Why AI Could Turbocharge L&D Professionals
Amid all the excitement surrounding artificial intelligence (AI), there’s one glaring fear: “Is AI going to replace me?” It’s a reasonable concern. After all, generative AI can work a whole lot faster than we mere mortals.But here’s the deal: AI is a tool. And a tool is only as good as the person who wields it. At Articulate, we think of AI as an accelerator of human capability, not a replacer of human ingenuity. Let’s unpack why AI can’t do everything alone and how—when used effectively—it doesn’t take away potential but unlocks it. AI Has Limitations On the surface, AI-generated content truly feels like it could’ve been written by a human. But mimicking a human isn’t the same as being a human, and that makes all the difference. Courses built solely with AI are prone to the following hurdles: Inaccuracies. AI is a people-pleaser. If it can’t give you a correct answer, it will still produce a reasonable “something”—but that something might be riddled with half-truths or outright “hallucinations.” Without a human validating output, AI might deliver wholly fabricated content. Biases. Generative AI was trained on the internet, making it highly susceptible to biases. Take away ethical human input and guidance, and AI may reinforce stereotypes, spread misinformation, and deliver inequitable training with unapologetic conviction. Ineffectiveness. AI can’t independently create complex, engaging learning experiences like the L&D pros. It can work quickly, but only a human course creator knows the nuance that goes into helping learners wrap their heads around tough topics, develop complex skills, and work through real-world practice scenarios. AI Requires Guidance AI’s limitations remind us that it can’t work alone. The sidekick is only as good as the hero. And AI is only as good as the e-learning heroes who use it. High-quality training requires humans in the driver’s seat. If you don’t have professionals consulting with stakeholders, discerning learning needs, setting directions, iterating with AI, and validating outputs, you end up with training that misses the mark. What Can AI Do? So, if AI isn’t replacing L&D professionals, what is it doing? If you’re a course creator, think of AI as another tool in your kit—and a mighty valuable one at that. Use AI mindfully, and you can: Collate information quickly. Have several dense documents to sift through? Consider using AI to pull and synthesize the information—kick-starting your course-creation process. Get a first draft. Debating how to start a lesson or course? AI solves the notorious “blank page” problem by giving you a first draft. Then all you have to do is fine-tune it. Brainstorm. Need to toss some ideas around? Your AI helper is an excellent creative thought partner. For example, you might use AI to think through course outlines, come up with industry-relevant examples, and surface themes within your work. Modify and personalize your work. Want to change direction or adapt your training for a different audience? No problem! AI can switch up your tone or writing style in a flash. Accelerate monotonous tasks. Have a lot on your plate? You might free up your day by using AI to speed through time-consuming, repetitive work. For example, you could ask AI to generate a summary, knowledge check, or full-course quiz based on your content. Well-Guided AI Unlocks L&D Superpowers Ultimately, with course creators at the wheel, an AI sidekick helps course creators do more, work smarter, and achieve their goals faster. The result? Instead of replacing L&D pros, AI gives them superpowers. Learning teams who leverage AI have more time, freedom, and mental space to use their specialized expertise, dig deeper, innovate, and home in on the creative side of course creation and design. Wrap Up The scary robot takeover isn’t happening anytime soon. AI is an invaluable asset. But it only works if we keep humans at the center. As Articulate’s own Chief Technology Officer Kerry Munz puts it, “AI gives you time; it lets you go deeper. But it’s your magic that helps people grow.” For more information about AI, check out these helpful resources: Build Compelling Courses Up to 9x Faster with Articulate’s AI Assistant 4 AI Basics Every E-Learning Creator Needs to Know in 2024 3 Ways AI Transforms Workforce Skill-Building Is Your Organization Ready for AI? How Articulate AI Safeguards Your Data You can stay in the loop by subscribing to our newsletter and finding us on LinkedIn and X (formerly Twitter). Want to try out our apps but don’t have an Articulate 360 subscription? Start a free 30-day trial today. And if you have any questions, please share them in the comments.How E-Learning Experts Are Shaping Articulate AI
What makes Articulate AI unique? It all started with a singular focus: Develop a tool, not a toy. Sure, AI is entertaining. But we recognize that what you really need as e-learning pros is functionality—something that inspires, elevates, and enables human creators to get things done. So, how do we get there? Our developers called in the experts, partnering with e-learning pros every step of the way. We’re working on a suite of features built with course creators like you, for you. Let’s pull back that creation curtain and unveil how the scene is unfolding. Consulting L&D Pros at Every Stage Articulate’s talented engineers, product developers, and designers aren’t working in a vacuum. From planning through creation, testing, modifying, and scaling, we’re developing Articulate AI iteratively with ongoing input and feedback from people who live and breathe e-learning. It started with consulting experts both inside and outside Articulate. As production began, the collaborative efforts only skyrocketed. Business as usual for us means regular brainstorming sessions, routine updates, rapid-fire discussions, shared docs, testing, working meetings, and feedback, feedback, feedback. Shaping the AI Features and Interface Thanks to this collaboration, e-learning experts are helping define what features Articulate is prioritizing and how the AI interface will work. More specifically, the L&D pros are: Molding the workflow. They share their typical workstreams and outputs with developers—ensuring that Articulate AI will work for you, not against you. Influencing features. L&D pros brainstorm AI’s limitations and values and present their findings, pitching ideas and rating features by the potential impact on Rise 360 work. Refining outputs. They help shape ideal AI outputs, influencing decisions around what questions AI should ask and when, how many outputs AI should generate, and how frequently you should touch base with AI before getting your final results. Shaping the user interface. E-learning creators are further helping our product designers customize how AI shows up to bring you a seamless and easy-to-understand authoring experience. Setting the Benchmark Articulate’s e-learning experts are working tirelessly throughout testing to help ensure you get the best possible AI outputs. Here’s how these subject matter experts are making a difference: Improving back-end prompt instructions. Leveraging e-learning best practices, they’re helping craft and test back-end prompt instructions to improve output quality. Developing the standard. Our e-learning experts are also developing weighted criteria for judging the AI outputs against instructional design frameworks—setting the benchmark for what “good” looks like. Testing the features. Who better to judge AI than those who use Articulate’s tools every day? With each update, the pros test the features, assessing what works and what doesn’t, and share their findings with developers. Our Goal? Tailored AI That Delivers Results We truly believe our deep collaborative efforts will pay off. When we release Articulate AI it’ll be specialized to meet your needs as an e-learning creator. Rather than offering a one-click magic button with subpar results, Articulate AI will complement your workflow. The built-in processes will keep humans at the center, incorporating instructional design best practices and enabling you to iterate every step of the way. Wrap-Up Thanks to direct, ongoing input from e-learning experts, Articulate AI will empower you to do more. Magic happens when great minds come together—and a whole lot of minds are melding to create Articulate AI. We can’t wait to share that magic with you! Ready for more? For more details about these upcoming features, check out the following resources: Build Compelling Courses Up to 9x Faster with Articulate’s AI Assistant 4 AI Basics Every E-Learning Creator Needs to Know in 2024 How Articulate AI Safeguards Your Data Why AI Could Turbocharge L&D Professionals Before you take off, remember to subscribe to our newsletter to get the latest product updates, e-learning examples, and expert advice directly in your inbox. You can also find us on LinkedIn and X (formerly Twitter). 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.Boost Productivity with Articulate AI – Coming Soon to Articulate 360
Last Updated: June 26, 2024 We’re super excited to announce that soon we’ll be adding AI features to Articulate 360 that will empower authors to create better courses even faster. But these seamlessly integrated features will do more than just speed up course development; they’ll help ensure your AI-generated content aligns with your learning objectives and instructional design best practices. If you’re like many Articulate 360 users, you’ve been itching to learn more about Articulate AI since we announced we were working on it a few months ago. In this article, you’ll get a sneak peek at some of the upcoming features, learn about the robust security and privacy policies we’ve implemented to keep you safe and in control, and find out how to manage the availability of these features for you and your team. Note: Articulate AI is in active development. User access, available features, and overall experience will evolve over time. Articulate AI Products AI Assistant AI Video AI Security & Privacy at Articulate Managing Access to Articulate AI Articulate AI Products Articulate AI is coming soon, but we can’t wait to show you what it can do! Dig into the details below for a sneak peek at the game-changing course authoring experiences you’ll have with AI Assistant and AI Video. AI Assistant Creating courses with Articulate 360 has always been fast and easy. But with AI Assistant, you’ll have a content-creation helper built right into Rise 360 and Storyline 360—accelerating course creation even further. (Note: this is subject to change and may not be the exact UI of the final product) Let’s take a peek at some of the ways AI Assistant will improve your workflow. Jump-start your course development process: With AI Assistant, instead of spending days or weeks analyzing existing content and trying to distill it into lessons, you’ll be able to simply upload your source materials—like PDFs or PowerPoint presentations—and generate Rise 360 blocks in minutes. Think about all the time you’ll save! Reinforce learning with AI-generated assessments: Designing quizzes that reinforce key concepts and assess learner comprehension can be challenging. It takes time to analyze the course content, write questions that align with the learning objectives, and come up with plausible incorrect answers. When you’re using Rise 360 or Storyline 360, AI Assistant will be able to take this task off your plate—freeing you to focus on other things. Create relevant imagery in a consistent style: Don’t have the budget for a graphic designer or stock images? No problem. With AI Assistant, you’ll be able to generate high-quality images in a variety of styles in a single click in both Rise 360 and Storyline 360. Transform and improve content: Working with a lot of text-heavy content? AI Assistant will help you transform static text into dynamic, engaging Rise 360 blocks. And if you change your mind about a block type, the assistant can automatically swap it out with another one—so you can skip the copying and pasting and focus on design strategy. AI Assistant can improve writing too! You’ll be able to update the tone, improve grammar, and more. Maximize instructional quality and consistency: AI Assistant was designed by L&D professionals, for L&D professionals. It’s easier than ever to create exceptional courses that maximize learner engagement and knowledge retention because we’ve baked in instructional design best practices. AI Video Adding videos to courses has the potential to increase learner engagement. But what if you don’t have the time, budget, or skills to create them? Not to worry! We’ve got you covered. With AI Video in Rise 360 and Storyline 360, all you have to do is enter your script to generate professional, studio-quality videos in minutes. (Note: this is subject to change and may not be the exact UI of the final product) You can even personalize them by inserting on-screen elements like text and shapes, swapping out the background image, and adding captions. With AI Video, you’ll have the power to create professional-grade videos at your fingertips. AI Security & Privacy at Articulate Security and privacy have always been a top priority at Articulate, and as we integrate AI into Articulate 360, we remain committed to ensuring our tools meet the highest level of safety and confidentiality standards. Articulate has a zero data retention policy—which means after Articulate AI generates your content, any data used in the process is immediately deleted from the servers of our AI subprocessors. And while we retain your data as long as your subscription is active, Articulate never uses your information to feed or train our AI models. We know that AI security is important to you as well and that you might need to provide your organization with detailed information about the measures we’re taking to keep your data secure. That’s why we drafted an official AI Security and Privacy document you can share with your organization to ensure it meets their AI usage guidelines. Managing Access to Articulate AI At this time, Articulate 360 Team admins and personal account holders can opt out of the coming AI Assistant free trial. Simply go to the account management console and select Manage Subscription. Under Articulate AI, toggle the Free Trial setting. Confirm by clicking the Opt-Out button on the pop-up screen that displays. If you change your mind after opting out of the AI Assistant free trial, toggle the Free Trial setting and agree to the AI terms of service to opt in. Wrap-Up We hope you’re as excited about the upcoming Articulate AI features as we are! And this is just the beginning. If you want more information about Articulate AI and other new features we’re working on, check out the following resources: How E-Learning Experts Are Shaping Articulate AI Articulate 360 Feature Roadmap Before you go, remember to subscribe to our newsletter to get the latest product updates, e-learning examples, and expert advice directly in your inbox.
