Working Out Loud Blog #8: eLearning Lessons Learned

Wow, LDT 504 was an incredible experience! The amount of work required in a seven weeks was rather intense (even for an unrepentant workaholic like me), but I learned so much in such a short amount of time! While I am not an expert in Articulate Storyline, I do feel much more confident and comfortable with the program. 

From start to finish, I found the development process of the module enjoyable. Building a storyboard in Twine took me longer than expected, but I know it saved me a lot of time and frustration. Not only did it force me to think through every step of my module, but it also meant I could create and align the content without getting caught up in the creative details of the learning experience. It was an ideal way to plan out the module. 

Next, I spent some time teaching myself the basics of Articulate Storyline. I watched Devlin Peck’s “Getting Started with Articulate Storyline 360” workshop, which taught me the basics of states, triggers, and layers. I was pleasantly surprised to find that Articulate feels like three programs rolled into one — it has elements of Microsoft PowerPoint, Adobe Illustrator/Photoshop, and DaVinci Resolve. Because I’m fairly comfortable with those programs, I had a workable schema for most of what Storyline can do. I understood the layers functionality thanks to Illustrator and Photoshop. The timeline, tracks, and playhead were like the ones I’d find in any video editor. And the slide functionality feels a lot like PowerPoint … even if it’s much more robust. 

Once I understood the basics of states and triggers, I got to work on the eLearning module itself. I knew the project would take a considerable amount of time — not only had Dr. Salik warned us to start early, but I knew I would need to do a lot of design and video work too. I wanted to hone my skills in those areas and practice designing under pressure. If I had to guess, I would say I spent between 70-80 hours on the final module … but a good portion of that was time spent watching instructional videos, making mistakes, testing new interactions, et cetera. I expect my next module to move much faster. 

Everything went smoothly except shooting my talking head video. I neglected to iron my green screen before filming, which made removing the background very difficult. I still have a strange green halo around my head in the final edit, but I’ve made peace with it and learned a good lesson!

In terms of what was most difficult … I think it was probably the first drag-and-drop knowledge check I made. I wanted learners to add the right ingredients to a mixing bowl, so I needed to build triggers and states that would allow Articulate to determine when the correct ingredients had been added. Articulate also needed to give learners feedback — e.g., learners needed to know when the wrong ingredients had been added to the bowl, too, and those ingredients could not trigger the “Next” button to appear. 

I also wanted the incorrect options — specifically “Cheese” and “Milk” — to snap back to their original positions if dragged and dropped on the bowl. That might’ve been the most difficult part to create because the Motion Path functionality in Storyline is a bit finicky. But I made it work! Once I figured this interaction out, my confidence in Storyline increased by leaps and bounds. 

As for what the future of eLearning could look like ten years from now, well, the gamer in me hopes that eLearning becomes increasingly interactive and immersive. Because I work for an edtech company that specializes in simulations for business, marketing, and communication courses, I would love to see work-integrated, simulation-based learning become more realistic and robust. Currently, our simulations employ Mayer’s Personalization and Embodiment principles by including interactions with “supervisors” in talking head videos, emails from supervisors, and direct-message conversations with simulated coworkers. However, I would love for these features to mimic the immersion of, say, speaking to a non-player character (NPC) in a video game, in which the player is allowed to take the conversation down different paths depending on their choices in the conversation. 

Articulate Storyline, of course, already has some functionality like this — eLearning designers can use branching pathways to immerse their learners in realistic conversations. The Haji Kamal module does this exceptionally well; in the future, I would like to take more time deconstructing that particular module and learning more about what makes it so effective. I would like to build eLearning modules that can accomplish similar feats in terms of learner immersion, just-in-time learning and application, and guidance from More Knowledgeable Others.

Still, I would love to see future technologies build on these foundations, particularly for process learning. 

Early in the course, Dr. Salik mentioned that Mayer’s Principles of Multimedia may become irrelevant in the near future (if they already aren’t), because learners are becoming increasingly distracted. I do want to explore more about microlearning for this very purpose — not only because it sounds like fun to develop, but because the world has become a very busy, very loud, very distracting place. I will need to know how to deliver succinct, effective training to my learners in many forms. 

To the instructors — thank you for an excellent course! I thoroughly enjoyed every aspect of LDT 504, and it’s been my favorite course of the program thus far, next to LDT 508 (accessible learning). I’ve learned so much, and I’m going to take it forward and continue to develop eLearning modules in Articulate Storyline. I want to share what I’m learning with others in my organization. Thank you! I am a more prepared, more capable, and more confident learning designer because of this course!