Peer Pod Coming Soon: “New to Instructional Design” — Who’s Joining Us?
We’re kicking off a brand-new Peer Pod for anyone who’s new to instructional design and you’re invited! 🎉 Peer Pods are 4-week learning groups where community members explore a topic together through weekly prompts, curated resources, and shared discussion. Whether you’re a few days or several months into your role, this is your chance to connect with peers, reflect on key topics, and build confidence together. Here’s what we’ll explore: ✨ What to focus on as you get started 📦 Intro to Articulate 360 + course design best practices 🤝 Tips for working with SMEs 💻 Best practices for incorporating AI By the end, you’ll walk away with a stronger foundation and a group of peers cheering you on. 🗓 Start Date: Monday, January 12, 2026 Participants will be added to the private Peer Pod group about a week before we begin. 👉 Want to join? Fill out the registration form. 💬 Your turn: What Peer Pod topics do you want to see next? If you could join a focused 4-week learning group, what topic would you choose? Drop your ideas below so we can build pods around what you want most. 🙌AvatarGrid (Unfolding UI) for Storyline
AI video is everywhere in learning design, but the experience hasn’t caught up. Too often, video is dropped onto a slide and left to do all the work. AvatarGrid challenges that approach. Built for Articulate Storyline, AvatarGrid is an unfolding UI system that uses purposeful motion and cinematic transitions to reveal content progressively. AI videos/images, created with Higgsfield AI, Nano Banana, and HeyGen AI, feel integrated, not pasted in, supported by layered vector UI. The result is an immersive, modern learning experience where motion has meaning. Every interaction supports the story. This is what video AI-first, motion-driven UXD looks like in practice. Watch the short tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLXJ_-K4vXIPassport Challenge: Badge Updates, Highlights & Upcoming Events
Great news, travelers! ✈️ All badges earned so far (except Voyager — those will be added at the end) should now appear on your profiles. If anything looks off, just let me know, and I’ll get it sorted. Remember, the Passport Challenge runs through January 5th, so there’s still plenty of time to level up and earn those badges! 🎉 This Week’s Highlights A huge shout-out to our badge earners so far! Tier 1 Members who’ve earned 3+ badges: JudyNollet Nedim Silverfire Seb_Daubert elizabeth ThierryEMMANUEL JHauglie HillaSchlegel jveedubs SandyMyers LeeMillardButlr Kate_Golomshtok KayleneWance ClaireBogue-155 Stephanie BarryHollembeak SMcNicol FelixFranke DanThornton ChelseaYoung-6f samxuan Caitlin_B jeremykelley78 Emily02 BorgCube RonPrice JodiSansone larryvanwave-ff HoneyTurner JenniferThom012 BenjiLukas Mb06 hannahrad22 DaisyWoods-2947 RamonTalavera-0 CydWalker_mwh RehanTT JulieBaker-ad32 RhondaRolf-1090 TamaraCraft-62f RomanieRoach-e9 SyedAmjad-Ali Tier 2 Members who’ve earned 5+ badges: Emmanuel_Kegler Lori_Morgan GolfPrincess AbigailVettese PaSchl Jonathan_Hill Michelle_Brooks MrugeshJani Marie-Pierre701 DanBoylandUK Ekaterina_V MeeraLynn-UK VickyAttridge 🌟 Most Badges Earned (so far!) Emmanuel_Kegler is leading the way with 7 badges — just one more to reach Globetrotter status! 🎁 Prize Reminder Tier 2 = Entry into our Articulate swag drawing Tier 3 (Globetrotter) = A chance to win our Grand Prize: a Fujifilm Instant Film Camera! 🚀 Keep the Momentum Going Here are a few ways to earn more badges this week: Weekly Challenge: Share Your 2025 E-Learning Challenge Highlights Upcoming Webinars: Overview of AI Assistant in Rise - Dec 16 Edit AI Images Using Free Windows Tools - Dec 16 Quick Tips & Tricks: Episode 120 - Dec 18 Join the Conversation - Jump into these recent discussions and share your insights: How does your organization support different ways of thinking and working? by smous Help with multiple packages that make up one course by RachelDavis-7dd Welcome Center: Say hi to a new member! Share Examples Hub: Post a project — and remember, sharing your challenge submissions is a great way to earn badges and contribute to the community! 💡 Weekly Pro Tip: Check out the latest Made by Members featuring portfolio examples. Participating in the Passport Challenge is a great way to sharpen your portfolio and showcase your skills! 💬 Join the Conversation What’s one badge you haven’t earned yet but plan to tackle this week?need help with multiple packages that make up one course
Where I work, we are creating training courses that are multiple modules long, anywhere between four modules to ten modules. We create each module as a separate .story file and publish that .story file from Storyline. This is because some of the .story files are reused across different courses. Then we have multiple published packages from Storyline that need to be combined to create the final course. The ways I know how to do this are two-fold 1 - use the features of an LMS to build a curriculum using the published packages 2 - create a multi-sco https://support.scorm.com/hc/en-us/articles/360051563253-Combining-Multiple-SCOs-Into-One-SCORM-Course What we want to do is take our Storyline files and publish them such that we can have one cmi5 package at the end of publishing. For example, if I have the course called Course 101 which consists of the following Introduction.story module-1.story module-2.story conclusion.story I want to publish all these .story files such that I get one Course 101 cmi 5 file which will contain all four pieces of the course. For those of you who are creating separate Storyline files that make up a course, how are you combining these files? Is anyone managing to use Storyline to take separate files and merge them into one final published file?Screen focus
I’m curious how others approach screen focus during reviews. Lately, when I’m looking at Rise courses, I keep coming back to one question: What is the learner supposed to do differently after this screen? When that’s hard to answer, I usually find the screen is: trying to cover more than one idea mixing purposes (teaching + explaining + assessing) or using an interaction that doesn’t really support an action I’ve started using a simple constraint to guide decisions: one screen supports one outcome one interaction supports one decision or action It’s helped me simplify reviews more than tweaking layouts or adding features. How do you decide when a screen is “doing too much”? Would love to spark a conversation on how other learning professionals check for screen focus during review.Exact source content
We have our source documents validated and an agreement that explains we will keep the content exactly as it is given. We want to create a course that will have the exact information our source document has ie table of contents, module intent, course outline...however, Rise 360 seems to be taking the liberty to provide its own spin on things. Is there a way to have it create a course that is closer to the exact resource we uploaded?Rise 360 Default Line Heights and Font Sizes
Hi E-Learning Heroes, I’m working to ensure our Rise 360 courses meet WCAG accessibility standards, particularly around line height (minimum 1.5) and font size for readability. Here’s what I’ve noticed: The default line spacing for the text blocks seems to be around 1.9, which is great. When I manually set line spacing to 1.5 in the editor, it looks much tighter, almost like single spacing. (not that you need to, but I was curious) Knowledge check blocks and some interactive elements appear to use much smaller line heights and font sizes than body text. Has anyone documented the actual default line heights and font sizes for each block type in Rise 360? If you have this information in a table format, that would be incredibly helpful for accessibility checks. Thanks in advance!The invisible work behind a great Storyline or Rise course
Hi everyone, Something I’ve noticed over the years is that most people only see the final course: the polished screen, the clean interaction, the tidy flow from start to finish. But designers see everything underneath it. We see the messy first drafts, the unclear SME notes, the rewrites, the “wait… does this actually make sense?” moments. We see the small decisions that quietly hold the whole experience together. And honestly, that invisible work is where so much of the quality lives. For me, great learning design isn’t just about content or visuals. It’s the structure behind them: the clarity of the flow, the way ideas build, how we reduce friction for learners, and how we make sure nothing feels confusing or overwhelming. Every time I work with a team, one pattern stands out: when clarity improves, everything else follows. Learners feel more confident. Modules feel smoother. And the review process becomes so much easier for everyone involved. I’d love to hear from the group: What small practices help you strengthen clarity or flow in your Storyline or Rise courses? Always curious to learn from others’ approaches.
