Here’s How Easy It Is to Add a Time Limit to Your Storyline Quiz

Sometimes, enforcing a time limit on a quiz just makes sense—like when you’re assessing learners’ performance on a series of time-critical tasks. Or when you just want to create a bit of time pressure so learners submit their answers without overanalyzing.

Articulate Storyline offers a super-simple way to add a time limit to your quiz. Here’s how:

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1. Insert a Result Slide in your project. If you already have a result slide, go to that slide in Normal View and click the Edit Result Slide button.
2. When the Result Slide Properties window appears, find the option near the bottom called End quiz after __ minutes. Mark the checkbox and enter the number of minutes you want to allow for the quiz.
3. Use the Start timer and Timer format options to set your preferences for when the timer begins, and what you want it to look like.

That’s it! Now just click OK to close the Result Slide Properties window.

When you publish your project, the timer appears in the upper-right of your course player (see the picture at the top of this article for an example). If learners don’t finish your quiz within the time allowed, a message pops up, indicating they’ve hit the time limit. When they click OK, they’ll be able to submit their answer for the question they’re currently viewing, but not any of the remaining questions.

How to customize the “time’s up” message

Want to change the wording on the pop-up message that learners see when they run out of time? It only takes a few steps to customize it:

1. On the Home tab, click Player and then Text Labels.
2. Scroll to items 92 and 93, and enter your own text in the Custom Text column.
3. Click OK.

Need more details on customizing your Storyline player’s text labels? Check out this tutorial.

How to customize the colors on the timer

If you’re not crazy about the default colors that Storyline applies to your quiz timer, no problem—you can change them:

1. On the Home tab, click Player and then Colors & Effects.
2. Click Show advanced color editing.
3. Use the Edit item dropdown selector to choose Timer, and then select the timer item you want to change. You can choose whatever color you like for the selected item, or even enter a specific color value:
   
4. Click OK when you’re finished.

For more info on customizing these and other colors on your Storyline player, see this tutorial.