills, you can quickly pick up the tool and get started to create some amazing courses. The tool automatically publishes courses to SCORM and is cross-platform ready with loads of built-in features. You don’t have to understand coding, HTML, Flash, etc. to be able to produce great, engaging learning. There is also a lot of flexibility in designing your own template if you don’t need a standard, inbuilt template.
With Articulate Storyline, we’ve created a host of solutions: Software training, product training, sales training on customer engagement, selling skills, etc. Storyline makes it easy to turn ILT resources into high-quality digital resources. One can simply upload PowerPoint presentations and make them interactive in a very little time. The tool is like a blend of PowerPoint and Flash, so users can utilize its wonderful features to develop interactive courses, quickly.
Challenge 2: Update and Convert Flash Courses to HTML5
Our clients often come to us with a requirement to convert Flash courses to HTML5. The challenge here is they also request us to make it as engaging as a Flash course. But, It is always hard to update Flash-based and Web-only courses to the HTML5 format using any of the rapid authoring tools. Now, Articulate Storyline has capabilities to develop Flash-like learning interactions which are possible with its easy to use actions. The tool has publishing options to HTML5. Learners can access the e-learning courses on any device (laptop, PC, iPad, or any smartphone).
To develop the courses, you can either leverage the inbuilt templates to get started immediately, or you can develop customized wireframes that work well on all devices. You can have wireframes such as:
- Learning outcomes screens (2 screens)
- Interactive screens (6-8 screen types)
- Assessment screens (5-6 screen types)
- Results page
- Summary screen (2 screens)
This will help you scale up courses quickly, especially when you have a huge stack of courses to convert.
Challenge 3: Translate into Multiple Languages
Before the introduction of Storyline in the eLearning arena, translating English courses into other languages was a time-consuming process. Importing the content manually from the course into a template, sending this template to the translator and again copying the translated content back into the course was one heck of a process.
With Articulate Storyline, this process became shorter and easier. Storyline lets you export all the text in the course, including on-screen text, text in the Notes, and the Player to Microsoft Word. After translating the text, simply import it back to Articulate Storyline and the formatting is preserved, without any modifications.
Challenge 4: Develop Instructionally Rich Courses
If learner dropout is one big hurdle with self-paced e-Learning, showing the desired ROI on the e-Learning course is another big hurdle. Any eLearning course needs to be developed in accordance with sound instructional design principles and learning strategies, to engage learners in the course.
We found Storyline to be a great tool to quickly create online learning courses with great engaging and fun functionalities. The tool lets you create different presentation patterns, interactive videos, and much more. You can use logic and branching, which works well for scenario-based learning or to develop games for the course. You can also have a fully branded customized interface which is user-friendly. So, the tool gives Instructional Designers the power to turn their ideas into action. This is the reason our clients’ learners love the hands-on and engaging training we create using the product.
These are the reasons that make Articulate Storyline a very powerful tool to present learning content effectively. In the next blog, we shall see various success stories of how corporates achieved their training goals using this tool.
