The following guest blog entry was written by Articulate VP of Community Tom Kuhlmann.

Quizmaker ‘09 is my favorite elearning application. One of the things I like best about it is that if I start in form view, I can create a decent quiz in just a few minutes. But, if I go to slide view, I can pretty much create a unique quiz that doesn’t have that block quiz look. Here are a few cool examples of Quizmaker’s flexibility.

Being able to build quizzes like you see in the examples above is easy because it doesn’t require any programming skills. I like to think of it as building Flash content in PowerPoint comfort. But it does take practice. In this post, we’ll do an informal walk-through of Quizmaker just like we did with Presenter ‘09. At the end of the post, you can download some Quizmaker files so you can break them apart and see how they were built.

Let’s start with a quick orientation of Quizmaker ‘09 (3:29). For a closer look at specific features, check out the tutorials below — they’re organized by the features in the toolbar. The tutorials were recorded in order, but you can jump in and out of them at your leisure.

Creating Quiz Questions

• Question Types: Overview of the different question types and some suggestions for when to use them (5:16)
• How to Create a Quiz Question in Form View: Quickly create a multiple-choice question in form view using the default settings (11:02)
• Overview of Slide View: Explore the features of Quizmaker’s slide view and its freeform authoring environment (7:01)
• Working in Slide View: Learn to modify the quiz question in slide view’s freeform authoring environment (11:56)
• Working with the Timeline: Use the timeline to manage when objects come in and out, and work with layers (10:19)
• Creating a Blank Slide: Create blank slides to augment your quiz and question feedback (7:41)
• Importing Questions: Import questions from previous Quizmaker quizzes, including older versions (5:06)

Managing the Quiz

• Working with Question Groups: Learn to work with question groups and how to create question pools that you can randomize (8:22)
• Editing the Pass & Fail Results Slides: Edit the pass & fail results slides that the learner sees at the end of the quiz (5:39)
• Customizing the Player Templates: Make customizations to the quiz’s player template (8:54)
• Setting Your Quiz Properties: Set your quiz properties, such as default feedback and passing score (1:58)

Preview and Publish

• Preview Quizzes & Surveys: Explore the various preview options for your quizzes and surveys (5:39)
• Publishing Your Quiz: Learn about the various publish options and features (5:26)
• Summary of Quizmaker Tutorials: A quick summary of the tutorials and how to get started with your next quiz (1:38)

Now What?

The quizzes you create in Quizmaker can be as simple or complex as you want them to be. But just like everything else in life, if you want to be good you need to practice. I’d start with some simple quiz questions. Go through the tutorials and practice what you learn. In no time at all, you’ll be creating some really nice quizzes.

Once you’re familiar with Quizmaker and its features, you can explore using it for mini modules and scenarios. To whet your appetite, check out the links below. I’ve also included all of the source files for you to download and break apart. If you don’t have the fonts I used, you’ll have to substitute them with your own.

• Common Question Mistakes: Good examples of animations, using video for questions, using blank slides for feedback. Download here
• Learning & Development Survey: Simple design and animations for this employee satisfaction survey. Download here
• Meet Jim Scenario: Built this in a hotel room right before a conference to show how Quizmaker can be used for elearning scenarios. I did all of the voices, including the woman. Download here

As always, I highly recommend that you:

• Join the user community. It’s free and it’s a great place to get help, quick answers, and learn from other users. Personally, I think the Articulate user community is the best out there.
• Follow the community tutorials. There are a few new ones added each week.
• Sign up for the Rapid E-Learning Blog, where you’ll get practical tips & tricks, and sometimes free assets like templates and fonts.
• Patti Shank and Jennifer Bircher have written a very in-depth book that covers the Essential Articulate Studio ‘09, if you want a great reference and resource at your fingertips.

This guest blog entry was written by Articulate Customer Support Engineer Brian Batt.

One of the great things about Articulate Presenter ‘09 is that you can easily bring any kind of web content right into your e-learning courses by using Web Objects.

In this article, I’m going to show you three examples of web content you can leverage in your courses, and how to insert them with Presenter.

Add a Google Map

Let’s say your client is a trucking company that’s going to start a new route from Texas to Wisconsin. You want to embed a dynamic Google Map into an e-learning course to show the new route. A Web Object is a nice tool for something like this.

Just go to the Google Maps page, enter your route, and click the Link button. Google will give you both a link and an embed code. The tutorial below shows how to use either of these as a Web Object in your course. As I explain in the tutorial, you can use the link to display the whole page, or you can use the embed code to create an HTML file of just the map itself. Though the second option involves a few more steps, you get the added benefit of being able to fully customize the way the map looks within your slide.

View this screencast at Screenr

Feature a YouTube Video

Another way you can leverage web-based content is by incorporating a YouTube video into your course. Check out the following tutorial, which includes instructions for making a YouTube video appear full-screen on your presentation slide. It just takes a simple tweak to the video’s URL.

View this screencast at Screenr

Add an Interactive PDF with Youblisher

Here’s another useful & free tool that works well for Web Objects. Youblisher will convert an uploaded PDF into a dynamic and interactive document that users can print, zoom, and leaf through. It’s a great solution if you need to include some documentation in your course but you want to make it look and feel a little more interactive. Here’s how to do it:

View this screencast at Screenr

Questions?

If you have questions about Web Objects, or you’d like to talk more about the ideas I’ve shared here, feel free to post a thread in the Articulate Community Forums. I’m there every day and would be happy to help you out. You can also feel free to connect with me on Twitter.

Articulate Online is our version of a Learning Management System — without the usual cost and hassle.

In this article, we’ll explore the three basic steps to start tracking your users’ activity in your Articulate Online account:

1. Create and publish content
2. Set content permissions
3. Distribute content

We’ll explore each of these areas below.

First, though, note that you’ll see references to content in this article. Content refers to any content item in your Articulate Online account created by one of the Articulate authoring tools. It could be a course, a presentation, a quiz, a survey, or an interaction. The rule of thumb that defines a content item: Every time you publish from an Articulate authoring tool, that’s one content item.

A course or presentation created with Articulate Presenter ‘09 can also contain any number of quizzes, surveys, or interactions (the course will count as a single content item). As with publishing for any other LMS, if you prefer to use quiz-based tracking vs. slide-based tracking and your course contains more than one quiz, you must select a single quiz to use for tracking purposes. (That said, there is a work-around for tracking multiple quizzes in the same course.)

1. Create and publish content

The first step to tracking users in Articulate Online is to get some content into your account. To publish content you’ll need to use one of the Articulate authoring tools. You can publish directly to your account from within Presenter, Quizmaker, or Engage, or you can manually upload content to your account.

Here’s a screencast about how to publish content to your account:

2. Set content permissions

The next step for tracking users in your Articulate Online account is to decide whether you want your content to be publicly available — so that anyone with the link can view it — or restricted only to authorized users or groups. (See also: User roles in Articulate Online.)

You can set your content permissions like this:

• Login to your account as an administrator or publisher.
• Click the Content tab and then the name of the content in question.
• Click the Permissions tab for the content and then the Change button to specify Public or Private.
• For Private content, select the Groups and/or Users who can access the content, then click Save.

Jeanette also covers this process in the above screencast.

If your content is public, a login is not required. So if your content is proprietary or not intended for anyone outside your organization to view it, make sure your content permissions are set to Private. Note that the default permission setting in Articulate Online is Public, so make sure you make this change if your material is sensitive.

With public content, you also will not get as detailed tracking capabilities when you run reports on your content since you won’t know who’s viewing the content. One way around this, which some of our customers do for public content that they’d still like to track, is to add a Guestbook in front of the content and require the email address from the user. With this method, you can still track quiz results and more with public content, but if users are sharing a computer, subsequent accesses of the same content from the same computer by different users will appear as the same user — since a local cookie is set on the computer.

If securing your content and ensuring the correct user is viewing it is important to you, be sure to set your content to Private.

Setting your content to Public is great for distributing a marketing presentation or a survey via your website, when it’s not as important to know who exactly is viewing the content, and when it’s not proprietary information.

3. Distribute content

Now that you’ve published your content and set desired permissions, the final step for tracking users in your account is to distribute your content to your users.

Here’s a screencast about the two primary ways users can access private content in your Articulate Online account:

If your content is public, you can still assign it to users in your User Portal or distribute it to users without private accounts by using the Link or Launch Button methods.

And that’s it! After you’ve distributed your content to your users, you’re ready to start tracking results and user progress, which you can do by running any of the available reports. Here’s a primer on running reports in Articulate Online.

This guest blog entry was written by Articulate Community Manager David Anderson.

Articulate Engage is a great tool for rapidly designing variety and interactivity into your e-learning courses. But did you know three of Engage’s interactions — Process, Timeline and Tabs — are a great way to bundle screencasts in your courses?

Most times, developers use Articulate Presenter to include screencasts in their courses. And for larger screens and fixed sizes, Presenter makes sense. But for smaller, shorter lessons, Engage is another great option for concisely presenting video lessons.

Let’s look at three ways you can use Engage as a video player.

Process Interaction

Most screencasts demonstrate a process. They show learners how to get from a starting point to an end point, usually in less than five minutes.

Engage’s Process interaction is ideal for bundling a series of screencasts into a standalone video player. Below is a screenshot of what the Urban Legends Quizmaker series might look like in an Engage Process interaction.

The numbered process buttons at the bottom indicate the video step, and the process titles enable learners to quickly identify the steps they want to review. Learners click the button corresponding to the video they need to view. It allows them to break their learning into manageable pieces.

Timeline Interaction

The Timeline interaction offers another way to bundle multiple screencasts. Similar to the Process interaction but with a twist: by strategically using different colors for each timeline period, you can creatively group a project’s high-level steps.

For example, the Urban Legends Quiz tutorial comprises eight screencasts. The eight screencasts roll up into three high-level steps:

1. Getting started
2. Animating and Syncing
3. Customizing

We can use the Timeline’s period colors to create three distinct sections, based on those tasks. Depending on the level of technical training you’re designing, you could also align each of the colored periods with your course colors. The color repetition makes a great design element while providing a visual reference for your learners.

Tabs Interaction

Another interaction for bundling videos is the Tabs Interaction. Those big, bold tabs provide a great way to summarize each step with a memorable word or phrase.

If your training is based around a recognizable acronym like S.M.A.R.T. (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, timely) you could use each letter to summarize the step. Not sure my example, C.I.S.T.I.C.F.P., works, but maybe if I repeat it enough it’ll catch on.

On Your Own

Remember, Engage as a video player works best for shorter videos. Take a look at the types of screencasts you’re including in your e-learning courses. Could a mixture of screenshots, written tutorials and screencasts be another way to add variety to your courses?

This guest blog entry was written by Articulate Community Manager Jeanette Brooks.

E-learning is a team sport. The best way to build an all-out winning course is to draw from the advice & expertise of your fellow e-learning developers. And the Articulate Community is the perfect place to do that. There’s always something new being shared around here.

Check out the list below and you’ll see what I mean. These are some highlights of the helpful stuff the Community shared this week.

And stay tuned for much more! This month is March Madness, Articulate-style, on the Word of Mouth blog. We’re featuring all kinds of special posts throughout the month to equip you with lots more tips for building better courses. Subscribe via email or RSS to be sure you don’t miss out.

Notable tutorials:

• Add Articulate-published content to a Google site

• Another way to create a mitred picture-frame effect in PowerPoint

• Save an “in project” Presenter player template so you can use it other courses

• Make your own animated avatars for your e-learning courses, for free

• How to work with multiple slide masters in Quizmaker

• How to set up your PowerPoint environment for rapid e-learning

Conversations in the Community:

• E-learning developers in the Community share their workflow best practices

• See how to build a cool animation from the Pallet Jack demo course (free source files, too!)

• How to work around the 8:53 Flash limitation in published courses

• How long does it take to build a course? Community members share their views

New blog posts:

• Become an E-Learning Pro without Spending a Dime

• Tips for using Articulate tools to build courses for non-English audiences

• The Beginner’s Guide to Presenter ‘09

• 3 Creative Ways to Use Engage Labeled Graphics

• Exercising Your Rapid E-Learning Design Skills

• The Fast Track to Custom E-Learning

• How Dave Mozealous created a Custom Articulate Presenter skin in less than an hour

Seen on Twitter:

• @getadam shares a post by Jeff Hendrickson on how to add Screenr videos to WordPress

• @joe_deegan shares 5 reasons why he decided to buy Articulate Studio

• @slhice shares how she built her website with Articulate tools

This guest blog entry was written by Articulate MVP James Kingsley.

It used to be that choosing an e-learning development tool was like choosing between a Yugo or a Ferrari. You could use PowerPoint, which was easy and accessible but had lots of limitations (it was impossible to track with an LMS and hard to distribute online, for starters). Or you could use Flash, which was super-cool but costly, complex, and required special skills to really do things right.

Then came rapid e-learning tools like Articulate Studio. They’re the Honda of e-learning: affordable, stylish, and dependable. The tools make it easy for anyone to quickly turn out high-quality content that’s simple to deploy and LMS-friendly.

So we all stopped driving Yugos and bought Hondas.

Get the performance of a Ferrari and the value of a Honda

The thing is, while rapid e-learning works great, sometimes you might want to add an interaction or feature that’s more complex than the tools allow. This doesn’t mean you have to go sink your money into the Ferrari.

If you have access to a Flash programmer — or if you have Flash skills yourself — you can extend the power of your e-learning courses by plugging in bits of custom Flash in just the places where you need it.

This means we can have the best of both worlds! We’re not limited to choosing between custom and rapid. We can combine the two. It’s like driving that trusty Honda but adding some specialized Ferrari parts so you get exactly the features you want. It’s a low-cost, high-speed approach that’s also fun and powerful.

Adding custom parts

One way to add custom elements to a course is by building interactive SWFs and inserting them into your project.

Here’s an example. It’s a sorting tool I created to help learners think about a topic and discern data. The learner creates a list of related items and then sorts them into categories. (For you geeks out there, I used Flash’s _global property for this.)

View this screencast at Screenr

If this is the kind of stuff that interests you, feel free to visit my blog, frameEntered.com, where I often post code and files like the one used in the screencast above.

To see another example of a custom Flash interaction inserted into an Articulate Presenter course, check out this screencast from David Anderson.

What this means for e-learning development

As a Flash programmer, I’m thrilled about the idea of blending rapid with custom. It means that I don’t need to toil with things like programming my bullets to load at one-second intervals, or ensuring that the Next button actually loads the next slide. I can leave stuff like that to Articulate and spend my time doing the things I love: creating new interactions that are engaging, efficient, and effective (I borrowed those 3Es from my boss, Orva.)

All this is great news for rapid e-learning developers too. You don’t need to be a Flash expert, or hire a squad of Flash coders, to build great e-learning. You can build your courses with Articulate tools, and supplement with custom Flash if you need to — just insert the content as a SWF or a Web Object, and you’re good to go. And if you do have Flash programming resources, you can spread those talents across many projects. If you outsource, you can hire out for just the custom pieces rather than the whole course.

As Tom Kuhlmann has pointed out, this is a great way to make your e-learning budget go much, much further. You might even find that the custom stuff you need is already out there on the web, for free or for a small price.

Questions?

I’m active in the Articulate Community Forums, as are several other Flash developers. So if you have questions about how to create or incorporate custom Flash in your Articulate projects, post a thread there and we’ll do what we can to help you out. The forums are also a nice way to gain insights and ideas from other designers and developers who are using or building custom Flash for e-learning.

I’d also recommend checking out the work of Dave Moxon and Dave Mozealous, as well as Brian Houle. They’re each doing some really cool things to combine rapid e-learning with custom elements.

This guest blog entry was written by Articulate Community Manager David Anderson.

One of the ways I like to exercise my e-learning skills is by deconstructing and rebuilding creative and engaging e-learning courses. Each time I find something I like, I ask “How would I build that in PowerPoint and Presenter?” And then I try to build it.

For example, I found this interactive graphic the other day. It’s clean and simple, with many repeating elements. Something like this could easily be part of an e-learning course.

Click here to view the original interactive graphic.

While it might appear difficult to replicate, it really isn’t that challenging to build. Basically, there’s a main slide that loads a separate slide for each of the 50 states.

Essentially, all of the slides are the same with just the information specific to the state changing. In fact, once you have the first slide built, it’s more about e-learning production than anything else.

And that’s why it’s a great project to rebuild using PowerPoint and Presenter ’09. By replicating the graphic, you’ll learn some production techniques and shortcuts.

Here’s what I came up with

Above, you can see the original. And below you can see what I created. As you can see, you get a comparable product using nothing more than PowerPoint and Presenter ’09. You didn’t lose anything in terms of content or functionality, and visually it’s identical. I just added the borders for emphasis.

Click here to view the interactive created in Presenter ‘09.

Lessons Learned

This project helped me rethink how I approach some projects to consider the development and production efficiency. Testing out an idea, I rebuilt the example a couple times. And each time I found a few new ways to streamline my work.

Specifically, I learned three things:

1. Never underestimate the value of slide masters. It took a few passes before I fully recognized just how much of this course was persistent and didn’t need updating on each slide.
2. Leverage placeholder text. Only three text objects were changed on each slide. Rather than copying blocks of text to place on each slide, I could easily move static text to the slide master and use placeholder text for the slide-specific text.
3. Save multiple objects as graphics. I built the Teacher:Student graphics in PowerPoint. All together, that came to around 50 objects per slide. Saving those as single .png files rather than keeping them as PowerPoint objects significantly reduced the number of objects on the slide, which reduced the publishing time!

You Must be Willing to Play

There are some great resources available, from books to blogs to classes, that will help you learn to design better courses. But you must be willing to invest your time and effort into playing.

Make it part of your personal learning strategy to regularly rebuild existing projects. They don’t all have to be e-learning either. There are some wonderful multimedia projects that leverage the same design and technical skills we use to develop e-learning.

I’ll write more about this in a future post. In the meantime, you can download the source files from this thread in the Community forums. I invite you to share your own tips and strategies for learning to design better courses.

This guest blog entry was written by Articulate Community Manager Jeanette Brooks.

The Engage Labeled Graphic is like the Swiss Army knife of Engage interactions. It’s a super-versatile tool that you can use for just about any e-learning content.

Lots of developers use a Labeled Graphic to add callouts to technical images or screenshots, like in this example. But you can also leverage this flexible interaction in all kinds of other creative ways.

Here are three ideas you might not have tried yet.

Build a clickable chart for learners to explore

Data-heavy charts can cause learners to glaze over in a hurry. Instead of showing a static picture of a chart filled with data, try chunking the information with a Labeled Graphic. Start with a simple, compelling image like the one below. Use the Labeled Graphic’s markers to break up the detail into bite-size pieces that learners can explore. Then watch how much easier it is for your audience to take it all in.

It’s an approach that opens up all kinds of new possibilities for things like org charts, flow charts, bar charts, and other kinds of diagrams.

View larger version in separate window

Replace a bulleted list

Labeled Graphics are also a great alternative to bullet points. Check out the following example of a pros/cons list. You can build something like this in about five minutes! The image is just something I found in Microsoft’s clip art library. I made a few simple tweaks with PowerPoint 2007’s image-editing tools, then saved it as a PNG. Once I brought the image into Engage and added my markers and text, I was done.

View larger version in separate window

Set up an e-learning scenario

Another cool use for a Labeled Graphic is at the beginning of an e-learning scenario. You could use an interaction like the one below to help learners get familiar with key characters and the setting. Then, in subsequent slides, take your learners through an exercise where they choose how to handle the situation.

View larger version in separate window

Need help finding or creating cool images?

The appeal of your Labeled Graphic hinges, of course, on the image you use. Fortunately, there are lots of free or low-cost images out there. This thread in the Community Forums lists some helpful places to look.

Remember, though, that you can always build your own images, even if you don’t have fancy image-editing software! This tutorial shows how.

Share your ideas

What other cool ways have you used Labeled Graphics in your e-learning? Add your thoughts & ideas to this thread in the Community Forums!

Get ready! Starting today, we’re doing our own twist on March Madness! We’ll post lots of great tips & how-tos throughout each week in March, including some from folks in the Articulate Community. Be sure to subscribe to the blog via email or RSS feed so you don’t miss out!

The following guest blog entry was written by Articulate VP of Community Tom Kuhlmann.

A lot of people are brand-new to rapid e-learning and aren’t quite sure where to start. So I sat down and recorded some quick informal sessions as if I were sitting next to you at your computer and explaining how to get started in Presenter ‘09.

The tutorials walk you through the features and how to use them. So if you’re just getting started and not sure how to begin, check out the links below.

Let’s start with a quick orientation of what you have in Presenter ‘09 (4:31). For a closer look at specific features, check out the tutorials below — they’re organized by the features in the toolbar. The tutorials were recorded in order, but you can jump in and out of them at your leisure.

Narration Features

• Create PowerPoint Animations: Create PowerPoint animations to sync to your narration track (2:27)
• Use Pre-recorded Narration: Import pre-recorded audio narration as a single file or a batch of files (2:03)
• Overview of the Consolidated Record Narration Window: Quick overview of features such as recording narration, synchronizing animations, adding annotations, and editing the transcript (4:05)
• Record Narration in Articulate Presenter ’09: Record narration, sync animations, and add annotations (7:47)

Insert Multimedia

• Insert Quizmaker ‘09 & Engage ‘09 into Your Course: How to insert and edit a Quizmaker quiz or Engage interaction (7:40)
• Insert Flash & Video Files: Insert Flash .swf/.flv and .mp4 files (5:58)
• Add Attachments to Your Course: Augment your elearning course by including attachments such as additional documentation and links (2:54)
• Leverage the Power of the Web Using a Web Object: Bring web technologies into your course such as intranet sites, wikis, and other social media (6:32)

Tools & Course Customization

• Overview of the Slide Properties Manager: Explore the capabilities of the slide properties manager (2:06)
• Using the Slide Properties in your Course: Learn to use the slide properties to enhance your course (9:22)
• Setting Your Presentation Options: Set presentation options for your courses. These are universally applied to all Presenter projects (4:24)
• Customize the Player Template: Modify the player template to meet your course and organization’s needs (7:35)

Preview & Publish

• Preview & Publish Basics: Preview your course and some publishing basics (2:23)
• Overview of Publishing Features: Quick tour of the publishing features (5:36)
• Your Next Steps: In this tutorial, we’ll wrap up the tutorials and get some tips on how to get started on your first course (1:53)

Now What?

So you want to learn Presenter and build good courses? Here’s how to get started:

• Create a simple PowerPoint file to practice what you learn in the tutorials above. Don’t worry about messing up.
• Join the user community. It’s free and it’s a great place to get help, quick answers, and learn from other users. Personally, I think the Articulate user community is the best out there.
• Follow the community tutorials. There are a few new ones added each week.
• Sign up for the Rapid E-Learning Blog, where you’ll get practical tips & tricks, and sometimes free assets like templates and fonts.
• Patti Shank and Jennifer Bircher have written a very in-depth book that covers the Essential Articulate Studio ‘09, if you want a great reference and resource at your fingertips.

This guest blog entry was written by Articulate Community Manager Jeanette Brooks

Want to build rock-star-quality e-learning? Then check out all the great ideas coming out of the Articulate Community! The links below are just a few of the cool things shared in the Community this week.

Also, a heads-up… Get ready, because during the month of March, we’re going to do some special things on the Word of Mouth blog to really help you supercharge your e-learning skills.  Tune in Monday to find out more!

Notable tutorials:

• A creative & easy PowerPoint effect for visual foreshadowing

• Highlight characters and de-emphasize backgrounds: two great ways to draw attention to key figures in your e-learning course

• Two ways to give learners access to private e-learning content in Articulate Online

• Simulate multiple questions on one quiz slide with a sequence drag-and-drop question

• A fun, free application for creating Polaroid-like images for your courses

• An easy way to fine-tune the position of images in PowerPoint

Conversations in the Community:

• How to use Quizmaker as a multimedia storytelling tool (includes free source files & links to step-by-step tutorials!)

• Community members share where to find template design ideas & resources

• Here’s a way to add a link to exit a Presenter presentation or invoke the attachments tab

• The Community helps a developer brainstorm ideas for product spec/sales training

• Tips for helping Articulate beginners get up-to-speed

New blog post:

• Here’s Why Contrast is an Essential Part of E-Learning Design

Seen on Twitter:

• @slhice shares the website she created using Articulate tools

• @articulatebrian reminds us what we should know about the PPTA file

• @biopolimer shares a creative way to craft a multiple response question and a fill-in-the-blank question in Quizmaker