One of the things that I found interesting when I started working in eLearning modules here in Ontario (and I believe this is the case for most companies across Canada that work at national level), is that most of the modules we develop, probably around 70%, need to be developed in both English and French. Being a company based in Toronto, the first language we use to storyboard and develop the first version of the eLearning module, is English, and then once everything is app

By this point, people should probably know we love using Articule Storyline a lot here at Pathways, because it really streamlines our development process and helps us with creating highly interactive eLearning modules. That being said, because we use it in 90% of our eLearning projects, we are also more likely to find more bugs or inconsistencies than the casual users, which was the case of yesterday’s adventure while developing an eLearning course. To give you a bit of a bac

When developing an eLearning module, you might be thinking about adding some restriction to the navigation of the content, with the purpose of making the learners go through the entirety of the module. In tools like Articulate Storyline, this can be done in different ways: Locking the next and previous buttons so that the learner can only move when they are unlocked (either by time or an interaction) Setting the navigation to restricted in the course menu, so that slides are

Here at Pathways Training and eLearning, we have always worked with our clients to achieve the level of accessibility they require for their eLearning projects, keeping AODA standards in mind (for those of you who don’t know, when it comes to AODA for web applications, these have to be compliant with WCAG 2.0). For the most part of our experience, it has been a positive experience making courses accessible, not to say that we haven’t had challenges but we have always been abl

We all work with Articulate Storyline to develop fully interactive, animated eLearning modules, and whether we publish it to web, LMS or 360 review, we all love to see all our efforts come to fruition after long hours of work. In my case, very rarely (probably no more than three times since I’ve been using Storyline), I have been asked to publish the eLearning module as a video. Although it is possible to do so with Storyline, one might wonder why not develop the video in ano

Adobe Captivate is an application used for the development of various eLearning content. It is an alternative to the application we usually use for our development, Articulate Storyline. Although the two applications do share some similarities, and are used for the same purpose, there are some important differences between the two. I find that Captivate seems to run much slower than Storyline. Storyline seems to run smoothly, even when working on large projects. In Captivate,

Many times, an outline for an eLearning module may be given to an eLearning development company as a PowerPoint file, or a pitch may be given to the company as a PowerPoint file which may act as a satisfactory outline for a Storyline project. Converting a PowerPoint file to a storyline file may seem like it’s a lot of work or may seem like its not even be possible without copying and pasting every slides content and reformatting text and images. Although this may seem the cas

When you are starting a new eLearning project in Storyline, it is always best practice to first take care of several elements that you know won’t change easily or at all. These elements could be: Player style Player buttons Master slides (for content, quizzes and feedback) Slide size Font style Working on setting the ground for all these at the beginning of an eLearning project will make your life easier and will certainly speed up your process and ensure consistency througho

One of the things that I have always found challenging, ever since I started working in the eLearning field, is to gather feedback for an eLearning module. I have seen different ways in which this feedback is provided to the programmers by the client, like an Excel spreadsheet, Word documents, even long emails detailing all the changes. Ultimately, what’s important for the programmer is to receive clear instructions as to what the issue is and how it needs to be solved, or ho

Lately, it’s becoming a trend in my job, that interactions designed for eLearning modules are becoming more and more challenging each day, especially, since it was announced that browsers will stop supporting Flash altogether, which means that all those cool interactions or animations, that were originally developed in Flash, will have to be developed either directly in Storyline or in HTML5. I admit that jumping into HTML5 development can be even more challenging an time con

On this blog, we talk a lot about how to make your elearning content well designed and engaging. Including elements like audio, video, graphics, and animation are critical design considerations. However, the instructional design should also specify what type of navigation will be used for the course – whether the learner will be allowed to choose which content to look at, in their own time, or if they must look at all the content in a predetermined order. Before deciding whet

A lot of the time when we’re programming elearning, it’s faster to get all the material and functionality done first and then edit the tabbing functionality and closed captions later. This is helpful especially if the client is known to make a lot of changes, so that images and text can be locked down before we add accessibility features tied to these things. However, I recently discovered some problems with completing all the programming first. Storyline 2 does have a great

You can make a neat playing card interaction for your elearning without any special graphics or external animations in Storyline with this simple tutorial! You can try out the card flip interaction here! Each card flips over to reveal content on the other side, and can be clicked on to flip back. To make the cards, all you need is to create a rounded rectangle shape approximately the same dimensions as a playing card. Duplicate the object to create as many clickables as you n

When you’re developing elearning courses, you’re going to need some great looking graphics to use in your interactions! Don’t forget about object states when you’re building interactions into your elearning so your learner can tell what can be clicked on, what they’ve already clicked on, and what they should click on next in your course. Don’t forget that Storyline has more than just buttons – refresh your memory on the lesser used slider interactions. If you’re feeling ambi

The latest build of Storyline was released a short time ago, and let’s check out what new functions it has to make building your elearning easier, faster and more effective! 1. Mobile friendly elearning Storyline now has built in mobile optimization for your elearning courses! The responsive player ensures that your published elearning looks great on mobile devices in any aspect ratio and contains mobile-friendly controls such as swiping instead of selecting the Next and Prev

Adding game mechanics to elearning is great way to keep your learners engaged and motivated. However, you don’t necessarily have to learn any new software to create a game-like experience in your elearning! Many game features such as achievements, points and badges can be done right in Storyline with variables. Variables We have discussed using variables in previous articles on programming elearning before, but what exactly is a variable? Variables are like a placeholder for

When creating eLearning modules, the transition between slides in Storyline is somewhat limited, especially compared to the variety available in Powerpoint! However, you can still create interesting and impressive transitions for your elearning just from the animations used on regular Storyline objects. Here are two transitions we developed. Swivel out This one makes use of the Storyline swivel in and out animations. When the learner leaves the slide, the object flips around

Alright, time for some classic eLearning development discussion! In the last few blogs, I have been discussing our experiences and lessons learned in the realm of 360 eLearning videos, but since here at Pathways, we are still designing and developing lots of classic (and very interesting) eLearning modules. Of course, we always strive to take our products to the next level, making good use of the tools and even extending their functionality with external tools. However, the c

Next in my ongoing series on adapting to using Captivate, here is a comparison of how to program drag and drop activites in each of the two elearning authoring tools. Storyline When you make a new slide in a Storyline elearning module, you can choose from several pre-built drag and drop interaction templates. These can be easily and quickly filled in with your question content, and have one of your own layouts applied, and you’re done! However, if your activity involves match

Here is a cute circle interaction we built to enhance your elearning. The circles will spin around each other and show content, then the learner can click any of the circles to review the content. 3 Circle Interaction To make this work, there are actually 4 slides here. The first slide contains the animations where the circles come onto the screen and show all the content one after each other. Each of the next three slides comprises one of the circles, rotated to the top, and