In today’s screencast, I’m showing you how to insert questions as a new draw from question bank into your story in Articulate Storyline 360. Using the question bank is a very nice way of reducing the volume of slides in your story (just work out of the question bank!) and streamlining your development.
Check out the screencast below!
Today I experienced something I have never experienced in all of my time using Articulate software via Parallels on my Mac…all of a sudden (I say this because it had been working perfectly fine earlier in the day), I could no longer hear audio that I had inserted into a project in Articulate Storyline.
Video was also being screwy (freezing on the initial frame, while the scrub bar played through with no audio in preview. Today was not a day that I needed these dramatics, so I sent out a panicked tweet.
As I was about to hop on a call with Alex (@StyleLearn), Articulate called me…and AMEN, because I had not yet gotten to the point of desperation of submitting a support ticket. They could tell that I needed them today.
The lovely Victor walked me through adjusting sound settings in Parallels, and it worked! Although, I’m still not sure why Parallels was all of a sudden deciding not to pick up my Bose headphones, even though I could hear through them the same audio files in my Storyline project in other applications (such as iTunes)…weird, no?
Whatever it was, I’m glad it wasn’t a poltergeist, and I was relieved to have it resolved so quickly (THANK YOU, Articulate!). If you find yourself in this weird predicament (now or 10 years from now, don’t worry, I’ll metadata tag the heck out of this post), hopefully this screencast helps you out and saves you some sanity.
Check out the screencast below!
It’s that time of year where gift-giving is upon us, and if you have an Instructional Designer or E-Learning Developer in your life, I have a great list of prospective gifts that you can give!
Tech Gifts
Bose QuietComfort Noise Cancelling Headphones – These are my number one gift suggestion for any Instructional Designer or E-Learning Developer. Whether they work from home, from a cubicle farm, or just like zoning out to music/podcasts while they work, these are an amazing gift! I purchased a pair of these earlier in the year and I will never return to another type of headphone. NEVER. Bose, I’m a customer for life now. Yes; they are expensive, but are they worth it? 150%! As someone who travels frequently, these headphones have also saved my butt more than once when I’ve had to fall asleep on a noisy redeye after an excruciatingly long week of conference travel/participation, and work wonders for those who are anxious flyers.
Storage – You can never have enough Storage. I like my storage in the form of the Apple Time Capsule (which has been discontinued….wah!), external hard drives, and cloud based storage through Dropbox and Google Drive. There is no shortage of options, and there are some pretty good deals kicking around on Amazon this time of year.
Sonos Beam – The Sonos Beam is on my wishlist this year, and it’s mostly because I enjoy working from my sofa at times, and while doing so I like to have background noise. Then, when I actually want to watch TV, I’d like to feel like I’m in the show I’m watching. Basically, this is just something I would like to have in my life!
Things to Make Work Easier
Things that make my work-life easier include the following (outside of the headphones and storage previously mentioned):
Coffee or Tea
Most Instructional Designers, E-Learning Developers, or humans I know consume some form of caffeine, and most often it’s in the form of tea or coffee.
Last year I sprung for the Nespresso Vertuoline with frother because I was spending way too much money on lattes at a local cafe (annually). I chose the Vertuoline because they have a fantastic recycling program for their pods (the entire pod gets recycled and coffee composted), are very fairly priced per cup, and their coffee is pretty tasty.
Before purchasing the Nespresso, I had a little Cuisinart that did the trick, and I would purchase coffee subscriptions so I could get a variety of beans. My favourite subscriptions were:
On the tea front, I am very firmly planted in the Davids Tea camp. Davids has an amazing selection of tea, and some of my favourites are: S’Mores Chai, and Movie Night. However, if you’re unsure what to choose, I would recommend the following gift packages:
Last Wednesday, I was fortunate enough to participate in the Best of DemoFest 2018 for my contribution to this year’s DemoFest at DevLearn. It was a fantastic opportunity because as a demonstrator, I had not been able to check out any of the other projects being demoed, so I was happy to see the other solutions!
In this webinar, I showed a 6-minute snippet of the project I demoed, which was developed for Algonquin College’s Addiction and Mental Health graduate program. I wrote out a full post, with demonstration, which you can check out here.
If you’re interested, visit the link below, and take a look at the recording – there’s a lot of really great projects in there!
In today’s screencast, I’m showing you how to easily add placeholder text in Articulate Storyline 360. You can also use this method in any other version of Articulate Storyline.
Check out the screencast below!
I’ve been working as an Instructional Designer for over a decade now, and within that capacity, most of my roles have required e-learning development. It wasn’t until I took on my first role in higher education, where e-learning development was not a thing I got to do, that I began to really long for the days I once lamented…working on an e-learning project for hours, weeks, or months. It was then that I realized that while I love all of the other phases of Instructional Design, I have a particular fondness for the development phase. Here are a few reasons why:
1.Flexing My Creative Muscles
Until I discovered Instructional Design, I had never been a particularly creative or art-sy person. I always wanted to be, but it was just never in the cards. I did much better with written activities, or things that required my imagination…I always dreaded the ‘creative cat’ category in Cranium. But once I began developing e-learning and seeing how I could craft really cool learning experiences, and make learning suck less for the target audience, I became passionate about that element of Instructional Design.
2. Working with Cool Technology
Within my first Instructional Design role, we worked in a ton of different technologies. We created a lot of cool learning experiences, from traditional Instructor-Led Training (ILT) to gesture-based training to Augmented Reality (AR). In creating these learning experiences, I was able to work across a broad range of technologies. This is where my love affair with Articulate products began. I became especially excited about Articulate products after having worked in so many other products that were a lot more confusing to use. In working with Articulate products, I was able to discover the E-Learning Heroes Community.
3. The Community
As with the communities of Instructional Designers I’ve encountered, the communities of e-learning developers are a-plenty, and it makes me so happy and excited to see so many people doing such cool things. When I was first building out my portfolio, the Articulate E-Learning Heroes Community was my motivational launchpad. I truly appreciate a community of people who provide constructive feedback as it helps me grow as a Learning and Development Professional.
I have also learned so much from all of the people I have met through other communities on Reddit, LinkedIn, and Twitter. There is such a wealth of inspiration for e-learning development out there, and these communities have been instrumental in my growth within e-learning development.
