Creating content in Rise 360 is quick and easy. But with a few tricks up your sleeve, you can create courses even faster. From reusing content, to quickly changing block styles, to adding collaborators so someone else can help share the load (because what’s faster than delegating?), here are a few of my favorite time-saving shortcuts.
Save & Share Block Templates
There’s nothing quite so satisfying as getting your lesson design just right with the perfect set of blocks. But recreating them quickly in another course or lesson is a close second. And it’s easy to do with block templates.
Even better, you can share block templates with your entire team. Now there’s no need to send an entire course when your teammate just needs a few blocks. They can find your template in the shared block templates archive and insert it just like they would a single block.
Here’s how it works:
Select Block Templates from the All Blocks menu, click New Block Template, then select the blocks in your lesson that you want to reuse. Give the template a name, share it with your team, and click Save. That’s it! Then, when you want to reuse your template, just select it from block templates. Boom, all your saved blocks pop into your current lesson.
Gotta (Copy) Them All!
Of course, there are times when you need more than a handful of blocks; you need the entire lesson. For example, I have a course I deliver each month with lessons on topics that might not be ready to highlight in the month I release the course. At first I was moving my lessons from course to course as release dates shifted. Then I got smart and created a “staging course.”
Now, I just create all of my lessons in one spot and copy them over to the pertinent course on a monthly basis.
The Lesson Copy feature is also handy for lessons that are consistently the same from deliverable to deliverable. Like if you have a disclaimer to start each course or you include an attribution section at the end.
It’s easy to do too. In the course outline, hover over the lesson you want to copy, click the ellipsis icon (•••) that appears, and choose Copy to Another Course. When the course selector appears, click the course to which you want to copy the lesson.
That’s it. The copied lesson is now in the target course and can be moved around the outline accordingly.
Seeing Double
But what if you need a copy of a lesson or block in the course you’re currently working on? That’s super easy to do as well.
From your course outline, click the more icon (. . .) and select Duplicate to make a copy of an entire lesson, right in your current course.
Need a duplicate block in your current lesson? Hover over the block and select the Duplicate icon.
That’s it!
Does It Look Better This Way … Or This Way?
Ever been to the optometrist? When it’s time to try out new lens strengths, they have you sit there and place a contraption against your face, then flip between lenses asking which is clearer.
Switching between blocks is a little bit like that, but without the Clockwork Orange vibes.
Once you’ve placed a block in your lesson, you can quickly and easily switch between all the available options for that type of block. Just select it from the drop-down menu!
Even better, selecting a different block type is nondestructive. In the GIF above, you can see that not every image block type has room for four images, but they’re all still there. All you have to do is select a block that supports additional content and what you’ve previously entered fills right in.
It’s a quick and easy way to experiment with layouts to see what works best.
Many Hands Make Light Work
Collaborative authoring in Rise 360 is supereasy to do and can be an enormous time-saver. Instead of sending a copy to another author and waiting for them to make changes and send it back, you and your collaborators can work on different lessons in the same course, simultaneously!
Any changes you make in the lesson you’re working on are instantly reflected in the course they see in their dashboard, and vice versa. And no worries about overwriting each other’s changes. When a collaborator is working on a lesson, it’s grayed out in the course outline, with their team icon displayed. You can also click to see the name of who’s currently working on it.
Invite collaborators from your team by going to Settings and choosing the Collaborators tab or selecting Share > Collaborators. Give collaborators the power to do administrative course tasks or just give them authoring access, depending on their roles.
Can You Hear Me Now?
Recording audio can be a pain. You’ve got to launch your recording app, record all your clips, then upload the file.
Or, you could just record high-quality audio directly in Rise 360.
The audio, process, labeled graphic, and timeline blocks all have a built-in audio recorder. Just hover over the block and click Edit. Then click Start Recording. It’s that simple. You can pause recording as needed, then click Stop Recording when you’re done. No worrying about external files or course compatibility, just sit down and get the job done, all in Rise 360.
All the Content, Half the Time
Creating quality content takes time. Beyond just designing the course, you have to work with subject matter experts, deep-dive into current research on your topic, and then create graphics and videos to support what you write.
What if you could outsource all of that work and skip right to sharing it for your learners? With real content courses and templates, you can do just that. Included in Content Library 360 is an extensive collection of professionally developed, high-quality, topical courses and lessons curated to fit a myriad of learning goals.
When you click Create New, just select a course or lesson on the topic you want to present. Then adapt it with details pertinent to your organization and ship it! You can also add real content lesson templates into your existing courses. It’s one of those shortcuts that gives you more value with less effort.
Don’t Waste Another Second
Here at Articulate, we’re Rise 360 users just like you. We want to make great courses but don’t have a ton of time to do so. That’s why we’re always on the lookout for time-saving tips like these. Have some to share? Comment below with your favorite course building shortcuts! In the meantime, check out these additional resources for more.
- Rise 360: Creating, Sharing, and Reusing Block Templates
- Rise 360: 7 Ways to Reuse Your Content
- How I Created an Information Security Course in No Time Flat With Rise 360 Templates
Want to discover how much time you can save while building your training in Rise 360, but don’t have Articulate 360? Start a free 30-day trial.
Published 3 years ago
Version 1.0
