Articulate Receives Security Certification From US Federal Government—FedRAMP®
Security is a priority for us, which is why we’re excited to share that Articulate is officially FedRAMP® authorized! If you’re not familiar with FedRAMP, basically this means that the US federal government has done a thorough security and risk assessment of Articulate apps and determined they meet their strict cloud security requirements and are safe to use. If you work for an agency of the US government, this also means you can use Articulate 360 without worry, knowing that they’re FedRAMP authorized. Head over to the FedRAMP marketplace for more details on our authorization. And for those of you in the private sector, it means you can rest easy knowing you’re in good hands with Articulate. Of course, if you want more information on our approach to security and data protection, check out our Trust Center. Want to try out our apps but don’t have an Articulate 360 subscription? Start a free 30-day trial today. And if you have any questions, please share them in the comments.How to Copy Blocks from One Lesson to Another in Rise 360
Have you ever built a course in Rise 360 and realized, later on, that some of the content in one lesson would work great in a different lesson? Or maybe you want to reuse the same content structure? I’ve been there! Luckily, it’s super easy to copy blocks from one Rise lesson to another, thanks to the blocks template feature. Here’s how it works. 1. Open the Blocks Library The first thing you’ll want to do is navigate to the lesson that contains the block you want to copy and open up the block library. You can do that either by clicking the plus sign (+) between two blocks … … or by clicking All Blocks in the blocks shortcut bar. 2. Create a New Template Next, select the templates tab in the block library and click the New Template button. 3. Select the Blocks to Copy Then, select the block or blocks you want to copy by clicking the checkmark for each one. 4. Save Your Template Next, click Save, name your template, and click Save once again. 5. Insert Your Template Finally, navigate to the lesson where you’d like your copied block to go, open up the blocks library, and select your template. Wrap-Up Et voilà! It’s that easy. With blocks templates, you can copy blocks from one lesson to another within the same course and copy blocks to lessons in other courses; you can even share your blocks with members of your team if you have an Articulate 360 Teams subscription. It’s super handy! Want to try block templates out, but don’t have Rise 360? Start a free 30-day trial of Articulate 360. And subscribe to our newsletter to get the latest e-learning inspiration and insights directly in your inbox. You can also find us on LinkedIn and X (Formerly Twitter).8 Business Use Cases for Microlearning
Are you excited to try out microlearning, but unsure when to use it? Below, we outline eight common workplace situations that benefit from a short-form course. Each situation includes a sample microlearning. At the end, learn how you can customize these templates for your own company and training needs. 1. Create Organizational Alignment To hit a business target, everyone needs to be moving in the same direction. Creating that alignment starts with clear, frequent communication of the shared mission, vision, and values. Microlearning can help. The following editable template shows how you can align employees through regular executive “micro” updates: Executive Update 2. Highlight HR Information, Notices, or Reminders Educating employees about annual events like open enrollment, tax season, and compliance training is a critical function of HR teams. The problem? Important announcements often get missed when they’re embedded in long paragraphs or endless emails. Grab the following templates to see how microlearning makes HR communications more digestible and engaging: A Quick Guide To Open Enrollment Internal Company Newsletter 3. Strengthen Company Culture and DEI Initiatives Fostering an inclusive company culture is a continuous process—not a one-time effort. A series of microlearnings can support your larger culture-building and DEI efforts. Check out the following examples for ideas on how to get started: Are You an Ally? Try Taking on These 5 Roles How To Identify and Stop Using Ableist Language Gossip-Proof Your Workplace 4. Streamline Business Processes You can also use microlearning to document and streamline business processes or workflows—such as employee onboarding or performance management. Notice how the following examples make it easy for employees to work through the steps of a process independently: New Hire Pre-Hire Checklist Performance Review and Feedback 5. Increase Security Awareness Most successful data breaches, phishing attacks, and other cybersecurity incidents are caused by human error. Adding refresher microlearnings throughout the year can fortify your defenses. See an example for safeguarding against phishing attacks below: Spot the Phish 6. Enhance Employee Wellness A successful business needs thriving employees. But employee wellness training often ends up buried under competing priorities. Microlearning makes it easy for employees to fit in short breaks for self-care throughout the workday. Check out these two wellness-related microlearning examples: 3 Desk Stretches to Instantly Improve Your Day 5 Tips for Better Naps 7. Provide Quick-Reference Guides Microlearning is the perfect resource for one-off training questions: Employees can quickly find the answers they need—when they need them. Below, we’ve created templates for product and software training. But you could easily create quick-reference guides for sales, customer service, and other teams. Get To Know [Name of Product] Software Training 8. Reinforce and Assess Key Takeaways Finally, who says you have to choose between a more sizable course and microlearning? Repetition aids retention. Consider following up longer training sessions with a microlearning quiz, scenario, or summary. The examples listed below demonstrate how you might do this: Can You Recover From a Workplace Mistake? Training Refresher Wrap-Up There’s no shortage of creative ways you can use microlearning to achieve your business training objectives. The examples above are just a starter list. You might also check out submissions to one of our weekly community challenges, 40+ Microlearning Examples Created in Rise 360 #407. Interested in customizing one of these examples for your team? If you’re an Articulate 360 subscriber or trialer, you can edit all of the examples linked throughout this post by choosing the course from our Rise 360 microlearning content templates. Here’s a short video showing how to do that: What’s the latest microlearning course you’ve created? Tell us about it in the comments—and feel free to ask any questions you might have! Like this article? Subscribe to our newsletter to get the latest e-learning inspiration and insights directly in your inbox. You can also find us on LinkedIn and Twitter.Your Guide to the Teams Admin Console in Articulate 360
With Articulate 360 Teams, your entire team gets access to Articulate 360 with exclusive features that’ll help them collaborate. Plus, you’ll get simple account management and priority support. Watch this video to see how you can easily manage your Articulate 360 Teams account. You’ll see how to invite users, manage permissions, and more. Take a look: To get started, log in to your Articulate 360 Teams console.15 Ways to Collaborate on Projects and Manage Your Team with Articulate 360 Teams
If you have a team of e-learning developers, you probably have two basic goals: to create beautiful, effective courses and to manage your team as efficiently as possible. And we want to help you do just that! That’s why we’re always adding new features to Articulate 360 Teams. Check out the following 15 features that’ll have you collaborating on projects and managing your team with ease, no matter how big your team grows. Collaboration Features Collaborative Authoring in Rise 360 Work together on Rise 360 courses with members of any Articulate 360 team. Create and edit different lessons simultaneously or take turns fine-tuning the same one. Changes happen in real time, so everyone always works on the most recent version. You can even give collaborators different levels of access by making them authors or admins. Learn more about collaborative authoring. Question Banks in Rise 360 Create repositories of questions that can be used in any course you create. Share them with your team so everyone can quickly create quizzes with consistent questions, answers, feedback, and media. Knowledge checks and quizzes draw from these banks rather than displaying the same static questions whenever a learner takes the course. When you share a question bank, team members can use your questions and, with the proper permissions, modify them or add their own. Learn more about question banks. Shared Block Templates in Rise 360 Build Rise 360 courses faster by saving existing blocks and their content as templates. Share those templates with your team, then everyone can reuse them in other Rise 360 courses. Learn more about block templates. Shared Team Slides in Storyline 360 Easily collaborate on Storyline 360 projects with a library of shared team slides. Team members upload and download slides, scenes, and entire projects right within Storyline 360. It’s perfect for sharing project templates, slides that need to be in every course, and reusable slide content, such as interactions and quiz questions. Learn more about team slides. Shared Team Folders in Rise 360 and Review 360 Create shared team folders in Rise 360 and Review 360 to organize your content, assign permissions, and invite collaborators. You can even allow multiple authors to publish new versions of a course to the same Review 360 project. Project Reviews in Review 360 Speed up project reviews. Publish e-learning projects from Storyline 360 , Rise 360, and your other Articulate 360 apps to Review 360 to gather feedback from stakeholders. Collect in-context feedback, follow threaded discussions, and resolve comments in one easy-to-use web app. Learn more about Review 360. Request Reviews in Review 360 Keep your team on track without the hassle of spreadsheets or phone calls. Send and track requests for specific stakeholders to review a content item right from Review 360. With email notifications, due dates, visible statuses, and completion buttons, you’ll never miss another deadline. Learn more about requesting reviews. Integrated Comments in Rise 360 and Storyline 360 Streamline review processes even further. Get Review 360 comments in context as you work in Rise 360 and Storyline 360, eliminating back-and-forth toggling between apps. Browse through feedback from various stakeholders, see comments for multiple Review 360 items, reply to and resolve comments, and add suggested images in real time—all in one place. Cloud Backup in Storyline 360 and Review 360 Work with confidence, knowing your files are safe and easy to access anywhere, anytime. Access your Storyline 360 project files from anywhere and share them with team members by uploading your source files to Review 360. Learn more about cloud backup. Admin Features Consolidated Billing Management Articulate 360 Teams makes billing management simple. You get one annual bill that covers all your team creator licenses. You have the flexibility to pay via credit card or purchase order. And as your team grows, you can add more licenses using your account management console. Learn more about account management. Easy User Management Easily add and remove users as your team evolves. For example, when users leave the company or their roles change, remove them from your team and assign the creator licenses to new users. You can even upload all your users at once using a simple CSV file. And you can add as many 360 admins as you’d like to manage your team. Learn more about managing your team. Group Managers Manage your team with ease. Organize users in groups, such as departments or locations, and assign group managers to manage each group. Watch this video for a brief overview and check out this article for details on managing users, groups, and managers. Manage Team Slides and Block Templates Admins who have creator licenses can rename and delete all Storyline 360 team slides and Rise 360 shared block templates. This is helpful when the original content owners aren’t available to make changes. Transfer Content Maintain control of your content and intellectual property. When someone leaves your team, keep shared content within the subscription and choose what happens to their personal content. Content includes Rise 360 courses, microlearning, label sets, and block templates; Review 360 items and request reviews; and Storyline 360 team slides. Single Sign-On Don’t worry about remembering (or forgetting!) another password. Control authentication for your Articulate 360 team using your own identity provider and our single sign-on (SSO) solution. Start a Free Trial Experience these Articulate 360 Teams features for yourself! Sign up for a 30-day free trial of Articulate 360. You can invite up to 10 users to join your team during the trial period. You’ll get the exclusive collaboration and admin features described above, as well as award-winning authoring apps, 22+ million course assets, as well as live and on-demand online training. See these FAQs to learn more about free trials and let us know if you need help!Introducing the Articulate Beta Program
We’re committed to delivering you more value, more often—which is why we’re excited to introduce Articulate’s new beta program! Here’s what you need to know. What Is It? The beta program gives you—our customers—the chance to explore and offer feedback on experimental features across Articulate 360 apps. That way, you can help shape and enhance these features to truly fit your needs. How Do I Participate? If you have an Articulate 360 account, you’re automatically included in this new program! We’ll add beta features to our apps during updates and mark them with a Beta badge. From there, simply try them out and give us feedback via in-app surveys or in our E-Learning Heroes community. If you’ve been paying close attention, you might have noticed that we already have a few beta features: Team Folders in Review 360—lets multiple authors publish a course to the same Review 360 link, so you never lose track of your comments. Request Review—allows users to request and track reviews all within Review 360. Integrated comments—lets reviewers browse, reply, and resolve feedback directly in Storyline 360 and Rise 360. Note that since features in beta are still evolving, they’re subject to changes in scope, pricing, and packaging, or discontinuation. Wrap-Up With incremental value, delivered more frequently—and with your helpful feedback—we hope to build products that meet your needs. Want to see how your voice can make a difference? Check out this update we’re releasing based on customer feedback: 11 New Articulate 360 Features To Celebrate. And if you’re not an Articulate 360 subscriber, you can start a free 30-day trial for access to the beta program.7 Creative Ways to Use Images in Rise 360 Courses
Have you ever finished creating a course, looked at it, and thought to yourself, Wow … that’s a lot of text! If so, you’re not alone. It’s easy for courses to end up text-heavy, because written content is the easiest way for a lot of folks to communicate. But a text-heavy course can also make learners feel overwhelmed—and that’s not what anyone wants! So what’s the best way to make your course feel lighter and more approachable? Add in some relevant imagery to break up your text content. Now, I know what you’re thinking: What if I don’t have the images I need to illustrate my content? No worries! Rise 360 is integrated with Content Library 360, so you’re never more than a click away from millions of course assets. And there are so many different ways you can use them in your course. Let’s take a closer look at a few creative ideas for adding imagery to your Rise 360 courses. 1. Replace Bullet Points with Illustrated Flashcards Instead of inserting a bullet point block, why not use a flashcard block with images on the front side? In addition to making your course feel less text-heavy, it’ll encourage learners to actively engage with your content. 2. Add a Quote with a Background Image Quotes are a great way to drive home your key messages and inspire your learners. By adding a background image to your quote, you’ll draw attention to it and break up the monotony in a lesson with a lot of text. 3. Illustrate Your Knowledge Checks and Quiz Questions Quizzes don’t have to be text-only! Add some visual interest to your knowledge check or quiz question by adding an image or illustration. 4. Make Key Points Stand Out by Adding a Background Image If you want to make sure your learners don’t overlook a key point, why not add some emphasis by pulling the message out from a paragraph and adding a background image? It’s a surefire way to catch your learner’s attention. 5. Replace Bullet Points with a Labeled Graphic If you’re looking for a more creative way to present your bullet points, try searching Content Library 360 for an image that illustrates your content, like in the example above. You can then add markers to the appropriate spots on the image so learners can click for more information. 6. Break Up Content with Full-Width Images If you have a lesson with a bunch of text blocks in a row, why not break it up with some full-width images? These images will serve not only as dividers but will make your course look nicer and feel less dense. 7. Add Images to Your Interactive Blocks If you’re using interactive blocks like processes, timelines, accordions, or tabs, for example, think about adding an image to each section to round out your content. Wrap-Up These ideas are only the tip of the iceberg! There are many other ways to incorporate visuals into your Rise 360 courses. And to help you find the images you want in Content Library 360, check out this article. Want to try out what you learned here in Rise 360, but don’t have Articulate 360? Start a free 30-day trial. And subscribe to our newsletter to get the latest product updates, e-learning examples, and expert advice directly in your inbox.Coming Soon: Articulate AI (With Video!)
Exciting news: We’re working on some AI features that’ll help amplify your creativity and accelerate course creation. Check out this short video for a quick preview of what’s in store: We hope you’re as excited as we are about these upcoming features! Subscribe to our newsletter to get the latest product updates directly in your inbox. If you have questions, please share them in the comments.3 Ways to Track & Display Learner Progress with Storyline 360
You’ve been asking for a simple way to track and display learner progress in your Storyline 360 courses, and we heard you! With the new slide numbers feature, you can easily insert progress indicators so that learners know exactly where they are in your course. One thing I love about this feature is that there are so many different options for displaying learner progress. Let’s take a closer look at a few of my favorites. Slide Numbers The most common way to let learners know where they are in your course is by showing them how many of the total number of slides they’ve completed, as shown in the screenshot below. The best part about it is that Storyline 360 calculates the slide numbers automatically, whether your course is linear or not. See for yourself in this example. Percent Complete Another way to let learners know how they’re progressing through your course is by showing them the percent of the course they’ve completed, like you see in the screenshot below. And just like the slide numbers, Storyline 360 calculates this percentage automatically. All you have to do is decide where you want it to appear in your course. It’s so easy! Check out this example to see how it works. Visual Progress Meters You don’t have to display the actual slide numbers or percent complete to make good use of this feature. You can also use it to create a custom visual progress meter, as pictured below. Thanks to the prebuilt variables available in this feature, it’s easier than ever to create a personalized progress meter. Take a peek at this example to see one way to do that. Learn More Ready to take this new feature for a spin? Here’s a tutorial that’ll teach you how to set it up, step by step. If you don’t have an Articulate 360 subscription, you’ll want to snag a free 30-day trial first. And of course, be sure to come back to E-Learning Heroes regularly for more helpful advice on everything related to e-learning. Questions? Comments? Let me know in the comments section below.Switching from Storyline 3 to Storyline 360? Here’s What’s in Store
If you’re making the switch from Storyline 3 to Storyline 360, you’re probably equal parts excited and anxious. I totally get it! Change can be scary, even if it’s GOOD change. It’s hard to know what to expect. The great news is that when you crack open Storyline 360, you’ll notice it looks almost exactly like Storyline 3. At first glance, the two are pretty interchangeable—aside from the color of the interface—so you’ll feel right at home. Of course, once you dig a little deeper you’ll start to see some differences. And these differences are what make Storyline 360 so much more powerful. Let’s take a look at a few of the big ones so you know what’s in store. Access Millions of Graphic Assets From the Insert Tab When you open the insert tab you’ll see options for adding characters, photos, illustrations, icons, and videos from Content Library 360. And while you already had access to some characters before, if you click on the Characters button you’ll find that you now have access to many more! Use the Media Library To Manage All Your Assets In the view tab you’ll notice another great new feature: the media library! If you’re struggling to find a good way to manage your course assets, you are going to love this feature. The media library lets you view, edit, and replace all the assets in your project in one window—without ever leaving Storyline 360. Not only is it a one-stop shop for all your assets, there are tons of great time-saving features built in. To learn more about the media library, check out this article: 5 Reasons You’re Going To Love the New Media Library Feature in Storyline 360. Create More Immersive Interactions With 360° Images Another thing you’ll notice in Storyline 360 is that you can insert 360° images to create a more immersive learning experience. You can also add interactive elements—like markers and hotspots—to these images and even embed supporting multimedia. Using 360° images is fantastic if you’re creating a course that requires the learner to interact with their environment or if you’re creating a guided tour of a location. To learn more and see some examples, check out the links below. 7 Immersive Learning Experiences That Use 360° Images 7 Tips for Creating Immersive Learning Experiences With Interactive 360° Images 42 Interactive 360° Image Examples in E-Learning Build Interactions Faster With the Updated Trigger Panel & Multi-Action Conditional Triggers While triggers are something you’re likely used to from Storyline 3, the trigger panel in Storyline 360 kicks things up a notch. Triggers in Storyline 360 are faster and easier to create and edit. You can copy and paste multiple triggers at once, temporarily disable them, or expand and collapse them. Also, triggers are now color-coded so you can quickly identify them. And that’s not all! The all-new multi-action conditional triggers, which give you the ability to define two actions for a single trigger, are another huge time-saver. That’s because now you can create a locked tabs interaction like this one with just one trigger instead of two—speeding up your workflow significantly. Before: Two Triggers After: One Trigger (with Else condition) To learn more about these enhancements, check out the resources below: 10 Reasons Why It’s Easy To Create Interactions With Storyline 360 Storyline 360: Trigger Panel Color-Coding Cheat Sheet Storyline 360: Conditional Trigger Enhancements Speed Up Your Workflow With Professionally Designed Templates In the slides tab of Storyline 360, you now have access to gorgeous, professionally designed, fully customizable templates in addition to the standard slide layouts you had in Storyline 3! And many of these templates include prebuilt interactions, so all you have to do is pop in your content and they’re ready to go. With thousands of Content Library 360 templates at your fingertips, you can create stunning courses in minutes—without paying a graphic designer. Learn more about our templates here: Storyline 360: Using Content Library 360 Templates. Collaborate With Team Members Using Team Slides If you’re an Articulate 360 Teams subscriber, make sure you check out Team Slides, located in the slides tab. Here you can save time and share slide templates you’ve created with your team, or use ones others have saved in your library. Team Slides are great if your company has a standard format for specific slides across all e-learning courses—for example, objectives or navigation slides. To learn more about Team Slides, head over to this article: Storyline 360: Using Team Slides for Collaboration. Give Your Course an Updated Feel With the Modern Player When you open the player settings, you’ll notice the player looks a little different than the one you’re used to seeing in Storyline 3. That’s because in Storyline 360 you have access to the Modern Player. Not only is this player responsive and accessible for all learners, it makes it easier than ever to customize the look and feel to fit your brand guidelines. Want to learn more about how this new player differs from the one you’re used to? Check out this article: Storyline 360: Choosing a Player Style (Modern or Classic). Easily Gather Feedback by Publishing To Review 360 When you click on Publish you’ll notice some new options. The first one is publish to Review 360. What’s Review 360, you ask? Great question! It’s a web-based project review app that works seamlessly with Storyline 360 to publish and share courses. That way you can get courses into the hands of stakeholders faster and easily gather feedback. Because it’s fully web-based, your reviewers and stakeholders don’t need to download an app—or even create an account—to use it. You simply share the link with them and they can view and add comments to your course. All they need to do is open the Comments bar and type their feedback. It’s super easy to use and makes the whole course review process go much more smoothly. To learn more about Review 360, check out this article: 3 Ways Review 360 Is a Big Gift for Course Developers. Create a Course Teaser in Seconds by Publishing To Video Another new publishing option you’ll notice in Storyline 360 is Video. This option comes in handyif you’re creating a teaser video for your course that you want to post on, say, YouTube. Or, maybe you need to create a GIF for a different project. If so, you can use Storyline 360 to build the GIF, publish to video, and then convert and embed it wherever you want. Want to find out more about how this works? Check out this article: New in Storyline 360: Publish To Video. Wrap-Up Of course, this isn’t an exhaustive list of all the features you’ll find in Storyline 360 that you didn’t have in Storyline 3, just the big ones that are likely to stand out as you make the switch. For a side-by-side feature comparison, check out this handy list. Hopefully this article has you feeling excited and ready to jump into creating courses in Storyline 360. But if you’d like a bit more information before you get started, we’ve got you covered! Just check out the links below: How To Find and Create 360° Images for Your Storyline 360 Project Make Your Storyline 360 Courses More Accessible With These New Features 3 Ways the Latest Review 360 Updates Make Managing Content Even Easier 3 Features That Make Storyline 360 Quick and Easy To Learn Set Yourself up for Success With These 5 Storyline 360 Project Time-Savers Want to try out these new features, but don’t have Storyline 360? Start a free 30-day trial of Articulate 360, 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.
