The Development Process

At the core of the RDS are four components:

• Storyboard Builder Book – built entirely in ToolBook, this application serves as the starting point for the creation of a Storyboard for a variety of different types of lessons.
• Authoring Engine – a ToolBook system book that contains all the code needed to build a final lesson from a Storyboard.
• Blank Starter Book – a one page book (Title Page) with all the code needed to allow the lesson to be hooked up with the Comment Collector System if desired by the Client.
• Template Pages Book – a book with a series of pages to be imported by the Authoring Engine to build the storyboarded lesson.

How does it all work?

A lesson is storyboarded in the Storyboard Builder by the Writer or SME. The Writer or SME just fills out a form, using the provided text as examples of the writing style to use. At the same time or at a later time, that person is responsible for gathering the graphics, following the naming conventions we use. If it is a Simulation page, the screen captures are obtained of the software application being simulated. Often, if we (the ToolBook Developers) are the ones also having to write the Storyboards, we will request from the Client a Camtasia movie of the entire series of steps being simulated and then we will use Snagit to grab the individual screens. When the Storyboard is complete, the Writer or SME exports the data from the Storyboard. A Store Data option saves the textual information into an ini file. We then use the Blank Starter book to create a new lesson book. A option from a custom Menu item then allows us to built the lesson, using the ini file from the Storyboard. As pages are needed, the Authoring Engine grabs those pages from the Template Pages book, the graphics from a Screens folder, and the text from the ini file. Once the pages have been added, all we then have to do is move and resize objects as needed. A typical 30 page book gets built in less than a minute. We might then spend another hour or so cleaning things up such as the moving and resizing, but no coding (unless there are special needs) is done at this point since that is already been taken care of in the Template Pages. The lesson is then published and deployed for review.

Major Advantages?

Besides the obvious time savings, the Storyboard tool provides consistency among Writers as far as the style used. On the Lesson building side of things, there are consistencies among all the lessons since the same Blank book and same Template Pages book is used for each Lesson built. Add to this the quickness and ease of updating any existing lesson.