As part of the MA Technical Communication and E-Learning student, I have been introduced to several e-learning authoring and design tools over the last 18 months, notably Articulate Storyline. It has been a steep and undulating learning journey, but one that has been extremely rewarding and hopefully of continued benefit in the future.
I recall my immediate reaction when first researching and sampling the Articulate suite of tools was one of apprehension, frustration and even doubt. This is often the case when we are faced with the prospect of leaving our comfort zone. I have found the longer we have been entrenched in said comfort zone, the greater the challenge it can be to drum up the motivation to progress and change. As the late Robin Williams stated, change is not popular, we are creatures of habit as humans, if you continue to be the way it ‘was’ there will be no ‘is’, and so the mind’s default reaction is to always encourage a safe return to what we know, what we are comfortable and familiar with. However, I enrolled in this MA to challenge myself, and ultimately to enhance my capabilities and upskill. Therefore, once I re-affirmed my why for enrolling in the MA, the apprehension subsided, and I was excited to begin my learning journey in the hope of developing new competencies.
The first stumbling block and predicament I encountered was the realization that the free trial of the Articulate software suite was valid for only 30 days, the second was the cost of an annual subscription. I realized that once I activated my free trial, I would need to hit the ground running. I first decided that due to work and extracurricular engagements, 30 days would be too short a timeframe to fully explore both Rise and Storyline. Drawing upon information and summaries provided by sources such as Elearningworld and E-Learning Heroes I concluded that Storyline would be more beneficial to me at present, as I was particularly interested in learning about complex-custom interaction commands and how these could add to the interactivity of a project.
Before activating the trial, I sought to learn as much as possible about the functions and capabilities of Storyline, and how I could use these to develop an interactive and engaging resource. I found the instructional YouTube videos of Mark Spermon, Devlin Peck and Swift Elearning invaluable in this regard. One crucial aspect I kept having to remind myself of was the potential for ‘overkill’. The more functions, triggers and gimmicks a course contains does not necessarily make this course more engaging and successful than others. In fact, it can often have the opposite effect, where learner’s find themselves overwhelmed and lose sight of the learning objectives. Once I had developed my storyboard and had a clear roadmap of the purpose and objectives of the course I wanted to develop, I sought out further YouTube tutorials illustrating how to do so.
Once I activated the free-trial, I quickly came to realize that YouTube videos are no substitute for the real thing, and the real learning journey began. With all things software, I find the best approach that works for me, is to dive straight in, to make mistake after mistake and take note each time of what went wrong. Slowly but surely, I find this increases confidence and proficiency. One of the most challenging aspects was getting accustomed to the Storyline interface and understanding how to implement and activate the various triggers and features. Perhaps the biggest factor in helping me get to grips with Storyline was the requirement to develop a real-world online educational resource for last year’s EL6072 Interactive Courseware Workshop module. This assignment enabled me to apply the skills I had developed on this learning journey and use them to create an interactive and engaging E-Learning module. I have enjoyed this learning curve am proud of the content I have created. I am motivated to continue developing my E-learning authoring skills and am excited at the prospect of doing so during the end of course development project.
Image 1 source: created by author in Canva Image 2 source: royalty-free image from Dreamstime.com
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