This guest blog entry was written by Articulate VP of Community Tom Kuhlmann.
In an earlier post, I showed you how to build scenarios using the branching and locking features in Presenter ‘09. It’s pretty easy to do. Once you get a handle on how to use those features, the question is, “How can I apply this to my elearning course?”
Today, I’ll show you a few ideas.
For this post, I built a quick demo using the Presenter ‘09 features that I discussed previously. The demo starts with a branched menu that discusses three ways to set up your slides:
- Linear: This is typical of what you might see. Linear isn’t bad and has its place. In fact, quite a few people prefer a straightforward presentation rather than clicking around and making decisions. As you can see, it’s easy to include linear content as part of your course and still make it interactive.
- Scenario: The scenario uses locked slides that force the learner to use the hyperlinks you build in PowerPoint. In this case, the learner can click all over the screen for info, but can’t leave until they get the right answer. The benefit to this approach is that you give the learner the freedom to click around. At the same time, you stop their progress until they get to the right answer you need.
- Layers: These slides are designed so it looks like just one screen that the learner can click around rather than a bunch of slides. They also can use the player navigation to move back and forward. The benefit here is that the on-screen navigation is free and uses branching. Yet, the player navigation is still linear.
At the bottom of each menu box is an explanation option. Click there to see how I built each section.
As you can see, the doors are wide open to what you can do with your rapid elearning courses. Throw in some animations and multimedia and it becomes a very dynamic learning environment. The only limitation is your creativity.
In upcoming posts, I’ll have more specific examples of how to use these features in your elearning courses. You might also check out some of the posts I’ve done in the Rapid E-Learning Blog for more ideas.
What would be the likelihood of seeing the actual slide master for this presentation? I’d like to know what the locking and branching options look like. Possible? Kind regards, JAG.
Jess Galloway | Posted at 08:42 am on February 9th, 2009 | #