Which color are you?
What is your spirit animal?
Which{insert random TV show or movie here}characterareyou?
In recentyears,therehas been a proliferation of web content sites,such asBuzzfeed,that seem packed full ofquizzes that, through a few basic questions,claim to be able to identify the deepest,darkestdepthsof your personalityandrelate them to almost anything you can think of.I’m not going to comment about the accuracy of the results,but the way these quizzes are built is quite interesting – and distinctly possible in Articulate Storyline 2.
Translated into Storyline speak, these quizzes are just a series of slides with images, shapes or text on them and when you click one of theobjectsStoryline registers your choice and jumps to the next slide.The choices will be grouped into categories and after you have answered allofthe questions,the quizdisplaysyour result based on the number of choices made in each category.
So,building the slides is very simple
- Lay them out asappropriate – maybe something like this:
- SetupStoryline to track the choices made.
For those of you who read teen magazines (and sometimes magazines for grown-ups too) you’d see these quizzes and at the bottom of the page – or over the page if the publisher was trying to be a bit sneaky – you’d see the summary‘result’paragraphs.You’d circle all your responses and count them up to find your results,ending up being “Mostly A”, “Mostly B” or Mostly C”.If you’d sneaked a peak at theresults first it’salmost certain you’d manipulate your choices to get the answer you wanted.
But in today’s technology based world you don’t get to see the results first. Yes, the questions and answers are sometimes obvious,but that’s half the fun.
Use variables to track learner’s choices
Tomake the survey work in Storyline2, you need totrack yourlearner’schoices,and for this we usevariables. Create a variablefor each set of choices:
These are usually number variables as you will need tocalculate with them.We“add” to themwhen we make a choice, and work out which is “Greater than” the othersto display the result.
Use triggers to navigate through the course
So, what do those triggers look like?There are two triggers on each answer option:
- An “Adjust variable” trigger toregister theuser’s choicein a particular category.
- A “Jump to” triggerthat moves the quiz onto the next slide.
Make sure the triggers are set up in thissequence, because if you “Jump” before you “Adjust” you won’t register theuser’schoice.
Give your learner’s feedback
Once you have all your slides built you are ready to start creating the feedbackandresults.You could go old school and just display all the feedback on one slide, just like the magazines, or you could use the technology in front of you and split it up, by showingthe user their personalized result. You could usemultiple slides – one foreach category – and the navigation is controlled by adding conditions to your “Jump to” triggers on the last question.
Or it could consist of one slide where you display different information based on thelearner’s choices. This could be achieved usinglayers, states or variables. The image here shows the variables options:
Either way there’s always the option to add an extra page to summarize all the possibilities, with a “Want to find out about the other types?” link.
There you are – a quick and simple magazine/online style survey done quickly and simply.
But… that’s not necessarily everything
If you build your surveys this way you will findthat your “Category A” option may always be on the left, “Category B” in the middle, “Category C” on the right etc. Unless you make the distinct effort to switch them round.And you will still need to keep track of which is which yourself, and thequestionswill always be presented in the sequence you buildthem.In the realm of printed media this is something youmustlive with, but again technology can give you an edge here.
Randomize question order
To randomizethe orderthatthe choices are presented in, convert your slides intoFreeform Questions, which isso easy in Storyline2.You canalsotake it one step furtherand place thequestionsina question bank, whichrandomize the order in which they are delivered.With just a few extra clicks your quiz is randomized from head to toe, and ready to go!
So, now we know how, what could we use it for?
Whilstidentifying your innermost motivations based on your preferred tipple or holiday hideaway is something we all do from time to time, there are more practical, work-baseduses for this technique.
Ever filled out a Learning Styles or Team Roles Survey? Are you an Activist, a Theorist, a Reflector? Plant,Team-workeror Motivator? If so, then you’ve probably used this exact technique – whether it be online or on paper – it’s the same thing.
Take inspiration from what you see about you, apply a little Storyline magic (a.k.a. a few variables and a trigger or two) and have some fun.
Want to see how I did it? Check out my interpretation of an old magazine quiz, ‘How trendy are you?‘
