How I Created an Information Security Course in No Time Flat with Rise 360 Templates

How often do you get thrown training projects on topics you know little or nothing about? It’s happened to most of us at one time or another, and it can be super-stressful—especially when you’re under a time crunch.

That’s why I think the addition of templates to Rise 360 is such a slam dunk for busy e-learning pros. While you’ve always been able to create your own block templates to copy the blocks you’ve customized from one lesson or course to another, now you can kick-start the course creation process by grabbing one of the gorgeous, customizable templates available in Rise 360. These templates can be quickly adapted with your text and media to build an engaging, interactive course in record time.

My favorite part of using Rise 360 templates is how they save me from having to come up with an effective course design from scratch. Since Rise 360 templates are full course templates with placeholder text, they include an outline with all of the topics typically covered in a course on this subject so I never worry I’m missing critical information. Each lesson has instructional prompts and placeholder interactions designed to help me visualize the best way to present my content so it’s engaging and effective. And all this adds up to a low-stress way to crank out effective courses quickly.

Here’s a quick rundown of the steps I took to create this awesome information security–themed course on phishing using a Rise 360 template. Click on the image below to check it out.

What did you think? I loved having Rise 360 templates right at my fingertips. Not only did I save myself the trouble of rounding up a subject matter expert on the topic (or making myself into an expert!), I enjoyed having a lot of the design heavy lifting taken care of for me—especially for a topic that I wasn’t feeling super-inspired to work on.

Let’s jump into a few easy steps for creating a course like this in minutes using Rise 360 templates.

Search for a Template

First, you’ll be able to browse through all the Rise 360 templates when you click on the New Course button on the left of your dashboard. On the following screen, you find both course and lesson templates. 

Simply start searching for the best fit for your topic. You can scroll through all of the available templates, using the filters on the left to narrow down your options ...

Or you can do a quick keyword search just by typing it into the search bar. In my case, I knew I needed to create a course specifically on the topic of “phishing,” so I typed that keyword into the search bar.

Once you’ve found a good match, you can click the Preview Template button to see your course template in action.

Select a Template to Customize

Course template previews open up in a new browser so you can choose which one is right for you. If you’re happy with the one you’ve picked, just close that tab and navigate to the browser tab with Rise 360 course templates. Just hover your mouse over the course and click Select This Template to add the template to your Rise 360 dashboard.

Make the Template Your Own

Now that you’ve added your course template to your Rise 360 dashboard, it’s time to start customizing it! 

At this point, I like to gather any source material from my stakeholders or Subject Matter Experts and loosely organize it following the high-level topics outlined in my chosen template. I find it’s also helpful to dive into each templated lesson and see how it flows. This can help me spot those areas where I’ll need to gather additional information or identify subtopics I can remove or reorder to suit my needs.

Thankfully, making all of these changes is super-easy with Rise 360. For one, you can just replace the placeholder text in each lesson with your own content, like this:

And because it’s simple to add, remove, and reorder blocks, you can easily reorder content, too. For instance, I wanted to add an image between some existing blocks in my template, so I just clicked the plus (+) icon to open up the blocks library and pop in the perfect block for my lesson. 

Now all that’s left to do is repeat the process of replacing placeholder text, and reordering and tweaking blocks to get each lesson exactly the way you want it. You can even turn your newly customized lessons into block templates and repurpose them in other courses you create, or (if you’re on an Articulate 360 Teams plan) share your block templates with your entire team to help speed up their course development process, too.

Which Rise 360 templates do you see yourself using to accelerate course development? Are there any other templates you’d like us to create? Just like all of the other resources in Articulate 360, we’ll be adding more in the future, so this is your chance to tell us what you’d find most helpful. Please share your ideas with me in a comment, below.

Want to check out Rise 360 templates, but don’t have an Articulate 360 subscription? 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.