Events, layers and steps

Most of the time, your AI writes a screen’s interactions:

On screen 5, if the learner gets the question wrong, open a panel with a hint; if they get it right, go to the next screen.

Elabora shows them to you as sentences, which you can read, correct or complete by hand.

Reading events

An event reads like a sentence: “When clicking the Check button: show layer Hint”. You find them in Properties, in the Events section, for a block, for the screen or for a layer. See all opens the screen’s events page in place of the canvas, grouped by what triggers them; Canvas, in the toolbar, brings the slide back.

Every word underlined with dots opens a menu when clicked: another block, another layer, another screen, another value. The menus only offer what is possible in that place.

Writing an event

1. Add event asks what triggers it: When the screen opens, When clicking…, When submitting a question…, When making a choice…, When an object signals…, When closing a layer…, When a variable changes… (and, on a narrated screen, moments of the voice).
2. The event is written at once, with no action. Its + asks what it does: Go to a screen, Show a layer, Close a layer, Show a block, Hide a block, Show a step, Set a variable’s value, Add to a variable, Set an object’s properties, Mark the screen as completed, Exit the course…
3. The selected event’s … menu (or a right-click beside its words) adds a condition (Add additional condition…), an alternative (Add “otherwise”…) or a note for reviewers (Add note…), and offers Delete event.

An event left without an action says so on its line. Shortcuts on the selected event: / adds an action, ⌘D duplicates it, ⌫ deletes it.

Layers

A layer shows over the screen: feedback, a hint, a window of details.

• The tabs above the canvas show Base and the screen’s layers; + adds one, with a first text ready to type over.
• Double-click a tab to rename it. Right-click to choose Modal (over the dimmed screen; learners close it to continue) or Panel (over part of the screen, which stays usable), to add an event that shows it, or to delete it with its blocks (⌘Z brings it back).
• Shown with nothing selected, a layer has its own Properties: its name, Display as, Opened by (the events that show it; if none, Elabora warns that learners will never see it) and Add an event to show it.
• A block moves into a layer, or back to the base, from its menu. Blocks added while a layer is shown go into that layer.
• A layer can speak: its voice explains, its blocks come in on the word that names them, and it can close once its voice has finished. See a layer that speaks.

Steps

Steps reveal a screen piece by piece.

• In a block’s Properties, Step puts it Initially, in an existing step or in a new one.
• In the screen’s Properties, the Steps section says whether the Continue button reveals the next step, and for each step how it Opens: With “Continue”, After activities (once the questions above are answered), After exploring (once the panels, cards and steps above have been opened too: see starter blocks) or By an event.
• Events then offer Show a step.

On a narrated screen, the voice moves through the steps too: see voices and narration. Why short steps help is in the learning science behind Elabora.

Variables

A variable remembers something while the learner goes through the course (a choice, a score, a hint already seen) so that events can use it.

• Variables, in the toolbar of the events page, opens the list: name, type, Initial value, Resume (kept between sessions).
• Select one to rename it (the events follow), change its type, its initial value, its Possible values or its Max. length, and say what it is for (Purpose). Below, the events that change it (Changed by) and read it (Read by), each opening its event.
• New variable creates one; event menus also offer New variable… wherever you choose a variable. A variable that is “never read” makes no difference to learners; a variable still in use cannot be deleted.

You will find interaction problems (an event without an action, a layer that is never shown) in the checks.