Welcome to our first post in this series! This post will guide you through the step-by-step process to streamline publish your content using Articulate Storyline 2 and get the most insight on your learner’s experience.

Who will benefit from this article?

Scenario A: you’re in the process of assessing authoring tools and started a free trial to see if Storyline meets your needs.

Scenario B: you’ve already purchased a license for Articulate Storyline, you need to figure out how you can publish content successfully.

Scenario C: you’re now in charge of authoring/updating/maintaining training courses for your company using Storyline, but have no solid experience with the tool.

Scenario D: you’ve used authoring tools before, maybe even this one, but need a refresher or simply more Firmwater-specific instructions.

If you relate with any of the above-mentioned scenarios, then this guide is for you.

Here are the steps you can take to ensure it runs smoothly and communicates all the right things to the Firmwater LMS…

Configuring the settings to publish for an LMS

  1. Once you’ve finished authoring your course, go to the Home tab and click Publish. A Publish window should pop up on your screen.
    Here’s where you can make all the necessary configurations.
  2. On your left-hand side, you’ll see a tab that says LMS, click on it as that is what you are going to publish for.
  3. Give your course a relevant Title and Description that you would like your users to see when logged into their LMS portal. A description can be very helpful in providing your learners with a brief overview of what the course is about and what its structure will be.
  4. In the Folder field, ensure that you are using the correct location you would like to store your package file in.
  5. Next, you will find the option to publish for HTML5 and Mobile devices. If you expect your learners to launch your course from
    devices besides their PC or laptop, you should check “Include HTML5 output”.

    Note: Browsers are starting to drop default support for Flash, so it’s always best to enable HTML5 output.

  6. We normally recommend that you leave the settings Properties as default, however, if you want to change the quality of the video or images in your course, you can do so here.
  7. Now, let’s move on to Output Options. This part is essential when publishing as this is where you’ll be able to track as well as view reports on your learner’s progress. Here, you’ll need to select SCORM 2004 from the drop-down menu.

    Next, click on Reporting and Tracking to further edit how the Firmwater LMS and your content will communicate.

    Reporting:

    Again, ensure that SCORM 2004 is selected from the drop-down menu to the right of LMS. Your title and description can correspond to that of your main menu title and description. Giving your learners more information or tips about the course is always helpful.

    The Identifier is a unique combination of characters to help the LMS recognize your content. Whenever you re-publish or want to update
    a course in the LMS, ensure that this Identifier code remains the same. This will allow the LMS to determine that you’re updating the content and not
    loading in new content.

    Now, we move on to LMS Reporting. The LMS tracks both a completion status and a success status. You will find that you may choose from four different options. We recommend that you select either Passed/Incomplete or Passed/Failed for optimal results.

    Tracking:

    For proper tracking to take place, you need to ensure this section is properly configured. You have two options: either track your learners progress based on how many slides they view, or track them based on their quiz results.

    For Track using quiz result to be an available option, you will need have at least one quiz slide, or if you have multiple, a quiz result slide that determines the total score of quiz questions throughout the course should be created.

  8. You’re now ready to publish your content for the LMS. To do that, Click the Publish button and wait for the Publish Successful dialogue box to appear. Under View Project, you’ll see the option to create a ZIP file for your course. Click on it. Now you have your course package available in ZIP format.

Tip: Our team highly recommends that you test your new content using your demo account before making it live for your learners
to launch. This will help you determine areas that need improvement in your content and recognize if you missed a step during the configuration.

If you need more details about how you can access your demo account, please don’t hesitate to reach out to
us.