Week 1 Discussion

Which editing tools (rewrite, shorten, change tone, etc.) did you find most valuable, and why?
The change tone feature was the most valuable for me as it allows me to quickly adapt content to different audiences. As a non-native English speaker, being able to adjust the tone instantly—rather than spending extra time trying to phrase things perfectly myself—is a significant efficiency gain. It helps ensure the message sounds natural, appropriate, and professional without slowing down my workflow.

What challenges did you face when trying to get AI to produce the results you wanted?
One recurring challenge was getting the AI image generator to avoid including text, even when I explicitly specified “no text” in the prompt. This often required multiple attempts. It would be very helpful to have a dedicated field for negative prompts, as including these constraints in the main prompt may be confusing the model and reducing the accuracy of the results.

Which AI Assistant feature felt most intuitive or useful to you during the practice activities?

• There are multiple features that I have been using frequently in my design and development. Recently, I created a storyboard and inputted this into Rise AI to build a course. The information was easily transferrable and I enabled the interactions to be built by AI. This made my development a lot faster, and smoother, so that I only had to jump in and minor minor edits and adjustments. It was so much easier than building the course was scratch. I also have been using AI text-to-speech and sound effects. What a game changer! It's fast, easy, and the voices are realistic. I love the ability to modify the variations and I also enjoy that they generate multiple generations (sound effects). This helps speed up my selections.

Which editing tools (rewrite, shorten, change tone, etc.) did you find most valuable, and why?

• I appreciate the ability to simplify writing and changing the intended target audience. This helps refine the text and ensure it's more relevant to our learners. The ability to edit text quickly is a huge win, especially for the moments when we need to use our brain power elsewhere.

Which AI Assistant feature felt most intuitive or useful to you during the practice activities?   

I love the instant convert function, especially for elevating existing content. I also love the audio feature--it adds an extra dimension for learners and gives us another tool in for accessibility. 

What surprised you about how AI handled text or media generation?

When the AI image generation works, it does a really great job of meeting the prompt requests, sometimes better than other AI tools I've used.

I do find sometimes when using the text generator, it adds extra content that isn't relevant, but it certainly helps when condensing large blocks of text into the most important parts.

1. Which AI Assistant feature felt most intuitive or useful to you during the practice activities?

I really like the Edit with AI feature. I like the options that are presented in that menu and I feel like it works well when you are designing in Rise. Instead of having to navigate to the edit blocks content or elsewhere it's available right within the block. It makes the workflow easy.

1. What surprised you about how AI handled text or media generation?

I think the image generation feature still has a long way to go. In many cases it takes the prompt very literally and wants to include everything from the prompt in the image. I like that you are able to choose the style you want and make that consistent across the course. However, I think those images need a lot of review by the author.

What challenges did you face when trying to get AI to produce the results you wanted?

I asked for it to create a bookshelf with 7 books. I gave it a title for each book, and no matter how descriptive, detailed, or concise I made my prompt, it would not generate the book titles correctly. All the titles were just jumbled letters. I kept adjusting my prompt and the output remained the same. I think it could be helpful f we could draw a text box around any text on an AI image and insert what we want. That way we are able to work off the AI image but still enhance it with a human touch.

Which AI Assistant feature felt most intuitive or useful to you during the practice activities?

All the features felt pretty intuitive. I liked the versatility in being able to convert blocks. It saves time and it gives the course an entirely different feel if I need to use one master template for several courses. 

I really like the text inline text editing tools and that on the slide you can adjust right there. Adjusting the tone is a really great feature and requesting an edit is super easy and rewrites it right in place. But what is really cool is the scenario scripts and dialogue. And I like the text-to-speech translations. I think the images are good but more challenging is needing to still regenerate an image. Ultimately, needing to replace with stock photos. Still have a little ways to go with image generating but getting close.

I want to respond to this question: 

1. What surprised you about how AI handled text or media generation?

I was surprised at how it turned the video into a transcript and then used it to build course content. This is a game-changer! Our on-demand courses rely on videos as visual aids to the concepts we teach, since the client is on their own.  Normally, we copy and paste from our PPT and then add the media. No more copy and paste!!!! Time saver for sure!! We can just add the video as an option for the client to watch for further instructions. So exciting!!!

Which AI Features: I like the instant convert and rewrite tools. Both of these new features are the most intuitive and practical. The AI-to-text feature is a great value, and all the voices are high-quality. 

Challenges: The image generation feature could be improved. I think there could be more guidance on keeping pictures consistent. The look, feel, and colors may be consistent, but with people, I notice variation in ways some users may not be used to articulating, such as the illustration and character styles. I would also like to see a preset option for whether the person should look like a model or a regular person. I know this could be specified in the prompt, but it would be great to see this in a preset.

1 - The "Instant convert" AI Assistant feature has been the most valuable for me. When I’m building in Rise, I usually already have SME‑approved content ready to go, so being able to instantly view that content in multiple presentation formats saves a significant amount of time. It helps me quickly compare options and choose the most engaging approach for the learner.

3 - The "Make shorter" editing tool has been especially helpful for my Storyline projects. Condensing content can be challenging, but keeping on‑screen text concise makes such a difference in reducing cognitive load and avoiding clutter. This tool streamlines the process and helps me maintain clean, learner‑friendly slides without sacrificing key information.

1. Which AI Assistant feature felt most intuitive or useful to you during the practice activities? They're all great and useful in their own ways, but the one that truly stood out to me the most was the ability to "Create an AI Image Prompt" based on selected course copy. For some reason, I overlooked that gem and didn't realize it was there until this cohort. Its ability to turn any header or copy you have into engaging and purposeful graphics that look like they took hours to create blew my mind. I especially think this feature is a fantastic way to jazz up flip cards. 
2. What challenges did you face when trying to get AI to produce the results you wanted? Sometimes the images generated got a bit weird (e.g., generating letters that aren't actually words or related to the description you gave it). I had to figure out how to tweak the prompt to get closer to the result I wanted, even down to omitting certain words if needed.