A Canvas LMS Quiz Converted to Storyline 3

I’ve began considering more often when it is appropriate to work within the Canvas Learning Management system rather than create content in Storyline. Canvas has the advantage that pages can be updated easily similar to updating blog content. Replacing an image or adjusting text is simple. Whereas with Storyline we need to open original SL files, make adjustments, export the file, and embed to the LMS.  Therefore, a rule I’ve begun to adopt is that if content needs modification within a year I’ll likely embed it as text and images straight to Canvas. If the information or lecture material will not need updating for at least a year then Ill consider designing it to Storyline.

Here is an example of where I opted to utilize Storyline rather than work in Canvas. This started off as a self-check quiz where students answered questions about their ability to learn in an online course. Normally I would create quizzes within Canvas. It is obvious right? Scores can be easily stored to the grade book, and it is accessible to update questions. However, in this case tabulating the total score was not a primary goal, and the quiz questions will remain the same for at least a few years.

Variable data was sent from my Storyline file to Google docs

Students receive a score after they take this self-check, but as long as they answer every question then they earn 5 points. To keep track of the score I used Javasscript to send the data from Storyline to Google docs. Incidentally I learned how to do this from this excellent online tutorial presented at an eLearning conference in Seattle, and I often reference back to it.

An example of a quiz question in the Canvas LMS.

I was able to create a more elegant quiz/self-check than the Canvas LMS interface allows, and IMHO it is more responsive and user friendly. I started from a quiz template provided by eLearning Heroes. I modified it, but the base will look familiar to anyone who has seen it at the eLearning Hero site. 

The link is here if you would to take a look the self-check converted from Canvas to Storyline. Enjoy!

Here is the Storyline version of the student Self-Check

E-Learning Challenge 174

Here is my attempt at the E-Learning Challenge #174

I’ve been following the Articulate e-Learning challenges for several years and decided it was finally time to jump into the water. The theme for last week's challenge was to use Javascript in SL to create random words. I developed this as something simple to showcase, but also to be usable in an introductory course for Healthcare Informatics. This will serve as a reinforcement of medical prefixes and suffixes.

Here is a link to the online version 
Here is a link to the original SL3 file

I added a JS trigger to a button on the Storyline slide. In the code below you will see that I created an array of medical suffixes and prefixes. The first fifteen words are suffixes and the rest of the words are prefixes. The program randomizes the words. Then on line 4 below, it retrieves the index value of the random word. This index value will tell us if the value of wordNumber is 0-14 (a suffix) or 15 and higher (a prefix). The conditional checking for which slide layer to display (correct or incorrect) is added to a button trigger event on the main slide.

1. var player = GetPlayer();
2. var words = ["algia","cyte","gen","graphy","ism","natal","oid","osis","penia","phobia","pnea","stasis",
   "uria","oma","ectomy","ab","circum","dia","dys","epi","extra","hemi","iso",
   "neo","pan","pre","retro","sub"]; 
3. var wordChoice = words[Math.floor(Math.random() * words.length)]; 
4. var wordNumber=words.indexOf(wordChoice); player.SetVar("randomWord",wordChoice); 
5. player.SetVar("arrayNumber",wordNumber);

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Credit:

• I used a medical template provided by the E-Learning Heroes community
  https://community.articulate.com/download/storyline-2-medical-theme-tabs-template
• It was very helpful to follow Matthew Bibby’s tutorial on integrating Javascript with Storyline. Much of my code is adopted from his tutorial: http://matthewbibby.com/random/

Return to an old blog

I started this blog in 2010.  But...then like a hundred and fifty thousand zillion other bloggers out there I let my early posts sit and sit and sit and fall asleep.  Besides...what is there to say that I couldn't broadcast on Facebook? In fact I forgot I started this thing until I went back to blogger to sign up for a new blog where I could write about instructional design.

Since the time that I first  created this blog I've been hired as an E-Learning Specialist for Healthcare Informatics at Bellevue College, I've become more proficient with a variety of educational software including Storyline, and I've been working with a great team here at the college. It is time to update my online presence, start being more creative again, and to share some good things  about learning and teaching.