🎓 Lesson 23: Capstone I — Plan & Build

🎯 The Capstone Mission

Back in Lesson 1 you named a topic — a "why" for taking this course. Now you'll turn that topic into a finished, publishable course. Here's the mission in one sentence: plan, build, and (next lesson) publish a real course on your own topic, made of one Rise 360 course plus one Storyline 360 interaction.

Why both tools? Because the whole point of this course was learning to reach for the right one — and a portfolio piece that shows both a polished Rise course and a hand-built Storyline interaction is exactly what an instructional-design hiring manager wants to see. You can embed the Storyline interaction inside the Rise course as a Storyline block, or keep it standalone; either counts.

Here's the whole plan at a glance. Notice it's the same design pipeline from Lesson 4, now aimed at a real deliverable:

Figure 1 — The capstone plan: one plan feeds two builds, which come together and ship next lesson.

🗺️ Step 1 — Plan (Revisit Lesson 4)

Resist the urge to open Rise and start dragging blocks. Fifteen minutes of planning saves hours of rework. Pull up your Lesson 4 notes (or start fresh) and lock down four things.

Pick a topic you already know

The best capstone topic is small, familiar, and real: "How to submit an expense report," "Kitchen food- safety basics," "Onboarding: our meeting etiquette," "How to reset your password." If you know it well, you'll spend your energy on building, not researching.

Write 2–3 learning objectives

Use observable verbs, the way Lesson 4 taught: "By the end, the learner will be able to identify the three parts of a valid expense claim" beats "understand expenses." Objectives are your compass — every block and interaction should serve one.

Name your audience & scope

Who takes this, and how long should it be? For a capstone, aim for a course you can genuinely finish: roughly one Rise lesson (5–8 blocks), two interactions, and a short graded quiz — plus one Storyline interaction. That's a complete, portfolio-worthy course, not a marathon.

Sketch a one-row storyboard

A storyboard is just a table: for each screen, note the on-screen text, the media, and the interaction. You don't need anything fancy — a doc, a spreadsheet, even paper. Here's a tiny example you can copy:

⚡ Step 2 — Build the Rise Course

Now the fun part. Rise 360 runs in your browser, so this works on any computer Trial / Paid. You'll assemble your storyboard into blocks, drop in your two interactions, and add a graded quiz. This is everything from Part 2, aimed at your topic.

Your target looks something like this — a stack of blocks with real interactions and a quiz:

Figure 2 — Rise capstone target (a simplified mock-up, not a real screenshot): content blocks, two interactions, and a graded quiz.

💡 Which two interactions? Pick ones that fit your content, not ones that look flashy. Labeled Graphic is great for "parts of a thing." Tabs/Accordion suit "a few related topics." Sorting Activity fits "which category?" A Scenario shines for "what would you do?" Purposeful beats impressive.

🛠️ Step 3 — Build One Storyline Interaction

Time to show off the three pillars. In Storyline 360 Windows only you'll build one custom interaction that uses states, triggers, and a variable together. The classic choice — and the one we'll walk through — is a click-to-reveal with a gate: the learner clicks each of several items to reveal information, and the Continue button only unlocks once they've explored them all.

Here's how the pieces map to what you learned. It's just Lesson 12 + 13 + 14 working together:

Figure 3 — The interaction logic: states record what's been clicked, a number variable counts, and a condition gates the Continue button.

On the stage it looks like this — four items, a disabled Continue button, and the triggers wiring it all up on the right:

Figure 4 — Storyline capstone target (a simplified mock-up, not a real screenshot): four items, a gated Continue button, and the three triggers that make it work.

🎯 Try It: Build Your Capstone

📓 Learning Journal

📝 Lesson Summary

🎉 What You've Accomplished

You didn't just read about building a course — you built one. You turned a topic into a plan, assembled a responsive Rise course with real interactions and an assessment, and hand-wired a custom Storyline interaction from states, triggers, and a variable. That's the exact work an e-learning developer does every week. Everything left is shipping it well.

❓ Common Questions at This Stage

🔭 Looking Ahead

In Lesson 24, you'll take everything you just built and ship it: a pre-flight accessibility and testing pass, publishing to the right target (LMS, Web, Review 360, or Reach 360), testing that tracking actually works, gathering feedback — and a big course wrap-up with where to go next.

✅ Before the Next Lesson

• Finish (or get very close to finishing) your Rise course and your Storyline interaction
• Make sure you know where your files are saved and can open them again
• Skim the Lesson 19 accessibility checklist — you'll run it in Lesson 24
• Write this lesson's journal prompt while the build is fresh

📚 Additional Resources

• Lesson 4 — objectives & storyboarding, if you need a planning refresher
• Quick-Reference Cheat Sheet — trigger recipes, states, and the publish-format map
• E-Learning Heroes — browse real course examples for inspiration