How Pros Use Rise 360 and Storyline 360

The two authoring apps included in Articulate 360—Rise 360 and Storyline 360—give you the flexibility to quickly create any type of e-learning. But since you can build engaging, accessible content that looks gorgeous on every device with both apps, how do you know which is the best fit for your project?

Why not take a peek at how e-learning pros choose? Since expert users are often comfortable with both Rise 360 and Storyline 360, they know exactly which one to reach for depending on the project’s unique needs. 

In this article, we’ll explore some of the factors experienced Articulate 360 users consider when making an authoring app decision. We’ll start with a look at our web-based authoring tool.

Why Experts Choose Rise 360

Ease of Use

If you’re new to building e-learning, Rise 360’s approachability takes away much of the stress of creating a course. But that simplicity doesn’t just help beginners. If you’re an experienced instructional designer with a lot on your plate, it can also make it easier to get projects built and in front of your learners.

Since Rise 360 is web-based, there’s no need to download any software—all you need is your web browser and you can create courses online, anytime and anywhere. Building a course is as simple as stacking modular learning blocks that house text, media, interactions, and more. And that makes the development process straightforward and quick to get comfortable with. The block-based approach also does much of the layout and visual design work for you, so anyone—even people without design experience—can create polished-looking courses.

Speed

The features that make Rise 360 easy to use also make course development delightfully fast. So if time is of the essence with a project, Rise 360 can speed things along.

Blocks take mere minutes to select and arrange, so developing a new course in Rise 360 takes no time at all. Even better, you might not need to build your course from scratch. That’s because Rise 360 also includes course and lesson templates, which can replace some—or even all—of your design and development work. These templates include:

• Placeholder content templates: The structure of these courses is all set up for you— all you need to do is build out the content.
• Real content course templates: These complete courses designed by training experts cover a wide array of business topics in engaging ways. Publish them as is or customize them to include branding and messaging.
• Real content lesson templates: Mix and match these prebuilt lessons to quickly curate the exact course you need. Or use them alongside lessons you’ve written yourself to speed up your workflow.

Collaborative Development

Do you need to write or build your course with others? Maybe a subject matter expert is pitching in to write the first draft of a few lessons, or a co-worker is lending a hand to speed up your development? If you’re all Articulate 360 Teams subscribers, the collaboration features in Rise 360 can make working together easier.

You can invite a colleague to work with you on a course with just a few clicks. Then you can each create and edit different lessons in the course simultaneously or take turns fine-tuning the same one. And since Rise 360 is web-based, there’s no need to worry about passing source files back and forth—you’re always updating the same file.

As you can see, Rise 360 is perfect for easy, quick, and collaborative authoring. But there are lots of good reasons to consider Storyline 360 too.

Why Experts Choose Storyline 360

Custom Interactivity

When a project calls for custom interactivity, Storyline 360 helps you craft the experience you need. That’s because its powerful features enable you to develop complex interactions—with no coding required. 

What kinds of interactions can you make? The possibilities are endless. Software simulations, 360-image tours, branched scenarios, games, personalized content, and more are just some of what you can build with Storyline 360. And if you want to see what other people are creating with it, the Articulate community shares downloads, examples, and e-learning challenges that can give you tons of ideas.

While the activities you can create in Storyline might be complex, building them is easy. In-app wizards and prebuilt common components help you along the way, making developing interactive content simpler than you might have expected.

Flexibility

Whether it’s a creative approach to course navigation, an innovative layout, or an idea that isn’t even a course at all, there are many times when a standard approach to e-learning might not fit your plan for a project. But if you can imagine it, chances are you can build it in Storyline 360.

Because Storyline is a freeform tool, you can put almost anything you want on the slide, giving you an exceptional amount of control over the look and feel of your project. And the features that make building complex interactivity simple also help customize navigation, enabling any number of different user experiences.

Complex Assessments

That flexibility can extend to how you assess learning as well. Complex skills may be beyond what a form-based quiz can evaluate alone. In those cases, turning to Storyline 360 can help you create more immersive ways to check people’s knowledge.

The freeform tools in this app help you quickly turn static slide objects—like pictures, shapes, characters, textboxes, and markers—into interactive quiz questions. If you’re developing software training, Storyline 360’s screen recording also includes features that help you build simulation-based quizzes. And those engaging interactions mentioned earlier? Storyline 360 makes it easy to use that approach to design custom assessment activities as well.

Shared Templates

Sometimes you need to speed up production while still leaving room for customization. When that balance is important, Storyline 360’s templates and shared content can help.

This app includes access to hundreds of professionally designed prebuilt slide templates. 

They’re fully functional, and you can easily make them your own in just a few clicks by customizing the colors, fonts, media, and content. 

In addition, Articulate 360 Teams subscribers can use the Team Slides feature to create a shared library of Storyline 360 content—such as project templates, slides used in every course, reusable interactions, and more. That way, when you build a slide once, it’s easy for you and your team to reuse it again elsewhere.

When Experts Use Rise 360 and Storyline 360 Together

Is your project a fit for Rise 360, but would be even better with a bit of custom interactivity? Thankfully, there’s a way to combine the best of both apps so you don’t have to choose!

The Storyline block allows you to bring content built in Storyline 360 into a Rise 360 course. So you can use the speedy development process in Rise 360 to cover most of your information, and then include custom Storyline 360 components just where they’re needed.

Wrap-Up

No matter which authoring app you use, you’ll be able to create courses and content your learners will love. Hopefully these insights can help you assess every new project and confidently identify the app that’s the best match for your content and goals.

Want to know more about all the helpful creator tools included in your Articulate 360 subscription? Check out these articles:

• Inside Rise 360: How Web Authoring Is Different
• Why You Need the Apps in Articulate 360 and When to Use Them
• 4 Time-Saving Ways to Use Review 360

Don’t have Articulate 360 just yet? Start a free 30-day trial, and come back to E-Learning Heroes regularly for more helpful advice on everything related to e-learning. If you have any questions, please share them in the comments.

This article is part of our E-Learning 101 e-mail course, a series of expertly curated articles that’ll help you get started with e-learning—delivered right to your inbox. You’re only a click away from becoming an e-learning pro! Sign up here to enroll.