Week 1 Discussion

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

Like others have written, the Instant Convert feature is particularly helpful because it saves time from rebuilding a block from scratch. It also lets you play around with what works best in a particular module and easily switch it back if you don't like it!

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

I personally enjoyed using the summarize/key takeaways functions because it is a good way to double-check that what you want to emphasize is actually what you are emphasizing. If not, it's a good way to tweak your content to make sure those key points are at the forefront of a response.

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

Most of the AI features were not new to me but I enjoyed using them in the practice activities. Before today, I have never used the AI entrance animation feature in Storyline and enjoyed playing around with it. I was able to test out and refine entrance animations fairly quickly. I had also not yet used the v3 text-to-speech feature. I especially like the expressive range that this beta version brings to the AI voices. These features are becoming more sophisticated and robust. I am loving it all!

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

I find that learning to use AI features takes time and requires practice, especially when I already have a specific design idea in mind. In the long run, I believe it will save me a lot of time but learning to refine my prompts and review for accuracy is time-consuming.

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

The most useful tool for me is the AI prompt tool. Even using it to generate an image prompt is super helpful and saves time.

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

I was surprised by the text generation. Many AIs use the exact same words or verbiage and put out the same material multiple times. I was surprised to see how far its come from even last year.

1. Which AI Assistant feature felt most intuitive or useful to you during the practice activities?
   I use the convert a block tool all the time. I take text from my SMEs and drop it into a paragraph, then use the convert with AI to create much more engaging and interactive ways of presenting the information, including pairing things like a process or tab interaction to learn with a quiz or sorting for practice.
2. What challenges did you face when trying to get AI to produce the results you wanted?
   I would love to use the image generation, but I want to use the same person throughout a single course. I can't for the life of me figure out how to do that. I've tried every which way I could think of, but I get a slightly different person every time. I wish I could have the same person in different positions/scenes. If you have any tips on this, I'd love to know more!

I was surprised with the write an AI prompt for images! I had totally missed this before and find that creating AI images can be challenging for some nuanced concepts and I will be using it in the future. The writing the haiku was also cute. I wonder how people are using this, or if it is there to make us all smile.

The challenge I face is deciding on content created from AI. The organizing can vary even if the source content is the same. Often the source content is a PPT, so any tips there are appreciated. 

What surprised you about how AI handled text or media generation?
I really like the built in styles for the AI image generation and being able to tweak the prompt to align with your content. I think these preset styles really help to create a consistent look and feel through the content and help to reduce time spent searching for the right image to help convey your training.

What challenges did you face when trying to get AI to produce the results you wanted?
I did find that the initial course created by the AI after doing some thoughtful edits in the lesson plan and objects felt a little to formal and repetitive for the audience I serve. I wish the initial output wasn't so rigid. It feels very 'textbook' lesson plan in the sense that every small section seems to start with a pre-amble and objectives that feel very clinical and straightforward. I will need to play around more with the prompts along the way to see if I can get shorter, more casual and engaging outputs for sure.

Which AI Assistant feature felt most intuitive or useful during the practice activity? AI voice would probably be the most impactful for me. It was the tool that required the fewest interventions, just add text and let it run. The instant conversion of blocks also worked pretty well.

What challenges did you face when trying to get AI to produce the results you wanted? Generating icons (flashcard faces) was rough. Our company has a distinct visual brand and brand colors, but if we tried to include a palette to pull from, the tool created wonderful images with the palette included below or beside the image. Often, it was easiest to download the image and crop out the palette.

I have some practice prompting other tools for generating images, but I will need to work with the separate fields for the description and style. Usually, I was able to refine the image after several prompts. I am also used to conversational tools where I could fine-tune the output (iterate on an existing image w/ a further instruction) rather than start over. This refinement process had its own quirks, so I think this will just be a matter of spending more time getting used to the different prompts.

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

I think the most useful feature is AI Course Drafts. I love that I can upload a PowerPoint, video, and agenda and have Rise turn them into a structured course draft. This gives our SMEs a clear view of how the course will flow from the start. Since most of our content comes in as PowerPoints with instructor-recorded videos, this feature can significantly speed up development. The workflow improvement is a real game changer.

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

I think the most valuable editing tool in Rise AI is Rewrite/Edit Text. I used it to shorten and expand content, improve clarity, and refine the tone of the course.

This tool helps polish content more quickly and supports the delivery of a clearer, more accurate course. It also improves workflow by reducing the need for multiple iterations.

Which AI Assistant feature felt most intuitive or useful during the practice activities? Context-aware content suggestions (scene or slide-aware prompts): The Assistant recognizing where you were in a course and proposing content — e.g., suggested slide text, learning objectives, or next steps — felt the most intuitive. It saved time by producing a starting draft that matched the module’s tone and structure, so you could quickly iterate instead of writing from scratch.

What surprised you about how AI handled text or media generation? Quality and speed of first drafts: It was surprising how quickly the Assistant generated coherent, usable lesson text and alt copy that required only light editing. For media, the AI’s ability to suggest image descriptions or recommend visuals fitted to learning objectives was unexpectedly helpful. That said, generative media could be uneven: short, specific prompts gave better image or asset recommendations than vague ones.

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

• Rewrite and change tone: Very valuable for adapting content to the audience level (e.g., from expert to beginner) and for matching the brand voice.
• Shorten/expand: Useful when converting long subject-matter content into concise on-screen text or extending brief bullet points into full explanations.
• Format/structure suggestions (e.g., converting text into bullet points, learning objectives, or quiz questions): These saved time by turning narrative into instructional elements. Overall, these tools accelerated polishing content and tailoring it for learning UX.

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

• Needing very specific prompts: Vague prompts produced generic or off-target content; getting exactly what you wanted required iteratively refining prompts (e.g., specifying audience, reading level, length, tone, and where text would appear).
• Fact/accuracy and specificity: When the content involved technical details or company-specific policies, the Assistant sometimes invented plausible-sounding but incorrect details (hallucinations), so the outputs needed verification.
• Visual/media limitations: Generated media suggestions or placeholders were helpful, but sometimes mismatched the exact visual style, licensing needs, or instructional clarity; replacements or edits were necessary.
• Integration/context gaps: Occasionally, the Assistant didn’t fully account for surrounding interactions (triggers, layers, branching logic) in Storyline, so UI/behavior details had to be adjusted manually.

1. Which AI Assistant feature felt most intuitive or useful to you during the practice activities? The convert block feature was very useful, especially for creating formative knowledge checks based on the content already created. I liked how many options were available and the time savings as opposed to programming them manually.
2. What challenges did you face when trying to get AI to produce the results you wanted? The image creation tasks for the card regarding "Toss your Cookies" was a bit of a challenge. I was able to very successfully create an image, but I had to improve my prompt to be very specific on the request.