Create an Interactive e-Learning Game Using Actions and Variables in Lectora

Incorporating e-Learning games in online training is a great way to keep learners engaged and make courses more interesting. At the 2013 Lectora® User Conference, Vicki Mueller and Stephanie Gregory from Cadence Health shared with attendees how they created a bingo game for their training course using Actions and Variables in Lectora e-Learning software. 
Cadence Health wanted to educate and promote a new health and fitness campaign within their organization. In order to accomplish this goal, they chose to create an interactive bingo game that required learners to read different articles about eating healthy and exercising in order to get a bingo. Let’s take a look at how they did this using Variables and Actions.

Set Up Variables. Variables enable you, as the developer, to capture what a user has done in an e-Learning course (like clicking a button) and conditionally act on that at a later time. In this example, the team created Variables for each square on their bingo board and one for each possible bingo win.Create Actions on Each Variable. In order to create actions for each variable, you must first select which event should trigger an action, such as a mouse click or keyboard stroke. In this example, a mouse click triggers the action. Each time the learner clicks on one of the articles in the bingo spaces, the mouse click triggers the variable value to change.

Changing the Square Content. After the learner has read the article and returns to the bingo board, the square content may change based on the variable value. When the variable value changes, Mueller and Gregory created an action to show a new image on the bingo square, indicating the space had been filled.

Use If/Conditions. This will allow you to execute the Action only when the specified conditions have been satisfied.

For more information on how to use Actions and Variables in Lectora Version 11, check out this quick video! To get more awesome e-Learning tips, subscribe to the Lectora e-Learning Blog.