Programming tip: How to Increase the font size in a Matching activity in Articulate Storyline
More often than not, I have had the opportunity to program in Articulate Storyline, different kind of activities that help the learners assess their knowledge of the topic at any point throughout the eLearning module. One of those activities, that I actually find very common in online training, is the matching activity, where you need to pair usually a definition with the correct term, or to give you a more specific example, the name of a car component with the correct picture.
This is a fun kind of activity, however, when you get to programming it, you will learn that you need to be careful with the amount of information that can be used for a matching activity within Storyline, especially if you are using the default layout provided in this rapid authoring tool. I have seen cases in which there is so much text, that the font size is ridiculously small and very hard to read, kind of like this:
So, how can you fix this small font if you are ever in the presence of this issue? Here are a couple of tips:
First, and most ideally, you should get in touch with your instructional designer and request that the content for this activity is modified, so that it can fit nicely within the default shapes of Storyline. To mitigate a risk of this happening in the future, you could also touch base with your ID before the design work starts, so that you can let them know what limitations the software has.
If modifying the content is not an option, because it is too important to leave something out, you can always resort to develop it from scratch, that is, creating the shapes manually like this:
And after the shapes are created, you can convert the slide to Free Form and select the drag and drop option:
That way you can have the same functionality as the default matching activity, but with a consistent and readable font, as well as a nicer look and feel.
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