Combining Text and Images in E-Learning #152

No - I ended up counting the triggers out of sheer curiosity Richard! At one point I was getting feedback from the client saying "the plate keeps turning back to a bowl" - "sorry, this activity must be driving you crazy"! One missing trigger - and thoughts of "does this client have any idea how complex this activity is" - which obviously they don't...I wouldn't recommend aiming for this many triggers - and I believe there may be a way to reduce some of these using states, but to be honest, I'm not game to touch this activity now that I have it working - and I have my fingers crossed that the client won't come back to me now and say "can I just change this bit"!!

So, this activity is a "design a meal' activity, which starts with a menu slide with 3 button options - you start with option 1 (option 2 and 3 are locked down) where you choose a plate or a bowl - then you drag-and-drop images from 5 different food groups (only one of which is visible on the screen at any time) - there's also a counter to count your choices as you're only allowed to choose 3 food items - but you can technically choose more - then there's a check button to check your choices - so there's then 3 different feedback layers depending on your choices - one to tell you you've chosen too many food items! oh and if you try to jump forward without completing the activity, there's a feedback layer that pulls you up - the client didn't want the next button locked down, so the trigger count went up trying to accommodate this request. once you've completed option 1, you go back to the menu and choose option 2 - and option 1 gets marked as completed - option 2 becomes available (and option 3 is locked down at this point) - and so the activity continues. oh, I forgot - after you get the right number of choices - you go to a "well done" feedback layer and then to an "enjoy your breakfast" layer - which displays exactly the food choices you made in the drag-and-drop part of that particular option. if you're overwhelmed just reading about this - think of me putting this together! and add to that the fact that the client changed their mind twice during development about exactly which food items and food group buttons they wanted to include...

I think Phil Mayor would win that one (as usual). He created a periodic table in SL 1 that had over 7,000 triggers on a single slide.

Well, that is a ridiculous amount of triggers Montse - so I managed them very systematically and very carefully - or I thought I was - I've got this right now, but initially I was getting random feedback from the client saying "I'm getting an egg on the plate at the end of option 2, and I didn't choose an egg"!! I have a huge thank you to offer to my colleague and fellow community member, Veronica Budnikas - we are working on this 10-module course together and Veronica is the triggers guru - so she jumped in and helped me out at one point when I couldn't get this activity to work - thanks Veronica!! The other thing I would totally recommend, is not to leave the development mid-way through creating the triggers, or sections of the triggers, because when you go to re-visit it, you probably won't understand what you've done!! I discovered (thanks to Veronica) using text variables where you trigger the appearance of an image by creating states, then using the state's name in the trigger - I'd never even heard of this before - but it works!