In Articulate Storyline, you have the option that you can import questions from other storyline projects and Quizmaker files, or did you know that you can also import questions from Excel and text files? In this video, I’ll show you how you can import questions in Storyline with Excel or text files, and also what you need to consider if you want to start using this in your next e-learning projects.
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How do you import questions into storyline?
Now, the first step is to create an Excel file or text file with the questions and that you can import in Articulate Storyline. I’ll begin with importing from Excel,
Create An Excel File With Questions
so let’s open an Excel file to see what the structure should be of a file. I’ve here already prepared an Excel file. You see here five rows and several columns, and the first row, this row, is the header row, and everything in your Excel that is after double slashes is considered as a comment by Articulate Storyline and won’t be imported. So this first row is purely for structuring the Excel file and isn’t imported in Articulate Storyline. Row 2, this is my first question, and this question and also the other three questions will be imported in Storyline.
Now let’s see what you have to fill in in the different columns for the row. So in column A here, you specify what question type it is. So here on row 2 it’s a multiple choice question. Row 3 is a matching drag-and-drop question. Row 4 is a multiple response question, and on row 5 is a pick-one survey question. Now, you can choose of 19 question types, and in the description of this video, I have a link with a table to all question types that are supported.
Now, you can import credit and survey questions. In column B, you must define the amount of points for a correct answer. Now, unfortunately you cannot specify points for an incorrect answer. So if you want to do this, something with points for incorrect answers, you have to do it manually in Storyline when you import the questions.
Now, here in column C, you see the question texts, and in the columns D until M, let me scroll here, are the choices. You can have up to 10 question choices in your Excel file. Now, on different cells on row 2 and also on row 4 and 5, you can see asterisk signs. With this sign, you can mark an answer as correct so Storyline knows that this is a correct answer. And after the answer option, and after the pipe sign, you see your feedback, so it just means you can have a specific feedback for each answer option. If you don’t want it and you want to use the normal feedback that is already in Articulate Storyline, you won’t put feedback in your Excel file and Storyline uses the normal feedback, their correct/incorrect feedback that is in the Storyline questions.
Now on row 3, here, we have a matching drag-and-drop question, and here the pipe sign is used to specify the choice and the match so Storyline knows what belongs to what. So we see here which countries and capitals belong to each other, so the Netherlands and Amsterdam, Germany and Berlin: these are the choice and the options that belong together. And you see here for the multiple response question that there are multiple answers correct, so here Antwerp and also Leuven, they are both correct on 5 as a survey question.
Create A Text File With Questions
So now let’s look at the structure of the text file, so I’ll click this away. I have here a text file prepared. What you see here is comments. So the same as in the Excel file: everything behind double slashes won’t be imported in Articulate Storyline, but our comments. And you see the question, everything has to be on a separate line. So the first is the format, the question type, then the points, the question, and then you have the different answer options. Put here the [inaudible 00:04:17] for correct, the answer option, and after the pipe sign, the feedback, for specific feedback.
And if you want another question in your text file, you can place it directly under the first question. So in this way, you can add it in the text file. Now, I prefer Excel files because it’s more structured and you have a better overview over the questions. Now let’s import the questions into Articulate Storyline.
Import questions from Excel In Storyline
So I created a new Articulate Storyline file, and you can import questions on different places. So the first place is if you go to File, Import, and click here on Question From File, but you can also go to Slides, Import and Import Questions, and let’s import my questions. So here is my Excel file. I click it and click on Open, and Articulate Storyline will read my file and this can take a while, and you see that it gives also feedback if my file is correct or incorrect.
Now, on line 5, I had a pick-one survey question, but it had a score and it was marked as correct, but a survey question cannot have a correct answer. So what I can do now is I can retry it, change my Excel file and try it again, or continue and Storyline will skip this question. So for now, I will click on Continue. Storyline sees the questions, and I click on Import, and now Storyline will import the slides.
Now, Storyline created a different scene, and you can’t import the questions directly in the question bank, so you have to import them first into a scene in Storyline, and from there you can copy or move them into a question bank. If you click import, what I’ve done, Storyline will import the questions, and the more questions there are in the file, the longer it takes for Storyline to load the questions in. I think that’s logical.
