Can a Slider or Dial Be a Quiz Question?

Want to make your e-Learning quizzes more interactive? Let’s dial things up and slide into how to use sliders and dials in Storyline 360 quizzing!

The DevLearn conference is a great opportunity for us to connect with e-Learning industry peers. It’s also a chance to take our hands-on Articulate 360 training to a new locale! We recently had the opportunity to convert one of the questions we receive during our Storyline 360 training into a DevLearn conference session. We had a blast showcasing how to use sliders and dials in a new, creative way—by transforming them into gradable quiz questions. So, we wanted to share this with you here on The Articulate Trainer too!

Sliders and dials let learners uncover content by moving along a sliding track or rotating a dial around a mid-point. They provide versatility in developing e-Learning interactions, but they can also be a game changer when it comes to quizzing. So, how do we quiz learners using sliders and dials? Read on for the answer this “as heard in training” question!

 

Downloadable Designs

Before we get started, feel free to download the completed Storyline 360 design or a practice file to get you started.

 

Step One: Insert Quiz Slide

First, we need a slide!

Let’s begin with a fresh canvas, and since sliders and dials use numeric variables, we’ll start by inserting a Numeric Graded Question slide.

Tip: If you’re using the downloadable files above, this step has already been done!

 

Step Two: Insert Slider/Dial

Use the Insert tab to insert either a slider or a dial.

 

Step Three: If you like it, put a name on it!

We feel that naming items is great for organization when working in Storyline 360.

In this instance, we recommend naming:

1. Slider/Dial
   Name the slider or dial in the Timeline panel.
2. Variable
   Storyline 360 automatically creates variables for any sliders or dials. We always rename variables so that they’re easier to identify. We can do so via the project variables button (the blue “x”) on the right side of the Triggers panel.
   Tip: Remember that variable names cannot contain spaces.

 

Step Four: Adjust Properties

Next, we’ll adjust the properties of the slider or dial.

Select the slider or dial and navigate to the Slider Tools or Dial Tools tab in the upper ribbon.

Using our example, if we ask learners how many inches of rain falls in Las Vegas annually, we will provide a range of 0 to 10 inches using the Start and End values of the slider or dial.

Tip: We can also allow the learner to submit half increments by adjusting the Step value to 0.5!

Finally, you can set the Initial value to the value you prefer the slider or dial to rest initially! We’d usually have the slider or dial begin at 0 initially, but this may depend on the build.

 

Step Five: Equate Variables

Now, we need Storyline 360 to read the slider’s value as the answer to the question.

To accomplish this, we’ll add a new trigger to the Triggers panel and set the question variable equal to the slider or dial variable.

Our trigger should read something like this:

 

Step Six: Adjust Form View

Before we can call this design complete, we need to provide Storyline 360 with the acceptable answer for our question!

Access Form View and update the fields accordingly.

In our slider example, we are accepting any number between 4.5 and 5.5 inches of rainfall.

 

Best Practice Tip

If your learners can revisit this quiz question slide, we’d recommend adding one more trigger to reset the slider or dial variable to its initial value.

Reset the slider or dial by adding the following trigger:

 

We hope this helps add to your e-Learning development, as well as the extras we’ve included in the downloadable files! If you’ve spiced things up with new ways for learners to test their knowledge, please comment below! We’d love to find out what you’ve come up with.

 

 

 

~ Stefanie