Can I Require Learners to Provide an Explanation after a Specific Response?

When building survey questions in Storyline 2, the Likert question type is a popular option for gathering feedback from learners. After covering this question type in Storyline training, we can almost guarantee we’ll be asked this follow-up question: “Can I require learners to explain why they gave a low value on a Likert scale question?” Or, perhaps you want to gather those glowing review comments for a high rating.  Or, find out why someone responded with a “No.”

Due to the limitations of the form-based Likert scale question, we can’t simply adjust variables within the form. But, never fail…there’s always a way to make it work in Storyline! Today, we’ll look at one easy work-around for solving this question.

Take a look at the finished solution: Click here to view the Likert Scale Question in action.

Build the Slide

To start, we need to build the question by adding the appropriate radio buttons to the slide.

Edit the States

To help learners understand the scale a little better, we then edited the hover states of each radio button to show the learner what was selected.

Convert to a Pick Many Question

Now that the slide is built and the states are created, we need to convert this slide to a question so we can track this data in an LMS. To do this, select the Insert > Convert to Freeform option.

From the menu that appears, select the “Pick Many” option. Now we need to select all of the radio buttons as choices in the form for this question.

Create Button Sets

In order to ensure that the learner only selects one rating per question, we need to create button sets. To do this, select all five radio buttons (hold down the Shift key as you select them), and then right-click on one of the radio buttons and select the Button Set option. Keep in mind that each question will need to have its own button set so that learners can rate each statement while preventing them from rating one statement twice.

Add Variables

Next, we need to set up the variables. To force the learner to elaborate, we need to communicate to Storyline when a low response is selected. In this case, we added a True/False variable for each question and named them based on the question number (such as “low 1,” “low 2,” and “low 3”), leaving each with the default value of False.

Add Triggers to Base Slide

Remember, with anything in Storyline, nothing happens without a trigger! So now we need to set up triggers to adjust those variables we just created. Each radio button choice will be set to adjust that question’s variable. For example, question 1 will need each of its choices adjusting its associated “low 1” variable based on what the learner selects. Take a look at our trigger panel for the question 1 triggers to get a better sense of which triggers are required.

The neutral (“Q1N”), disagree (“Q1D”), and strongly disagree (“Q1SD”) choices set the “low 1” variable to True, while agree (“Q1A”) and strongly agree (“Q1SA”) set the “low1” variable to False. So why do you think we need to add triggers to the high ratings? They are already set to False by default, yes, but we need to make sure the variable is also set back to False if the learner chooses a low value and then changes the answer back to a high rating.

Next, we need to use that data we just collected to send learners to an essay style question to elaborate. In this case, we used a form-based essay question to ask the learner to explain their low rating.

Add Triggers to Feedback Layers

Going back to the Likert question, we’ll set up triggers on the feedback layers as shown below.

We’ll also need a trigger to send the people who gave higher ratings on to the next question.

These triggers then need to be copied onto all feedback layers.

Summary

As you can see, you can require learners to elaborate further after answering a Likert scale question. Keep in mind that you can apply these steps to other question types as well! This will help you receive more in-depth feedback from your audience. There’s really no way to get better without knowing what you aren’t doing right!

Feel free to take a look “under the hood” at our example: Click here to download the Likert Scale Question Storyline file.

Let me know if you have any questions, or if you use a different approach to gather feedback from your learners.

Storyline goes wherever creativity takes you!

~Katie

Update: Please note that the interface of the faster new trigger workflow (in Storyline 360 update 3.33.20625.0 or later) will appear slightly different! While the process is the same, this article uses screen captures from the classic trigger workflow.