Embedding problems in Storyline

I have problems embedding....

Embedding content into a Storyline is a nice way to add video content or a survey into a package so students don't need to leave.

Storyline has a nice feature that allows you to embed videos directly from the code or embed a web object such as a mentimeter poll or Qualtrics survey into your content (other polling and survey tools are available).

Here is what I have learned
 

1. YouTube – works like a dream. Copy the embed code, paste it into the ‘video from website box’. Done. 

2. Qualtrics – ditto. Copy your survey link and paste it into the ‘insert web object’ box. Job done, make a brew.
(side note – I also add a click here to open in browser option)

3. TED – works like, well Southern Rail. It functions but not as you may like it to. Grab the embed code from your TED talk and copy it into notepad. Then look at it! There is a lot of unnecessary junk in there which means that your video will not render well.

<div style="max-width:854px"><div style="position:relative;height:0;padding-bottom:56.25%"><iframe src="https://embed.ted.com/talks/kirby_ferguson_embrace_the_remix" width="854" height="480"  style="position:absolute;left:0;top:0;width:100%;height:100%" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" allowfullscreen></iframe></div></div>

When all you really need is this

<iframe src="https://embed.ted.com/talks/kirby_ferguson_embrace_the_remix" width="854" height="480" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>

4. Mentimeter - works. Less horrifying than TED but there is a minor vexation. If you share the presentation link it asks if you want to create an account. I have one thanks, and I doubt my students want one, more importantly though this option takes up space – which you don’t have in a slide. 

 However, menti offers an embed function, so you can put results into a webpage. You can’t copy this into the video embed box – I tried it, it doesn’t work – but you can copy the embed url and use that as your ‘web object’ and hey presto, no pushy sales box.

<div style='position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; padding-top: 35px; height: 0; overflow: hidden;'><iframe sandbox='allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-presentation' allowfullscreen='true' allowtransparency='true' frameborder='0' height='315' src='https://www.mentimeter.com/embed/c096b6865c/3b8413c9abaa' style='position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%;' width='420'></iframe></div>

Accessibility updates

I am back,

It has only been two years - and in my defence the world has been on fire for a year of that. Plus I don't have a large number of readers do I?

No Katie, you do not!

I was very excited to learn that the December update of Articulate 360 included accessibility features that allow a user to modify the text font and size and change colours. I was less excited to learn that doing this through Blackboard when you publish as a SCORM package was not super simple!

But I have done it.

After you have run your Storyline update anything you publish will have the accessibility tools on the player as a default.

 

As default accessible text is set to off (false). You can change this from the variables menu, built in variables. However, at time of writing, I would advise against having the accessible text on as default as it has a minor effect on the formatting.

So far so simple.

If you are publishing your content for the web - all is good now. However, if you are publishing for a VLE using SCORM there are a few things to note.

1. Articulate support were really helpful, and they pointed me to SCORM cloud as a platform for testing - which was actually really helpful as it means you don't have to faff about deploying things in a VLE.

2. Not all accessibility software is created equal, I think I will end up recommending the free version of helperbird, not because it is necessarily better than other tools but this is the one I got to work most effectively in this scenario (and actually with Blackboard in general)

3. And this is the important bit, as far as I can tell it doesn't work if you set your player to open in 'frameset’. The best option I have found is

SCO launch = new window

Player launch = frameset.

(this can all be tested easily in SCORM Cloud)




On the one hand this is good because the default is new window. On the other hand, I prefer to use 'frameset' as it gets around the pop-up window (and it being blocked by internet settings etc)

Articulate yourself on the web with google drive

You can make a public link for your Articulate storyline project by using your google drive account. It is really quite simple...

1. Upload the output folder to your google drive.
2. Set the folder to 'public on the web'
3. Rename story.html to index.html
4. When you are in the folder copy the junk at the end of the web address

https://drive.google.com/?authuser=0#folders/0B21-w1uGFQjkS3RvRF9IOFhuckk

5. Then type the following into your address bar http://googledrive.com/host/  
6. Finally copy the junk from above into the address so it looks like this


              http://googledrive.com/host/0B21-w1uGFQjkS3RvRF9IOFhuckk


That link should then give you a link to your course that you can hyper link into your blog or website... much like this.

When you know you are being a bit too caught up in the details...

...but you just can't stop.

I have been building a study guide in storyline and I decided that I wanted information to appear when the mouse hovered over a button. This should have been quite simple but the nice people at articulate do like to have a little fun with you first it seems. To make something appear on mouseover you have to 1st make it disappear. Seems obvious doesn't it? And it is until you realise that there are 2 ways of making objects disappear.

The eye.... and the state

 

If you hide it using the eye it will be hidden until eternity and beyond if you are trying to make it appear when 'mouse hovered over' so you need to go to the 'States' tab and then make the initial state hidden. Then when you add the appropriate triggers *poof as if by magic your extra information will appear. Which is quite pleasing really. 

The other complication, somewhat more visual than practical is that your hidden objects are still visible on your work-in-progress slide. Consequently if you have several of these hidden items it looks a bit like this. 

 

 The reason I am telling you all this though is because when it is finished, after a whole afternoon of messing about it looked like this

 

And I am really quite happy with it .

THE END

 

pastry assistance

In response to  my previous post I decided to try and put a bit of motivation into a STATA quiz - seven sections of medical statistics (thrilling). So at the end of each section I added in an extra results slide to break up the quiz and say well done to the students. Time will tell if they like it!

It wasn't all plain sailing either... I was struggling to get it to report to the grade book so I decided to motivate myself by going out for a pastry. As soon as I got out of the office I realised what my problem was, because I had put in extra results slides, when publishing I needed to tell Blackboard which one to look at... simple really.

Needless to say even though the problem was solved I still went to get to the pastry, which, I think, proves that everything is better when you have a pain au chocolat.

Things I have learn't about articulate storyline today

When making complicated slides with multiple data entry fields - which is possible, if time consuming - the temptation to duplicate the slides and change the questions is as tempting as a mirage in the desert BUT in the little letters at the right of your screen pay attention.

It changes things - be ware of the number of your data entry field when you are changing the values!! You have been warned!

My control has lost focus

I have spent quite a lot of time recently trying to work out how to make Articulate storyline do what I want and I have been making ever more complicated slides.

 

Thus far at least they seem to be working although it frustrates me that Storyline does not have a feature which allows you to put more than one data entry field into a slide without having to do through the whole performance of setting triggers outside of the field to actually select the answers. 

It is also frustrating because I am yet to work out how to tell Storyline to unselect a box if the user changes their mind. As it stands at the moment,  if the student selects no and then changes their mind to select yes both boxes 'correct' and 'incorrect' boxes will be selected forcing the slide to return with a wrong answer. 

However I am still having fun trying to make things bend to my will....

Let Me See about that SCORM

My challenge of the day was to get my SCORM package created in Storyline into Blackboard and reporting to the gradebook.
It took me a few attempts (and an email from a helpful colleague) to get them right but I seem to be getting reports into the gradebook from a PC and a tablet so it is looking good :)

Step 1 - Player settings.

When I first tested on an tablet (Samsung) I had this problem.

The submit button was cut of and I could not resize the screen. It worked if I rotated the screen but that left the player very small. So in player settings I did this...

(worth  noting is, even in my super awesome version of Blackboard where files update automatically if they are changed in the file system, SCORM packages don't seem to update. I had to remove and rebuild the package)
- although that could just be me -


Step 2 - LMS settings

When publishing the story you are also given options for reporting.

Under advisement I set my reporting to pass/fail.
I think - purely speculation at this point - that if you set it to complete/incomplete for it to report to the grade book you also need to change the settings on your results slide.

Finally - The SCORM settings

My SCORM settings looked like this. The top half of course changes depending on your requirements but under advisement again I set the grading settings as shown.

I tried messing with them and didn't get results in my grade book so this is my settings and I am sticking with them!






And just to prove it works...

Here is my grade book with multiple results reported!

Articulate - multiple answers on 1 slide

My only frustration with storyline at the moment is not being able to have a question that has multiple part answers. After reading a few blog posts however I have found a work around. 

First create your slide with the objects you need then add extra buttons for the number of correct answers. On mine you can see I have three blank boxes (numeric entry objects) so I have created three 'correct' buttons to correspond to them. For ease of identification later I renamed the objects to match their corresponding buttons. The 'correct' buttons are out side the slide so they are not visible to the students.

Then convert the slide to a 'freeform pick many'

This process works by adding logic operations to the slide. These operators are added as triggers that tell articulate to select the correct button if a specific answer is entered into the numeric entry field. If the student answers an incorrect answer the button will not be selected and the slide will return and incorrect answer.


Select new trigger and your trigger wizard should look like this...

• Where 'button 1' is my 1st 'correct' button
• Object 'MEAN' is the numeric entry box associated with MEAN 
• control loses focus seems to be the term for the change of state of a text entry box - the logic escapes me but this is how I got it to work.

You then need to add conditions by opening the 'show conditions' tab at the bottom of the page.

• Add a condition by clicking the green + in the bottom right corner
• Then you can specify your variables
• 'NumericEntry 6' is the name of the box which I called MEAN 
• Then you only need to select the operator you want and the appropriate value. 

After you have added conditions to all your buttons you can edit your pick many slide in the normal way and you should get a multiple answer question on 1 slide...

Or that is the theory anyway.

My first storyline

After some discussions about using the quizzing tools in Blackboard vs using other software to come up with something prettier (see earlier post about educational aesthetics) my bosses bought me my very own authoring tool, articulate storyline. This is not a post about why one tool is better than another, more that this is what my colleagues use so this is what I have, but a post about a new toy and my first attempt at doing something with it. It is a bit like lego but more professional!

I have inherited some e-learning content which was made by an external company so I cannot edit it and furthermore it does not provide us with any student results so there is no way of tracki... blah blah, that is not the point. The point is my new toy.

I am making a pre/post test which in theory is given to the students before they start the module and then again at the end of the module. The first thing I wanted to do with this quiz was to add in some aims and objectives so students know what they are doing and why they are doing it. So my front page currently looks a bit like this (subject to edits).

Before I started the projects I created templates for the front page and for each question type so there is a level of continuity going through, not just this particular test, but all the tests on the course. I hope this will also reduce my workload by meaning I can import and edit slides rather than building from new every time.


My second task was, of course, to create some questions. Standard multiple choice questions are easy to achieve but can, in my opinion look a bit dull especially if you are answering 50 questions in a row. Which is why I have varied the format slightly by making some of the questions with numbers for answers into squares rather than just normal lines of options.

 


In addition to this I spent a bit of time with the questions before hand and worked out which I could make into different formats and which I could add graphics to, so as to further break up what could be a very monotonous test. I was able to utilise most of the available question formats, including the hot spot question.

How could you not want to do a quiz with skeletons in it?

The pre test does not have much feedback other than correct/incorrect however the plan is to use the same questions again for the post test and add in a feedback slide for each question so that students are not only told the correct answer but are given suggestions for reading to help them focus on areas which still need work. This can help them prepare for examinations or just be used as a consolidation of work done.

Finally, I just want to revisit the question of aesthetics for a moment. After having a discussion with a friend about using an authoring tool over blackboard quizzes I had to argue that while BB quizzes may be more functional, easier to edit and many other things, they simply do not look nice. To start with the opening page looks like this...

and the questions look like this...

Which would you rather do?

The tests I am making are formative, they are essentially for the student's personal benefit. It is my opinion that they need to look a little bit fun or they will be a chore and students are much less likely to gain the educational value from them. So before I become a broken record. My favourite thing about my 1st storyline quiz, is that it was fun to build and I am excited to make another one!