Articulate Studio '13 for Beginnners

The first three steps of the workflow are shown and explained. First, sketch out the structure of the presentation or training. Then, build the slides in PowerPoint. Third, add in the hyperlinks that will allow a viewer to navigate through the triaining.

Using PowerPoint to preview is a big "no no", as the Studio '13 elements won't display properly that way. Get used to performing your previews using the Articulate tab up on the ribbon.

Interactions help connect a user to the content being communicated. The checklist interaction is the first one we'll create and is well suited for the information being communicated in this field experience informational presentation.

Hyperlinks won't provide answers for all of your navigational needs. Creating branching and making other adjustments within slide properties will ensure the training progresses in the intended manner.

The initial sketch is only a draft. Other ideas and insights may come to mind as the build progresses. Adding in new slides or modifying existing slides is certainly to be expected.

Its important when saving your file to be aware of the other files that are created alongside your saved PowerPoint file. These files never need to be accessed directly, but need to be sent along with the main PowerPoint file if other people need to work on the presentation.

Quizzes can be used to assess along the way, as a knowledge checkpoint before allowing a viewer to advance to the rest of the material.

How a quiz question looks and behaves within the quiz can be customized. This includes the correct/incorrect feedback that a user sees upon answering, as well as other characteristics.

Change the settings for a quiz including what qualifies as a passing score, how or if results will be shown to the quiz taker, and whether or not to randomize the questions of the quiz when it loads.

The second set of quiz properties is located on the quiz placeholder slide and contains settings effecting navigation.

Freeform questions are visual or action oriented. For a drag-and-drop question, a user is required to drop images onto correct drop targets. This type of question is set up in both form view and slide view modes.

Within slide view, the format tab has a command to allow image backgrounds to appear transparent. This is particularly useful for making images look good in drag-and-drop questions.

Images are added to a drag-and-drop style question using slide view, but switching to form view is required to designate how the question will function (assigning images to correct drop targets.)

Hotspot style questions are another popular freeform type of question. They require a user to click on a correct area of an image to get the question right. These areas are designated by drawing "hotspots" onto the image when the question is being made.

Having a main menu slide is not always suited for presentations that progress through content sections in a predefined order. Re-purposing the main menu slide to instead indicate a user's progress through the training may be a better choice for the flow of this training.

Sometimes showing is better than explaining with words. Replay is the screen casting application that exports screen recordings into .mp4 video files that can be imported into the training.

Unlike interactions and quizzes, you must make a blank slide for your screen recordings to be imported onto.

The media panel interaction lets a viewer click on a thumbnail image to explore more information above.

Colors, playback, and quality settings can all be adjusted using the interaction properties button found back in Engage. This set of properties differs from the "interaction properties" button found right on the slide, which has more to do with navigation.

The labeled graphic interaction type allows a user to click on markers that have been placed over an image to learn more about that area or spot on the image.

Another look at slide properties to ensure a training advances along as its intended to.

Add voice narrations to enhance a presentation. Refrain from using the audio command on the Insert tab, that's not compatible with a Studio '13 publish. Instead, use the record narration button on the Articulate tab. Syncing of slide animations can be done during the recording or afterwards.

Outside applications can be used to record narration into an audio file which can then be imported. Whether imported from a file or recorded within the application, syncing of slide animations can be done (or corrected) using the sync animations button.

Narration (either imported or recorded) can be edited using the audio editor button. This is useful for silencing rogue sounds that may have made it into the audio like coughs or shuffling of papers.

Annotations can help bring a user's visual focus to specific areas of a slide. As an accompaniment to screen recordings, they can improve the effectiveness of the demonstration by keeping the viewer looking in the right places.

The player's colors can be changed, and several of it's features can be toggled on or off. A player with the menu turned off, or at least re-positioned to the upper right, looks more minimal.

Navigational problems are sometimes discovered in the final preview. Sometimes duplicating a slide and modifying the duplicate, along with easy adjustments to branching, is all that is needed to solve these dilemmas.

Of the publish options, web and LMS are the most used. All files and folders created during the publish process are necessary for the presentation to run (so all must be uploaded to the web server or LMS). The file that viewers should be directed to is named "presentation" which will automatically direct them to the other presentation file if it is detected that their equipment cannot view Flash content.