Interactive Components
Overview
If you have a lot of time before your course goes live, you might want to consider including interactive content in your course. This can be accomplished through a variety of methods: Articulate Storyline interactives, polling, discussions, case-based activities, and others. There is a specific section on polling in this website if you are interested in learning more about how to use polling in your online course. This section of the site will focus specifically on using Articulate Storyline in your online course.
Articulate Storyline
Storyline pieces are visual presentations where the learner reads and listens to a special case or example and then answers questions or makes decisions based upon the information provided. Interactives can be linear experiences that offer information and are followed by questions, or they can be branching activities where the learner's decisions determine the path through the scenario.
For example, do you want the learner to go through the material and answer questions, or do you want their answers to guide learners go down different branches/paths? The first situation is referred to as a "linear" experience and the second style is called "branching." Branching is usually a more interactive experience; however, you will need to set aside considerable time for development of content and programming to build this level of learner experience.
If you would like a visual reminder about how branching works, you might remember the Choose Your Own Adventure books. Here is a link that describes these books and how they can connect to learning online. The linear style of Storyline pieces is much quicker to develop and program and sometimes PowerPoint slides can be directly uploaded to this program and used for a straight-forward experience.
If you would like to design interactives for your course, the ETMD team can help you through the process. For example, we can make suggestions on what subject matter might work well in an interactive, how to build the story or case, ideal images to use, and how to design the user interface for the learners to answer questions or make decisions.
Examples!
Here are some curated online examples of Storyline pieces can be developed and some of the standout examples available on the Articulate website that can help you see what is possible with this software.
Simple linear Storyline piece about using passive and active voice in writing.
Simple linear Storyline piece about designing PowerPoint slides.
Example of a branching Storyline piece.
