elearning Brothers or Course Designers: Do you have a working TOC solution?
February 4, 2022 12:00 AM
I did a search for this issue. The primary that pops up is when I asked this before years ago. I also suggested as a feature. Management has stated it is the format they want. Employees also desire the format.
Lectora has a stock feature of adding the Table of Contents. Im not referring incorporating inside the Menu feature. The goal is always having the Table of Contents showing on the side as the viewer goes through the course. A status indicator shows where they are, what they have done, and what they have ahead. Both the gauge indicator and stating page# of #of pages is also not an option.
The ability to go back and review content without having to press the back arrow to the desired destination is also a benefit that is now expected. I dont know if the programming is too complex or the desire is not there, but for what ever reason there seems to be no plans to have the ability built in as a standard feature to not allow the viewer to use the Table of Contents as a means to skip ahead and pass over content. That is the goal: a table of contents which will have the status indicator, show the selected pages of the entire course, allow viewers to go back to content already visited, but not have the ability to skip ahead.
Pages appearing as the viewer goes through content would be acceptable and an alternative. I have tried putting a white rectangle on each page, which does work for the initial part of the course. However, in edit view unless I am missing something, you cant scroll the table of content. Iend up running out of room. So that approach does not work.
4 years ago, I was able to insert 2 lines of javascript in the TOC file. It was not 508 compliant, but al least prevented the viewer from using the TOC. The problem is, it prevented them from using it at, even going back. That would be the last preference. It has come down to me being forced to start using products other departments are using both Captivate and Articulate. Both have a stock feature to build this. I like Lectora. I have been using it now for 9 years. Its not my first choice to have to switch to another software.
I know there is a way to do this going the long route. Through variables and going page by page. That is something I simply don't have time to do. Its a lot of work when other applications can do it as a stock feature.
Does anyone have a solution, technique, suggestion of any sort of how to accomplish this goal?
Thank you for your time, experience, and feedback.
Discussion (10)
Might I suggest adding this to the Lectora Feature Requests category?
Okay I whipped this together pretty quickly as a base example. If any of you Rockstars want to expand on it that would be great!
It doesn't contain any scripting just base Lectora functionality, with Lectora if you can think it you can do it B).
You can import the PKG file into Lectora Desktop or Online.
This is definitely in our backlog and it is requested often. I believe some customers have made this work with only a few global actions using the page status tracking feature. Let me see if I can figure out how they did it.
Here is a scripting solution for Lectora Desktop, it only works for framed TOC with status indicators. This actually disables the links for pages that are not started.
(Note: it doesn't work in run mode, but works well after publishing)
Adding a "Review Mode" option to a TOC should be easy. Our backlog item is to tackle the entirety of handling prerequisites. I'll see if the team can put in [what I feel should be called] a "Review Mode" option that only allows visiting pages that have been visited before.
Excellent. Thank you for the rapid response and solution.
Real quick follow up question. Lectora Online has shifted my ability to work from home and when Im out in the field. It seems I hardly go to the office anymore. I have Inspire on the desktop there.
Going from inspire to online is still creating bugs. I went through almost 1 1/2 years using Inspire not realizing my company had a contract with Lectora online included. Now that hardly anyone goes to my office anymore, Ive used Lectora online a majority of the time. Its this TOC thing that is stumping me. Is there any help you for what I have described short of creating a class in Inspire importing online, publishing, and then testing the above. I have not had a successful run with it even with Inspire. It could and probably is me making an error somewhere.
Is there any plans in the future to create something like this. Other software applications do have the feature, but similar to Lectora do not offer a stock method of preventing users from jumping ahead. THe only one I have seen is Presenter (which is now ancient). The problem with Presenter is it would not let the user go back. It only represented a status indicator and the length of time the narration was for each page.
Yes, the team is looking at including this review mode option soon.
Here is the Lectora Online version of the scripting solution. All the script necessary is in the On Show Run JavaScript action at the project level.
Note: since this is custom JavaScript it will only work when the course is published.
Wheels, the level of gratitude is beyond words. Thank you
I wanted to post a follow up here in case any had this same question or goal. The format my company prefers in classes is to have a TOC always showing on the side with a status indicator displaying the current page. The challenge was people using it to skip content. The goal was to allow the viewer the ability to go back to any content already viewed using the table , but not ahead of the navigation arrows, or auto advance if on. The script provided above solved the issue and works great. However, it only works when all three status indicators are on. If you dont want the other two to show, go into the resource manager and change the color to match the background of the table.
If you have testers reviewing the class, I have found not to have the other two on at all. The will allow the testers the ability to skip ahead if needed. I have found it optimal to save this feature as the last thing to activate before the class goes live for all employees.