Learn. Show. Repeat.

Category: Show Your Work

Looking Behind the Facade
Since I was young I’ve always enjoyed stopping whenever I come across a construction site. I’m interested in how buildings, from houses to skyscrapers, are put together. It really doesn’t matter what stage of construction the building is at either for me to pause to take a look. I like to see things like the depth of the footings or the size of the columns and supporting beams or the length of the cantilevered balconies or how the wall framework will divide an empty space or how the roof structure will finish off the building.

Image source:Shutterstock

While completed structures often look impressive, I find there’s more value in knowing how it all fits together (but that could be just me!). I think that’s why the practices of working out loud and showing your work appeal to me and I learn more from seeing how something was created as opposed to trying to figure it out when looking at the finished product.

Working in the eLearning space I often see people sharing some great samples of work and many times I wonder:
- How did they do that?
- Where did their ideas come from?
- How long did that take to create?
- Why did they do it that way?
I figure that I can’t be the only one who wonders these things and when someone shares this information, it’s like looking at their construction site and I’m happy to stop and take a look.

I’ve shared the ‘how’ behind some of the demos I’ve created, some examples are here and here and here. I don’t do it all the time and on reflection, it’s because I can be so caught up doing the work that I forget about sharing the work at different stages. So, it’s a habit I need to develop to make it part of the work.

From my experience, some ideas for showing your work are:
- Start with something small; share a part of a project or a tip or a discovery you’ve made.
- Find a method of documenting that works for you; it could be via blog post or a video or a photo or a tweet or a combination of these.
- Don’t worry about what other people think; the aim is to make your tacit knowledge visible.
- There’s no right or wrong way; I’m just making it up as I go but I do get ideas from what others do.
If we make time to document our planning and construction phases and then make this information public, there’d be many more opportunities for others to learn from our experiences. It might just encourage them to share what they know too.

After all, the best type of learning is when we learn from each other.

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September 2, 2015
Making Videos Interactive

Often when we talk about our work, we talk in terms of ‘what’ we did. The Showing My Work series of posts aim to also capture the ‘how’ something was done.

E-Learning Heroes Challenge #94 – Interactive Video: Visual Interviews in Online Training. The brief: This week your challenge is to create an interactive video interview.

Every so often David Anderson posts a weekly challenge that I know I want to participate in (even if it’s not in the current week) and this was one of those challenges. I haven’t done a whole lot with shooting my own videos (apart from the Smartphone Video challenge) so I wanted to have a go and complete this one at some point. I noticed that for some reason, there weren’t as many entries for this challenge and I wondered if folks thought that it would take too long or that they didn’t have the right equipment. My demo was put together fairly quickly (using myself as the victim, I mean subject, also saved some time) and my equipment was not high tech. While the result was a simple looking entry it still does the job and here’s how I did it.

On a recent plane trip for work, I mapped out my ideas on paper (as I usually like to do):

I didn’t want to create anything too big or too complex, so my idea was to use four questions and I would be in the centre of the screen with the questions around me. When you click on a question, the video answer would play. I also had an idea to add an ‘introduction’ clip which give some instruction as to what to do – so I’d need five clips altogether.

Over the past few weeks, I seen David and other Community members who had used video make them look more interesting by placing a cover over the video so that it didn’t have the standard rectangular video on a slide look. I really liked the idea and I wanted to try to do something similar. Here’s the slide with the video sitting on it:

and the same slide after the cover is put on:

I used PowerPoint to create my cover and the first thing I did was to set up my PPT slide in the same aspect ratio as my Storyline project (4:3). Then I inserted a rectangle the same size as the slide and then inserted a circle shape (with no fill) and positioned it in the centre of the rectangle. Then by selecting both shapes, I was able to use PowerPoint’s ‘Merge Shapes’ feature and ‘Combine’ to create a rectangle with a circular hole in the middle.

I filled the shape with my chosen blue colour and saved it as a picture that I was able to then insert into my Storyline project. I now had a cover!

In Storyline, the video intro sits on the slide itself (also known as the base layer) and each of the video answers sit on their own layer, so I also put my cover image on each layer too so that the demo would look the same as each layer is shown. I kept my questions simple and in keeping with the circle theme, I added four circles with a question in each. The triggers would be a simple ‘Show Layer’ when a question was clicked.

Now the framework of the demo was set and all I needed to do was record the video introduction along with the answers to each question. I don’t have a proper video camera or equipment, so I used Storyline’s ‘Record Webcam’ from the insert video options and recorded each of my answers using my laptop. As you can see my set up was very basic:

Yes, that’s our spare room which has all our clean washing that we need to put away (everyone has a room like that don’t they?) and my laptop is sitting on the clothes dryer to get the right height but you can’t tell from the clips although the sound quality could be better.

It took a few takes to get my eyes looking straight ahead and for me not to make a mistake with my answers, so it probably took about half an hour all up to record.

As I was putting the demo together, I had an idea that instead of separate video clips, I could include a GIF image of myself that would create the effect of me waiting for the next question. For this it sliced a five second clip of myself from one of my questions and went to a website called http://makeagif.com/ where I uploaded the clip and it created a looping GIF image for me that I could add into my demo.

Unfortunately this idea didn’t turn out as good as I would have liked for a couple of reasons, one was that the quality of the GIF wasn’t the same as the clips so it looked different and secondly I really needed to start and end each clip with the same pose and expression, which I tried to do but it didn’t quite work.

Because of this extra clip, I needed to add an extra layer to my project and the triggers became show the ‘GIF Layer’ after the introduction and then for each layer, it was show the ‘GIF Layer’ when the media completes (i.e. after each video on the layer had finished). So essentially the demo jumps from an answer layer to the GIF layer.

When I placed my videos on the slide and each layer, all I had to do was make sure the cover sat in from to the video file and adjust the position of the video so that my face is roughly in the middle of the circle.

After some testing and adding some animations I was ready to go. All up it took about four hours to put together and while it’s a simple demo, I think it works but you can see for yourself by clicking on the image below to launch the demo:

Let me know what you think and you can see all of my ELH Challenge entries on My Portfolio page.

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August 25, 2015
Spinning Around with Storyline 2

A few years ago, before I was working with Articulate Storyline, I saw this cool interaction where you could spin a group of on screen images around in a circle. I later found out that this was referred to as a ‘carousel’.

While I liked the carousel when I first saw it, I haven’t see it around much – the closest I’ve come is where the images scroll from side to side. So I thought I’d try and build a circular carousel in Storyline 2. In my head, the way I saw the interaction working was by using a slider and as you move the slider along the images would rotate in a circle.

I was on the train on my way into work the other day and I started to sketch out my idea on paper. I always like to start this way no matter if it’s for a client project or a simple demo like this was going to be. I find that I can jot down ideas quickly and play with them on paper as I try to arrange and re-arrange my thoughts. So this is how it started:

Then once I have a bit of a clearer idea of where I’m going (it’s never usually finished or fully formed at this point) then I’ll start playing in the tool however I’m still experimenting at this point and I don’t actually know if my idea will work!

To start with I inserted a slider and four coloured rectangles onto a new slide just to get an idea of the layout. To help with the look of the interaction, I made the two rectangles behind the front one slightly smaller and the back one slightly smaller again to give the look of perspective – as the objects move around the carousel they’ll appear to move closer and then further away.

Initially, I thought I’d use a change of state and what would happen is that as you move the slider along, each rectangle would change its state and the new state would be the rectangle in the next position. I started with just two different coloured rectangles (so that I could keep track of which was which). Plus if I started with two and could get it to work, then I could add the other two. It turned out to be a good plan because using states proved to be unsuccessful.

The first two moves worked just fine:

But the next two didn’t:

The problem was that objects on a slide sit at different ‘levels’ depending on where they are in the timeline and in this case the blue rectangle is always going to be above the red one:

So it was back to the drawing board.

This time I thought I’d try it again but using separate layers for each position of the rectangle. That way I could control how the rectangles were arranged as each layer is shown. Thankfully, this way worked much better. Each time the slider moved a position, a different layer would show and because the rectangles are in a new position on each layer it gives the effect that they are moving in a circle:

The next step was to replace the shapes with images and see how it looks. I also decided to add a couple of extra pictures – meaning two extra layers. I wanted to make the front picture stand out so I increased the brightness of the front image and changed the back images to black and white and decreased their brightness. I did this on one image and then used format painter to apply the changes to the other images. I also adjusted the layout and sizing of the images slightly and in the end it turned out like this:

Click the image to view the working demo.

While it isn’t exactly how I envisaged it originally (in my head I wanted the movement from position to position to be much smoother but would be much more complex to create given the objects change size as they move) this method does give a revolving effect and I was happy with the end result. Maybe I could try using motion paths next time…

I reckon the slide could be used for images or videos or even as a different type of menu where you could click on the front image and jump to a topic. You can download the source file from here.

Note: I also want to develop more of a habit of working out loud so I tweeted my progress as I went. It’s the first time I’ve done that as I went along and not just at the end. It’s my habit in progress.

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July 19, 2015
Showing My Work #11

Often when we talk about our work, we talk in terms of ‘what’ we did. The Showing My Work series of posts aim to also capture the ‘how’ something was done.

E-Learning Heroes Challenge #18 – Using Characters in E-Learning. The brief: This week your challenge is to show us how to use characters in e-learning. You can create static slides that show character-based ideas, or build something more dynamic to show the interaction between characters.

This challenge is all about using characters and my inspiration came from a similar interaction I’d seen a few years ago, although it was laid out differently and used video.

It’s essentially a question and answer style interaction where users can ‘ask’ a question and see the response from each person within a group. The whole interaction is built on one slide.

I started by inserting a square for my characters then duplicated it three times, so I had four squares. Then I used the ‘Align’ function to evenly space the squares across the slide. I use align a lot because it takes care of evenly arranging objects. You can align object to the slide or select several objects together and it will space them evenly between the first and last object:

I used the illustrated characters for this demo but you could the use photographic ones or add your own images. I put one in each square then used the ‘Group’ feature so that it became one image (and not a square and a character).

Then I added a title (Ask the Team), some instructions, three question boxes and a large rectangle where the responses would be displayed. As there’s a few objects on the slide, naming them in the timeline is helpful to avoid confusion and it’s a good habit to get into.

This interaction uses 12 layers (3 questions x 4 people) to show responses to the questions. I set the layout on the first layer, then duplicated it using the ‘Duplicate Selected Layer’ button in the Slide Layers panel:

Then I was able to change the character every fourth layer. Again, naming the layers is important so to not get the layers confused. I went with P1, A1 (Person 1, Answer 1); P1, A2; P1, A3; P2, A1 and so on.

Now that everything was laid out, I needed to make it work. Firstly, I used a cool Storyline 2 feature called ‘Button Sets’ which make objects work like a button and only allow one object at a time to be selected. To create a button set, select the objects, right-click your mouse and then click on Button Sets. I created two button sets – one called Questions and another called People.

Secondly, I needed some triggers to make the whole interaction work. I created a trigger to show a layer when the state of a question and a person is selected:

For the layer P1, A1 to display, both Question 1 and Person 1 need to be selected. I then copied and pasted this trigger 11 more times and adjusted it for the three questions for each person.

While this demo is a template and uses text-based responses, you could use audio or video responses.

Click on the image below to view the demo:

If you’d like to use the source file to customise and use in your projects, you can download it here.

Let me know what you think and you can see all of my ELH Challenge entries on My Portfolio page.

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April 18, 2015
Showing My Work #10

Often when we talk about our work, we talk in terms of ‘what’ we did. The Showing My Work series of posts aim to also capture the ‘how’ something was done.

E-Learning Heroes Challenge #52 – Using Interactive Sliders in E-Learning. The brief: This week your challenge is to show creative ways to use sliders in online learning. You can focus your slider on functionality or visual design.

I enjoy watching cooking competition shows on TV like MasterChef and My Kitchen Rules. Often on these programs the contestants are given the same ‘core’ ingredient and they need to create a meal that hightlights this ingredient. In a way, this is similar to the weekly challenges in that you create a demo based on a core theme or Storyline feature.

On the shows there’s always at least one or two people who don’t achieve desired outcome or as they say on TV ‘fail to make the core ingredient shine’. In other words, the core ingredient doesn’t stand out and gets lost among all the other ingredients in the dish. On reflection, this happened to me with this challenge and I’ll show you what I mean.

In this challenge the ‘core ingredient’ were sliders (not the tasty little burgers) a new feature for adding interactivity in Storyline 2:

In an eLearning project, a slider allows learners to reveal information, pictures etc. as the thumb is dragged along the track. When a slider is inserted into a project, you can customise it for your needs via the ‘Slider Tools’ tab:

In the above example, the slider is divided into 10 ‘steps’ which are the number of movements the thumb makes along the track.

I was struggling for an idea for my demo but I happened to see a tweet where a guy called Nick Barclay had recreated movie posters using circles and colour. So I thought that I could do something where movies were represented with colour and as you drag the thumb the colour changed. Then you need to guess the name of the movie.

I came up with four movies and I used state changes to change the colour of a rectangle as you drag the thumb along the track. I added triggers for each step on the slider:

Then, because the demo was about movies I thought it needed to be themed and set in a cinema. So I found an image of a movie screen, resized the rectangle to fit the screen, made the track transparent and changed the thumb to a popcorn image:

Then, because there were four movies it needed a ‘home’ screen to start from. Plus this would allow people to choose the order in which they completed the demo. I added a screen with four movie poster frames and some instructions and each movie branches from the home screen. Here’s how it looks in Storyline:

Each time you go into a ‘theatre’ you come back to the home screen until all four are completed. After each cinema was visited, I used a change of state on each movie poster along with some true/false variables to darken the colour of the poster which indicates that it has been completed.

Then, because I wanted people to enter their guesses for each movie into the demo I needed something that allowed for this, so I used a text entry variable. These are cool because you can type information into one part of a module and it can be used in another part (and this can be done more than once if needed). I jazzed it up so that it fitted in with the overall theme:

Then, if people were typing in their guesses, they needed to see if they were correct so I needed another screen that showed their answer (using the text variable again) compared to the correct response. I came up with the idea that you were playing for ‘free movie tickets’ for each correct response and I found a ticket image and duplicated it four times:

Then, to tie it all together I added some intro and closing screens along with some music to help set the scene!

Can you see what happened?

I started out using sliders but kept adding a little bit more, then a bit more and by the time the demo was finished I had variables, changes of state, branching and some sliders in there too. At the time, I was satisfied with how it had turned out but I didn’t realise how diluted the sliders demo had become until a few days after I finished it and I went back and looked at some other entries. By adding more and more to the demo, I’d lost sight as to what it was supposed to be about in the first place. So while I didn’t really make the slider interaction shine, I did learn a valuable lesson and that is to stay focused on the reason why you’re creating something in the first place.

I still think it’s a good demo but unfortunately it doesn’t really meet the brief and showcase the use of sliders. To see for yourself, click on the below image to view the demo:

Let me know what you think. You can see all of my ELH Challenge entries on My Portfolio page.

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March 26, 2015