Showing Meaningful Comparisons in E-Learning #1
E-Learning Challenge #1: Challenge | Recap This week I worked with an Articulate Storyline user who needed to build some interactive feature comparisons for their products. The interactions needed to simplify product data (specs, costs) and show meaningful comparisons between their products and their competitors’ products (size, weight, proportion). It made me aware that you can also apply comparisons beyond technical training. For example, you can feature comparisons between behavior (legal vs. illegal), decision-making (ethical vs. unethical), choices (good vs. poor), and more. You could build comparisons on almost anything. The key is to show them, so they’re meaningful to learners. And that's what this week's challenge is all about. Challenge of the Week This week, your challenge is to use the provided source files to create an interactive demo to compare the different sizes of aircraft. Objective: Design an interactive graphic to show relative sizes for a series of airplanes. Check out this Wikipedia entry on giant aircraft for inspiration. Assets: Download the airplane graphics. They’re available in .png (transparent) and .pptx (PowerPoint) formats. Tools: You can use Storyline, Articulate Studio, or PowerPoint to create your interaction or infographic. Share Your E-Learning Challenge Demos This is a great way to practice your visual communication skills while building your e-learning portfolio. To share your files, do one of the following: Comments: Use the comments section below to share a link to your published project. The comments section allows links but not attachments. You should use the forums if you have a question or want to share your source files. Forums: Create a new thread in the forums and share a link to your published source file. You can also attach your project files if you want help or feedback. Personal blog: Post your published example on your blog or website. Examples Here are a few examples to get you started: Scale of the Universe Powers of Ten Planet size comparison What You Can Do in 25 Square Meters Cell Size and Scale The Size of Our World Kingdom of the Blue Whale Great whales Tapuiassauro, the new dinosaur from Brazil What are the E-Learning Challenges? The weekly e-learning challenges are ongoing opportunities to learn, share, and build your e-learning portfolios. You can jump into any or all of the previous challenges anytime you want. I’ll update the recap posts to include your demos. Learn more about the challenges in this Q&A post and why and how to participate in this helpful article.How to Fill Text with an Image in PowerPoint
Have you ever seen a text with an image fill, like this one, and said to yourself, “I wish I could do that”? Well, I have some good news. If you have PowerPoint, you can! Just follow the six simple steps below. 1. Add Combine Shapes Tool to Your PowerPoint Ribbon If you haven’t already, the first thing you’ll need to do is add the Combine Shapes tool to your PowerPoint ribbon. Check out this tutorial to see how to do that. 2. Insert a Background Image The next thing you’ll need to do is find and insert the image you want to use as the fill for your text. For this kind of project, it’s best to choose an image that’s easily recognizable. 3. Insert & Format Your Text The third step is to insert your text. Once your text is inserted, you’ll need to choose a font. I recommend using a bold font so that more of the image is visible. Then, increase the size and boldness of the font as desired. Finally, position your text on the part of the image you want to appear as the fill. In this example, I’m going to move the text over a little so that no green shows through. 4. Insert a Rectangle Next, insert a rectangle that’s the same size as the image. In my case, the rectangle covers the whole slide. Then, right-click on the rectangle, select Send to Back, and choose Send Backward. Your text should now appear on top of the rectangle. 5. Combine Your Rectangle and Your Text Now select your text, followed by your rectangle, click on Merge Shapes, and select Combine. At this point, your rectangle should have taken on the color of your text, and the place where the text was should be transparent. If you try and move your text, you’ll notice that the rectangle is still independent of the image, like in the screenshot below. If you don’t like the part of the image that’s showing through, move the rectangle around until you’re satisfied with the result. If you don’t need the image and the text to be a single object, then you can stop here. If you do, then move on to step 6. 6. Subtract the Image from the Text Select both the image and the rectangle, and then click on Merge Shapes and select Subtract. The image and text should now be combined in one object, like in the screenshot below. If you’re following these steps and the result doesn’t look quite right, try selecting your objects in the reverse order. Now you can go ahead and add any other text or images around it to finish off the look you’re going for. And you’re all set! Want to learn more tips and tricks for creating graphics in PowerPoint? Check out the tutorials below: Guide to Creating Illustrations in PowerPoint for People Who Don’t Know How to Draw Creating Custom Shapes in PowerPoint How I Created These Handy People Icons in PowerPoint And if you’re on the lookout for beautiful images, be sure to check out Content Library 360, the library of 10.3+ million assets that comes with an Articulate 360 subscription. Click here to start your 30-day free trial. 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 X (Formerly Twitter).2 Tips for Using Content Library 360 That’ll Save You Oodles of Time
I feel a bit like a broken record, but I can honestly say that Articulate 360 is jam-packed with timesaving tools for streamlining your workflow. And one of my personal favorite tools is Content Library 360. In case you’re not in the know, Content Library 360 is an ever-growing library of course assets. These assets include: slide templates for Storyline 360 and Studio 360 courses with flexible layouts and interactions that are prebuilt with all the object states and triggers in place; over 100,000 photographic and illustrated character combinations with different poses and expressions—many in industry-specific garb like scrubs, lab coats, or hard hats; access to a library of millions of stock photos, videos, and vector graphics—all assets available to you right from within Storyline 360, Rise 360, and Studio 360. Beyond the creative possibilities and sheer convenience of Content Library 360, I can’t stress enough what a huge timesaver it is to have professional-looking prebuilt slide templates right at your fingertips—especially when those last-minute change requests hit your inbox. Those urgent requests to shoehorn new content into my courses used to send me into panic mode. I’d either scramble to adapt an interaction from another project or try to create an interaction from scratch. And when you’re in a rush, it’s really easy to overlook things like pixel-perfect alignment or missing triggers, resulting in more hassles. But now, with Content Library, I can quickly browse for and insert an interactive slide template that fits the bill, and then easily customize the appearance, add my content, and go. It’s a game-changer! Here are step-by-step instructions (with video!) to show you just how easy it is to customize the Content Library 360 slide template for your projects. Step 1: Browse & Insert a Slide Template Don’t let last-minute changes derail your productivity. Save yourself hours of searching and design work by browsing for a Content Library interaction to customize on the fly. Here’s how it works: Click on the slide that will come before your soon-to-be-inserted slide. Select the Slides menu and click on the Content Library 360 option to open up the template browser. Speed up your search for the perfect template by using the filters on the left. In my case, I wanted an interaction, so I used the interaction filter. You can also filter by color theme, either light or dark. Click to select the slide you need and then hit the Insert Slide button. Boom! Your new slide is inserted into your project. Pro Tip: You can select and insert multiple slide templates from the Content Library browser just by holding down the Shift key while you click on the slides. Here’s a quick (silent) video I made to show you these steps in action. Step 2: Add Content & Customize If the idea of customizing the look and feel of a template seems a little intimidating, don’t sweat it. It’s actually a whole lot easier than you think. Here’s how I tackled it … First, I selected and then deleted the slide elements I wouldn’t need. Since I wasn’t creating a timeline interaction but rather a sleek click-and-reveal interaction, I took out the “date” boxes and the divider lines. Then I started swapping out images. I already had the ones I wanted to use saved in a folder on my desktop, so all it took was a quick right-click on each placeholder image to browse to the location of each new image. Next, I added my text. Because Content Library slides are professionally designed with all elements of the layout clearly named and easy to identify on the timeline in Storyline 360, all I did was click to select the textboxes I wanted to change and start typing. Bonus: If you’re new to e-learning, Content Library 360 slides use placeholder text that gives you pointers on how to get the most out of each layout so you can design more effective e-learning. With your newly inserted slide selected, navigate to the Design menu. Then, click on any of the prebuilt color themes or create a color theme that matches your project. I had one already designed for my project, so I just clicked to apply it to my slide. Never used design themes before or not sure how they work? Here’s an article about what they are and how to use them. A few more clicks to fine-tune the look, applying my lighter text color to the layer text, etc., and then … voila! Here’s another short and silent video to walk you through these steps. How cool is that? Adapting Content Library 360 templates instead of creating something from scratch makes a whole lot of sense when you’re a busy e-learning developer—especially when you’re a one-person training department. And if you'd like some more tips and timesavers on this topic, check out 3 Timesaving Tips for Customizing Content Library 360 Templates. There are so many more creative uses for Content Library 360 assets. Will you share your favorites with us? Leave your Content Library tips, tricks, and creative ideas in a comment below. And don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and come back to E-Learning Heroes regularly for more helpful advice on everything related to e-learning.6 Amazing Things You Can Do in Rise 360
Rise 360, the web-based authoring tool in Articulate 360, just keeps getting better! Like all the apps and resources in Articulate 360, we’re continuously adding features that save you loads of time and give you new ways to create whatever type of learning your audience needs. To give you a sense of how Rise 360 can boost your productivity and increase your agility, here are six totally amazing things you can do in Rise 360. 1. Boost Your Productivity with Content Library 360 Integration With Rise 360, you can access photographs and illustrations from the ever-growing library with millions of assets in Content Library 360, right within the app. You can even crop images in Rise 360 using the built-in cropping tool in the edit menu. Or change the aspect ratio, focus on a specific part of the image, and more. Check out this article for more examples of what you can do with the crop tool! Following is a quick Peek 360 video to show you just how painless it is to search for and insert the perfect image in Rise 360: 2. Create Branching, “Choose Your Own Adventure”-style Scenarios Easily create branched scenarios with scenario blocks in Rise 360. Scenario blocks let you choose from a selection of Content Library 360 characters and create dialogue, responses, and feedback to craft an engaging scenario. Scenarios can be as complex or simple as you need—anything from a single scene with a few pieces of content to multiple interconnected scenes, each with their own branching choices. Whatever you choose, scenario blocks uniquely engage learners, giving them the opportunity to practice new concepts or think more deeply about information they’ve learned. Learn more about building branching scenarios in this article, or watch Tom Kuhlmann’s video tutorial. 3. Tables and Charts Make Your Data Come to Life Did you know that you can add tables to your Rise 360 courses and format data as pie, graph, or line charts? It’s easy to do with table blocks and chart blocks. You can insert tables as a separate block or inside of almost any other block that contains text. You can easily format your tables exactly how you want them. Charts get their own category in the block library and give you tons of options. Add legends, label your axis, tweak custom colors—do whatever you need to help your learners engage with data on a whole new level. And because it’s in Rise 360, it’s easy to save your charts and tables as block templates and share them with your team. Learn more in this article: 4 Ways to Elegantly Display Data in Rise 360. 4. Control How Learners Experience Your Course with Continue Blocks A common requirement for compliance courses is that learners must watch, listen to, or complete every single piece of content in your course before proceeding. So how can you do that in Rise 360 and not make it feel like a drag? One way to exert a little more control over how learners experience your course without making them feel locked down is to use the Continue Block feature. Continue blocks not only allow you to chunk content and reveal it progressively, they also enable you to require learners to complete critical content before moving on to the next. Want to learn more? Check out this article: Create Compliance Training Like a Pro with Rise 360. 5. Use Templates to Get a Jump on Course Creation Don’t get stuck with “blank-page syndrome” when starting a new course. Build engaging, interactive lessons quickly with gorgeous, customizable templates. Templates are fully structured and contain relevant headings, media, and writing prompts; they just need your personalization. Templates cover a wide range of business topics such as compliance, workplace safety, human resources, information technology, and more. Select the Templates option from the New Course button to access the full library and quickly add them to your Rise 360 dashboard. Then sit back and relax, knowing the hard part’s already done. You just need to make it your own. Head over to this article to learn more: How I Created an Information Security Course in No Time Flat with Rise 360 Templates. 6. Embrace the Next Generation with cmi5 Support The latest e-learning software specification standard is cmi5. It combines the structure of SCORM with the tracking capabilities of xAPI. It’s more flexible, works well with offline solutions, and even reduces browser pop-ups! The e-learning industry has only just begun to scratch the surface of what cmi5 can do. With Rise 360, you publish to cmi5 and will be on the cutting edge of learner tracking. When you export a Rise 360 course with the cmi5 option selected, you’ll download a cmi5-compliant package that works seamlessly with your LMS. To find the cmi5 export option, click on Export, choose LMS, and select cmi5 as shown in the GIF below: Summing It Up With Rise 360’s flexible block lessons, inherently responsive output, and a host of new features being added all the time, the creative possibilities are endless. But don’t take my word for it. A quick scroll through E-Learning Heroes Examples will show you that folks are busy building everything from cool interactive resumes to seriously immersive case studies. Which of these Rise 360 features has captured your imagination? What creative possibilities do you see for Rise 360 in your organization? Share your feedback, ideas, or inspiring examples with us in a comment below. And don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and subscribe to the blog for more helpful advice on everything related to e-learning.Make Over Your Rise 360 Course in 4 Easy Steps With Themes
Rise 360 has always been a fantastic tool for creating courses fast. And with the templates and other flexible options, even people without graphic design experience can feel confident that their Rise 360 projects will always look polished and professional. That’s why we’re so excited about Rise 360 themes. Themes give you even more ways to put your unique spin on the look and feel of your Rise 360 courses. And just like everything else about Rise 360, the themes feature makes creating beautifully designed courses easy—no graphic design skills needed. So let’s take a closer look at four easy steps you can follow to refresh your overall course design with a new theme, pique your learners’ interest with cover pages and lesson headers, reinforce your branding, and customize the course navigation experience. Step 1: Update the Overall Course Design With a New Theme The easiest way to give your course’s visual design a little facelift is to choose from the three prebuilt themes included in Rise 360. These themes are great for setting the overall look and feel of your project in one fell swoop. Let’s look at how to choose a theme and the available theme options, below. Choosing a Theme Start by opening any existing Rise 360 course on your Rise 360 dashboard. Select Theme in the upper right corner, and then click Change Theme. Rise 360 includes three professionally designed, ultra-stylish themes—Rise, the classic theme you’ve come to know (but with a few more customization options), plus two brand-new ones: Apex and Horizon. Following is a quick overview of each theme. Rise Our original theme, Rise, always looks modern and clean—a tried-and-true design choice that never goes out of style. Apex For a bold, contemporary, and striking design with angular finishes, choose Apex. Horizon When you want to give your course an elegant, sharp, and stylish makeover—complete with understated flourishes—Horizon is a great choice. They’re all so beautiful, right? Not sure which theme works best for your content? We’ve got you covered! Check out 3 Ways to Use Themes to Tailor Your Rise 360 Projects for some pro pointers. Once you’ve decided on a theme for your project, click to select it and you’ll see it applied to your project in the adjacent preview pane. Being able to preview your theme choice is handy because if you’re not in love with it, you can simply click another one. And if it’s love at first sight, click Save to apply it to your project. While you can use each theme as is, you also have loads of options for customizing key theme elements such as the cover page, lesson headers, and other features of the user interface, like colors, fonts, and navigation. We’ll explore some of these customization options in the next few steps. Step 2: Grab Learners’ Attention With a Custom Cover Page and Lesson Headers A cover page is your first opportunity to grab a learner’s attention, so why not customize it to fit the course topic or your company branding and really make it count? Select Cover Page from the menu and pick a stylish layout. If you’re opting to add a course image to your cover page, you can upload your own image or browse the wide selection images available in Content Library 360, which is built right into Rise 360. Pro Tip: You can also crop images directly in Rise 360. That means no hassling with a separate image editing app to tailor your course images to your project. To make your theme branded, upload your logo too. Customizing the Lesson Header option is another nice way to draw learners in and direct their attention to your content. You can choose from a variety of header designs or customize them with your own color or image. You can even adjust lesson headers to make them taller or shorter to create more or less white space, as you can see in the GIF above. Step 3: Reinforce Your Brand Identity With Custom Colors and Fonts The design choices we’ve walked through so far are quick but powerful ways to transform your course, but they’re really just the tip of the creative iceberg! You can also brand your course with custom colors and fonts to make sure it more fully aligns with your brand guidelines. Colors You can choose the Colors option to customize course accents like the menu and progress bar. Rise 360 makes picking eye-catching colors easy with curated options you can apply with a single click. But what if you need to bring in your official brand shades? No problem. Choose the Custom feature and select any color you’d like. Fonts Another easy way to brand your Rise 360 projects is to customize the fonts. Choose the Fonts option to find the perfect typeface for your project. Not sure where to start? Try the Recommended pairings—a fast way to make sure your headings and body fonts go together perfectly. For even more flexibility, click More to browse a selection of pre-installed options. And if you want to use your official brand fonts, just click Manage Custom Fonts to upload the ones you need and use them throughout your course. Step 4: Complete the Transformation With Custom Navigation and Button Styles You’ve got the cover page, lesson headers, colors and fonts fine-tuned. The final step in making over your Rise 360 course is to customize course navigation and button styles. Navigation In Rise 360, you’ve always had the option to show, hide, or disable the sidebar navigation. And now we’ve added more ways to customize course navigation so you can create the perfect experience for your learners. To start exploring your options, choose Navigation. Both Compact and Overlay navigation are great for making your content the star of the show. Choose Compact navigation to tuck your lesson menu away in a corner, where it can be quickly expanded with a click when learners need it. Another great option is Overlay navigation. When learners need to view the menu, they simply click the ☰ (hamburger) icon and the menu overlays the lesson, filling the screen. Love keeping things familiar? The always reliable Sidebar menu is a great choice with more options to choose from. Don’t want to include a navigation menu at all? No problem. You can remove it entirely—just as you’ve always been able to do in Rise 360. Buttons Want to continue customizing your course? Don’t forget about button options! Pick the button color that’s right for your course or branding. You can even refine your Previous and Next buttons by making them full width or floating—or you can remove them entirely. It’s totally up to you! Want to see how themes and custom settings can be combined for different effects? Check out the following example course. We present the same content three different ways and with minimal customizations so you can see for yourself. Explore Horizon Explore Apex Explore Rise Customizations: compact navigation, large header height Customizations: overlay navigation, small header height, custom color Customizations: sidebar navigation, medium header height, custom color Wrap-Up Not only does the themes feature give you a host of new ways to express yourself, wow your learners, and brand your Rise 360 content, it’s also streamlined the course creation process by consolidating theme settings all in one place—right at the top of the authoring environment in Rise 360. With so many options to customize your project's look and feel, you can rest assured knowing that whichever professionally designed theme you choose, your course will look fantastic on any device. And all of these thoughtful features and enhancements mean Rise 360 just keeps making it easier to create stunningly unique and stylish courses your learners will love. For more tips and inspiration on how you can start using themes in your e-learning, check out these helpful resources: Quickly Create Uniquely Stunning Courses with Rise 360 Themes 3 Ways to Use Rise 360 Themes to Tailor Your Projects How to Brand Your Rise 360 Course Want to try the new Rise 360 themes but don’t have Articulate 360? 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.GIFs 101: How to Use, Find, and Make Them
Aside from—you know—the ability to access any information you need in seconds, GIFs are the best thing about the internet. In this post, we’ll talk about what GIFs are, when to use them in your e-learning, where to find them, and how to create your own. You’ll learn everything you need to know about GIFs. (Except for how to pronounce it. We’re staying out of that debate!) What are GIFs? Basically, GIFs are image files that include animation. GIF stands for Graphic Interface Format. And, unlike JPEGs and PNGs, GIF files support animated images. Early GIFs were super basic. They were composed of just a couple of alternating frames, for example: In the 30 years that GIFs have been around, the art form has evolved. Now it’s super easy to find high-quality clips from TV shows and movies, quick clips of cats doing funny things, fun custom artwork, and much more! How can I use GIFs in my e-learning courses? GIFs are also great for your e-learning projects. They offer an easy way to delight your learners with some unexpected movement. And you don’t have to embed a full video or build an animation into your course. Making your learners laugh or expressing an emotion with a GIF can make your e-learning more relatable and more fun. Plus, they’re handy for demonstrating a process or system. Instead of having learners click from one slide to the next to see how a process works, you can use a GIF to give learners that helpful context. GIFs look particularly at home in Rise courses, which are web-based. Check out this example on hurricane preparedness and this one on cardiology observations to see what we mean. Where can I find GIFs? GIFs are abundant online. Some popular places to find great ones include: GIPHY, the most popular search engine for GIFs, allows you to browse for images by category or search to find exactly what you need. Educational GIFs, though it hasn’t been updated recently, has a ton of GIFs on processes, history, how-tos, and more. Imgur is a place for people to share images. A lot of these images are GIFs, and a lot of the GIFs are great. Social media sites such as Twitter are great places to find GIFs. How do I make my own GIFs? There are a couple of ways to make an animated GIF, depending on how involved you want to get. The old-school way provides you with the most control over the process. Here’s a tutorial that shows you how to put together a GIF from several static panels in Photoshop. There are also several widgets that can help you make GIFs quickly and easily. You build them from video snippets using GIPHY’s own GIF Maker App. You can create a GIF from images on GIFMaker.org. Or you can make and style your own reaction GIFs on sites like And I Was Like and GifCam. Get your GIF on! You now have all the knowledge and tools you need to find and use GIFs in your projects. If you have any other questions about when and how to use GIFs in your e-learning (or if you’re just looking for the perfect one for your project), let us know in the comments. And be sure to follow us on Twitter and come back to E-Learning Heroes regularly for more helpful advice on everything related to e-learning.Time-Saving Tips for Formatting Tables in Rise 360
Do you love the table block in Rise 360 as much as I do? It’s a great way to organize content so it’s easy for learners to digest. And there are so many different ways to use it! Whether you want to display product specs, outline your weekly schedule, or compare and contrast concepts, tables are an excellent option. Depending on how you’re using tables, you might want to customize their look and feel by adding a background color to certain cells, for example, or by changing the font size. Luckily, personalizing table formatting is super quick and easy in Rise 360! Read on to find out how to efficiently format multiple cells at once. Formatting Multiple Cells If you want to change the way your cells look—say, change the background color from white to green or gray—there’s an easy way to apply that formatting to multiple cells at once. Simply click inside a cell, press and hold Shift, use the arrows on your keyboard to select the other cells you want to apply the formatting to, and select the format you want to apply in the toolbar. It’s super easy! Check out the GIF below to see how it works. Formatting Text Across Cells Once you’re happy with the formatting of the cells themselves, you might want to change the formatting of the text within those cells. For example, let’s say you want all your text to be a little smaller. No problem! There are a couple of different ways to quickly format your text across cells, depending on what you want to do. To apply the same text formatting to all the cells in your table, simply highlight the text in one cell, press and hold Control+A (or Command+A on a Mac), and select the format you want to apply in the toolbar. Take a look at the GIF below for a quick preview of how this works. If you want to reformat the text across some cells, but not all, highlight the text in one cell, press and hold Shift, and use the down arrow to select the cells with text you want to format. Every time you press on the down arrow, it’ll automatically select the entire text in the next cell. Once you’ve selected all the cells with text you want to format, choose the formatting options you want to apply in the toolbar. Get a clearer picture of how this works by checking out the GIF below. You can also select text that you want to format letter by letter. To do this, highlight the text in one cell, press and hold the Shift key, use the right arrow to select the cells with the text you want to format, and select the format you want to apply in the toolbar. See how this works in the GIF below. More Resources As you can see, formatting tables in Rise 360 is super fast and easy. To find out more about inserting table blocks into your Rise 360 courses, check out this helpful article. And if you’re looking for some creative ideas on how to use the table block in your next course, be sure to check out the following resources: Displaying Your Data with Rise 360 Tables Rise 360 Example Featuring Table Blocks If you’re dying to try out Rise 360 but don’t have Articulate 360, be sure to grab a free 30-day trial. 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).3 Steps for Creating Your First Rise 360 Course
Everything you need to create modern, engaging e-learning is at your fingertips with Rise 360. Not sure where to start? This handy guide will help you create your very first microlearning or full-length course in three easy steps. Let’s get started! 1. Choose the type of learning experience you want to create: microlearning or a full-length course Start by choosing whether you want microlearning or a full-length course. Your choice will depend on the content you want to share with learners. Microlearning courses aren’t just short courses. They’re bite-size pieces of content focused on a single learning objective. They’re approachable, bingeable, and easy for users to review and apply. Microlearning courses are also great for learners on the go because they’re easy to consume on phones or tablets. Full-length courses give you the opportunity to go in-depth on a certain topic. Made up of multiple lessons and knowledge checks, courses may include multiple learning objectives and, as a result, take longer for the learner to experience. Learners almost always use a computer to access full-length courses. So how do you know which format to use for your course? When choosing between the two, ask yourself: How many learning objectives do I have? If you only have one, a microlearning course is the clear option. If you have more than one, could each one stand alone or are they interdependent? If they could be split up, you could create a series of microlearning courses. If they’re interdependent, then a full-length course is the best option. Once you’ve made your decision, go to your Rise 360 dashboard. Click Create New and choose Course or Microlearning. 2. Search for a template or start from scratch It's always a good idea to look at templates and see if there’s already material you can use or adapt to your learning objectives. Articulate offers two types of templates: placeholder and real content: Placeholder templates include guidance and ideas to help you create a fully customized course. Real content templates have pre-written content you can adapt to fit your learning objectives. After choosing the type of e-learning you’d like to develop, you’ll see all available templates. Select Preview to explore a template before you choose it. You can use the search bar to find templates by keyword. And for full-length courses, you can use the left-hand panel to explore templates by category. When you’re ready to use a template, click Select This Course. If you don’t find exactly what you need, don’t worry: You can always customize a template or even start from scratch. Just click +Blank Course/Microlearning to begin. 3. Add your content Once you’ve chosen a template or started from scratch, you can add in your content using blocks. Blocks give you different ways of formatting your content in a lesson or microlesson. There are many types of blocks: text blocks, image blocks, interactive blocks, knowledge check blocks, and more. You can use different block types to make your content unique and engaging. Clicking All Blocks or the + sign in your lesson or microlesson will open a list of block types in a left-hand panel. If you change your mind about the type of block, you can easily choose a different block from the same category by clicking the dropdown menu in the top-left corner of the block. For example, the paragraph block gives you the option of reformatting your content into different types of paragraphs, headings, statements, and a note. Not sure how to pick the right block? Think about what your learner needs. For example, if you have a lot of content that may be overwhelming as a text block, consider using a tabs block to break up the text. Or, if you want learners to compare and contrast different chunks of information, consider using an accordion or flashcard block. As the course author, this is your opportunity to get creative! Here are some articles for inspiration: 6 Rise 360 Blocks to Use Instead of Bullet Points 7 Creative Ways to Use Images in Rise 360 Courses 6 Rise 360 Block Types to Use to Compare and Contrast Concepts 5 Different Ways to Create Scenarios in Rise 360 3 Creative Ways to Incorporate Your Logo into a Rise 360 Course More Resources Creating microlearning or full-length courses in Rise 360 is superfast and easy. In just three steps, you’ve already started putting together an elegant course customized for your learners. And when you’re done drafting your course, you can share and review your content with stakeholders easily thanks to Review 360. Here’s more information on how to use Review 360: Getting Started with Review 360 Rise 360: Publish Content to Review 360 Your Most Asked Review 360 Questions Once they’ve been approved, you can easily publish from your Articulate 360 dashboard. Here are some guides to get you started: Rise 360: Share Content with Learners How to Share E-Learning Courses with Learners Want to try creating your first course in Rise 360, but don’t have Articulate 360? Start a free 30-day trial. And subscribe to our newsletter to stay up-to-date on the latest e-learning examples.Tips for Using Sound Effects in E-Learning
As e-learning developers, we’re always looking for new ways to liven up our content and engage learners. Sound effects can be a great way to do this: they bring content to life and make learners feel like they are part of an experience. Not to mention, it’s never been easier to find free, high-quality sound effects that you can use in your projects. Let’s talk about a few tips to make sure you’re using sound effects wisely and effectively. Proper Rights and Attribution First of all, it’s important to make sure you have the proper rights for the audio clips you’re using. You also need to check that you’re using proper attribution, if required. When you download an audio clip from the Internet, look for the associated Terms of Use (usually there’s a link) and read them carefully. The Terms of Use will indicate if and how you can use the audio clip in question. Consider the Learner Experience You may want to let the learner know on the starting slide that audio is included in the course in case they have their volume turned off. After all, you don’t want them to miss important info and have to restart the course! You may also want to give learners the ability to control the volume of the sound effects and to mute them if they choose. Know Your Audience Should you include funny, whimsical sound effects in a serious e-learning module for accounting professionals? Probably not. That would work better in a gamified course you’re building for new employees that is more playful in nature and casual in tone. Know your audience and topic, and make sure you select sound effects that work well with both. Use Sound Effects Sparingly Once you find sound effects that work well with your material, you might be tempted to add a sound effect to each slide and for each mouse click. That can get annoying really fast…so use them sparingly to make sure they remain effective for the learner. Be Consistent This applies to the type of sound effects you’re using, and also to the quality. Certain sounds work well together, and you should consider the quality and volume of sound effects to ensure they’re all consistent with each other. Keep these tips in mind when you’re adding sound effects to your next course and it’s sure to add that extra oomph your learners will love. If you're looking for sources for free audio, try this roundup by Tom Kuhlmann. Got any tips of your own for using sound effects? Let me know in the comments below. You can always sign up for a fully functional, free 30-day trial of Articulate 360. And don’t forget to post your questions and comments in the forums! We’re here to help. For more e-learning tips, examples, and downloads, follow us on Twitter.
