Globalization has significantly impacted most businesses, leading to the establishment of offices across multiple countries and continents. As organizations expand internationally, corporate training localization becomes essential to effectively engage teams and employees.

By tailoring training programs to align with diverse cultural and regional needs, businesses can shape company culture and implement strategies to thrive on a global scale. Such training includes management, soft and hard skills, compliance, and even equipping employees with equity, diversity, and inclusion knowledge.

What is Corporate Training?

Corporate training is a real game-changer. It is a phenomenon that is significant to an organization and its employees since it helps to boost employee productivity and also improves the company’s reputation and authority in its niche.

A corporate training program is the process of educating and exposing the staff of an organization to important knowledge and skills required for them to do their jobs more effectively. This entails frequently organizing physical seminars, eLearning programs, or providing training materials to employees.

What is Corporate Training Localization?

Meeting the learning needs of international employees is not a one-size-fits-all approach. Corporations with a diversified worldwide workforce must learn to localize training materials, learning environments, and teaching approaches to suit the teams’ and employees’ cultural and regional standards.

Corporate training localization goes beyond the translation of written content into the local language of employees. It is all about personalizing every aspect of the training material to appeal to the culture of the target audience. By adapting corporate training to align with linguistic and local contexts or preferences of employees, organizations can be assured of better understanding, engagement, retention, and assimilation of knowledge acquired during the training.

Types of Training Materials to be Adapted

1. Training Manuals
2. Instructor Guides
3. Presentation Slides
4. Quick Reference Materials
5. eLearning Videos
6. Job Aids

Five Benefits of Localizing Corporate Training

When a company expands its workforce internationally, it must also adapt its training programs to suit its diverse workforce. Training employees from different cultural backgrounds and languages requires implementing an effective localization strategy to give them the best learning experience.

Here are some top benefits of localizing corporate training programs.

1. Fosters Diversity and Inclusion

   As organizations expand beyond borders, localization of training programs no longer is optional, but becomes a necessity. Investing in a good localization strategy increases learning outcomes, leading to increased productivity. By fostering a sense of belonging and inclusivity, through the adaptation of training programs for different groups, employees will feel more respected and valued which reflects a great work culture that will boost employee loyalty.

2. Better Learning Outcome and Experience

   Localization efforts targeted at corporate and compliance training make learning more engaging. Adapting even the smallest elements like date, time, currency, and units of measurement formats can make learning more interesting, and boost employees’ motivation to learn.

3. Maintains Precision, Consistency, and Accuracy

   Localization of training materials is a sure way of preserving the core message of the training materials which could be misunderstood or lost by translation alone. Adapting educational content also eliminates misunderstandings and offense amongst offices with regional differences and adds uniformity to the content. For instance, some regions use right to left script layout, while others use left to right layout. Taking this factor into consideration can help organizations convey teachings accurately to diverse employees.

4. Cultivate a Healthy Work Culture

   Employees are the strength of any successful organization. Investing in corporate training is a way to cultivate a healthy and strong corporate culture. Additionally, employee loyalty will increase when they see that the company has invested resources toward their professional development needs. The staff of such an organization will be willing to reciprocate the effort by increasing their performance.

Challenges in Corporate Training Localization

As a result of regional differences, there is no fixed approach to localization. Applying a localization strategy for corporate training on a global scale can be tricky and comes with some challenges.

However, recognizing these challenges can be a step towards tackling and overcoming them. Here are some challenges when localizing corporate training materials.

1. Logistics

   Localizing materials for corporate training can be quite daunting as these learning resources come in varying formats. Extracting text for translation and adjusting multimedia for the Learning Management System (LMS) takes time and effort. Partnering with an expert localization service provider like GPI can make the process smoother and more effective.

2. Language Variations

   Apart from language differences, there are also dialectal variations between individuals within the same geolocation. This can pose a serious challenge and disrupt efforts targeted at localization. Catering to a workforce with linguistic preferences and dialectal differences requires paying keen attention to the differences in vocabulary, spelling, abbreviations, and grammatical structure.

3. Errors and Mistakes

   Providing employees with educational materials that are not up to par reduces employee engagement. Using examples that are not culturally appropriate can be offensive. In order to enhance engagement and retention, materials must be free of spelling errors, grammatical blunders, and formatting mistakes. Paying attention to these details reduces distractions, offenses, and uncomfortable situations.

Six Best Practices for Effective Corporate Training Localization

1. Know Your Target Audience

   Before implementing a localization strategy, it is important to know who the efforts are targeted towards. It is also important to be cognizant of dialectal differences in a language. For instance, the Spanish spoken in Argentina, Spain, and Mexico are distinct.

   An effective way to learn about your target audience is to gather useful information about employees. This data may include geographical location, language, culture, and laws.

   Once this information is known, the next step is to categorize employees based on similar characteristics of language, culture, locale, and country. By focusing on these details, the process of creating region-specific learning content will be easier.

2. Use Simple Language and Clear Formatting

   Different countries and regions have their unique formatting styles. Some cultures read from right to left. These observations are necessary to take note that all the elements in learning materials are culturally relevant for employees. Ensure that the fonts, text size, and layout are appropriate.

   Additionally, the language of the educational materials should be simple. Avoid ambiguous words that make sentences complex. Use short sentences to convey messages. This makes content translation and adaptation less difficult. Secondly, it enhances clarity, readability, engagement, and retention.

3. Add Relevant Graphics and Multimedia Contents

   There are two major ways of adding multimedia graphic elements to training materials, incorporating neutral graphics that will be relevant across regions and cultures, and adding personalized images or diagrams that will resonate with employees.

   For voice-overs, choosing the right narrator for training materials is key. For instance, training materials targeted towards employees in the West require a friendly and informal narrator whereas, an audience in the Asian region would prefer a formal narrator that sounds authoritative.

4. Leverage AI and Machine Translation Tools

   The presence of Artificial Intelligence in the translation industry has been really helpful in streamlining localization workflows. AI technologies and translation tools can be utilized to generate translation of multilingual content for large projects from written to multimedia content.

5. Partner with Localization Experts and Native Influencers

   Creating a well-adapted training program is beneficial. This is achievable with a trusted and experienced localization service provider such as GPI made up of expert translators who understand the subject matter. Collaborating with native influencers is also helpful to connect with the target audience, they can provide valuable insights and tips for effective localization because they understand the ins and outs of their language and culture. From the perspective of local influencers, training materials that contain nuanced language with idioms, phrases, and multimedia can be localized to be culturally relevant.

6. Conduct Quality Assurance Testing

   Once educational materials are translated and localized for the target workforce, the final step before publishing is quality assurance (QA) testing. This critical step is best handled by QA experts who are native speakers of the target language or by selected representatives fluent in that language, as decided by the localization team.

   After translating and localizing the educational materials for the target workforce, the final step before publishing the content is quality assurance (QA) testing. This is an integral step that can only be conducted by localization QA experts who are native speakers of the target language or a group of representatives of the target language, depending on the choice made by the localization team.

   QA testing is so important because the final version of the learning material is reviewed in context. The reviewer also checks for any technical issues related to the software and general user interface.

Conclusion

For modern businesses, having a workforce from various linguistic and cultural backgrounds is now the norm. This is especially the case for organizations that prefer to work with a diverse pool of talents.

Investing in an effective localization strategy increases the employee’s ability to comprehend and retain information. This improves work performance and productivity and eventually boosts company ROI.

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Articulate Rise and Storyline are the most popular authoring tools chosen by instructional designers. Its principal function is the development of online eLearning courses. Nowadays, many companies in different industries and professionals use eLearning courses to train their employees and improve their skills or learn online.

Both tools were created by the same company and have similar functions. With these two eLearning development tools available, the question is how to choose the right tool to use. Well, the answer depends on the type of project you want to create. In this article, we will talk about their differences and their uses.

Articulate Rise

Features and uses

You can create your course completely on your browser because Articulate Rise is an online tool. That means that you don´t need to download any program on your computer. It’s a cloud-based tool, with a powerful drag-and-drop function included in the browser.

The most important thing about Rise is that it allows you to create content for all screen sizes. That is called “responsive design” and means that your course will adapt to any screen size. Rise is flexible and was developed for pc, notebooks, and mobile phones.

Rise doesn’t have many customization options, which means we have limited control over the look and feel of the content in our courses. But it is an easy-to-use tool, you can learn it in minutes, and allows you to create simple interactions and design a course quickly.

What about localizing courses in Articulate Rise?

Regarding the localization of eLearning courses, Rise supports content creation in multiple languages but unfortunately does not support RTL (right to left) languages at 100%. In this scenario, engineers must create solutions to adapt courses correctly. There are some online tools which can be sued to improve the appearance of an RTL course.

Articulate Storyline

Features and uses

Compared to Articulate Rise, Storyline is a tool with a little more time in the eLearning market. It looks and feels like Microsoft PowerPoint, it consists of a series of slides where you can add content easily.

With Storyline you can create courses from scratch, allowing you to add countless design elements such as graphics, animations, audio, videos, and much more.

In case you don´t have enough experience with eLearning tools, Storyline comes with hundreds of pre-built templates, ready to be customized as you desire.

One of the features of Storyline is that it allows us the creation of attractive and complex interactions in our courses. You can create activities to solve quizzes, games, assessments, etc. Complex interactions include, for example, when a user selects an incorrect answer. The program allows the creation of a custom error message and shows the appropriate explanations.

What about localization courses in Storyline?

As for the localization of eLearning courses, it initially allowed translation through a Word document. Nowadays, Storyline supports XLIFF files, and it simply consists of exporting the content and then importing the translation. The tool supports content in multiple languages, including RTL languages.

Conclusion:

Both tools are powerful in creating eLearning courses. For companies or professionals, Rise works fine. It’s flexible, easy to use and learn, and you can create courses with simple interactions, in record time. The most important feature is that these courses will be flexible and adaptable to any screen.

But if you need to create courses with customized content and complex interactions, Storyline is the best choice. It allows extreme customization of many design elements, including their pre-built templates.

For content localization in multiple languages, both are suitable, but Storyline is a better option, as it supports content creation in RTL.

The post Articulate Rise vs. Storyline: How to Choose the Right Tool appeared first on Globalization Partners International.

The  Storyline 360 Insert tab contains a variety of powerful features. In today’s article, I will go through two of these features — adding shapes and tables in Articulate Storyline 360.

Working with Shapes

Shapes play many different roles in Storyline. Shapes are used to build the design of a slide as drag-and-drop questions or they are inserted to function as buttons. . Let’s start with how to insert a shape.

From the “Insert” tab choose “shape”.  There are a wide variety of shapes that you can choose from depending on your design needs.

You can insert any shape you want then control it with the “Format” tab. This allows you to customize the color, fill, outline, size, group, etc.

You can add text to any shape through one of these two ways:

The first option is to, draw a text box from the “Format” tab.

Tip: Don’t forget to group the shape with the text box by selecting both the text box and the shape then hit “Ctrl + G” or choose the “group” option from the “Format” tab:

The second way to add text to a shape is to write directly in the shape. Select the shape, then right-click and choose “Edit Text”.

How Do You Convert Shapes to Buttons?

One powerful feature of shapes is that we can convert them to buttons. You can do so by adding different states and triggers to control how a button works. Typically, shapes have only one “Normal” state.

To convert a shape to a button, select the shape and go to Format > Button.

Now the “States” option for the button appears below

You can copy this formation to the shape by choosing “Format Painter” and then clicking on the shape. Now you can use the shape as a button.

Using Format Shape and Format Picture

If you want to change or edit any of the Shape information and format, you can Press “Ctrl + Enter” or select from the “Format” tab on the ribbon, then click the arrow in the lower right corner of the “Shape Styles” or “Picture Styles” group.

You can also use the tabs on the left side of the window to set your options.

Working With Tables

Tables are an important tool to organize data in an easy way. They also play an important role in making your data more accessible for all users.

Import Tables:

There are two options to import a table in Storyline:

– Import tables from a PowerPoint presentation with all the text and formatting, then edit them as you’d like.

– Copy and paste a table from any other tool like Excel.  All you need to do is to select the table and copy (Ctrl + C) then paste it where you want it to appear. Formatting may be lost, but you always can edit the table content and format when needed.

Creating Tables

You can always start a table from scratch. Select Insert > Table and select the number of rows and columns you want, then click your mouse to activate your choice.

The table will appear on the current slide. Then you can start building your table by adding data, rows, columns, and formatting.

There are two options in the ribbon to control how the table looks. The “Design” tab controls the table design and the “Format” tab controls the text layout inside the table.

Shapes and tables in Articulate Storyline 360 can be used in many ways and levels. Aside from their original usage, both can be used as interactive elements to enrich your content design. Follow these easy steps and explore how you can make your product more engaging with shapes and tables.

The post Working with Shapes and Tables in Articulate Storyline 360 appeared first on Globalization Partners International.

Articulate 360 includes an interesting tool that enables you to create, manage, and publish eLearning courses within one review link. It also allows all team members to check courses in one place and add comments related to their fields of expertise. This tool is Review 360. It is an online space that is very similar to the Learning Management System (LMS) and File Transfer Protocol (FTP) hosting, Review 360 enables you to show the course as everyone else will see it. In this blog, I will go through the steps on how to publish an eLearning course to Review 360.

Step 1: Publishing a New Course or Editing an Existing Course

1. Click on the Home tab and click Publish.
2. Select the Review 360 tab on the left (as shown below).

3. Choose to publish a new course or update a course that has already been published before.

• To create a new item: Choose this option to publish a new course to Review 360, then give it a name.

Note:
– The title on the player will display up to 80 characters.
– The name of your course will be either the name of the placeholder in the first slide or the name of the file itself.

• Publish a new version of an existing course: Select this to update an existing already published course in Review 360. Select the item you want to update.

Note: One of the best features of this option is that Review 360 keeps version tracking so you can get back to any old version at any time.

• Publish locally for manual upload: Select this option to publish a course on your device to manually upload it.
Note: This option is great if you have a slow internet connection.

Step 2: Update a Course Thumbnail Image

This is optional but you may need it upon client marketing or SEO instructions. The default is that Storyline uses the view of the first slide in any course as the thumbnail image for the course on Review 360. However, you can choose a specific image.

1. Switch to the Web tab on the left side of the Publish window.
2. Click the ellipsis button (…) beside the Title field to open the Project Info window.
3. Click the hyperlinked text below the default image, then select a different slide in your course, or click Picture from File to choose an image on your hard drive.
4. Click OK to close the Project Info window.
5. Switch back to the Review 360 tab to finish the publishing process.

Step 3: Adjust the Quality Settings and the Player Properties

Use the Properties section of the Publish window to make any changes to the player and quality settings.

1. The Quality options enable you to control the compression settings for audio, videos, and images. The quality options default is always set to whatever the last used settings. To change them, click the Quality property, change what you need, and click OK.

• Choose Standard if you want to use the default settings: optimal video quality of 5, audio bitrate of 56 kbps, and JPG image quality of 100%.

• Choose Custom if you want to define your desired quality settings. Drag the slider for any of the three values to change the compression. Higher values give you higher-quality output but also larger file sizes (which means longer download times). Lower values give you smaller file sizes and faster download times, but the visual and audio quality will be lower as well.

• Mark the Optimize Audio Volume box to normalize audio throughout your course for consistent volume across all slides.

2. The Player property shows the name of the player currently assigned to your current course.

Note: To make changes to your player, click the player name to open the player editor.

Step 4: Choose to Publish a Slide, a Scene, or an Entire Course

The default action for publishing is to publish your entire course. However, you can now choose to publish a certain scene or just a single slide. This is very helpful when you want to test a particular scene or slide. To do that, just click the Publish property, then choose the entire project, a single scene, or a single slide.

Step 5: Choose a Tracking Option

If you insert your Storyline 360 project into a Rise 360 course as a Storyline block (see below), you get to choose how to track the completion of the Storyline block. Click the Tracking property, then select one, two, or even all three of the following tracking options. Whichever option a learner completes first is the one that Rise 360 uses to mark the Storyline block complete.

• When the learner has viewed # slides: Mark this option to trigger completion when learners view a certain number of slides. You can choose a percentage or a fixed number. Then decide which slides get counted—all slides or just those with slide numbers.
• When the learner completes a quiz: Mark this option to track learners based on their quiz results. You can let Storyline 360 keep track of multiple quizzes and send results to your LMS/LRS for the first quiz each learner completes.
• Using triggers: Mark this option to track learners based on course completion triggers you added to your course.

Step 6: Publish

When done adding all the options you want, click the Publish button. Your course will get published and uploaded to Review 360 at the same time. Please note that the speed of finishing this step depends on many factors. For example, course size, number of multimedia items, and your internet speed. When the Publish confirmation window appears you can View Project to open it on Review 360 using your default web browser.

Step 7: Giving Access to Your Published Course

To give viewers access to your published course:
1. Open your web browser to your Review 360 home page and click your course to open it.
2. Click Share in the upper right corner.
3. If you want to password-protect your course, mark the box to Set a password and enter a password in the field provided.
4. Copy the shareable link, then send it to your viewers. Be sure to give them the password, too, if you added one.

If you don’t want viewers to post comments on your course, click the ellipsis (…) button in the upper right corner and choose Disable comments.

It is recommended to always use Review 360 as a quality assurance step before you deliver your final product to the client. It is easy, time-saving, and guarantees the best collaboration between various teams.

Globalization Partners International has a rich collection of eLearning topics, download it for free.

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Now more than ever, every organization, business, public, or private entity needs to train their members on their corporate compliance standards to mitigate their risk exposure to physical or digital security issues, lawsuits, upholding the rights of employees and customers alike, environmental concerns, identifying company values, among many other requirements based on their specific operational needs.

In today’s world, companies and organizations have many employees and members, either located domestically or internationally, whose first language is not English or the primary language of where the company is headquartered.

Identify Language for Translation:

To assure a company or organization is properly training their staff and members on their corporate compliance, everyone will need to be able to fully understand the standards. As such, training on the standards should be provided in each of the languages used within your organization – which can include Braille and Sign Language.

Training Materials Translation:

Translation of training content can be for printed material and in many cases, video training is the preferred method to implement training. Videos can have the script translated and either subtitle added to the video or a voice-over is implemented for each language required for all corporate training.

Not offering training in the employees’ or members’ native language could result in a misunderstanding of what is expected of the person, and open a legal risk for the organization. Another consideration is conforming with accessibility standards which focus on how a disabled person accesses or benefits from a site, system, or application.

Working with an ISO 17100 Certified translation vendor should be considered as translation industry best practices will be followed which will assure an appropriate translation by professional linguists experienced in the various subject areas to be translated. Translation is performed by a team performing three levels of linguistic review – translation, editing, and proofreading to assure the highest level of quality. In most cases, a glossary will be developed for key terminology and translated for each language required.

Glossary Development for Corporate Compliance:

Development of a glossary and translation for each language in your organization should not be overlooked. The glossary will serve as a baseline for the key terminology that you use in your industry and organization. Often a company may only translate the key terms used in their organization for the glossary, but for corporate compliance needs, definitions should also be included and translated to have documentation of what the organization is conveying with use of the terms, and avoid a possible misunderstanding of key terms.

Here are a few links to blogs that provide best practice guidance for training projects:

• https://www.globalizationpartners.com/2020/06/11/elearning-localization-localizing-for-multiple-cultures-and-countries/
• https://www.globalizationpartners.com/2017/09/19/creating-an-effective-elearning-localization-strategy/
• https://www.globalizationpartners.com/2015/08/04/how-to-translating-your-elearning-and-training-courses/
• https://www.globalizationpartners.com/2021/03/03/why-video-subtitle-standards-are-important/
• https://www.globalizationpartners.com/2017/06/14/translating-multimedia-content-videos/

An organization providing Corporate Compliance training is a must in today’s world, but all employees need to understand what they are expected to know and adhere to as part of your organization. To do this they should have the opportunity to learn in their native language.

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eLearning plays an important role to enhance learners’ skills starting from the very basic to the most advanced one. To achieve the goal of any eLearning course, developers invest a lot of time to design and build a course that will engage the learner. In addition to the educational goals and scientific material for any eLearning course, visual and audio material play an important part in delivering educational goals.

The video and audio creation process can be very complicated and time consuming. Thanks to some authoring tools like Storyline, the process can be less complicated and affordable. In this article we will go through the audio and video features in Articulate Storyline 360.

Working with Audio

There are many ways to insert audio in Storyline.

1. Import file from an existing audio file

This option enables you to insert any audio from your device to your timeline. Storyline supports .mp3, wav, wma, and many other audio extensions.

2. Import audio file from Media library

This is the same as the import from file. It enables the user to import from the media library of the current project or any previous projects.

3. Record from mic

This option enables the user to record directly from his personal microphone. To do this you have to set the recording options to “Options”.

4. Text-to-Speech

This is a very distinguished feature because it can save a lot of money and effort. All you must do is to copy the text you need to convert to audio and choose the suitable language and voice type you want. The steps are as follows:

• Copy the text you want to convert to an audio
• Go to Audio > Text-to-Speech
• Copy the test to the window below
• Choose the language and voice gender

TIP: You can also choose to add Closed caption in the same step by checking the “Generate Closed Captions”.

• Click “OK”

Now you have an audio with subtitle generated in the same step. Below is the output of this step.

Working with Videos

Working with videos in storyline will not enable you to create advanced videos, but it can help you create simple videos.
There are many ways to insert video in Storyline.

1. Import video from file

This option enables you to insert a video file from your device to your timeline.

2. Import video from Website

This option enables the user to embed video from popular video hosting websites like YouTube and Vimeo

3. Import video file from Media library

This is the same as import from file. It enables the user to import from media library of the current project or any previous projects.

4. Record a video from Webcam

You can record videos using your personal webcam following the below steps:

• Go to the Insert > Video > Record Webcam
• Make sure to adjust the device settings before you start.
  
• Click the red Record button to begin recording
• When done, click the “Stop” button.

You can preview the output of the recording before inserting it to the timeline by clicking the Play button.

Tips for Dealing with Audio and Video in Storyline

Storyline has an audio editor that enables you to delete parts from the audio, control the volume by increasing or decreasing it and add silence where needed.

You can export audios from Storyline to mp3, wave, and both mp3 and wave at the same time.

You can choose a poster frame for your video by right clicking on the video frame and choose “Set Poster Frame”.

Recorded or imported videos can be controlled by the timeline and the video editor. Video editor enables you to trim, crop, adjust volume, add logo, and control the brightness and contrast of the video.

Videos imported from websites can’t be edited in the video editor. It also plays separately from the slide and can’t be controlled by the timeline.

Storyline is not a video and audio advanced producer, but it has the essentials that enable course developers to polish and enhance the quality of the final eLearning course.

The post Working with Audio and Video in Articulate Storyline 360 appeared first on Globalization Partners International.

Illustrator and Photoshop are the most common tools for layout design. Many times, we layout courses in one of these Adobe tools. Here we create designs, define colors, set the layers needed, and much more! And when we are finally happy with our design, a problem pops up – how do we import the content created in Adobe into Articulate Storyline?

Here you can find some tricks to avoid the inconvenience of the Storyline integration, as I see it, the Achilles’ heel of this powerful tool.

How to Integrate Adobe With Storyline as Effectively as Possible?

Fortunately, there are many ways to solve this issue. Here I will provide the most effective solutions in my experience in each scenario. In this way, we can take utilize our work in the design step.

First, some comments to optimize the layout for your course:

• Make sure to configure your Photoshop or Illustrator template with the same size as the storyline course.
• Build your design in layers. Each layer should match the layers you need to create for Storyline. This step is the most important to avoid issues when synchronizing

Are you satisfied with your design? Great, go ahead!

How to Proceed if You Have Your Design in .PSD Format?

Here I have a Photoshop example:

Step 1:

On the File menu select Export > Layers to Files…

Step 2:

Select your Destination, select Transparency, and deselect Trim Layers, then click Run.

As a result of this export, you will obtain several layers of the same size, with different objects and transparent backgrounds.

Step 3:

In a new Storyline project, go to the INSERT menu, and select Picture > Picture from File…

Then, select all the layers imported from Photoshop and click Open.

As result, you will obtain your design separately in layers like you mocked up previously. Now you are ready to animate layers, make the text editable, and do whatever you need to complete your course in the right way!

…and if You Have Your Design in .AI Format?

Here, I have an Illustrator example, in essence, it is the same as in the photoshop example, but I need to complete a few additional steps thank in the Photoshop exampleHere, I have my file with its corresponding layers:

Step 1:

On the File menu select Export > Export As…

Step 2:

Select Photoshop (*.PSD) file and click Export.

 

Then complete the pop-up as follows:

As a result of this export, you will obtain a correctly laid out Photoshop file, with this file, you can follow the previous steps described in the Photoshop section.

 

Good news, Storyline accepts SVG now!

Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) is an XML-based file format that uses lines and dots to display a graphic. In contrast to pixel-based image formats like PNG or JPG, SVG has no set resolution and stays sharp when scaled up or down on any screen size. Another advantage is that SVGs are much smaller in size. To use SVG images on Articulate Storyline you only need import the same as you would a typical image, it is just as simple as that. (For more information about Storyline 360: SVG Support, visit the official website of Articulate)

 

Conclusion

• Remember that instructional design is, first of all, functional.
• Make sure to take note of your goals before you start laying out.
• Remember to set the dimensions of your course before you start designing in Adobe.
• Ensure the distribution of your layers correspond to the animation you want to perform.
• Keep in mind the workflow of your course.
• At GPI we make sure to stay up to date with new updates in the world of eLearning, we invite you to learn more about all our services here.

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Working with text is an essential part of eLearning course development. Articulate Storyline 360 makes working with text a pleasure, introducing a variety of options and styles to work with. Text styles is a powerful feature that enables you to update text throughout the course with only one click.

Let’s go through this feature and explain how it works in Storyline 360. In this blog we will learn the following:

• How to define styles
• How to create custom styles
• How to apply styles
• How to reuse styles
• How to reset styles
• How to copy & paste text

How to define styles

To define a new style, follow the below steps:

1. Start by creating a text box and format the text as you need exactly. Define the font, size, color, etc.
2. Open the Home tab > Text Styles. You will find the style list. You will notice a check mark and an asterisk beside the style that is applied to your text. The asterisk means that the style of the selected text is modified. See the screen below.
3. To update the style according to the edits you made, go to the Home tab > Text Styles and click on the style name. Then from the style menu options click Update style from selection.

NB: The style you updated automatically will be applied to the text you select.

How to create custom styles

Storyline allows you to create unlimited custom styles for any text element; such as quotes, buttons, tables, image captions, and speech callouts. There is also an option to create two versions of the same style that suits different backgrounds. For example, a white and black version. Below are the steps to create a custom style for a block quote.

1. Start by creating a text box and format the text defining the font, size, color, etc.
2. Open the Home tab > Text Styles > Add Style from the bottom of the list.
3. Choose a Name for your style and enter it as below.
4. Choose the style level that the screen readers will read. For example,

• • You can select the (<P>) for the Normal Text
  • You can select the (<h1>) for Heading 1
  • You can select the (<h2>) for Heading 2
  • You can select the (<h3>) for Heading 3
  • You can select the (<h4>) for Heading 4, or
  • You can select the (<blockquote>) for Blockquote

5. Then Click OK to confirm your settings.

How to apply Styles

Applying styles has never been easier. All you need to do is point the mouse to a text block or select the text box edges; Go to Home > Text Styles and pick a style from the list. That’s all!

To work more effectively, you can apply text styles to the slide master and feedback master. This will reflect across all the course slides. If you need to override a text style, you can do it simply by editing the text directly in the specific slide.

Within the same text box, you can have a different paragraph style for each paragraph – there is no limitation.

How to reuse styles

Any styles used within the course are saved within the design theme of the project. You can have more than one per course and each one will keep its own list of text styles. To reuse these styles in another project, do one of the following options:

Save the theme(s). You can save the custom design theme and apply it to other projects.

Save a template from your current project. By saving your current project as a template, you will be able to use this template in other projects using the styles you created.

Copy text from an old project. You can simply copy text from an old project to a new project by choosing the basic Paste function.

How to reset styles

If you want to reset your style(s) to the default, all you need to do is the following:

• Select the text style(s) one by one.
• Go to Home > Text Styles.
• Select the style you want then choose Reset style.

How to copy & paste text

Copy and paste text from one slide to another depends on the following:

• If you paste the text using the Ctrl + V shortcut or the Paste option from the menu – the text will keep the original formatting.
• If you paste the text and used the Use Destination Theme option – the text will match the destination theme.
• If you copied the text from an external document like Word, PowerPoint, or Excel – the text will check the slide format.

Important tips and notes for working with text

Choose unique names for your styles:

• Always use slide and feedback masters to apply text styles.
• Always start editing styles from the higher level to the lower one. For example, if you want to edit the styles start with H1 until you reach the normal text.
• You can update the styles of the hyperlink states by updating the style from selection option. Right click on each state and choose Update Style from Selection.
• Use the format painter to copy the formatting from one object to another. Format painter doesn’t only allow you to copy the text formatting, but it copies the text fill, outline, shadow, and any other text effect.
• You can also change the text styles across the entire course by replacing the Theme Fonts with another one. This will change all the styles within the course with just one click.

Working with text in Articulate Storyline 360 is a pleasure for any instructional designer. It makes it easy to keep consistency across the course and use any number of styles and themes to achieve the authors’ educational goals.

The post Working with Text in Storyline 360 appeared first on Globalization Partners International.

The graphic script on storyboards is an excellent tool to visualize and present all information needed when creating an eLearning course. It helps us unify a multitude of information such as graphics, texts, time, effects, intentions, feedback, etc. Storyboards are essential to carry out work in which different components and steps coexist. In this blog, let me show you some tips on how to easily create an eLearning script.

What is the difference between Script and Storyboard?

The simplest example to define a script is similar to the way we describe an animation scene. When we want to make a scene, we need to prepare a detailed description of the following aspects before we work on recording audios or animation sequence:

• camera shots and movements
• the characters’ expressions
• what we want to emphasize in each scene
• dramatization of the scenes

Considering all the above points is an important step to approaching something more complex: the Storyboard.

In a Storyboard, we can consolidate the visual part, the narrative, and the technique in a summarized yet informative way.

Key points before creating a Storyboard

Building the storyboard requires several key elements to be carried out. First, we need to decide on what type of storyboard will be the most suitable for our project.

There are three types of basic storyboards:

1. Text-based, it’s essentially a detailed description.
2. Graphics-based, the text will serve to provide support and to add only the necessary information.
3. Prototyping sample, this is more complex in addition to using text and image, it includes functional elements, and can even contain animations or audible support.

Building an eLearning Script

Objectives and purposes of the Storyboard

There are many styles of storyboards depending on the functionalities we want to use them for. However, to define this aspect we must consider these important questions first:

• What story are we going to tell?
• What is our beginning, development, and ending?
• What do we want to convey?
• What language style are we going to use? Formal, casual, etc.
• How do we want our audience to react?
• Will there be an interaction between our eLearning course and the learner?

After answering these questions, we will have essential elements to work on. Generally, this process is going to be repeated throughout the eLearning development lifecycle.

Essential elements of a Storyboard

Manager: we will always have a reference person in each section of our Storyboard, whom to consult for content, animation, etc.

Script: the essential reference text for everyone involved to be always on the “same page”.

Graphic elements: the graphic support, animations, photography, color palette, typographies, etc.

Feedback: the multimedia job is ever collaborative. For this reason, we need to reserve a space for feedback.

In addition, we can include estimated durations, execution phases, effects descriptions, audio script, and everything that is relevant to our eLearning project. As every eLearning course has the same degree of importance, so logically, any storyboard is going to be equally important as well.

What are the benefits of working with a Storyboard?

• Allows collaborative work.
• It is flexible. We can modify it. It means, we can consider it as an evolving part of our project.
• It allows the objectives to be clearly stated and design the best possible work strategy.
• It allows establishing a system and specific work dynamic.
• It also allows us to improve our communication and language resources, such as to look for new ways to improve our workflows. Thus, optimizing both processes and the final product.

In conclusion, the Storyboard is a powerful vehicle to develop an eLearning script and allows space for creativity.

The post How to Create an eLearning Script? appeared first on Globalization Partners International.

Slide layers are used to create different interactions and sequenced scenarios within Articulate Storyline 360 eLearning modules. As indicated by its name, slide layers provide an extra layer of content that appears over the main slide. You can add many layers to a slide, which provides a lot of flexibility on how you want your content to be displayed. In this blog, we’ll talk about how to do some of the functions with slide layers:

• Add Layers
• Duplicate and Copy Layers
• Rename Layers
• Change Layer Properties
• Hide Individual Base Layer Objects
• Delete Layers

Add Layers

You can add as many layers as you want to each slide. To add a layer, click the New Layer icon in the Slide Layers panel.

Alternatively, go to the Insert tab on the ribbon and click Slide Layer.

Duplicate and Copy Layers

To duplicate layers that already exist on the same slide, select the layer(s) in the Slide Layers panel and click Duplicate Selected Layer icon.

To copy layers from one slide to another:

1. Select the layer(s) you want to copy in the Slide Layers panel, and then press Ctrl+C or right-click and choose Copy.
2. Go to the slide where you want to place the layer(s), and then press Ctrl+V or right-click and choose Paste.

Rename Layers

It’s always a good idea to name your layers with a simple, descriptive name to make it easy to identify when you’re creating triggers. To name a layer:

1. Double-click the layer’s name in the Slide Layers panel to open it for editing.
2. Type the new name.
3. Press Enter on your keyboard.

Change Layer Properties

You can change the properties for each layer on a slide. Select the layer(s) you want to edit, and then click the icon.

Make your choices as needed and click Close.

You have slide visibility options.

Here are the visibility options.

You can find different options at the base layer to control the slide navigation and gestures for the buttons and swipe. You can choose which buttons or swipes to add or remove, and you can customize these options for specific slides. For example, you may choose to only have the “Next” button for this layer with no option “Back” button.

You can also customize the player features. For example, you can choose whether to use the default player features or add custom ones for a specific slide. Similarly, you may need to add resources for a specific slide or remove the notes of this slide, etc.

You can also reset all the settings to default by clicking on the Reset button.

Hide Individual Base Layer Objects

Layer properties give you a feature to Hide objects on the base layer, which allows you to hide everything on the main layer. If you want to hide a base layer only:

1. Expand Base Layer Objects in the timeline.
2. Click the eye icon for each object you want to hide.

Delete Layers

If you want to delete a layer, select the Layer and click the trash can icon or just press the Delete key on your keyboard.

Conclusion

Working with layers won’t be complete without adding triggers to show interactions, animations and/or achieve scenario goals. You’ll be able to add triggers to display or hide a layer, start a media, show steps and create feedback layers.

Articulate Storyline 360 Slide Layer features and options provide a variety of ways to help you design interactive eLearning modules for your audience to encourage engagement with the material. Enjoy using layers’ capabilities and properties to achieve the best possible results.

Reference Links:

Articulate Storyline 360 Tutorial: What are Slide Layers and how to Work With it?

Slide Layers in Storyline 360 – E-Learning Heroes

Best Tips For Working With Slide Layers in Articulate Storyline

How to Create Fading Layers in Storyline

The post Engage Your Audience with Slide Layers in Articulate Storyline 360 appeared first on Globalization Partners International.