I was approached by an educational research institute to develop an Articulate Storyline-based survey tool. The client wanted to combine gamified interactivity with visual representations that would engage and assist participants. The tool was designed to collect text-based and multi-choice answers—altogether 116 separate variables—for research and professional development purposes.
The Leibniz Institute for Research and Information in Education is an important K-12 educational research institute in Germany. For the study this tool is designed for, early childhood teachers were asked to participate. The survey tool will be given to teachers for their onboarding into the study—to both collect initial data and stimulate participants' thinking.
In everyday situations in German kindergartens, the institute recognised that many educational opportunities go overlooked. To enhance the substantial free-time students get for play, the survey tool encourages teachers to apply curriculum by encouraging kids to make connections in their everyday environment.
To maintain the study's confidentiality, I have changed the images used and the specific scenario the survey tool was designed for. See the interactive survey in action in the video below.
Audience:
Kindergarten teachers
My Roles:
Design and integration of visual elements, animations, and interactivity; xAPI based data retrieval
Tools Used:
Articulate Storyline 360; Figma; Moodle LMS; Watershed LRS
In the survey tool, participants are asked to connect science curriculum topics with common kindergarten scenarios. Over the course of 8 images, participants must identify 58 separate scenarios. For each scenario, they must complete a multi-choice question and short answer response.
First, the multi-choice: "What scientific content area applies here?"
Next, the short answer: "What specific activity do you recognise in the picture?"
The client asked me to consider the following in formulation of a solution:
See below one of eight illustrations used. Like the others, this picture details a specific setting with varied opportunities for science-based learning.
On each image, invisible shapes were placed over scenarios of interest. When clicked, a shape would bring up the multi-choice survey question for the respective scenario. Clicked through again, the user would be taken to the short response question. Upon completion, the user would leave these layers and return to the original image.
To represent the two minute timer, I chose to incorporate an animated clock with a rotating hand. To pause the timer on the short response questions, I connected triggers to the click-through buttons. A greater challenge was keeping this timer visible on all layers of a slide. To do this, I made holes in the question layers to allow the clock to peek through.
For each short response question, the entered text was assigned to a variable. For example, the Question 1 Scenario 2 response was assigned to Q1S2_text. For the multi-choice question, the variable was assigned a value between 1 and 5, to represent the answer number.
I set up xAPI coding to send the variables to an LRS. The following is one example of the 116 variables I set up code for:
In the accompanying xapi-statement.js file, I included a provision for UserName. This was essential in linking the specific user with their associated response. A text input was created to retrieve the user's name at the beginning of the survey.
The client needed to collect individual user responses. They were planning to use Moodle LMS but also had Watershed LRS at their disposal. I advised that a solution involving xAPI and an LRS would be sleeker. Such a solution would allow web hosting, for one, and would avoid the need for the institute to set each participant up on an LMS. To attract as many participants to their study as possible, it was advisable to lower the barrier to entry by providing a web link only.
Given the complex design of the survey, with quiz answers being entered on layers within slides, xAPI was also favoured on account of its greater versatility. See below some response statements on the LRS. These align with the statements entered in the video at the top of this page.
