Designing Interactive Storyline Elearning

 In Articulate Storyline, Design, E-learning, Health

This post focuses on design of content for maximum impact in rapid elearning.

The Original Presentation:

The case for redesign is a flat animation slide from an Infection Control presentation on the effectiveness of hand hygiene agents.  What was a simple data table was designed as a pictorial graph to indicate the presence of germs before and after use of the cleaning agents. From the hand hygiene training perspective, you want your health care personnel to KNOW what keeps their hands clean and for how long; it is a critical piece of information that motivate health care workers to follow appropriate hand hygiene and prevent infections in the hospital setting.

Interactive Storyline Elearning

What’s Missing?

Instructional designers  often design elearning in line with the SHOW, NOT TELL dictum. Is the above presentation design really showing the effectiveness of hand hygiene agents?

  • SHOW can be mistakenly assumed or be interpreted in a limited manner as only visual presentation.
  • To show and not tell, an element of user exploration is essential.
  • Interactively presenting content is the gold standard of good elearning design and development.
  • What-happens-if scenarios increase the credibility of information that is routinely dispensed in the take-it-from-the-experts format

The Redesigned Interactive Demo:

Here’s how this same presentation slide turned after being designed using the drag and drop, a few triggers, and slider interactions in Articulate Storyline.

Click the image to view the example.

Key elements of this elearning design:

1) Exploit scenarios in a minimalist fashion (without an elaborate story): Use of human characters in the medical and health care industry

2) Draw attention to the key learning point on user action: Display the effectiveness data only when the user drags the cleaning agent

3) Allow users to explore and judge for themselves: Show effectiveness on a time scale with each passing hour

Interactive Storyline Elearning

Good instructional design is the foundation of awesomely interactive elearning!

What started as a simple data table is now transformed into a see-for-yourself interactive exercise.

Try exploring this activity on touch devices. Judge for yourself!

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