Articulate 360 Storyline can produce SCORM contents and we are going to see how you can integrate them in the Teach on Mars application.

Content layout

Storyline content is usually not optimised for mobile applications, but there a few things that can be done or checked to make sure the user experience on mobile is good.

Responsive or not?

Storyline does not generate responsive contents. Instead, it will adapt the size of the content to the screen without changing the ratio of the content player. This behaviour implies a couple of consequences that you need to be aware of:

• Most contents are designed in a landscape oriented player, but in any case the content will be adapted to fit inside the screen with black borders to fill the rest of it.
• Everything is shrunken down, including interface controls like buttons and menus which can be difficult to handle on a mobile phone.
• Text also gets smaller on a mobile phone screen, and can sometimes be too small for comfortable reading.

What to do about it

Test the content

The first important thing is to test on a mobile phone screen to make sure the content is usable and readable on a small screen. You can also use the preview feature in Storyline which allows you to preview the content on multiple screen sizes. But keep in mind that nothing can replace a human test on a true mobile phone screen to check if the interface is working and the text is not too small.

Force orientation

If your content renders well on a mobile phone only when the screen is in landscape orientation, then you can configure the Storyline player to force the orientation to landscape on mobile phones, tablets, or both.

1. Open the Responsive playback menu on the right
2. Select Landscape only for Phones and/or Tablets.

Content launcher

As mentioned in this support thread, Storyline might insert a launch page before the content, and this is not something that is compatible with the Teach on Mars platform. You need to make sure that the option Launch player in new window is disabled.

Navigation with exit button

By default, Storyline does not include an Exit button in the content which is essential in Teach onMars. So you need to create a trigger or a button that will close the content.

Example

If you have no idea how to do such a thing, here is a way to add a menu in the player with this exit action:

1. Open the Player properties menu
2. Add a Player tab 
3. Name it Exit
4. Choose the alignment Topbar right or Topbar left
5. Select the action Exit course
6. and click OK.

This will add a menu with an action that allows the user to leave the content. There is one drawback though. If the content didn't already include a menu, one will be added and take some space on the screen, leaving less space for the player itself.

Data tracking

Storyline content behaviour

Here are some basic rules Storyline contents seems to follow:

• Time is always tracked on each launch
• Intermediate progress measure is not tracked (even when SCORM 2004 is selected)
• The user is able to resume the content at the last known location
• Completion status and success status depend on the content export configuration (see below)

Export configuration guide

Export type

Storyline allows you to configure how the completion status and the success status is dealt with in the content. Here's a quick guide on this configuration.

It begins in the export menu:

• Choose LMS on the left
• Choose SCORM 2004 in the Output options
• You may leave it to that and click on Publish but there's a little more to it that you might want to dive into

Reporting and tracking options

Open the Reporting and tracking options menu. Basically, here is where you can determine:

• what information the content is going to send to the Mission Center (Reporting)
• when the content is going to send this information (Tracking)

So in LMS Reporting you can choose between multiple options and each on will determine what data will be sent to the Mission Center if the content is completed or not:

Regarding when this information will be sent to the Mission Center, you need to go to the Tracking tab.

Detailed information about this configuration may be found on the Articulate 360 community hub.

That's it! You can now export your content again.