“Global” Glossary in Articulate

Do you have a glossary of terms that you’d like to have in every course? When there are additions and edits would you like to change one file and have it update every course? We’ll…if so you’re in luck!

Below are the steps that I take to build Global (or Universal) Glossaries.

Overview

The basic concept is that you create a glossary in Engage and then export it as a website. You can then upload it to a server and use the direct URL to access it from any course. You’d place the link in the Attachments section within Articulate Presenter.

Step 1: Build a glossary interaction in Engage 1. Create New Interaction 2. Choose Glossary 3. Input glossary terms 4. When done click Publish 5. Choose the Web tab 6. Select a publish folder

Step 2: Upload the Glossary files 1. Upload the entire Glossary folder to your web server (typically you’d upload this to the same server that houses your completed courses.) 2. Make note of the entire URL to this location

Step 3: Attach the Glossary to your course. 1. Open the PowerPoint file for your course 2. Click Articulate / Attachments 3. Type a Title such as “Glossary of Terms” 4. Choose Link as the Type 5. In the Path field type the full URL to the engage.html file on your server 6. Click OK

Here is a sample of the Glossary link. Notice how the tab says Glossary instead of Attachments. The step below explains how to change that text.

Optional Step: Change the Course Tab text to Glossary 1. Click Player Templates 2. Make sure that the Player Template that you’d like to change is selected in the drop-down at the bottom of the window 3. Choose Text Labels tab 4. Change the text for Attachments to anything that you’d like. (i.e. Glossary) 5. Click Close

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Check out flash games that you can use in Articulate!

Articulate Tip – Lock the Browser Size

Have you ever published your Articulate course and the images and flash are fuzzy and look terrible? Well, if so it might be caused by your course content resizing in the browser.

There is a setting within each Player Template in Articulate Presenter that allows your to either allow the course to expand/shrink as the user’s browser window changes size or to lock the content as the “optimal” size. If you don’t lock the presentation then if your user has a large browser window your images/flash might look as though they’ve be “zoomed in”. They could start to get that pixelated look.

Here’s how to lock your presentation size in Articulate Presenter:

1. Click Publish

2. Open the Player Template (the button with 3 dots to the right of the Player Template drop-down)

3. Click the Other tab and choose Lock presenation at optimal size.

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Articulate eLearning games and interactive flash templates that you can insert into PowerPoint and Articulate.

Awesome Quizzes – Tips to Use Articulate Quizmaker

I really like Articulate’s Quizmaker ‘09. It allows me to do some pretty powerful stuff quickly. Here is a list of how do make your quizzes awesome in Quizmaker.

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There are times when you need to group questions to ensure that they flow in a certain order. (Especially if you want to randomize the order of some and not others.) I’ve also found this helpful if I want to present a scenario and then have specific questions after.

Grouping Questions

Here are the steps:

1. Create your questions

2. Click Question Group

3. Drag the questions into that group

Randomizing Question Order A lot of times you want to randomize the sequence of questions. In Quizmaker you add randomization to groups of questions. So you could have 10 questions randomized and then have the next 10 stay in order. While grouping questions (above steps) think about which ones might be randomized.

Steps:

1. Select on a group of questions

2. Click Randomize Group

Using a Pool of Questions Sometimes you create a pool of 50 questions but only want to have 30 randomly presented.

Steps:

1. Select the group of questions

2. Click Randomize Group

3. Click the Include drop-down

4. Select the number of questions you’d like to include

Shuffling Answers Want to not only randomize the question order but also the possible answers?

Steps:

1. Open Quiz Properties

2. Select Question Defaults

3. Check Shuffle answers

Branching Users that Pass vs. Fail Many times I’d like to send participants that pass the test to a congratulations page. However I’d like to send the participants that fail to a review page.

Steps:

1. Insert the quiz into PowerPoint (done with Articulate Presenter)

2. Quizzes and Interactions window appears

3. In the Quiz Properties area, where a user goes when they Pass and Fail

Adding Flash Videos There could be a time where you’d like the user to view an animation or video vignette prior to answering a question. You could insert a flash movie on the question page.

Steps:

1. Open the question that you’re editing

2. Click Media/Flash Movie

3. Browse to find your flash file

Submitting Questions All at Once There are two ways to have a user submit questions: All at once or One at a time. If a user submits questions one at a time it is nice because they know right away if they got it correct. However it also takes more time to submit each question individually.

Steps:

1. Click Player Templates

2. Choose the Submit all at once template (or you can make your own template … continue to next step)

3. Click New and give your template a name

4. From the Navigation tab select Submit all at once

Using a Timeline You may want to have content on the slide appear in stages. Maybe you are building up to the question. (an animation build)

Steps:

1. Open the question you’re editing

2. Click Slide View

3. Open the Timeline at the bottom of the window

4. Move your text boxes/image to different time markers on the timeline

5. Grab and move the red play bar right and left to see the content appear/disappear

I hope that these tips help. Are there anymore things you’d like to see?

Also, check out our eLearning games and interactive flash templates.

Awesome Games and Interactions for Articulate Presenter

If you’ve been coming to this site for awhile you probably know that we build a lot of custom flash games/quizzes/interactions for eLearning developers. I want to take a moment and focus on how the templates work with Articulate.

eLearning Games

Each of the games is created in Flash and has scoring and looks amazing. A learner answers various questions and gets feedback and a running score. Every game comes with the .fla file so that you can customize everything until your heart is content.

However, if you don’t know flash very well, that’s ok. All you have to do is insert your question text into the movie clips in the library. (a tutorial is included with every .fla and there are videos on our template tutorial site.

There are 8 games available right now:

eLearning Interactions

Ever wish that you have tons of interactive page layouts just ready and waiting? Now you can! We’ve created 4 different designs of interactive flash layouts. Pages with tabs and sections, scenarios, drag and drops, flash cards, quizzes, and more! Each set has over 30 interactive layouts.

All you need to do is add your text to the text movieclip in flash and publish. Here are some samples:

Using Templates and Games in Articulate Presenter

Here are the steps to use these flash templates in Articulate:

1. Add the text that you want to see in your game/interaction to the appropriate movieclip in Flash.

2. Publish the flash movie as .swf

3. In PowerPoint go to Articulate / Flash Movie

4. Select your .swf

5. From the Insert Flash Movie window choose these settings:

• Display in slide
• Advance to next slide “When user clicks next”
• Movie plays independently of slide

6. Click OK

That’s it.

Bonus – eLearning PowerPoint Backgrounds

There are also PPT backgrounds available that have over 80 different layouts. We also provide a PPT master template file that you can use to speed up the development process.

(Check out amazing eLearning Games, Flash Interactions, PowerPoint Backgrounds, and eLearning Templates)

eLearning Templates Biggest Bundle

$1500 (Sells separately for $2,670)

8 Flash games, 2 PPT eLearning course style themes AND more than 60 Flash interactions included in this bundle!

These are PPT and Flash based templates that are super easy to update. Each template is fully customizable in Flash (we give you the .fla Flash source file). All you have to do is open Flash, paste your text, publish, and insert into your favorite eLearning Development tool. Made to work within most rapid elearning software (Articulate Presenter, Adobe Captivate, Rapid Intake, Adobe Presenter, PowerPoint and more).

BONUS: Reuse the templates over and over again in multiple courses…or even other websites and presentations.

What’s Included:

• Millionaire Challenge
• GameShow Challenge
• Golf Challenge
• Boardgame Challenge
• Bootcamp Challenge
• Pyramid Challenge
• Spy Challenge
• Shootout Challenge
• Interaction Pack: Clean Corporate (30+ Interactions)
• Interaction Pack: Pulsing Dots (30+ Interactions)
• PPT Course Style Theme: Billboard (80+ files)
• PPT Course Style Theme: Paper & Folders (80+ files)

Specs:

• Files included: fla, psd, ppt, pptx, jpg, swf
• Requirements: Flash 8 or newer (CS, CS2, CS3, CS4)
• Flash Player 8 or newer
• Output size: Final .swf around only 50 KB each
• Output dimensions: 720×540
• Actionscript 2.0

Copyright info

Demos:

Click each of the screenshots below to demo a few of the games and interactions included.

PPT course style samples (just a few)

• Demo PPT Theme: Billboard
• Demo PPT Theme: Paper & Folders

Games

Testimonials:

“I’m really impressed by the professional build up of your templates, so that even an non programmer like me can make the changes in an easy way. Your templates are really excellent add-ons to the Articulate software I am using.” ~ Peter M.

“I just built the Gameboard one for a course we offer, it is fantastic! These are so easy to work with and I am a Flash hater…we will definitely be integrating these into our Articulate courses.” ~ Laurel S.

“Your template is swimmingly easy – the tutorials were very helpful.” ~ Rich V.

Tutorials:

We have an entire website dedicated for tutorials to assist you in customizing these templates.

BootCamp Challenge Flash Game Template

You got it…another awesome Flash eLearning game template to spice up your online training courses. Just like all our other games, this is super easy to update/customize in Flash.

Made to work within most rapid elearning software (Articulate Presenter, Adobe Captivate, Rapid Intake, Adobe Presenter, and more).

Golf Challenge eLearning Flash Game Template

We have just released another awesome rapid eLearning Flash game template. This template is super easy to update/customize within Flash…even for the non-flash developer.

Made to work within most rapid elearning software (Articulate Presenter, Adobe Captivate, Rapid Intake, Adobe Presenter, and more).

Using View Slides to Send LMS Completion in Articulate

I published a course the other day and when users started going through it the completion status never passed to the LMS. I just used the standard “publish to LMS” option in Articulate…it has to be working. The user must be doing something incorrectly right? Well, actually I messed up. (but the software tricked me)

Using “Track using number of slides viewed” to pass a completion status to your LMS:
You can have users pass a course if they pass a quiz or if they viewed a pre-determined number of slides. I chose “view slides” to pass my course.

When you publish in Articulate and your course has no quiz, the completion status defaults to “view number of slides”. You can select how many slides must be viewed. I left it at “view 64 of 64 slides”. I wanted them to view all of my pages. Seems simple right? Well, not so fast

What I didn’t think through is that if your course has hidden slides then your user won’t be able to click on every slide.  (for example if you use branching) Articulate software doesn’t calculate that you have hidden slides. It just gives you the option to have a user click every slide.

In conclusion, make sure you think through the flow of your course. Will a user touch every page? If not, make sure that you calculate that when determining how many slides they should view to be considered “complete/done”.

View our Articulate eLearning games, flash interactions, PowerPoint style kits, and clipped-out people.

Articulate Resources and Articles

If you’re like me I’m always looking for good articles and “how-to” blogs on Articulate. So I thought that I’d share a few resources that I’ve written and use.

Articles:
Articulate and Flash Audio
Navigating the Articulate API with Flash
Scavenger Hunts in Articulate
Using Flash to Control Articulate Navigation

Blogs/Sites:
Articulate Forums
Rapid eLearning Blog (great usability and design info)
Mozealous (technical developer info)
Daveperso (technical developer info)

Articulate and Flash with Audio

I’ve been working on an Articulate Presenter course with a lot of flash files that have audio.  Each of the .swfs have buttons that the user clicks to go to various frames. There are audio clips that go along with each slide. I quickly began to notice that the .swfs acted differently once imported into Articulate. Here are a few things to consider/think about:

1. Import settings – When inserting a flash movie into Articulate you have a few different settings to consider.

• How to display the movie – I choose to display the moving in the presenter panel because it was the main content that I wanted to show. You could experiment with have the flash display in a new browser window (full screen on top of the main course) and have it automatically “pop-up” when a user hits a particulate slide. This could be helpful with system simulations.
• How the movie behaves (advancing) – I you have a linear movie that the users watches and doesn’t need to interact with, you could choose “Advance to next slide automatically”. However if you have a movie with buttons and user interaction, you must select “Advance to next slide when user clicks next.
• How the movie behaves (synchronization) – I always choose “Movie plays independently of slide” as this setting. I want the flash movie to be completely separate from what’s happening on the slide. In fact, when I import a flash movie I never have anything on the slide.

2. Audio placement – If you are using audio in your flash movie don’t import audio to the slide as well. If the user clicks on your flash movie before the slide audio is done, you will have overlapping audio.

3. Overlapping audio within the Flash movie – When I previewed the .swfs in flash the audio worked great. The sounds didn’t overlap. However when previewing in Articulate if I clicked on a button before the audio was complete it would overlap with the next frame’s audio. I solved this by putting a stopAllSounds() action script on each button before moving to the next frame. For example:

on (release) {

stopAllSounds();

this.gotoAndStop(”tool4″);
}

This script stops all audio before moving to the frame label “tool4”.

4. Few audio tips – It’s a good idea to warn the users that the course that they are about to take has audio. This allows them to adjust their speakers and not get surprised. This can be a big embarrassment especially if a course starts blaring and there are customers around.  Warning them also allows them to find another computer if for some reason sound doesn’t work on their current computer.

Audio is a great addition to any course. However with the benefits also comes the extra work.

View our Articulate eLearning games, flash interactions, PowerPoint style kits, and clipped-out people.

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