It’s no secret that instructional designers spend a lot of time working in PowerPoint. It’s a great presentation tool, a handy image editor, and a lightweight drawing tool, just to name a few uses. But when it comes to creating e-learning, you typically want to grab people’s attention with something that’s more polished and engaging than a PowerPoint presentation.
That’s where Rise 360 really shines. In a few minutes’ time, you can transform content that would have otherwise ended up as static slides of text into a beautiful course that looks great on every device your learners might use.
Rise 360 is the web-based authoring app that comes with an Articulate 360 subscription. Folks choose Rise 360 when they want to build fully responsive courses in minutes. If you’re just getting started with it, here are a few ideas for how you can add Rise 360 to your training workflow.
1. Text-Based Content
When you’ve got a lot of related content to share, it’s pretty easy to end up with a slide like this:
There’s a lot of information on that slide and no context for all those key terms.
The problem with placing lots of bulleted text onto a slide is that it quickly becomes overwhelming and hard to parse.
But there’s another option: make that content feel more inviting with a streamlined look. That’s easy to do using the accordion block in Rise 360, like this:
Wow. Those terms and definitions look so slick and professional now!
With Rise 360, you can add all sorts of media to interactive blocks like this accordion interaction, including a supporting image, an animated GIF, an audio clip, or even a short video to help illustrate concepts. This gives you a great-looking and flexible way to present information while making it a whole lot easier for learners to absorb content at their own pace.
Adding a glossary of terms to your course is easy, but what if you want to create a stand-alone glossary of terms your learners can refer to at any time? Rise 360 is a great option for that, too. Check out this example of a glossary of marketing terms. It helps break up text-heavy content using the interactive timeline block.
2. Deep Dives Into Diagrams & Charts
Using PowerPoint to give learners an overview of a process or to get them acquainted with an organization’s structure is pretty standard in onboarding or sales process training, for example. You might have even created a slide like the one below to make the organization or a process a little easier to understand:
A diagram like this is a neat visual for giving folks a high-level view, but you’d probably end up adding a lot more text to this slide so learners could get the detailed content they need to really understand these steps and apply them on the job.
So here’s something new to try: it takes just a minute or two to reuse that PowerPoint diagram as a labeled graphic lesson in Rise 360. A labeled graphic lesson is an easy way to take advantage of diagrams and charts to help folks visualize the process, while also keeping it light on text and easy for them to read on every device. Here’s how to do it:
1. In PowerPoint, save the slide where you created your chart or diagram as an image. Here’s an animated GIF to show you one way of doing that:
2. Over in Rise 360, open up the lesson where you’ll feature the diagram or chart and click on Labeled Graphic on the blocks shortcut bar to add a placeholder to your lesson.
3. Click the Edit button and then select Upload Image. Browse to the image of your chart or diagram and click Open. Here’s an animated GIF to recap the steps:
4. Now you can click on each marker to edit the text and title, or add new markers. You can also customize markers by changing the marker type and adding images, video, or other media, or by adding audio. Here’s another GIF to show you how it’s done:
5. Finally, just drag-and-drop your markers to place them on the appropriate parts of your image. Watch it in action, below.
3. Case Studies
Case studies are a great training tool for reinforcing relevancy and demonstrating real-world consequences.
In a classroom setting, case studies are usually delivered by an instructor with the help of PowerPoint slides. But when you’re trying to capture the essence of that case study in an online course that learners need to explore on their own, it’s nice to be able to mix different kinds of content to help tell the story.
Rise 360 to the rescue! By mixing and matching different blocks you can layout the case study content and help learners unpack the key takeaways. For instance, you could insert a few text and image blocks and then add a knowledge check block with a continue block beneath it, like in this example:
Configuring the continue block to require learners to answer each question before they can move on encourages them to pace themselves and take in all the important information. Check out this article on controlling learner progress with the continue block in Rise 360 to learn more about working with the continue block.
Another great way to prompt learners to reflect on what they’re learning in a case study is to use the scenario block. Below is an example of this technique in action used in a case study on conflict of interest.
Bottom line: by using Rise 360, you can break up lengthy case study content into smaller, more digestible chunks and you can make it more engaging for your learners by sprinkling in interactions that get them thinking.
More Inspiration
These are just three ideas for morphing content you’d normally share with PowerPoint into beautiful, responsive content created with Rise 360. And there’s so much more you can do with the app! Here are a few of my favorite examples of Rise 360 projects to inspire your thinking.
- Job Aid - Using Live Chat by Nicole Legault
- Performance Support Demo by Allison LaMotte
- Customer Service Interaction by yours truly
- Outbreak Investigation by Elizabeth Miles
How are you using Rise 360 to transform your content? We always love to learn more about what you’re creating. Share your ideas and comments with us below.
Want to try something you learned here, but don’t have Articulate 360? 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.
Published 7 years ago
Version 1.0
