Initially when I pitched this session, I thought “ooooh…a play on Let’s Get Physical…that’ll get picked up!”. I had planned on playing variations of that song in the background throughout the session…and then I read the lyrics. They are much more inappropriate than I had originally considered! OH MY!
Then I thought “maybe I’ll dress up in an 80s aerobic outfit”, but my session was at 1045am, and there was not enough morning coffee for that. Ah well! The room was packed, which is great news, and I think only about 10 folks trickled out throughout the session, so I’ll consider it a win. These sessions are always tricky because you never know what skill level folks are coming in at and it’s hard to cater to all within a one hour session, but 75% of the room had worked with variables before and they followed along very well – I was so proud!
Last time I delivered this session, I was having participants build a progress meter AND do closed captions with variables in Articulate Storyline 2 (which wasn’t a thing, so you had to do a workaround) and it was painful for them and for me. I opted out of two complex things for this session in favour of a more successful singular thing, and it paid off!
We started out with a bit of theory:
- What are variables?
- What variables are available in Storyline 360?
- What can these variables do?
- Why use variables?
I demonstrated a few examples of things you can do with (click each to download the .story file):
Then, I discussed controlling navigation using variables. I provided an example of bad controlling of navigation, and then discussed better ways of controlling navigation.
For those interested, you can download the very brief slide deck that I used here.
Finally, I had participants create a very simple progress meter. You can download the PDF walkthrough of what was done here, and you can watch me create the progress meter in the video below.
Thanks for the video demo, Ashley!!