In this video you’ll learn in about 10 minutes how Articulate Storyline works and what the most important features are. So you can start creating e-learning with Storyline today.
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Articulate Storyline is an authoring tool to develop e-learning modules. Storyline has many similarities with Powerpoint. If you have experience in Powerpoint, you will learn Articulate Storyline pretty quickly. Let’s open Articulate Storyline
Open Articulate Storyline for the first time
When you open Storyline you will see the start screen.
Here you can see an overview of the last courses you have opened.
- Information about Storyline. As:
- Advertising for Articulate 360 teams
- A link to the product support
- And a link to the Articulate community forum
- And a link to Storyline tutorials.
- And at the top left of the screen you have the options to:
- Start a new project.
- Make a screen recording
- Or import items on the basis of which you will make your course. For example, a PowerPoint presentation or a Story template.
Now I open an existing course.
Opening an existing course in Articulate Storyline
You are now in the Story view of this course. Here you see a visual overview of your course and the structure of your course.
You can also see here that the course is made up of different scenes. A scene is actually nothing more than a collection of slides and a way to organize and structure your e-learning module.
If you compare your e-learning module with a book, then the complete book is your course. A book contains chapters. These are the scenes in Articulate Storyline. The pages from the book are the different slides of your course.
The scene with the red flag is the starting scene of your course. When a user opens your course, he automatically sees the 1st slide from your starting scene.
Storyview
You will also see arrows in the story view that indicates the connection between the different scenes. There is an arrow from scene 1 to scene 2 here. This means that after scene 1 a user sees the slides from scene 2.
At the bottom right of the story view you see the properties of a slide. Above that you can see which actions are on a slide. On the 1st slide of the module this is only an action that ensures that when a user clicks the next button he goes to the next slide. On another slide in this course you will see more actions on a slide.
When I double-click on a slide in a scene Storyline opens the slide view.
Slide view
In the middle of the slide view you see the layout of your slide. Here you can add text, images, shapes, video and audio files. But also buttons and sliders or links to external sources to create an interactive module.
On the left side of the screen you see the slides that are in this scene. Also, as in the story view, you can see arrows between the slides that show the flow between the different slides. At the top you can switch between different scenes of your module.
At the bottom of the slide view you see the timeline of your slide. Here you see all the objects that are on your slide. Here you can also time objects. If an object wants to appear after a few seconds, you ca move the object on the timeline to the desired moment.
States in Articulate Storyline
In Storyline, objects can also have states. For example buttons. This allows you to change the appearance of a button when a user passes over it with his mouse or clicks the button. Or hide an object so that you can display it with a trigger. Storyline has a number of predefined states but you can also add states yourself.
You can also add a slide to Storyline just like in Powerpoint notes. You can use this to record voice-over or just as an explanation of how the slide works.
At the bottom right of the screen you see the basic layer of your slide. But you can also create additional layers for example pop-ups that you want to show on a slide.
Triggers in Articulate Storyline
At the top right you see triggers. You use Triggers in combination with states and layers to make your e-learning module interactive. An example of a trigger is, for example:
Jump to slide: next slide: when user clicks btn_further.
I have now shown you the most important parts of the Storyline interface. Now let’s go and build something.
Building your first slide
Basic layouts – different shapes. I opt for a ‘blank layout’. Because the screen that I want is different from the other layouts. I now have an empty slide and can add objects.
I now start with the Text. I go to the insert tab and choose Insert Text Box. This will be the slide title. On the home tab I can format and align the text. Now a second text box where the question comes. I can add it by going back to the insert tab or by using the quick key ctrl + T.
Add characters
Now I will add the characters. For this I go back to the ‘insert tab’. And click on characters. I use Articulate 360. In addition to Articulate Storyline and a number of other tools, you also have access to a content library with characters, icons and photos that you can use in your e-learning.
You can choose from different characters in different poses. I choose Valeria, Gianna and Brandon. And then align them on the slide
I also make three captions with the answers of the people.
Create a Freeform Quiz Slide
Now I want that if a user clicked on a character, feedback would show whether the answer was right or wrong. I can do this in two ways. I can do this with slide layers and triggers if I convert this slide to a Freeform slide. It now becomes a question without the layout of Storyline itself. Of course, in Storyline you can also choose predefined question types such as multiple choice, multiple select sleep questions or fill in the blank questions. You can find these on the slides tab under ‘graded questions’.
My characters are now the answer options. I go to the Form view at the top right of the screen. At Choice I select the three characters and then I indicate that Character B is the right answer.
Storyline now creates two feedback slide layers itself. I just want a different layout. For this I click with my right mouse button on the slide> choose apply layout and choose the Blank layout. There are still a few items on my timeline. I will delete this one. I do the same for the incorrect feedback.
