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Articulate Studio Cookbook

By Robert Kennedy III , Robert Kennedy
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  1. Free Chapter
    Getting Started with Articulate Suite
About this book
More and more companies find they need to build their training courses internally. They are turning to tools like Articulate Studio because it is easy to use and doesn't have a steep learning curve. If you are familiar with Microsoft PowerPoint in any way, you should feel right at home with Articulate Studio."Articulate Studio Cookbook" will get you ready to add Articulate Studio to your enterprise toolkit. This book gives you detailed yet simple steps to complete your training course. By following the clear steps in each chapter, you will gain an understanding of the software but also be able to complete specific tasks and common activities.The good thing about this book is that you can start anywhere and get the information that you need for a specific activity. Cross-references are provided if there is a skill located elsewhere that you need to complete a task.It can be frustrating to pick up a new piece of software and not know where to begin. With Articulate Studio, there is a whole suite of software to work with. You need to know how to work with Presenter, Engage, Quizmaker and Encoder to make great Articulate courses. Then, you'll need to know how to put them all together in a way that makes a professional looking, cohesive and smooth-flowing course. We'll make it easy to follow step by step until you have a professional course."Articulate Studio Cookbook" will help you go from Studio newbie to Studio guru. Dive in and choose your recipe.
Publication date:
November 2012
Publisher
Packt
Pages
292
ISBN
9781849693080

 

Chapter 1. Getting Started with Articulate Suite

In this chapter we will cover:

  • Launching Articulate Presenter

  • Publishing a simple, slide-only course for a website

  • Adding a background theme

  • Modifying slide masters

  • Adding a learning game to your course

 

Introduction


Congratulations! You've just bought and installed Articulate Studio '09, one of the most popular and easiest to use e-learning development tools available in today's market. Sure there are other tools, but among corporate users, Articulate is a popular choice. Why is this? Because their organizations have already been working on the Microsoft Office platform and they are used to working in Microsoft PowerPoint. As a matter of fact, many of them have huge libraries of training materials that they have already developed for use in PowerPoint. When making the decision to transition to an e-learning platform, their familiarity with PowerPoint makes the transition easy.

Articulate Studio is a complete suite that comes with four applications, namely Presenter, Engage, Quizmaker, and Video Encoder. These four applications work together, and in some cases individually, to help you produce a Flash-based, e-learning course with minimal programming expertise.

We're going to start out by focusing on Articulate Presenter. This application is not a standalone application like the others in the suite; instead it is a PowerPoint plugin. In other words, you need to have Microsoft PowerPoint installed on your computer in order to use Articulate Presenter.

Note

Additionally, you need to be aware that Articulate Studio is a Windows-only application. It will not work with the Mac OSX versions of Microsoft Office. However, if you are on a Mac-based system, you may install Windows through the use of programs such as boot camp (which comes preinstalled in Mac OSX) or emulation software such as Parallels and VMWare Fusion.

 

Launching Articulate Presenter


Once you have Articulate installed on your computer, you can run any of the four programs that are part of the Articulate suite. Articulate Presenter functions as a plugin for Microsoft PowerPoint. Although the four programs are standalone applications, they are intended to work together. Articulate Presenter is the main program while Engage, Quizmaker, and Video Encoder can produce standalone, finished products.

How to do it…

When the Articulate suite is installed on your computer, it should provide you with desktop icons for all four of the programs in the Suite. This is the easiest way to access any of the programs in the Suite:

  1. If you have installed the Articulate Studio Suite, you should have an icon for Articulate Presenter on your computer's desktop. Double-click on the icon and a dialog box should appear.

    This dialog box gives you basic information about the application and how it should appear in your PowerPoint application.

    Note

    On the launch screen there are a series of buttons for View Tutorials, Join the Community, Product Support, and Visit Blogs. These buttons take you to recourses that are located on Articulate's website.

  2. Note that at the bottom right-hand side of the dialog box it now says Launch PowerPoint. Clicking on this button will open PowerPoint with the Articulate plugin.

  3. Once you have opened up PowerPoint, check that the Articulate tab has been included on the ribbon.

How it works…

If you need to perform this recovery feature, you will need to make sure to have administrator privileges on your computer. If you don't have such privileges, ask your system administrator for assistance.

There's more…

There is also another way to access Articulate Presenter. Since Presenter is a plugin of PowerPoint, it opens whenever PowerPoint is opened.

The other method of launching Articulate Presenter is simply by going to Start | Programs | Microsoft Office on your computer's desktop and double-clicking on the Microsoft PowerPoint application. Launching it in this way actually cuts out a step for those concerned about efficiency.

Recovering from startup errors

While Articulate Presenter is a stable application that works well, it is still a PowerPoint plugin. So like any software, from time to time, there's the possibility of errors happening. When these happen, don't be too alarmed. There are ways of recovering from most of the things that can happen:

  1. If the Articulate tab is not there, you can get it back. If you are using PowerPoint 2010, start by clicking on File and then Options. If you are using PowerPoint 2007, start by clicking on the Office button, and then click on the PowerPoint Options button at the bottom of the menu.

  2. A PowerPoint Options dialog box will appear; click on Add-Ins.

  3. At the bottom of the dialog box, where the Manage select box is, select COM Add-Ins.

  4. Click on the Go… button.

  5. A COM Add-Ins dialog box will appear. Look for a line that says Articulate Presenter Ribbon and make sure it is checked. If not, check it; then click on OK.

Once these steps are completed, the Articulate tab should appear in PowerPoint.

 

Publishing a simple, slide-only course for a website


Articulate handles presentations differently from PowerPoint, creating a Flash animation video (a .swf file) out of it. This means that Articulate has to publish the presentation and not just save it as PowerPoint does. The published presentation consists of two parts, the presentation itself and the player. The player folder is the skin with the controls and other information about the presentation. In addition to controlling the slides of the course, it also allows access to other files if they have been added to the course.

When finished, each slide becomes its own Flash file. This allows for fast downloading by users who are accessing the course or presentation via the Internet. Additional content, such as a glossary, would be a separate Flash file accessible through the player.

Getting ready

Any presentation will consist of a number of slides. These slides may contain any of the text, graphics, and objects that PowerPoint can produce, along with other content that is created in Articulate Presenter or the other programs contained in the Articulate suite. We will be showing you how to add this material throughout this course.

In order to walk through the process of publishing a presentation, we're going to need a presentation that we can use. You can either open an existing PowerPoint presentation that you have on your computer or create a simple one. I've created a simple, three-slide presentation about the nursery rhyme "Mary Had a Little Lamb".

How to do it…

Once you have your presentation, there are two parts to accomplishing this recipe. The first one consists of creating the player template. Once we have created the template, we'll use that template to publish our simple course.

As you can see from this flow diagram, the process is a logical one. Typically, one starts by creating the presentation before creating or choosing the template. In this way, the template can be made to match the needs of the presentation.

Creating the template

  1. The first thing we're going to need is a player template. This will tell Articulate how to set up the player when the presentation is published. Click on the Player Templates button in the Tools section of the Articulate ribbon.

  2. The Player Templates dialog box will open. As we've already seen in other Articulate dialog boxes, this one also has a set of tabs along the left-hand side. It should open with the Layout tab highlighted; if not, select it.

  3. The only change we want to make here at this time is in the View Modes. You will probably find all three tick boxes checked on the upper part of the center pane. Deselect the Standard view and No sidebar view, leaving only the Slide only view (Starting view) tick box checked.

  4. We're now going to save these settings as a new player template. To do so, go to the drop-down list at the bottom of the dialog box. It will say Corporate Communications. Since we want this to be a new template, we're going to click on the button to the right of it that says File…, and select Save As… from the menu. A small dialog box opens for us to type in the new template's name. Let's call this one Slide Only Template.

Publishing the Course

  1. Now that we have our template set up, we can go on to publish the presentation. Close the Player Templates dialog box and select the Publish button from the Articulate ribbon.

  2. To do this, we'll need to be on the Web tab. The first thing we need to do is to provide the Publish Location. If you don't want to use the default location shown in the Folder area, click on the button to the right-hand side of the location (arrow 1 in the screenshot) and select the folder you would like to place the published presentation in. You can also type the location directly into the provided area (arrow 2 in the screenshot).

  3. Dropping a little further down in the dialog box, we find an area called Properties. We'll need to give our presentation a name in the Published title area (arrow 3 on the screenshot). This is the name that will appear in the presentation window header when the presentation is published. Therefore, you want to use a proper name for the presentation. Finally we need to tell the program what template to use. We're going to select Slide Only Template (the template we just created) from the drop-down list.

  4. We are now ready to publish our presentation. All we have to do is click on the Publish button in the dialog box and the program will do the rest.

  5. Depending on the length of your presentation, publishing may take several minutes. To make this process run as fast as possible and reduce the chance of errors, it is recommended to not use your computer for other operations while Articulate is creating your Flash presentation. If you use copy and paste, what you have copied will show up in your presentation.

How it works…

As you can see from the tabs in the Publish dialog box, Articulate can publish your finished Flash presentation in a number of ways. The first tab, the one we used, creates the necessary files for publishing to the Web. You can also use this option for publishing on your computer for local use.

Note

Before you start publishing presentations, it's important to realize that not everything that PowerPoint does is supported by Articulate; specifically, the slide transitions aren't supported. So if you're accustomed to using transitions between your slides, you'll have to forgo that in Articulate Presenter. Likewise, not all animations from PowerPoint are supported. Later we'll show you which ones are.

Once you start working in Articulate Presenter, it creates a second file for your presentation. So instead of only having a .pptx file from PowerPoint, you will also have a .ppta file. The name will be the same, and only the file extension will be different. If you need to move your presentation to another folder on your computer or put it on removable media for it to work on another computer, be sure to copy both the files, otherwise you will lose all the work that you did in Articulate.

The Flash presentations that Articulate creates are noneditable Flash files. This provides a great advantage over standard PowerPoint files, which can be modified by the end user. In training and sales presentation situations, where the user is viewing the presentation on their own, there is no possibility of the viewer accidentally or intentionally making changes to the file.

Once Articulate has finished publishing your Flash presentation, it will notify you by displaying the Publish Successful dialog box. This provides you with a number of options, including the ability to view your presentation, upload it to the Web via FTP, or compress it in a ZIP file.

If you open the folder that contains your presentation, you will see that it consists of a number of files. The folder will be titled with the name of the presentation, and it will contain two folders (titled data and player) and a player.HTML file. The player file is the one that you click to play the presentation. It will open in whatever program the user has selected as your default for Flash files, probably their default web browser.

You can rename this file as desired. However, don't rename the folders. If you need to copy, move, or upload your presentation, be sure to move the entire folder, including the subfolders and the player file. Otherwise, your flash presentation will not work.

 

Adding a background theme


Artistic design is an important part of creating a presentation. You want people's eyes to be attracted to your presentation, and even more importantly, you want it to hold their attention. That's pretty much impossible to do if your presentation isn't attractive.

You also want your presentation to provide some identity with the subject matter and/or your company's brand. Whether designing a presentation for a training session, corporate proposal, or sales, you need to be able to tie the whole thing together, providing visual continuity so that the viewer understands that it is all part of one continuous theme.

At this point, the theme we are creating only deals with the presentation and not the skin. That will be done at another time. For the best possible results, you want your presentation theme and your skin theme to go together. It is helpful to keep your skin theme colors in mind while creating your presentation theme.

There are actually several ingredients in creating this visual theme, such as the background image, the placement of objects on the slides, and the text size, style, and color. For this reason, it is very useful to start the creation of your presentation by applying a theme to the slides in the presentation. Microsoft PowerPoint has this capability built-in along with a number of themes that are available for its use.

How to do it…

Themes are created using PowerPoint's capability rather than Articulate's. However, the skin theme is created in Articulate:

  1. To access these themes, you need to click on the Design tab at the top of the PowerPoint screen. Your ribbon should change to show the following screenshot:

  2. Selecting from PowerPoint's installed themes only requires clicking on the theme's thumbnail on the ribbon.

    Note

    Please note that not all the themes are visible at once. Clicking on the scroll bar to the right-hand side of the shown themes allows you to scroll through all the themes you have installed on your system. The arrow with the line at the bottom of the scroll bar is for opening the drop-down that shows all the installed themes at once.

How it works…

Selecting a theme for a presentation gives us the following:

  • Background options

  • Text styles

  • Color pallets

There's more…

The themes themselves are fully customizable. There are three buttons located to the right-hand side of the shown themes, which provide for the customization of the colors, fonts, and effects in the theme.

Changing theme colors

By clicking on the Colors button in the Themes section of the ribbon, a drop-down appears that allows the selection of the existing color themes. This may be divided into two separate areas depending upon the selected theme, the upper section showing the color themes that are available for that particular theme, and the lower section listing all of the color themes that are built-in to Microsoft Office.

For most themes, selecting a color theme doesn't affect the background color; it affects the text and bullet point colors. However, there are a few themes that change to match the color scheme selected. You'll have to play with the theme you are using to see what changes it allows you to make. If none of the included color themes satisfy your need, you can modify them by selecting Create New Theme Colors… from the bottom of the drop-down list. This opens a dialog box for creating a new color theme.

By selecting one of the existing color themes, you can use it as your starting point for creating your new color theme. The theme shown in the screenshot of the dialog box is the "Text" theme. Each type of Text, Accent, and Hyperlink theme can be individually changed. Your new color theme can then be saved under whatever name you choose.

To change the background color, one would need to select Background Styles in the Background section of the ribbon. Since in many cases the backgrounds are pictures, you are somewhat limited to the amount of color change that you can make. However, there are some themes that are not images, but rather are designs that are appropriate for being used as the background. In these cases, you can change colors, add a texture, or change from a solid fill to a gradient. This varies from theme to theme, depending upon what is built in to that theme.

Changing theme fonts

Selecting Fonts from the Themes section on the ribbon allows you to select any of the standard Microsoft Office font style sets. These are the same font style sets that are used in Microsoft Word and other office applications.

Just as with the color themes, the font themes are fully customizable. Selecting Create New Theme Fonts… at the bottom of the Fonts drop-down opens a dialog box for selecting the heading and body fonts that you want to use in your theme. These can then be saved as a new font theme.

Note

The reason that you can only select the heading and body fonts rather than select a variety of different fonts is that, artistically speaking, it is not recommended to use more than two fonts in a document. You still have the availability to individually change the font of a specific word, line, or page of text if you so desire, but that would not be a part of the font theme.

Changing theme effects

The final area of customization available for your theme is the effects, selectable by clicking on the Effects button in the Themes section of the ribbon. The Effects drop-down provides a selection of the different effects that can be used in the theme. These effects are automatically applied to buttons and other objects in the presentation as a part of the theme.

Saving your changed theme

Once you make changes to a theme, you can save that modified theme under a new name. This would be especially useful if you needed to create a series of presentations and wanted to maintain branding throughout the series.

To save your new theme, open the Themes dropbox by clicking on the button at the bottom of the scroll bar to the right-hand side of the theme thumbnails. At the bottom of the dropbox it will say Save Current Theme…. Clicking on this opens the standard, Windows Save As… dialog box, which will be open to the themes folder on your computer.

Adding a theme from Microsoft.com or third-party websites

Although Microsoft PowerPoint comes with a number of themes preinstalled, it may not have the theme that you want for the presentation you are trying to produce. Never fear, that has already been considered, and the ability to add themes has been built right into PowerPoint.

You can find themes on Microsoft's website and a large number of third-party websites who produce them both for free and for sale. Both of these sources can be used and added to your personal copy of PowerPoint.

To search for and add themes from Microsoft, click on the button at the bottom of the scroll bar to the right-hand side of the themes thumbnails to open the themes drop-down list. On the bottom of this drop-down, you will see the words More Themes on Microsoft Office Online.... Clicking on that legend will take you to the themes page on the Microsoft website.

The web page will show you a variety of themes for all of the Microsoft Office products. Since we are working in PowerPoint, you will want to select the PowerPoint themes by using the button on the left-hand side of the screen.

Selecting a theme allows you to download it to your computer. This is essentially the same procedure you would use to select and download a theme from a third-party website. While the details will vary with the website, the idea is the same.

Themes consist of several files, so they are downloaded as a .zip file. You will need to unzip the file to a location on your hard drive in order to input it into a PowerPoint or Articulate presentation. Once the theme is downloaded and unzipped, you will need to find the theme, bring it into PowerPoint, and click on the legend Browse for Themes… on the themes drop-down list. This will open a standard Windows dialog box, allowing you to search for and select the theme and follow the prompts to install the new theme. It will show up immediately in PowerPoint without restarting.

 

Modifying slide masters


What we talked about in the last recipe is how a theme allows us to have consistent background, colors, and fonts. Those are all part of the theme. However, one of the great tools that PowerPoint provides that is extremely useful to us in creating Articulate presentations is the ability to create slide masters. These slide masters are the part of the template that controls what objects show up on each page. If we want to have a title on each page, as is common in PowerPoint presentations, placing a textbox for it on the slide master ensures that it will be located in the same place and be the same size on each slide.

Getting ready

You can find the button for the slide masters by clicking on the View tab. The Slide Master button appears on the Presentation Views section of the ribbon.

When the slide master appears, it will show the first slide master in the set as in the main editable part of the screen. To the left-hand side of the pane, where the thumbnails of the slides are normally shown, you will see the thumbnails of all the slide masters in the set, one for every layout option (there are usually 10). At the same time, the Slide Master tab will appear, allowing access to the Slide Master ribbon.

To create a totally new theme, you would start by clicking the Insert Slide Master button on the ribbon. This will insert a blank master set, which includes all the layouts that are in the current set. If you do this and then delete the existing master, you will have an entire new set of slide masters.

How to do it…

Creating a slide master consists of placing the things on the master that you want to have show up in all your slides. This can be done in one of two ways so that they are all on all the slides regardless of the type, or so that they are only on one type of slide layout.

A complete slide master not only deals with the background and objects that you want to show on all the slides, but also with all the layout options for the slides. Don't forget to make the necessary modifications to all the different layouts:

  1. The first thing you want to do on your master is to add an image in the background. This is done in the same way as inserting an image in a regular slide, using the Picture button on the Insert ribbon.

    Note

    This image should be 720 x 540 pixels in size. If you download background images from the Internet, they will typically be this size. If you are using your own image, you may need to resize it or crop it to these dimensions. When you insert the image, it may not show up as filling the entire page. This would indicate that the image is not 720 x 540 pixels.

    Although the background image is covering the other elements in the master, it will not be covering them in the normal work view. However, if you need to work with those elements, changing them in some way, you will want to arrange the background image at the back, as we discussed in the How it Works… section in the Launching Articulate Presenter recipe.

  2. To delete a layout from the set, select its thumbnail from the list in the left-hand side panel of the PowerPoint screen. Click on the Delete button on the Slide Master ribbon or right-click on the thumbnail and select Delete Layout from the context-sensitive menu.

  3. You can also add another layout to the master set by clicking on the Insert Layout button on the ribbon. This allows you to create your own layout, which is totally different from the standard layouts included in PowerPoint.

    Note

    There are two categories of objects that can be added to the master, namely regular objects and object placeholders. Regular objects are anything that you want showing up on all the slides. Placeholders are used for inserting information, such as pictures, text, or charts later.

  4. Regular objects are placed on the master just as they are onto individual slides. Select the object that you want to insert from the Insert ribbon and place it on the master slide.

  5. To make these same objects show up in the same place on the title slide, as on the other slides, place them on the master, then copy them, select the Master Slide, and paste them.

  6. Clicking on the arrow next to the Insert Placeholder legend of the Insert Placeholder button on the Slide Master ribbon opens the drop-down, which allows you to select what type of placeholder you want to place on the master. Do not use Media placeholders on your slide masters as media will be inserted in Articulate.

  7. Once you select the type of the placeholder you wish to put on your slide master, you must place it on the slide. To do so, go to the corner of the area where you want the placeholder, click-and-hold your left mouse button, and drag it to the opposite corner, releasing the button there. This will create the placeholder.

    Note

    Placeholders are the dotted line boxes that you see already in place on the slide masters. They allow you to insert the content in a consistent manner across all the slides of your presentation. As you can see by looking at the master slide set, PowerPoint makes extensive use of placeholders. This is an important part of maintaining visual continuity throughout your presentation.

How it works…

Looking at the thumbnails on the left-hand side pane of the PowerPoint window, you can see that the top one is larger, with the rest of the thumbnails connected to it as in a branched directory tree. That's because the first one is the master while the others are the various layouts that exist for that master. Any changes you make to the master, such as adding an image, will show up in all the layouts. Changes made to the individual layouts will only show up in that particular layout.

The exception to this rule is when you are dealing with the title slide. Changes made to the set do not affect the title slide, as many people have different title slides, but they are similar to the other layouts in the set.

There's more…

There is an alternative way of accessing the various changes that we've made in this recipe, and that is to use the Edit Theme that is a part of the Slide Master ribbon. This provides the exact same changes to the theme as we saw in the Design ribbon.

Turning on Date, Slide number, and Footer placeholders

Along the bottom of every slide master are the placeholders for the date, slide number, and footer. Although these placeholders exist, they are normally hidden. To use them in your presentation, they need to be turned on. To do this, exit the slide master view by clicking on the Close Master View button on the Slide Master ribbon.

In the Insert ribbon, click on the Header & Footer button to open the Header and Footer dialog box. You can click on the radio buttons you desire for turning on the Date and time, Slide number, and Footer object placeholders. The Footer allows you a place to insert the text you want on the footer. Date and time allows you to choose between having the date automatically update to the current date or the date and time of the presentation, or to having a fixed date showing the date of your choice, such as the release date for the presentation.

Hyperlinks and the slide master

You can also add a hyperlink for any object on the slide master. This is done in the same way as in PowerPoint. The same hyperlink will show up and function on all the pages of the presentation. This would be especially useful for branching your presentation to various subjects or chapters.

You can also place an object on your slide master, which will be hyperlinked to different places on each slide. You can do this by placing the object on the slide master but creating the hyperlink on each slide.

Creating transparent hyperlinks

Let's say that you are creating a sales presentation demonstrating the benefits of a particular piece of technology. You want to make your presentation usable by both the general public and by engineers who will want to see the technical specifications for each feature. You can create your master slide with a series of buttons in the corner, essentially creating a button bar. Then you can create your presentation with each slide, showing a different feature for each piece of equipment.

The Home and Directory buttons can be hyperlinked directly on the slide master as they will be the same for all the slides. The Specs hyperlink will be different on each slide, so it cannot be hyperlinked on the master slide. Its hyperlinks will have to be done on each individual slide. But by putting the graphic button object on the master, we can ensure that it is always in the same place.

On the individual slides, another object will need to be placed over the Specs. button, in this case, a transparent rectangle. That object can then be made transparent by giving it no fill and no outline on the Format tab. This transparent object can then be hyperlinked just like any other object. That will allow the engineers to go to the detailed specs for that particular feature.

 

Adding a learning game to your course


Articulate Quizmaker gives you the capability of creating extensive quizzes and other interactive activities; however, there is also a built-in capacity for creating interactive learning games that is a part of Articulate Presenter. This capability gives you the ability of creating three different learning games right in your Articulate presentation. Having this capability allows you to make the lesson more interactive and ask questions to the learner.

Putting a learning game into your presentation can do a lot to help engage the learners in the training being provided. This will help them grasp the material that is being presented better and retain it longer.

How to do it…

The learning games provided directly in Articulate Presenter are much simpler than those that can be created in Quizmaker. However, when something quick and simple is needed, this is much easier than creating a quiz and importing it into a presentation.

The learning games are accessed off the Articulate ribbon in PowerPoint by clicking on the Learning Games button:

  1. Clicking on the button opens a dialog box that will allow you to select between adding a new learning game and editing an existing one. Since we have not yet added a learning game to our presentation, the edit option will be grayed out, leaving our only option to Add a new learning game slide.

    Note

    It should be noted that any time that you add a learning game, it will be added to your presentation as a new slide immediately following the currently selected slide. Of course, like any other slide in a PowerPoint presentation, it can be moved through the order of the presentation by clicking and moving its thumbnail to the left-hand side pane of the work area.

    There are three types of learning games that you can choose for your presentation, namely Choices, Word Quiz, and Sequence. We're going to do the Choices type. The others are done in a very similar manner.

  2. The Learning Games Wizard dialog will show Choices as the default Learning game type.

  3. Select the Require completion checkbox in the lower part of the dialog box. This will ensure that the viewer must complete the game before continuing on to the next art of the presentation.

  4. In the Passing score textbox, input 70 for a required passing grade of 70 percent to move on to the rest of the presentation.

  5. Click on the Next button at the bottom of the wizard's dialog box. Here you can type in any custom message to be displayed before the game starts. Type in Answer the questions about Mary's Lamb in the text area. Be sure to check the checkbox so that the message will be displayed.

  6. In the Instructions section select Display instructions. If you do not wish to provide instructions to the user, click on Don't display instructions.

  7. Click on the Next button to insert the questions. Click on the Add button to type in a new question. Add the questions shown in the screenshot.

  8. The questions will appear in a list, allowing you to reorder them as you choose. To reorder them, use the buttons outlined in red in the following screenshot:

    Note

    At this point, the dialog box is going to be context specific for the type of learning game you are creating. Regardless of which type of learning game you are creating, you will be adding one question and its answers in the same dialog box. You can continue adding as many questions as you like to the game. However, for each game, you'll need to supply the correct answer. In the case of multiple choice, you'll need to supply the correct answer and as many as four false answers.

  9. Once you have finished inserting and checking your questions and answers, click on the Next button to create any custom feedback for the learner.

  10. Once the feedback is inserted, click on the Next button to create the learning game.

  11. Articulate will add a placeholder slide in the order of the slide thumbnails on the left-hand side pane of your PowerPoint screen. You will not be able to see the learning game unless you preview or publish it. To preview the game, click on the Preview button in the Publish section of the Articulate ribbon.

  12. It will take the program a moment to render your game in a functioning, viewable version. This will show you exactly how it will look when you view it in the final presentation. It will also allow you to test the game, making sure that the questions and answers function correctly and that you are satisfied with how it looks.

How it works…

The learning games are added to the presentation via a wizard, which creates the game from the information you fill in. The Learning Game Wizard, which opens once you click on the OK button of the previous dialog box, walks you through the process of creating the game.

Although you can fully customize the content of your learning game, you can't customize the appearance of it. Within Articulate Presenter, you are limited to the default game style. If you would like to be able to further customize your game, create it in Articulate Quizmaker. We will discuss how to do this in Chapter 3, Preparing Your Player.

One last detail about your learning game. Now that you've created a learning game in your presentation, when you click on the Learning Games button on the ribbon, you now have the option of editing previously created learning games. To do this, click on the Edit an existing learning game slide radio button, and then use the drop-down menu to select from the various learning games that you have in your presentation.

To preview the learning game, click on the Preview tab in the Articulate ribbon and you will see the following screenshot:

There's more…

There are three types of learning games included in Articulate, as follows:

  • Choices: This creates a multiple choice or true/false quiz

  • Word Quiz: This creates a "Hangman" or "Wheel of Fortune" type of game

  • Sequence: This is where the learner puts things in order

The Choices game allows you to select between Multiple choice and True/False. In both cases, you enter the question and your answers. You must also tell the wizrd which answer is the correct one.

The Word Quiz game allows you to enter only the question and the answer. The answer will be what they are trying to guess the letters for.

The Sequence game allows you to enter up to seven items, which the learner must put in order. You enter them in the correct order and the program randomizes them for you.

The following screenshot is for adding Multiple choice questions to the Choices learning game. Please note that towards the bottom you can select the amount of time given to the learner to select the correct answer. This option exists with all the games, for all types of questions. The default will be whatever you selected for the game back in the first step of the Learning Game Wizard dialog box. However, you can customize the length of the time that will be allowed for each question.

You can select the type of game you want from the learning game type drop-down menu on the Learning Games Wizard dialog box. Selecting a game type changes the thumbnail in the dialog box, providing visual recognition of the type of game you have selected. You can also input the name for your game in the area Learning game title. In the lower part of the dialog box, there are selections available for the customization of the gameplay:

  • Require completion: Selecting this radio button prevents the learner from moving on until they have successfully completed the learning game.

  • Play audio effects: Selecting this radio button plays built-in sound effects for the game. The sound effects are built into the program and cannot be changed.

  • Passing score: The default for this is 80%, but it can be changed to any figure you want.

  • Default question time limit: The default for this is 30 seconds for the Choices game and 60 seconds for the other types. However, it can be changed to any time you want.

About the Authors
  • Robert Kennedy III

    Robert Kennedy III is a former High School and College Educator turned Entrepreneur. He has owned web development and now e-learning/training companies, and has spent almost a decade as a trainer in topics ranging from music industry preparation to technology and learning. Currently, as the owner of RKCS Learning Solutions, Robert spends a great deal of time teaching others how to integrate technologies into their business workflow and training companies on how to develop effective learning modules for their employees. Robert earned his Masters degree online through the University of Maryland University College and is currently completing his PhD in Educational Technology with Walden University. Although he was a former classroom teacher, he will tell you that online education saved his life. He is an admitted tech lover; when not working, Robert spends his time playing with or catching up on the latest gadgets. Sites such as CNET, Tech Crunch, and Engadget are probably permanently burned into his screen at this point. Robert grew up in Bronx, New York, and is therefore legally obligated to be a fan of the New York Yankees. He takes this obligation seriously and watches every Yankees' game on his phone, iPad, computer, or TV. He loves sports in general and can be found playing softball, golf, basketball, or bowling at any point during the year.

    Browse publications by this author
  • Robert Kennedy

    Robert Kennedy III is a former High School and College Educator turned Entrepreneur. He has owned web development and now e-learning/training companies, and has spent almost a decade as a trainer in topics ranging from music industry preparation to technology and learning. Currently, as the owner of RKCS Learning Solutions, Robert spends a great deal of time teaching others how to integrate technologies into their business workflow and training companies on how to develop effective learning modules for their employees. Robert earned his Masters degree online through the University of Maryland University College and is currently completing his PhD in Educational Technology with Walden University. Although he was a former classroom teacher, he will tell you that online education saved his life. He is an admitted tech lover; when not working, Robert spends his time playing with or catching up on the latest gadgets. Sites such as CNET, Tech Crunch, and Engadget are probably permanently burned into his screen at this point. Robert grew up in Bronx, New York, and is therefore legally obligated to be a fan of the New York Yankees. He takes this obligation seriously and watches every Yankees' game on his phone, iPad, computer, or TV. He loves sports in general and can be found playing softball, golf, basketball, or bowling at any point during the year.

    Browse publications by this author
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