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).Articulate Receives Security Certification From US Federal Government—FedRAMP®
Security is a priority for us, which is why we’re excited to share that Articulate is officially FedRAMP® authorized! If you’re not familiar with FedRAMP, basically this means that the US federal government has done a thorough security and risk assessment of Articulate apps and determined they meet their strict cloud security requirements and are safe to use. If you work for an agency of the US government, this also means you can use Articulate 360 without worry, knowing that they’re FedRAMP authorized. Head over to the FedRAMP marketplace for more details on our authorization. And for those of you in the private sector, it means you can rest easy knowing you’re in good hands with Articulate. Of course, if you want more information on our approach to security and data protection, check out our Trust Center. Want to try out our apps but don’t have an Articulate 360 subscription? Start a free 30-day trial today. And if you have any questions, please share them in the comments.Coming Soon: Articulate AI (With Video!)
Exciting news: We’re working on some AI features that’ll help amplify your creativity and accelerate course creation. Check out this short video for a quick preview of what’s in store: We hope you’re as excited as we are about these upcoming features! Subscribe to our newsletter to get the latest product updates directly in your inbox. If you have questions, please share them in the comments.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!5 Ways to Use Animated GIFs in Your E-Learning
Animated GIFs—or image files that act like a short video that loops endlessly—are everywhere these days, on social media, in blogs, and even in e-learning courses! That’s right, instructional designers are using these eye-catching multimedia assets to grab their learners’ attention—and you can too. Check out these ideas to get inspiration on how to incorporate animated GIFs in your courses. 1. As Course Header Images If your learners have a ton of courses in their dashboard and you want yours to stand out, try using an animated GIF in the course header, like in this example: Mars Curiosity Rover. It’s a surefire way to get your course noticed. 2. As Attention Getters GIFs are eye-catching. Have you noticed how hard it is to look away even when you’ve already seen the same animation loop 10 times over? That’s what’s so great about them. Their movement naturally draws your learners in and incites them to pay attention. Not convinced? Take a look at this Rise 360 course: Space Travel–Themed Interactive Infographic See how the GIFs draw you in and make you want to click on the interactive parts? I thought so. 3. To Illustrate Key Messages But GIFs can do more than just catch your learners’ eye. They can actually help learners better understand the concepts you’re teaching them. Check out the GIFs in this course, for example: An American’s Guide to Driving in France. See how the GIFs support the key messages? 4. To Lay Out the Steps in a Process If you’re creating a how-to course, you might be tempted to make a video. And that’s definitely one way of doing it! But if people need to replicate the steps one by one, they might need to rewind each step and watch it over and over again. What a pain! Instead of creating a lengthy video or screencast, why not create a GIF of each step, making it easy for people to rewatch the steps as needed, like in this article on how to make coffee? 5. For Comic Relief If the topic of your course is particularly dry, it might be a good idea to work in some humor to make sure your learners don’t fall asleep. GIFs are a great way to do that! However, be careful to not overdo it. A humorous GIF here and there is one thing; peppering every section of your course with them is another. Here's an example that uses humorous GIFs effectively. Another thing to keep in mind with humor is that it’s subjective. Test your course out on a trusted coworker or two and make sure they find the GIFs to be both work-appropriate and funny. The Bottom Line As with anything, it’s important to keep in mind that too much of a good thing is bad. When using animated GIFs, make sure they’re helping and not hindering the learning process. After all, the goal is to get your learners to focus on the content and retain the key messages. If you’re sold on using animated GIFs in your courses but aren’t sure how to go about creating your own, check out this tutorial. 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).How To Make the Business Case for E-Learning Software
Being a part of the sales team here at Articulate, I’m on the front lines answering customer questions (and yes, indeed, we get them all). In a single day, we might hear, “What is e-learning exactly?” “What is the cost of a license?” and everything in between. The most frustrating comment we encounter, however, is “Now I just need to convince my boss to pay for it.” You know how great our software is, but what’s the best strategy to convince the “higher-ups” to go for it? Here are some helpful hints. Share a Demo The first rule of sales is “show . . . don’t tell.” We are happy to offer a free, fully functional 30-day trial of Articulate 360 so you can experience how easy it is to use, and so your boss can see how much this robust software platform can do. To someone not fully versed in e-learning, words like triggers, variables, blocks, microlearning, and highly immersive courses don’t mean a lot. Those people need to see the difference. Identify the Cost Benefit Another piece of advice is to make it make sense—and cents! How much time would Articulate 360 save you compared to all of the tools and resources you currently use? And if you decide to include our AI Assistant in your subscription, your time saved will go up even more! This can be a powerful message, especially if your workload is at capacity. You should also find ways to show how much money e-learning saves your organization. Many people find they can quickly and easily justify the expense when they consider how much this small outlay will save them in the long run. Demonstrate the Ease of Use Articulate differentiates itself by providing outstanding customer support, free training webinars, tutorials, and a helpful, friendly user community. This is key for your manager to know, because you can get up and running quickly with minimal downtime—without lengthy expensive training—and if there’s a problem or something you can’t figure out, our fabulous support team and community are here to help. Fulfill Future Needs Software that meets a current need is good, but software that also has future benefits for your organization is even better. So, think about your organization’s current needs, and how they will evolve. Then, have a good explanation ready for how Articulate 360 will help your organization fill an anticipated need. For example, perhaps mobile access isn’t a huge deal to your company now but might become so in the future. With Articulate 360, you’ll have a ton of robust features to call on as your needs change, and we’re constantly adding and improving those features with monthly software updates that are included in your subscription. Wrap-Up Convincing upper management isn’t always easy, but if you prepare for the meeting and present your case logically, you might find it is easier than you think! Here are some additional resources to help get you started: Get Up to Speed on Articulate 360: What’s Included? Making the Business Case for E-Learning Build Compelling Courses Up to 9x Faster with Articulate’s AI Assistant AI Assistant Released: Pricing Details and Resources Available Don’t forget that you can 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.Why & How To Participate in the Weekly Challenges on E-Learning Heroes
Did you know that every week here on E-Learning Heroes our very own David Anderson challenges community members to build mini-projects around a different theme? Well, if you didn’t—now you do! Keep reading to find out why and how to participate. Why participate? There are so many great reasons to participate in the E-Learning Challenges. Here are a few: Grow your skills. Whether you’re new to e-learning or a seasoned professional, it’s important to continuously grow your skills to stay up-to-date with current practices and trends. Participating in the weekly challenges not only allows you to build projects that might be outside your comfort zone and get feedback from others, but it also gives you a chance to see their work and glean inspiration from it. Build your portfolio. Even if you’re not currently looking for work, it’s important to create and maintain a portfolio. After all, you never know when an exciting opportunity might pop up! One challenge with e-learning portfolios is that often the e-learning courses you create for work are confidential and therefore can’t be included. The challenges give you an opportunity to create a variety of projects you can show prospective clients and employers to showcase your skill set. Expand your network. While some people participate in the challenges more sporadically, many of the participants are the same from week to week. Joining in the challenges is a great way to get to know other e-learning professionals and build relationships with people who can help you grow your skills and advance your career. Boost your visibility. When organizations are searching for e-learning designers, the internet is the first place they’ll look, so establishing an online presence is key. Participating in the challenges regularly is one way to boost your visibility and increase the chances that your name will come up in search results. Have fun. When you’re building courses for clients, you can’t always do things exactly the way you’d like to. The challenges are a great place to let your creativity run wild and have a little fun. How to participate Now that you know why you should participate, you might be wondering how to join in. It’s supereasy! Just follow the steps below: 1. Check out the challenge article Hover over the Learn tab in the navigation bar and scroll down to E-Learning Challenges. This will take you to the E-Learning Challenges hub, where you can click on the current week’s challenge—which is always featured at the top of the page: And if you’d like to participate in a previous week’s challenge, you can do that too! Just open the full list of challenges and click on one that interests you. 2. Read the challenge description Take a minute to read through the challenge and get a feel for what it’s about. Often there are a couple of examples to get your creative juices flowing. 3. Create your project Once you’ve got a handle on the challenge, it’s time to start working on your project. You can spend as much or as little time as you want on it—so no need to create a full-fledged course or stay up all hours of the night getting it done. Just sit down and see what you can bang out in the time you have—whether that’s 30 minutes, an hour, or half a day! 4. Add a comment When you’re done, simply add a link to your project in the comments section of the challenge article. Easy-peasy! Not sure how to generate a link to your project? If you’re using Articulate 360, simply publish your course to Review 360 and paste the share link in the comments box. Otherwise, you can also publish your course for the web, upload it to a web server, and share that link. It’s up to you! Here are some resources to help you generate a link to your project: Rise 360: Publishing a Course to Review 360 Storyline 360: Publishing a Course to Review 360 How to Get an E-Learning Course Online That’s all there is to it! From there, you can check out other people’s challenge entries and leave feedback if you’d like. But once again—there’s no obligation! And if you want to increase the visibility of your entry, you can start a new thread in the discussion forums, write about it on your blog, or share a post on social media with the dedicated hashtag: #ELHChallenge. 5. Check out the recap (optional) About a week after David posts a challenge, he rounds up all the entries in a separate article to highlight all the projects people have shared—to give them maximum visibility. If you didn’t have time to check out the other entries, the recap is a fast and easy way to do that. To access the recap, you have two options: Go back to the challenge article and click on the recap link he’s added below the article illustration. Go to the E-Learning Challenges hub and click on the recap article directly. It’ll appear below the featured article with the same illustration as the challenge, but with a restart icon instead of a trophy icon: Challenge Recap Wrap-Up So what are you waiting for? Head over to the E-Learning Challenges hub and join in on this week’s challenge. You’ll be glad you did! And remember to follow us on Twitter 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. This article is part of our E-Learning 101 e-mail course, a series of expertly curated articles that’ll help you get started with e-learning—delivered right to your inbox. You’re only a click away from becoming an e-learning pro! Sign up here to enroll.What’s a Subject Matter Expert (SME)?
What’s the first thing that popped into your mind when someone told you to find the “ess, em, ee” to get the course content you need? Did your rookie self grasp at straws and think something along the lines of “small- or medium-size enterprise"? Or maybe your potential client actually said “smee,” which really threw you for a loop. In the e-learning world, the acronym stands for subject matter expert. SME is really just a fancy way of describing someone who is an expert in his or her field. It’s the person in an organization who has the most knowledge or skill in a specific topic. But don’t go looking for the SME department; there isn’t one. An SME might be an HR staff member, an engineer, a researcher, a product manager, a sales manager, or a finance person. Pretty much every department or business unit has a resident expert. The SME has tons of content, experience, and insights that are essential to creating fantastic courses that your learners need in order to ramp up on a new skill quickly or improve their existing skills. And when you’re developing an e-learning course, the SME can be your best friend. Your SME can help you define learning objectives, craft content, and give valuable feedback as you’re developing the course. In short, you can’t develop effective e-learning without an SME. And if you’re an e-learning developer, your job is to partner with the SME to get the information, strategies, and content you’ll need to build an effective course. So, you need to build a collaborative partnership that’s focused on productive communication. Effective communication is especially important during the course review process. Otherwise, you could find yourself in a (seemingly) never-ending cycle of iterations. But don’t worry, that’s why we created Review 360: a simple web app that makes collaborating with SMEs (and other stakeholders) super easy. And we didn’t stop there! We even created this great course to help you explain the review process to your stakeholders, so you can be sure everyone is on the same page. And we’ve got tons of other resources to help you figure out the best ways to work with SMEs to create amazing e-learning: Learn more about engaging productively with SMEs by downloading our free e-book, “The Essential Guide to Working with Subject Matter Experts.” Read this article for some quick tips on working with SMEs. Discover the secret to turning a reluctant SME into an engaged team member in this article. Check out the top discussions and forum threads in our “Working with Subject Matter Experts” forums compilation in E-Learning Heroes. We’d love to hear your questions and comments about working with SMEs in the comments below! Remember to follow us on Twitter and come back to E-Learning Heroes regularly for more helpful advice on everything related to e-learning.Upcoming Articulate 360 Training Webinars
Stay ahead of the curve with our free Articulate 360 Training webinars. These weekly sessions are designed to help busy course creators like you enhance your e-learning skills without investing too much time. As an Articulate 360 subscriber, you can grow your expertise through targeted training on the latest techniques and best practices – all at no additional cost. And if you want to view some on-demand training to view at your own time, visit the Articulate 360 training site to see what's available. Check out our upcoming webinars and level up your e-learning game. If you can't attend, that's OK. We record all of the sessions, so just sign up and you'll get a recording emailed to you. Date Title December 17, 2024 ✨ Overview of AI Assistant in Storyline December 17, 2024 ✨ AI Assistant & Rise: Smart Strategies for Efficient E-Learning December 17, 2024 Using Dials to Create Menu Navigation in Storyline 360 December 17, 2024 How to Build Compliance Training in Rise 360 Not yet an Articulate 360 subscriber? Sign up for a 30-day free trial and check out as many as you’d like. And if the live webinar time doesn’t work for you, no worries! Simply sign up anyway and you’ll receive the recording in your inbox so you can watch it whenever you have time. Hope to see you at one of our upcoming webinars!
