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.