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).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 seats. You have the flexibility to pay via credit card or purchase order. And as your team grows, you can add more seats 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 seats to new users. You can even upload all your users at once using a simple CSV file. And you can add as many admins as you’d like to manage your team. Learn more about managing your team. Group Admins Manage your team with ease. Organize users in groups, such as departments or locations, and assign admins to manage each group. Watch this video for a brief overview and check out this article for details on managing users, groups, and admins. Manage Team Slides and Block Templates Admins who have user seats 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!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.10 Most Popular Rise 360 Real-Content Templates of 2023
Developing high-quality, engaging content can be time-consuming. But don’t worry—with the real-content templates in Content Library 360, you can quickly deploy fully developed training full of prewritten content, instructional videos, and interactive exercises. Editing real-content template is easy too, making it a breeze to personalize your courses to fit your needs. From time management to mental health to effective meetings and more, here are the templates our customers found most valuable in 2023. 1. Time Management Essentials For the second year in a row, Time Management Essentials is the number one most popular real-content course. This crowd-pleasing course gives learners valuable tips for making the most of their time. 2. Developing a Growth Mindset Is your team feeling stuck? Want to help employees unlock their potential? Try sharing this course to help learners identify roadblocks and reignite growth. 3. Leading with Emotional Intelligence Explore empathy, social skills, and other essential soft skills for leadership in this course. 4. The Basics of Managing Stress Give your learners valuable information about the connection between the body and stress and actionable tips for how to manage it. 5. 5-Day Challenge to Improve Your Mental Health Challenge your learners to improve their mental health in just five days with interactive exercises, reflection questions, and more. 6. Workplace Communication Basics Help your team communicate more effectively with the verbal and written strategies in this course. 7. Resolving Conflict with Coworkers Conflict is inevitable, but it doesn’t have to slow your team down. Use this course to teach your team how to work through common issues. 8. Communication Fundamentals Help your team understand why communication matters and learn actionable tips and tricks to improve their skills. 9. A Guide to Effective Meetings Use this course to establish a culture of productive, energetic meetings within your team. 10. Soliciting and Responding to Customer Feedback Help your employees gather and respond expertly to customer feedback with this story-driven course. Wrap-Up Ready to try one of these real-content templates? Or curious to see what other templates are available? Log in to your Rise 360 dashboard, click +Create New, and click Course. This will open a dashboard where you can browse all templates currently available for subscribers. Have an idea for a real-content template? Let us know in the comments! Want to try one of these real-content templates, 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 sent directly to your inbox. If you have questions, please share them in the comments.7 Pro Tips for Working with Motion Path Animations in Storyline 360
Animations can be a powerful way to explain a concept, tell a story, or make your content memorable. Storyline 360 has a variety of animation options—including entrance, exit, and motion paths. With motion path animations, you can control how your objects move and bring your ideas to life. Here are some time-saving tips to help propel you forward when working with motion path animations. 1. Rename Motion Paths When you add a motion path animation to an object in Storyline 360, a name is automatically assigned. If you plan on adding multiple motion paths, it’s a good idea to rename each one. This will make it easier to identify which motion path you’re working on when editing triggers. 2. Copy Animations If you plan on using the same motion path animation on several objects, save time by copying the animation from one object to another using the Animation Painter. By double-clicking the Animation Painter, you can apply the same animation to multiple objects one after the other without having to click the Animation Painter over and over again. To turn it off, click it one last time or press the ESC key on your keyboard. Did you know? When you copy and paste an object, any animations you’ve added to the object are also copied over. So if you’re using the same object multiple times, add any animations you want to include before you copy it to save time. 3. Sync Using Cue Points As you build content, you might change your mind about when you want your motion path animation to start. Syncing your motion path to a cue point gives you the flexibility to change the motion path timing without having to edit the trigger each time. All you have to do is drag the cue point along the timeline until the timing feels right, and the motion path will start at the new time. 4. Select the Object Path to Edit To edit a motion path, you can select the start or end point individually using your mouse and drag the point to the desired location. If you have multiple start or end points overlapping each other, you can easily select and edit them without having to hide objects from your timeline. Simply select the line of the object path you want to edit. It will turn bright blue while the other objects and their paths will fade. Then, move the start or end point as needed. Did you know? Another way to fine-tune a motion path is to select the start or end point of one or all of the objects and edit the X and Y coordinates. This is great for times when you need to be super-precise. 5. Change the Easing Option By default, Storyline 360 automatically assigns an ease-in and ease-out effect to your motion paths. This controls the acceleration and deceleration of an animation. If your animation needs to move at the same pace across the screen, then you’ll want to edit the easing direction to none. 6. Orient Shape to Path There might be times when you need to include an object that faces a certain direction as it follows a path—for example, a car making a right turn. By selecting Orient Shape to Path, the object will always face the direction it’s moving, even when it travels on a nonlinear path. 7. Use a Relative Start Point Perhaps you want to create an interaction where the object can move multiple times depending on the learner’s choice. For example, let’s say you created a racetrack and want the learner’s car to move forward whenever they answer a question correctly. Instead of duplicating the object and creating motion paths for each possible outcome, you can select Relative Start Point to move the object along the motion path starting from its current position. For more ideas on how to use this feature, check out this tutorial. Did you know? You can add more than one motion path to the same object and have each begin at the new location of the object based on previous movements. For more ideas on how to use this feature, check out this free Storyline 360 download by Samuel Apata. Motion path animations give you the flexibility to quickly create content that’ll move your learners. What tips do you have for working with motion paths? Share your ideas in the comments below. Want to try something you learned here, 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.All About Lightboxes in Storyline 360
Whether you’ve designed a website or simply done your fair share of web surfing, you’ve probably run across lightboxes. They’re often used to display content (particularly images or video on photography websites) while dimming out the web page background. The lightbox feature in Storyline 360 works similarly. Triggering content to be displayed in a lightbox allows the slide of your choice to appear in a pop-up window over the current slide, which is dimmed. Here’s an example: Click here to explore the interactive version and here to download the template. A lightbox allows you to show learners additional content without navigating away from the current slide, which could cause them to lose their spot in the course. This can be especially helpful for stuff like bibliographical references or links to external resources. It’s also great for navigation instructions, a table of contents, or any other supporting assets that need to be available throughout the course. Let’s walk through how to add lightboxes to your Storyline 360 course so your learners can start reaping the benefits of this powerful feature. How Do Lightboxes Work in Storyline 360? In Storyline 360, you can trigger any slide (or series of consecutive slides) to open in a lightbox. The size, placement, and appearance of the lightbox is prebuilt for you, to make it super simple. This includes a red X button that closes the lightbox window automatically when learners click. These features make it quick and easy for you to create a consistent user experience. However, the trade-off is that you can’t customize these lightbox settings. If you’re looking for more control over the size, placement, or appearance of your lightbox content, you can always create your own pseudo lightbox effect using slide layers. To read more about how to do this as well as the pros and cons of this approach, check out this forum discussion: Lightbox Change Size? Pro Tip: When designing content for use in a lightbox, keep scale in mind. The scale of objects on your content screens (e.g., text, buttons, images) will be about 75% of the original slide size. Triggering the Lightbox Once you’ve created content slides for your lightbox, what’s next? To get your content into a lightbox, you’ll need to add a trigger. You’ll find the Lightbox Slide option under the action menu in the Trigger Wizard. Once you’ve selected Lightbox Slide, you’ll need to tell Storyline 360 which slide(s) to open. From the Slide drop-down menu, select the slide you want to appear inside your lightbox. If you’d like a series of slides to be lightboxed (e.g., for a media gallery), you’ll find it’s easier to place those slides into their own scene. That way you can simply select the first slide in that scene from the Slide drop-down and check the Navigation Controls box to allow learners to move forward and backward within that scene of lightboxed slides. You can also use your own navigation buttons, but your learners may find the size of Storyline’s default navigation controls a little easier to see and use. Pro Tip: To keep learners from getting confused, be sure to remove any custom on-slide Forward/Backward navigation buttons or arrows from your lightboxed slides if you’ll be using the default player navigation controls. Once you’ve selected the slides you want to appear in the lightbox, it’s time to tell Storyline 360 when to trigger this effect. From the When drop-down menu, simply select the option that fits your needs. For example, when the user clicks. Next, select the associated object. For example, in the screenshot below, the action to open the lightbox should happen on Slide 1.3 when the user clicks on the Previous button. If you’re using the built-in navigation buttons in Storyline 360, you can also trigger the lightbox to open when the user clicks on buttons built into the player, like Next, Previous, or Submit. Lightboxes can also be triggered to open from a slide or slide layer. Finally, you need to decide whether there are any specific conditions or criteria for launching the lightbox. For instance, what if you only want the learner to be able to access the lightbox after they’ve clicked on all the buttons on a slide, like in the example below: You can specify any conditions to be met by adding conditions to the trigger in the Trigger Wizard, as shown above. For more details on trigger conditions, check out this tutorial: Adding Conditions. Adding a Lightbox to the Course Player It’s one thing to make a lightbox available on a single slide, but what if you want lightboxed content to be accessible throughout your course? No problem! Storyline also gives you the ability to add a lightbox to the course player as an additional tab. Here’s how. From the player properties, select the Features tab. Under the Player Tabs section, click Add New (the blank paper icon): In the Trigger Wizard panel, enter a name for your new tab in the name field—for example, “Contact” for a slide with contact information. This name is what learners will see in the player, so be sure to choose something that makes it obvious what kind of information learners will find there. In the action field of the Trigger Wizard panel, select the lightbox trigger and then choose the content slide(s) you’d like to open up. Just like adding a lightbox to a slide, you can specify conditions for triggering this lightbox effect from the course player. When you’ve finished entering the information for your new tab, click OK. In the adjacent Storyline player preview, you should see your newly added tab. To make sure that your lightbox is functioning properly, simply preview your project and click the newly added tab on the course player. Resources Hopefully this comprehensive look at lightboxes has given you some new ideas for using them in your courses. For even more lightbox design inspiration, check out these helpful resources: How Are You Using Lightbox Slides in E-Learning? 3 Subtle Ways to Integrate Navigation Instructions Storyline Template: Lightbox Tabs Storyline Template: Integrated Navigation Instructions What creative uses have you discovered for lightboxes? Leave your ideas in the comments below or share them with the E-Learning Heroes community. Want to try lightboxes out for yourself, 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.Expand Your Possibilities With These New Articulate 360 Features
Articulate 360 is constantly evolving to better meet your needs. Our latest collection of features is full of exciting new ways for you to design, develop, and share your e-learning courses. From new resources to enhance the learning experiences you build, expanded options for distributing courses, and one of our most requested enhancements to Storyline 360, there’s so much that can make your work easier and more effective! Check out this video for some of the highlights. And keep reading to dig in to the details. Create exciting and engaging e-learning 64-bit Storyline If you create large, media-rich courses, you’ll experience a noticeably speedier authoring experience with this release. The new 64-bit Storyline 360 takes full advantage of the power of modern computers, giving you increased stability and faster performance—even with your most complex projects. Learn more about this highly requested feature here: Storyline 360: 64-bit App. Improved Text-to-Speech Voice Quality The more natural text-to-speech voices sound, the less likely they are to distract from your course content. That’s why we’ve upgraded many of the voices included in Storyline 360 using new neural voice technology. They sound better than ever, and they’re still incredibly easy to use! Check out this link for the current list of neural voices in Storyline 360. Background Audio Triggers Building on the Storyline 360 background audio feature from earlier this year, this update gives you even more options for controlling the experience. With it, you can use triggers to play, pause, or stop the playlist on each slide. So you and your learners have more ways to customize course audio. Find out more here. Trans-inclusivity Microlearning Need to get much-needed training out fast, but don’t have the time research, write, and build it yourself? Our library of Rise 360 real content templates has you covered! Our latest addition—4 Ways To Build a Trans-inclusive Workplace—helps define key terms and gives learners concrete steps they can take to make their organization more inclusive. We’ve taken care of the hard work of researching and building the experience. You can either launch it to your learners exactly as written or tweak it to fit your company’s needs. It’s your call! New Illustrated Characters Finding just the right character can help your courses connect with learners and make scenarios ring true. That’s why we’re excited to add three new illustrated characters wearing casual outfits to Content Library 360: Shanae, Wren, and Don. Template Accessibility Updates We’re always looking for ways to make it easier to build accessible e-learning—and this latest update is a real timesaver! We’ve reworked many of our Storyline 360 and Rise 360 templates so they’re even more accessible right out of the box. The former now has updates to the focus order and video controls. And the most popular templates for the latter feature the removal of italicized content, as well as broader improvements to their content and design. With the templates taking on more work for you, it’s faster than ever to create courses that all learners can access. Collaborate with team members and stakeholders Share Link Permissions Want more control over who can and can’t see an item in Review 360? You’ll love this new feature. With it, you’ll be able to make a Review 360 item invitation-only—so it’s only visible to the specific reviewers you’ve chosen. Distribute courses to all your learners Custom Certificates From branding your course completion certificates to including important accreditation requirements on them, this feature is here to help. With our simple certificate editor, you can include company information like logos and learner performance details like course duration, quiz scores, and more. Plus, you can save time by creating a library of certificate templates to use in any course in Reach 360. SSO for Learners Make taking training in Reach 360 even simpler with Single Sign-On (SSO). Since this method allows people to securely access multiple applications with just one set of log-in credentials, your learners don’t have to remember yet another password to check out all the training you share with them in Reach 360. Learn more about how to use this feature to manage groups and users here. Microsoft Teams Integration - COMING SOON Weave training into the flow of work with this upcoming Reach 360 integration. With it, learners can get due date and enrollment notifications and also see previews of training right in Microsoft Teams. And by including that information in a tool they already use for work all the time, you’ll make it easier for them to stay on top of training deadlines and explore what courses you’re offering. Reporter Role Want to streamline reporting for different groups in Reach 360? Try assigning users to the new reporting role. With this feature, you can grant someone access to the analytics from just one or more specific groups, so they don’t have to wade through the training data for all your learners to get access to the targeted information they’re looking for. Wrap-Up If you want to get your hands on everything these new features have to offer, you’ll be glad to know most of them are available right now! Just log in to your account, make sure you’re running the latest version of Storyline 360, and you’ll be all set. And keep an eye out for the features labeled “coming soon”; they’ll be available to you in no time at all. But not to worry if you don’t currently have an Articulate 360 subscription. Just start a 30-day free trial to try out all these helpful features and more. And you can also subscribe to our newsletter to get the latest product updates, e-learning examples, and expert advice sent directly to your inbox. If you have questions, please share them in the comments.Get Two Free, Updated Courses to Help Your Organization Celebrate Pride Month
Did you know that workplaces that cultivate LGBTQ+ inclusivity have happier employees, regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity? Or that LGBTQ+-friendly employers boast higher employee retention rates and even earn more revenue? As a learning and development professional, you can boost your organization’s LGBTQ+ inclusion efforts by providing substantial, engaging learning opportunities for Pride Month. If that sounds like a lot of research and course development time you don’t have right now, relax. We’ve updated Articulate’s professionally designed and researched Pride courses for 2023, and they’re ready for you to use right now, free of charge. Articulate 360 subscribers and trialers can even customize the content. Keep reading to learn more about the courses and find out how to make them your own. What Courses Are Available? “Power and Pride: The Origins of Pride Month.” Learners can discover how the events at the Stonewall Inn in June 1969 catalyzed change and accelerated a movement for LGBTQ+ rights that has spread worldwide. The course also introduces learners to key individuals, organizations, and moments in the ongoing struggle—emphasizing that activism, celebration, and equal rights remain central to Pride more than 50 years later. “Beyond Pride: Year-Round Action.” Learning about and taking action to support equality doesn’t stop when June ends. This course offers practical, actionable steps for both organizations and individuals to uplift the LGBTQ+ community every day. What’s New? For 2023, we updated Power and Pride’s decade-by-decade timeline to reflect some of the latest developments in LGBTQ+ rights, including the passage of the Respect for Marriage Act. We also added new, deeper context around pivotal events and figures of past decades. Fresh resources around language are also available in the updated course. In the 2023 updates for Beyond Pride, you’ll find the latest available facts and figures around LGBTQ+ representation in the workplace. And new links out to practical resources such as a gender-neutral bathroom sign can help learners take action to support inclusivity no matter where they are. Wrap-Up Pride Month is the perfect time to share learning opportunities that demonstrate your organization’s commitment to the LGBTQ+ community. And since these beautifully illustrated original courses are ready to go, why not share them with your learners? As we mentioned above, you can either use them as is or—if you’re an Articulate 360 subscriber or trialer—you can easily adapt them to fit your needs. Simply navigate to your Rise 360 dashboard, click Create New, choose Course, select Diversity and Inclusion, and choose the course you want from the list. Want to customize these but don’t have a subscription yet? Start a free 30-day trial. And if you need other ready-to-go courses for your diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, there are plenty of other options to choose from, including: Black History Month Diversity Basics: Foundations Diversity Basics: Taking Action Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging Once again, these are all available directly in Rise 360. Simply follow the instructions above to view and use them. And remember to subscribe to our newsletter to stay up-to-date on the latest real course templates, product updates, e-learning examples, and expert advice directly in your inbox. If you have questions, please share them in the comments.13 New and Enhanced Features That Will Help You Get the Most From Articulate 360
There’s so much we’ve been working on lately that we’re thrilled to share with you. If you want to expand the e-learning experiences you can create, streamline your development processes, and get great training out fast, check out these new and upcoming features that will help you do all that and more. Create exciting and engaging e-learning Rise 360: Linked Padding Speed up your Rise 360 layout formatting with this new option to link the padding on the top and bottom of a block together. When this feature is on, you can quickly change their values at the same time. Need to adjust the top and bottom padding independently? Simply click the Unlink Padding icon. To learn more about all your block padding options, check out this post. Rise 360: Random Block Images Automatically liven up your Rise 360 designs with this enhancement. Instead of seeing the exact same photo every time you insert a block with a background image, Rise 360 now randomly selects background images on a block-by-block basis. Rise 360: Team Folders Enhancements Now working with large numbers of Rise 360 courses is even easier thanks to this set of new Team Folders features. You can quickly view just the courses you created with the Owned by Me filter. Accessing courses that have been shared with you is faster too, as they’re now automatically added to the Shared with Me folder. And if you want to fully reorganize your folders, Move Dialog allows you to move both source files and shortcuts in a jiffy. Want to know more? Check out this post. Rise 360: Women’s History Month Course Celebrate the broad spectrum of ways women have contributed to history, society, and culture with this Rise 360 real-content template. This fully built course covers the history of women’s rights in America and strategies for continuing to move gender equity and equality forward. Share it with learners right away or customize it as much as you like! For more information about this course, give this post a read Storyline 360: Emphasis Animations Grab your learners’ attention with this new selection of Storyline 360 emphasis animations. You can now add effects like pulsing, shaking, and teetering to shapes, images, buttons, characters, markers, textboxes, videos, and more. Learn more in this post. Storyline 360: Global Notes Formatting Adjusting the font color, size, style, or paragraph spacing in the Storyline 360 Notes panel is easier than ever! With this feature, you can now customize the Notes panel formatting across the entire project in one fell swoop. What a timesaver! If you’re excited to know more, check out this post. Storyline 360: Player Tooltips Help learners get to know the modern player controls in Storyline 360 with these accessible tooltips. If someone isn’t sure what a particular player button or control does, all they have to do is mouse or tab over to it to display a bite-size pop-up with more information. Find out more here. Storyline 360: Background Audio Volume Variable Fine-tune your course’s audio with this new Storyline 360 variable. With it, you can raise or drop a slide’s background audio by whatever percentage you choose—adding more precision and customization to an already helpful feature. Collaborate with team members and stakeholders Review 360: Manage Integrated Comments Seeing Review 360 comments directly in Storyline 360 and Rise 360 is a real timesaver. But what about when you need to have separate, independent reviews of the same course? Thanks to this new feature, that’s easy! With it, you’re able to see the comments for multiple Review 360 items in your authoring app workflow. That means you can create multiple copies of your course in Review 360—one for each reviewer segment—but still see everyone’s comments in your original Rise 360 or Storyline 360 file. Curious to know more? Check out our feature posts for both Storyline 360 and Rise 360. Distribute courses to all your learners Reach 360: Starter Plan If you have an Articulate 360 Teams subscription, distributing and tracking training just got easier. That’s because you can now use Reach 360 Starter to share courses with up to 300 learners per year at no additional cost. This new Reach 360 Starter access makes it easy for everyone to try out all the features of our fast, flexible, and frictionless LMS. Check out the details here. Reach 360: Manager Role Give people just the Reach 360 access they need with the new Manager role, which can invite and remove learners, assign training, and view reports for any group assigned to them. It’s perfect for when someone needs more administrative powers than with the Reporter role—but just for one or more specific groups. Need help determining which Reach 360 role is right for a particular user? This article compares the permissions for each role, making it easy to narrow down the option that best meets your needs. Wrap-Up There’s a lot here to be excited about! And since all of these new features are available right now, trying them out is as simple as opening up your Articulate 360 apps. Not only that, but there are lots more exciting features coming this year—including AI capabilities. So keep an eye on our roadmap and E-Learning Heroes to stay in the loop about all the other cool functionality we’ll be adding soon. Feeling left out because you don’t currently have an Articulate 360 subscription? Not to worry—just start a 30-day free trial to try out all these helpful features and more. You can also subscribe to our newsletter to get the latest product updates, e-learning examples, and expert advice sent directly to your inbox. If you have questions, please share them in the comments.10 Tips for Coping With Vague E-Learning Project Requests
The typical advice when you start a new e-learning project is to find out as much as possible about the problem you’re trying to solve, the audience you’re creating it for, and your stakeholders’ vision for the solution. And while this is a best practice for a reason, sometimes it doesn’t go as planned in the real world. Maybe new regulations require you to provide training on a topic but don’t specify much other than course length. Perhaps your only guidance is that doing anything new is better than what your company is doing now. Or you could be dealing with the problem our Articulate User Conference attendees faced in this Training Trailblazers activity—stakeholders who don’t know enough about training to understand what exactly they need. So, what should you do when you need to know a lot more about a project before you can move forward? Let’s look at some useful strategies community members suggest for digging up that information! 1. Start by outlining what you do know If you feel overwhelmed by project ambiguity, sometimes the simple act of summarizing everything shared with you so far in one document can give you a better sense of what to do next. Also, if all the project conversations and decisions up to this point have been fragmented across lots of meetings and teams, your stakeholders and subject matter experts (SMEs) may not realize how little has been settled. Rounding up the few facts you have and sharing them with those partners can make it easier for you to highlight critical project gaps. 2. Create a list of questions—and experts to answer them Another way to narrow down next steps is to list the big questions that come to mind as you consider the project. Once you’ve finished your initial list, consolidate what you want to ask, ensure you’re covering all your information gaps, and triage the items so you’re asking the most vital questions first. When you finish the list, review each question and identify the best person to answer them. Project stakeholders or SMEs are logical places to start. But also consider if there are others inside or outside your organization that could have helpful information to share. 3. Analyze the problem with the project requester One source for answers can be the person or group who first contacted you for assistance. Even if they’re not experts in the material, they may have insights into what problem they want this training to solve and what they want people to do differently after they take it. If the project requester doesn’t know the answer off the top of their head, it’s worth spending some time chatting with them to try and uncover the answer. After all, if the requester doesn’t know what performance gap the training needs to fill, you’ll be hard-pressed to make that happen. 4. Get to know your audience It’s hard to design training when you don’t know much about who you’re designing it for. Learning more about your target audience can answer lots of questions about what your project should cover and formats likely to work well for them. Not sure what information is most important to find out? This article on how to do an e-learning audience analysis can guide you along the way. Your audience is also a valuable resource when your stakeholders know the gist of what they want your training to address but are foggy on the specifics. Interviewing and surveying your audience members can fill in those content gaps and give you practical ideas for what training experiences would help them the most. Not only that, but their feedback can also point out aspects of the topic you can leave out because your audience already has them mastered. 5. Research common problems and solutions If the initial request is vague about what exactly your training should cover, try exploring the most frequent issues people have with the topic and best practices for overcoming them. That way you can uncover tried-and-true ideas for your course content. This approach may not work well for niche, company-specific content or challenges. But it’s a great starting point for more general training topics, like leadership, communication, or compliance training. 6. Dig into metrics If your stakeholders aren’t sure about the specific areas your audience is struggling with, data may paint a clearer picture for you. Performance metrics can give you direct information about learner strengths and gaps. And you can infer a lot by looking into what company goals they aren’t currently meeting. This approach also has a bonus—it gives you concrete numbers to compare pre- and post-training. That’s a handy way to show the impact of what you create. 7. Consult official documentation or regulations When designing compliance training—or any courses related to legal requirements—the regulations themselves can offer guidance on the content your project needs to cover and what behaviors need to change. While it may take some work to convert this information from legal theory to real-world application, that effort puts you in a much better position to craft learning experiences that effectively meet your compliance regulations and land well with your audience. 8. Review historic courses and related training Has this training topic been covered by your organization before? Digging into what’s been done in the past may give you inspiration for what to do in the future. Old or retired courses can point out what approaches click with your audience and which fall flat. And you may even discover that you don’t have to create your project from scratch after all, but can instead rework existing course materials to meet your new training needs. To keep your course content streamlined, try investigating related courses too. That way you can spot if there are subtopics you don’t need to touch on because they’re covered in other training your audience is taking. 9. Investigate what other organizations are doing in this space Chances are, other companies are tackling similar challenges to yours. And thankfully, we work in an industry where people tend to be generous about sharing their work. Webinars, white papers, conference sessions, podcast interviews, social media posts, and articles are some of the many places you can learn about the training approaches other organizations have used. But publicly available insights aren’t the only resources to check out. Consider reaching out to former colleagues and industry connections outside your company to chat one-on-one about what training they’ve created or seen on your topic. 10. Do a needs assessment Finally, if you’re not in an emergency time crunch, one of the best ways to get all the answers you need and more is to take a step back and do a full training needs analysis. This process helps you analyze the business problem or performance gap your stakeholders want to address and determine the best approach to help—sometimes even identifying when interventions other than training are better suited for the job. Wrap-Up Vague project requests can be stressful and confusing. But these approaches can help you cut through the ambiguity, giving you the details you need to make your e-learning a success. Want more practical tips for starting a project on the right foot? Try these articles: 6 Agenda Items for Your E-Learning Project Kickoff Meeting All About Training Needs Analysis The 7 Questions You’ll Want To Ask When Deciding What Kind of Training To Create And if you’re looking for even more ideas to make every stage of e-learning design and development easier and more effective, be sure to 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). And if you have questions, please share them in the comments.
