Storyline and Instructional Design Q&A - What? How? Is it for me?

Many times when I'm asked about Storyline and transitioning into the field of instructional design and e-learning development, I realise that it can be difficult to know how to get started, what skills are needed and how long the process takes. In this blog post, I try to summarise some of the basic aspects of the software and how it relates to the wider context of e-learning development and instructional design. I hope this can help those who are looking to find a job or do freelance work in this field.

Articulate Storyline is a complex authoring tool that you can use to create e-learning content utilising animation, interactive elements, photos and videos. It allows you to write the content of a teaching module by drawing on your or others' knowledge and expertise, breaking it down into slides, choosing a background and creating a unique style with the comfort of being able to collect everything in one place.

It is the most often used e-learning authoring tool and while it has its drawbacks, it still offers an enormous amount of opportunities for us to be creative about developing e-learning courses or any other digital learning content. The use of the software is also commonly requested for jobs in the field of instructional design and e-learning and many people during their transition from other fields find that this is one of the most difficult barriers between their previous position and starting a new career.

Working with Storyline goes hand in hand with a lot of the other parts of the learning experience design process, and if you are looking to get a job in this area, it can be

helpful to understand how these are related.

Let's start with some of the fundamentals.

1. What do I need at the beginning? What is in the package and what is not?

First of all, we need to point out that Storyline is an extremely user-friendly, easy-to-understand, and easy-to-learn piece of software. It has a logical, clear interface, and it's simple to operate.

Looks familiar? No surprise. Storyline has a very similar user interface to many of the other Windows applications, such as PowerPoint. In the image above, you can see Storyline on the left-hand and PowerPoint on the right-hand side.

The software comes with an extensive library of photos, videos, icons, illustrations, but these libraries contain a limited amount of themed items, so they often won't be enough to meet some of the more specific needs. There is also a built-in simple video editing tool, although, that will only be enough for very basic modifications to the original video file.

Click here for some video editing tips for e-learning courses.

Therefore, for a more professional and varied content creation, it is definitely recommended to subscribe to one of the paid media libraries available (Freepik, iStock, Shutterstock, etc.), as well as one of the video, image, sound editing and graphics software packages (e.g. Adobe or Canva).

So we come to a pivotal, delicate point in using Storyline and the supporting applications: how much does a suitable toolkit for all tasks cost each year, including the annual fee for Storyline and the fees for other subscriptions required?

The total cost per year would be around $2000, including the subscription fee for the Articulate and Adobe suites containing applications like Articulate Rise, Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere Pro and a collection of images, vector images and icons.

Many of these tools provide a free trial period which could be helpful for you to start familiarising yourself and also to decide whether you like to work with them or not before making a bigger decision. We are all different and while we often find one piece of software easy to learn, we struggle to get to grips with some others. I used these trial periods for many projects where I needed to help with the decision of a new LMS or application, e.g. H5P for interactive videos.

2. How can I use my expertise and skills from different areas in my Storyline work?

Although it's a great start, being comfortable using Storyline alone won't always be enough for you to find a job or offer freelance services.

Let's look at some of the areas which can help to create a great combination of your newly learnt and existing skills.

There are a lot of elements of making training modules that require fundamentally different skills, here we will look at the following three:

1. Content: creation, editing, structuring, scenarios, simulations, assessment, games, overall learning experience design

2. Design: designing look and feel, branding, images, graphics

3. Storyline implementation: interactions, animations, technical solutions, setting the

timeline, triggers, variables, possibly dealing with publishing to an LMS etc.

As you can see, there's a big variety of tasks related to creating digital learning. This means that based on your previous experience, other skills, willingness to learn new things, you can find opportunities doing something as simple as replacing background images in a Storyline course to something as complex as helping with the strategic planning and development of an end-to-end learning experience.

Source: Pellas, Nikolaos & Kazanidis, Ioannis & Nikolaos, Konstantinou & Georgia, Georgiou. (2017). Exploring the educational potential of three-dimensional multi-user virtual worlds for STEM education: A mixed-method systematic literature review. Education and Information Technologies. 22. 2235-2279. 10.1007/s10639-016-9537-2.

As the image above also shows, there is a huge number of factors that influence the success of learning experience design. Storyline, and all the other tools are part of this picture, but by far not the only ones.

I found it extremely helpful to start transitioning into this new field by first doing some small Storyline, instructional design related projects. Some of these early tasks were to help someone with setting triggers, organising layers on a slide, or building something simple in the software. Some others helped me to learn about and practise content development and the overall structuring and production process.

3. Is Storyline the right tool for me?

This video can give you a taster of what it's like working in Storyline. As you can see, this is not a complex slide, but it can transfer useful knowledge and be visually appealing at the same time.

It's not easy to decide whether Storyline is the right tool for you and it's also important to understand that there are other great authoring tools out there which you might find much easier to use.

Saying this, who could be a good target audience for using this software?

1. Professionals already experienced in content creation, i.e.: teachers, other educational professionals, people familiar with written media, people with experience in literature and humanities, who are able to interpret, extract and translate any source material received into a logical, understandable curriculum.

With such abilities, learning the basics of Storyline can already bring exciting opportunities.

2. For professionals in the field of digital / media design, i.e. audio-visual content creators, graphic designers, website designers, learning Storyline should not be a problem and in most cases would be familiar with picking up these kind of skills quickly.

3. Also those who, although not having relevant expertise other than basic computer use, have an affinity for either of the above two areas. Here, everyone has to decide whether they actually have any interest in either content creation or design. It's crucial to understand your motivation before investing your time and money into learning this tool and all the things related to it.

The list is not complete, but it is important to note that excellent skills in one sub-area can significantly compensate for lower proficiency in the other area.

There's no need to worry that if you can't produce the breath-taking technical features used in the making of Harry Potter or Avatar! In reality, the vast majority of e-learning is about something else. Many companies think the opposite way and understand that over-using animation and interactive elements can divert the learners' attention from the most important element, that is, the main learning points to be learned.

The goal is more usually to convey a given curriculum in a logical, understandable, measurable, but also attention-grabbing way, usually following strictly set and pre-determined guidelines (background, positioning, font and size, applicable colours, layouts, and technical solutions).

4. How long does it take to learn to use Storyline?

Those with only basic computer skills need around 2-3 months of intensive learning until the marketable use of Storyline. If someone wants to learn the recommended additional software (photo, video, audio editing and graphic software) it will take another 2-3 months, so in a good case it will take 4 months, but rather 6 months to be able to use these with some confidence. Of course, this is highly depending on many of the factors that would be quite difficult to generalise, but let's keep these as rough estimates.

On a positive note, the slide you can see above in the video only requires basic knowledge and can be done quickly once you know the 2-3 steps involved. The process of creating something new can be extremely exciting and rewarding. If you want to check out how to increase your Storyline development speed, see this post.

When I got started, it helped me a lot to start working on small projects despite the lower hourly rate to try myself in real-life situations. This also allowed me to learn while doing it, and even though sometimes it took me twice as long to build something, the deadline and the project goals helped me stay focused. You don't need to master every single feature of Storyline to be able to do many of the tasks that others will need your help with.

Summary

Even if learning Storyline seems daunting, both in terms of cost and time, it is definitely worth considering that at the end of the process it is possible to acquire entrepreneurial and creative skills in a field that is in a great upswing and thriving in the long run. E-learning has a secure future, more and more companies, institutions, educational organisations will use it more and more widely. The projections show a stable annual growth rate in the online education industry and hopefully this will allow more and more learners around the world to enjoy the benefits of the carefully designed digital learning materials.

If you need more help with Storyline or e-learning development related topics, feel free to visit my other blog posts here.