Welcome to E-Learning Heroes! So happy you're here ✨
Audio autoplay isn't a feature currently on our roadmap, but I have seen this brought up before in our Community. I can see how it would be really handy in that instance, so I'm going to relay that to our team.
When we first released Rise, the auto play feature was something we shied away from as you'll see in Adam's comments here.
It's always good to keep these discussions going and evaluate any changes to that as Rise is continually evolving!
In the meantime, you could try restricting the navigation in your course then adding a Continue Divider under your audio block with the completion setting Complete All Blocks Above:
This would force the learner to listen to the audio before continuing.
I'd like to bump this up, too... my organization's design standards are to have any video or audio auto-play, keeping clicks and interactions valuable, and action-learning focused.
To have the ability to turn on/off audio as is now on Facebook would be a "nice to have", but not a requirement for my company. Auto-play, (especially for audio), however, is.
Thanks Dawn for sharing that insight - we've sent the feature request along to our product team, and from here they'll follow our process to evaluate and implement feature requests. You can read more about our process here.
I am currently evaluating Articulate 360 (we currently use SL3 and are considering moving over to 360!)
The feedback for the e-learnings I have created using Rise has been extremely positive except for the need to click on the audio to play it... as with Dawn above we want to ensure clicks and interactions are meaningful and learning focused... the addition of the continue on completion means the learner now has 2 non learning focused clicks!
Has any progress been made on adding the Autoplay feature??... or is there a time frame for this?
Hello, Ahmed. Web browsers are moving towards stricter auto-play policies in order to improve the user experience. We agree that requiring some kind of action from the user, such as clicking a button before playing audio, is the right approach to ensure a unified experience for all learners. To that end, we won’t be adding any auto-play features to Rise 360.
However, we are looking at ways we may be able to provide narration features that don’t auto-play. We'll keep you posted on any changes!
Browsing web services and engaging in e-learning are different IMO and I wouldn't be so quick to use that standard as the standard for learning experiences. I'm deleting audio as we speak to eliminate the extra step for my learners.
It's quite disappointing to see that Rise does not allow for the auto-play audio/video feature. We see auto-play as a huge benefit, especially for the businesses we support (Sales, Customer Service, etc.). Often times, if it does not auto-play, the end user will simply look past it and that alters the entire learning experience.
We really need an auto-play feature, it really does not make sense for a learner to have to click a play button every single time. PLEASE introduce this feature. We have multiple courses that we use the audio block in and it's really challenging not having an autoplay option :( We have 2 seats and make pretty large courses. This would help us tremendously, pleasssse put in a good word.
I looked at this at one stage but it didn't feel right restricting the learner for our use case. Also the play button is not as obvious as other interactive elements, which may confuse the learner as to why they cannot progress in the module. Having a little tick for completion on each element would address this issue ( which I saw being implemented in other rapid eLearning authoring tools such as Adapt.)
Unfortunately it literally seems like Articulate is ignoring what appears to be the majority opinion... Which is to have some way to auto-play audio. In most instances my company's learners are in a controlled environment or are aware ahead of time whether or not they need headphones while viewing a course. I would like to make use of Rise but it doesn't seem as if it is feasible without an auto-play option. Just as others have stated, I feel having to click on every block with audio breaks up the flow of the course and takes away from the learning. The intent is that it should be seamless for them with the exception of those places that are value added clicks to advance or segment the lessons. It'd be very much appreciated if this could be revisited/reconsidered.
I would like to know about bringing the audio feature on Rise. Is it currently under process? As it was a long time ago I hope the company fixed it already. thanks :)
"When we first released Rise, the auto play feature was something we shied away from as you'll see in Adam's comments here."
I suggest adding an option setting so if anyone who wants to have the autoplay, he/she would have the benefit of it. and those who don't want, they could keep the setting off.
Hello, Hussain. You can add audio blocks in Rise 360 lessons, and learners will click to play them. We aren't developing a way for audio to automatically play in Rise 360 courses at this time.
:( Why are you ignoring the request of the E-Learning InstuctionalDesigners? We currently have 2 seats in which we use to create courses. Not having control of the audio feature is hindering our progress and overall success. We are considering pulling our 2 seats and go with another product that grants us this control. Even free authoring tool such as Adapt and Evolve allow this level of granularity.....It's really frustrating,
Hi, Martin. I appreciate your honesty. We believe that requiring some kind of action from the user, such as clicking a button before playing audio, is the right approach to ensure a unified experience for all learners. We're looking at ways we can enhance narration in Rise 360 courses, and we'll let you know if we make any changes that help.
To help me document what hasn't worked for learners, are you finding that people ignore the audio block even if there is introductory text above it, or a continue button block beneath it requiring that the audio is played?
So our company create various courses for multiple use cases primarily software technical training videos along with on boarding, human resources, legal compliance training and internal staff training. A lot of the technical courses are converted from legacy content such as PowerPoints. The way we structure the content is a blend of theory and practical video labs. With each theory topic (theory being the written content) is being coupled audio underneath. For each topic we have may have few sections related to that topic. The audio piece (narration) will touch on the theory elements but provide a better contextual overview of that particular section or topic. In between each section we have continue buttons and I understand that we could lock this down and force people to interact with everything above. But this in turn will restrict the user and cause frustration (I know this because we did a trial user testing with this approach).
You say you believe in creating a unified experience for all learners, I totally agree with this. I believe in creating a unified seamless solution and making people click an audio button every single time is going against creating a a n unified experience for learners, it's actually hindering them and causing frustration because people are at times not clicking it and just reading the theory thus missing out on relevant and important information.
If there was a handful of audio blocks in a module all well and good, this wouldn't be so bad. But when we have 30-40 per module this becomes a great challenge.
Through my education I have studied meaningful user interaction and design usability. I am a big believer in creating interactions and making the learner have to click buttons to increase interactivity and engagement but those are for when there are specific use cases for specific learning outcomes like sorting activities and knowledge checks or elements like accodians or flip cards...... However........ Forcing a leaner to press a play button is NOT MEANINGFUL and creates an unified, non seamless eb and flow to courses.
You can see from peoples reactions that we is really sought after. There is a huge demand for this within the e-learning community using Rise as their main authoring tool. This community has world class industry leader in instructional designers, trainers and multimedia professionals. All we are asking is for a simple thing... Give us a choice of auto play, let the instructional designers and authors decide what works best for their particular instance/use case.
This is something that I feel really strongly about as you may have gathered. So I ask you kindly, to please discuss this with your development team and leaders. Show them our messages and requests. If you could do that I would really appreciate it. Thank you very much for taking the time to read my message.
"We believe that requiring some kind of action from the user, such as clicking a button before playing audio, is the right approach to ensure a unified experience for all learners." I guess I don't understand why this can't just be an option. That's like saying 'we believe that only using grey font color is the right approach to ensure a unified experience for all learners'. Yes, that ensures that everything looks the same but not everyone builds courses in the same way so users are all going to have different experiences. I am asking for audio autoplay because our users HATE the extra clicks. They like to scroll, read, scroll, read, scroll, watch a video. Not scroll, click play, read. They end up not clicking the play button and missing the audio altogether. Some have mentioned that clicking play for audio is not a meaningful click - 100% agree.
In my own experience, when I offer clients the option to develop in Storyline or Rise, and have to point out that in Rise the audio will not autoplay on each slide, then unless the customer decides to skip audio altogether, they inevitably opt to go with Storyline because they feel (and I agree 100%) that forcing the learner to click to play audio on each and every slide significantly deteriorates the learner's experience. It flies in the face of decades of end-user eLearning experience. Stopping the course at every single slide for an extra click instead of offering a pleasing flow irritates the learner--or, as others point out, the learner simply skips the audio (and forcing them to go back to play it by means of an end-of-section control block only increases the resentment factor). While of course no crucial learning content should be in VO only, if one adds VO to a course it's there for a reason and needs to be heard smoothly and seamlessly.
Back when Rise was first released I asked about this issue and Articulate said the various browsers were forcing this limitation. If that's not still the case, and if the autoplay option can in fact be offered, from a learner experience standpoint this should be a no-brainer. I realize it may not be easy on the development side. But isn't the learner's experience what it's all about?If the source of this issue remains the browser companies--then go back to the table with them and push back about offering at least the option.
Articulate has added so many wonderful elements to Rise, including Storyline interactions and now branching scenarios. All wonderful innovations. But at the end of the day, if Rise can't autoplay the audio on each slide, that simple failing is a complete deal-breaker for most of my clients, and I don't get to use Rise and all those great features. In fact, it happened again with a new client this afternoon. He loved the idea of the online development tool and was all set to have me use Rise until I explained the audio limitation. He immediately said: "You're joking. That's ridiculous. That won't work for my audience."
There you have it. Browsers, meet eLearning. Please, if this feature can be added, think of the learner's experience, and make it a priority. I almost never get to use Rise because of this one issue. "For want of the nail, the shoe was lost...."
"Articulate has added so many wonderful elements to Rise, including Storyline interactions and now branching scenarios. All wonderful innovations. But at the end of the day, if Rise can't autoplay the audio on each slide, that simple failing is a complete deal-breaker"
Thanks Andrew, I fully support your statement!
Autoplay of videos is also a non-feature of rise. The storyline block, however, is played automatically and that is great. As an instructional designer I can choose if I want to use the autoplay or if I want the learner to click the play button (even though I have to it in SL). But that's how I love to work: taking the perspective of the learner and providing the best learner experience possible.
BTW: you can insert an autoplay SL block with audio only ;-)
53 Replies
Hey there Académie,
Welcome to E-Learning Heroes! So happy you're here ✨
Audio autoplay isn't a feature currently on our roadmap, but I have seen this brought up before in our Community. I can see how it would be really handy in that instance, so I'm going to relay that to our team.
When we first released Rise, the auto play feature was something we shied away from as you'll see in Adam's comments here.
It's always good to keep these discussions going and evaluate any changes to that as Rise is continually evolving!
In the meantime, you could try restricting the navigation in your course then adding a Continue Divider under your audio block with the completion setting Complete All Blocks Above:
This would force the learner to listen to the audio before continuing.
Take a quick Peek over here for how to set this up and here's an example of what it would look like for your learners! 😊
I'd like to bump this up, too... my organization's design standards are to have any video or audio auto-play, keeping clicks and interactions valuable, and action-learning focused.
To have the ability to turn on/off audio as is now on Facebook would be a "nice to have", but not a requirement for my company. Auto-play, (especially for audio), however, is.
Thanks Dawn for sharing that insight - we've sent the feature request along to our product team, and from here they'll follow our process to evaluate and implement feature requests. You can read more about our process here.
I am currently evaluating Articulate 360 (we currently use SL3 and are considering moving over to 360!)
The feedback for the e-learnings I have created using Rise has been extremely positive except for the need to click on the audio to play it... as with Dawn above we want to ensure clicks and interactions are meaningful and learning focused... the addition of the continue on completion means the learner now has 2 non learning focused clicks!
Has any progress been made on adding the Autoplay feature??... or is there a time frame for this?
I would like to chime in and say this functionality would be extremely useful for us as well.
I would like to add my voice to Dawn, Patricia and Rene as well. Having this feature would be very useful for us as well.
Hello, Ahmed. Web browsers are moving towards stricter auto-play policies in order to improve the user experience. We agree that requiring some kind of action from the user, such as clicking a button before playing audio, is the right approach to ensure a unified experience for all learners. To that end, we won’t be adding any auto-play features to Rise 360.
However, we are looking at ways we may be able to provide narration features that don’t auto-play. We'll keep you posted on any changes!
this is unfortunate news. Autoplay is a great way to reduce clicks, something my users often complain about.
Browsing web services and engaging in e-learning are different IMO and I wouldn't be so quick to use that standard as the standard for learning experiences. I'm deleting audio as we speak to eliminate the extra step for my learners.
It's quite disappointing to see that Rise does not allow for the auto-play audio/video feature. We see auto-play as a huge benefit, especially for the businesses we support (Sales, Customer Service, etc.). Often times, if it does not auto-play, the end user will simply look past it and that alters the entire learning experience.
We really need an auto-play feature, it really does not make sense for a learner to have to click a play button every single time. PLEASE introduce this feature. We have multiple courses that we use the audio block in and it's really challenging not having an autoplay option :( We have 2 seats and make pretty large courses. This would help us tremendously, pleasssse put in a good word.
Agreed, the option of having hot spot elements playing an associated audio file on open automatically would be particularly helpful....
I looked at this at one stage but it didn't feel right restricting the learner for our use case. Also the play button is not as obvious as other interactive elements, which may confuse the learner as to why they cannot progress in the module. Having a little tick for completion on each element would address this issue ( which I saw being implemented in other rapid eLearning authoring tools such as Adapt.)
:( we need it though.....
Unfortunately it literally seems like Articulate is ignoring what appears to be the majority opinion... Which is to have some way to auto-play audio. In most instances my company's learners are in a controlled environment or are aware ahead of time whether or not they need headphones while viewing a course. I would like to make use of Rise but it doesn't seem as if it is feasible without an auto-play option. Just as others have stated, I feel having to click on every block with audio breaks up the flow of the course and takes away from the learning. The intent is that it should be seamless for them with the exception of those places that are value added clicks to advance or segment the lessons. It'd be very much appreciated if this could be revisited/reconsidered.
Hi Ashley,
I would like to know about bringing the audio feature on Rise. Is it currently under process?
As it was a long time ago I hope the company fixed it already. thanks :)
And about this comment that you shared.
"When we first released Rise, the auto play feature was something we shied away from as you'll see in Adam's comments here."
I suggest adding an option setting so if anyone who wants to have the autoplay, he/she would have the benefit of it. and those who don't want, they could keep the setting off.
Hello, Hussain. You can add audio blocks in Rise 360 lessons, and learners will click to play them. We aren't developing a way for audio to automatically play in Rise 360 courses at this time.
:( Why are you ignoring the request of the E-Learning InstuctionalDesigners? We currently have 2 seats in which we use to create courses. Not having control of the audio feature is hindering our progress and overall success. We are considering pulling our 2 seats and go with another product that grants us this control. Even free authoring tool such as Adapt and Evolve allow this level of granularity.....It's really frustrating,
I am in the same space and totally agree with you. Learners can and will look past the audio block element. We totally need an autoplay feature.
Hi, Martin. I appreciate your honesty. We believe that requiring some kind of action from the user, such as clicking a button before playing audio, is the right approach to ensure a unified experience for all learners. We're looking at ways we can enhance narration in Rise 360 courses, and we'll let you know if we make any changes that help.
To help me document what hasn't worked for learners, are you finding that people ignore the audio block even if there is introductory text above it, or a continue button block beneath it requiring that the audio is played?
So our company create various courses for multiple use cases primarily software technical training videos along with on boarding, human resources, legal compliance training and internal staff training. A lot of the technical courses are converted from legacy content such as PowerPoints. The way we structure the content is a blend of theory and practical video labs. With each theory topic (theory being the written content) is being coupled audio underneath. For each topic we have may have few sections related to that topic. The audio piece (narration) will touch on the theory elements but provide a better contextual overview of that particular section or topic. In between each section we have continue buttons and I understand that we could lock this down and force people to interact with everything above. But this in turn will restrict the user and cause frustration (I know this because we did a trial user testing with this approach).
You say you believe in creating a unified experience for all learners, I totally agree with this. I believe in creating a unified seamless solution and making people click an audio button every single time is going against creating a a n unified experience for learners, it's actually hindering them and causing frustration because people are at times not clicking it and just reading the theory thus missing out on relevant and important information.
If there was a handful of audio blocks in a module all well and good, this wouldn't be so bad. But when we have 30-40 per module this becomes a great challenge.
Through my education I have studied meaningful user interaction and design usability. I am a big believer in creating interactions and making the learner have to click buttons to increase interactivity and engagement but those are for when there are specific use cases for specific learning outcomes like sorting activities and knowledge checks or elements like accodians or flip cards...... However........ Forcing a leaner to press a play button is NOT MEANINGFUL and creates an unified, non seamless eb and flow to courses.
You can see from peoples reactions that we is really sought after. There is a huge demand for this within the e-learning community using Rise as their main authoring tool. This community has world class industry leader in instructional designers, trainers and multimedia professionals. All we are asking is for a simple thing... Give us a choice of auto play, let the instructional designers and authors decide what works best for their particular instance/use case.
This is something that I feel really strongly about as you may have gathered. So I ask you kindly, to please discuss this with your development team and leaders. Show them our messages and requests. If you could do that I would really appreciate it. Thank you very much for taking the time to read my message.
Kindest Regards, Martin Dunne.
"We believe that requiring some kind of action from the user, such as clicking a button before playing audio, is the right approach to ensure a unified experience for all learners."
I guess I don't understand why this can't just be an option. That's like saying 'we believe that only using grey font color is the right approach to ensure a unified experience for all learners'. Yes, that ensures that everything looks the same but not everyone builds courses in the same way so users are all going to have different experiences.
I am asking for audio autoplay because our users HATE the extra clicks. They like to scroll, read, scroll, read, scroll, watch a video. Not scroll, click play, read. They end up not clicking the play button and missing the audio altogether. Some have mentioned that clicking play for audio is not a meaningful click - 100% agree.
In my own experience, when I offer clients the option to develop in Storyline or Rise, and have to point out that in Rise the audio will not autoplay on each slide, then unless the customer decides to skip audio altogether, they inevitably opt to go with Storyline because they feel (and I agree 100%) that forcing the learner to click to play audio on each and every slide significantly deteriorates the learner's experience. It flies in the face of decades of end-user eLearning experience. Stopping the course at every single slide for an extra click instead of offering a pleasing flow irritates the learner--or, as others point out, the learner simply skips the audio (and forcing them to go back to play it by means of an end-of-section control block only increases the resentment factor). While of course no crucial learning content should be in VO only, if one adds VO to a course it's there for a reason and needs to be heard smoothly and seamlessly.
Back when Rise was first released I asked about this issue and Articulate said the various browsers were forcing this limitation. If that's not still the case, and if the autoplay option can in fact be offered, from a learner experience standpoint this should be a no-brainer. I realize it may not be easy on the development side. But isn't the learner's experience what it's all about? If the source of this issue remains the browser companies--then go back to the table with them and push back about offering at least the option.
Articulate has added so many wonderful elements to Rise, including Storyline interactions and now branching scenarios. All wonderful innovations. But at the end of the day, if Rise can't autoplay the audio on each slide, that simple failing is a complete deal-breaker for most of my clients, and I don't get to use Rise and all those great features. In fact, it happened again with a new client this afternoon. He loved the idea of the online development tool and was all set to have me use Rise until I explained the audio limitation. He immediately said: "You're joking. That's ridiculous. That won't work for my audience."
There you have it. Browsers, meet eLearning. Please, if this feature can be added, think of the learner's experience, and make it a priority. I almost never get to use Rise because of this one issue. "For want of the nail, the shoe was lost...."
"Articulate has added so many wonderful elements to Rise, including Storyline interactions and now branching scenarios. All wonderful innovations. But at the end of the day, if Rise can't autoplay the audio on each slide, that simple failing is a complete deal-breaker"
Thanks Andrew, I fully support your statement!
Autoplay of videos is also a non-feature of rise. The storyline block, however, is played automatically and that is great. As an instructional designer I can choose if I want to use the autoplay or if I want the learner to click the play button (even though I have to it in SL). But that's how I love to work: taking the perspective of the learner and providing the best learner experience possible.
BTW: you can insert an autoplay SL block with audio only ;-)
... but it's ugly