ID Toolbox
Practical tools for e-learning developers… Over the past several months I've built a set of browser tools for the bits of Storyline and Rise that used to cost me hours. Eleven of them, all completely free, no signup, no accounts, nothing to install. They run entirely in your browser. Nothing is uploaded anywhere, which for me was the whole point, I wasn't keen on posting client content to a website just to check something… ID ToolboxLess Is More Is Not Just About Content, but About Learning Experience
After working in instructional design for many years, I've come to realize that "less is more" is often misunderstood. It is usually associated with simplifying content, such as making courses shorter, reducing information, or avoiding overload. But in my experience, it goes beyond that. Even when we have correctly identified what learners need to know, do, or change in order to meet business goals, there is still another important question: How should we design the learning experience itself? The goal should be to help learners learn with the least unnecessary effort. Not by removing depth or rigor, but by removing friction that does not contribute to learning. Over the years, I've seen many different approaches to learning design. Some learning experiences feel under-designed, where the lack of structure or intention makes it difficult for learners to stay engaged or understand the purpose of the content. I've also seen cases where, in an effort to avoid being "too simple" or "boring," additional layers of interaction, visual elements, or gamification are introduced. Many of us have probably spent hours building advanced interactions in Storyline or carefully structuring a Rise course because we wanted the learning experience to feel more engaging. There is nothing wrong with using these features. The question is whether they genuinely support learning. Sometimes these additions are driven more by what the tool allows us to build than by what learners actually need. As a result, learners may end up spending more time completing interactions than understanding, retaining, or applying the knowledge that really matters. This is especially important in corporate learning. Learners are often balancing training with their daily responsibilities. Time is limited, and attention is limited. That is why I believe we should be intentional about where we add complexity. Interaction is not the problem. In fact, meaningful interaction is essential for learning. The key word is meaningful. The most valuable learning experiences are those that help learners understand concepts more deeply, retain what they have learned, and apply that knowledge in real work situations. This is where I choose to focus my design effort. Not on adding interaction for its own sake, but on identifying the moments in learning that truly matter. Instead of asking, "What cool Storyline feature can I use here?", I think we should be asking, "How does this interaction help learners understand, retain, or apply what they need to learn?" When we design with that intention, learning can often become simpler while also becoming more effective. That's the kind of learning experience I continue to strive for. I'd love to hear how you decide when an interaction is truly worth adding.An eLearning Course May Be Teaching More Than You Intended
After many years in instructional design and eLearning, I’ve come to question something we often take for granted about learning. We tend to think of it in simple terms: The learner learned it. The learner didn’t. The course worked. The course failed. But I don’t think learning works that way. People always learn something. The more important question is: What are they learning? Consider a poorly designed eLearning course. An employee attends a course because they genuinely want to learn. But the content is difficult to follow, the activities feel disconnected, and the experience becomes frustrating. The course doesn’t help with the problems they actually face at work. We might conclude that the learner simply didn’t get much out of it. But they may have learned something very different from what we intended: “I could have spent this time getting my work done.” Or “eLearning is a waste of time.” That is still learning. It’s just not the learning outcome we intended. And if that happens repeatedly, something else happens. We spend a great deal of effort trying to motivate learners, get them interested, and hook them into the learning experience. But several poor learning experiences can work in the opposite direction. Learners may become more guarded and less receptive, even when they are later required to learn. There is an interesting example in Taiwan. The government has invested heavily in eLearning for public servants, offering a large number of courses across different topics and allowing employees to choose based on their needs and interests. There are many good courses among them, but the quality is mixed. In 2018, a proposal was submitted on Taiwan’s Public Policy Participation Platform calling for the abolition of the eLearning program for public servants. One of the complaints was that requiring 20 to 40 hours of eLearning each year was a waste of time with little effect. The proposal received nearly 8,000 endorsements in just three days. What interests me is not whether the program was good or bad. It’s this: If people repeatedly experience learning that feels ineffective, what are they learning about learning itself? Maybe: “This isn’t worth my time.” And that may be a bigger problem than one ineffective course. A poor course doesn’t simply fail to teach what we intended. It may teach learners to distrust the learning experience itself. So perhaps we need to ask a different question when we talk about learning effectiveness: Not just, “Did they learn what we wanted them to learn?” But: “What else did they learn from the experience?”Community Insights: Peer Guide Spotlight
Many of you have seen buzz about our AI Assistant Certification Cohort , regardless if you have participated. Our second run of the program just wrapped up, and it’s safe to say that the biggest difference between these two sessions lies in the hands of four community members. Our peer guides: MelAngiulo SusanWhalen0822 lane_jacole & TaylorSakinsky- What is a peer guide? These are community leaders who help with community programs. Right now those programs are our AI Assistant Certification Cohort and Peer Pods. These initiatives are leveling up the way we learn in ELH by creating bite sized communities of practice. This increases peer to peer connection: they’re opportunities to learn not just with each other, but from each other. As these programs continue to grow we realized they needed one major improvement: peer leadership. That’s where these four community members come in! Their journey to LD varies: from a recent M.S in Instructional Design (congrats Melissa!) to having left teaching middle school after 16 years (an incredible tenure, Jacole!). The path specifically to becoming a peer guide was more straightforward, as they all participated in the first AI cohort. All four guides shared that filling this role was anything but a re-hash of their first experience. Rather, being a peer guide meant a front row seat to the variety, creativity, and possibilities that each participant brought to the assignment. “We all had the same prompt, but it was fascinating to see how many different directions everyone took it in. There were some genuinely creative ideas and modifications that inspired me to try something new in my own work.” - Melissa “It's so fun to see everyone's take on the same task, and it shows just how truly unique we all are! The creativity was inspiring.” - Taylor “I love the different color schemes, the images generated, and the creativity applied to the activity. It truly inspired me!” - Susan “I saw some new ideas that I haven't seen before, and those submissions helped me grow as well!” - Jacole The willingness to experiment with the assignment is just the surface of successful community based learning. Being open to resources, learning from others, sharing pain points (and of course bonding over pet pictures) are all central elements to maximizing the opportunity for personal growth in a learning community. Taylor and Melissa emphasized the diversity of expertise in ELH, reminding us “lean on those around you” and that “we can all leverage and learn from one another.” Jacole pointed out that “sometimes the best learning comes from the workarounds others have found and shared for their similar frustrations.” Susuan corroborated, sharing the reward of this is discovering “shared experiences, from our love of pets to the all-too-familiar challenge of getting AI to generate exactly the image we envision.” Being intentional about openness to growth, to sharing, to learning with and from one another is a huge part of their success as peer guides. Another part is simply the joy of building up others. When asked what being a peer guide meant to them there was a resounding consensus: they wanted to help and connect with the community. “Stepping into the peer guide role gave me the opportunity to build meaningful connections with individuals across the global Articulate community.” -Susan “I wanted to be a witness to the growth and trials of my peers, celebrate the wins no matter how big or small, and commiserate over any pain points.” - Jacole “I thought it would be a great opportunity to help the next group of members navigate their experience.” - Taylor “Being a Peer Guide means sharing what I know with others, while simultaneously continuing to learn myself.” - Melissa And in the spirit of helping others by sharing what they know, each of our peer guides offered some advice: About using AI tools, make sure you check the final product. “As trained professionals, we have the expertise and responsibility to design effective courses—LLMs should be viewed as just another tool in our toolbox, not a replacement for our judgment.” -Susan What this looks like: integrating AI into your workflow means integrating a system of checks you might not have thought about before. The usual read-through for clarity, typos, and other common human errors should be joined by reviewing images, making sure quiz questions match the type of answers available, and keeping a library of prompts that are more effective than others. About ELH, explore the full extent of resources available “There are so many cool features and how-to videos that I wouldn't have known about if I didn't get an email about an "updated features walkthrough" or if I wasn't scrolling through the ELH resources.” -Melissa What this looks like: take advantage of our download library, ask for feedback on builds, and attend webinars whenever possible. Don’t hesitate to search for a keyword or interaction type- the well of knowledge here is deep. “Lean on those around you (and in the ELH community)! All of us come from varying backgrounds with different levels of experience, and none of us knows it all!” - Taylor What this looks like: reach out to your peers, pose questions about best practices, and specify if you think a certain lens will help you that you’re missing. Chances are high someone here has that perspective. About life outlook, stay in a growth mindset “There are always so many ways to grow when you are intentionally open to it.” - Jacole What this looks like: stay alert for opportunities to learn, to revisit things you once knew, and to share what you know now. 🌟Our peer guides are wonderful resources for advice, and we know there are many more in the community who just need the right chance to shine. If this is you, sound off in the comments with what you’d like to bring to the community! It can be an article, a build, or a community leadership position. 💬If you’re not ready for the spotlight, chime in below with what you believe is essential to learning in a community.What tools do you use?
What are your go to tools you use everyday and wouldn't be without in your authoring process? Here's mine. There's one thing they all have in common, and for me it's the important bit, nothing gets uploaded. They're plain HTML and JavaScript running in your browser. When you drop a .story file, an image or a SCORM zip on one of these, it gets read in memory on your own machine and that's the end of it. No server, no account, no sign up. Most of what I work on is client material and I'd rather not be posting it to a third party site. I suspect I'm not alone in that. They're all completely free, no trial, no limits, no nonsense! Story Auditor Variable health checks Storyline project files. Finds broken and at risk JavaScript references, unused variables and script issues before you ship. Story Documenter A complete written specification from a .story file. Every slide, every trigger in plain English, every quiz answer etc, ready to print or share with clients. Great for creating storyboards. Image Press Resize, compress and convert images in the browser. E-learning size presets, a target file size, batch zip download, and image metadata stripped on output. Great free tool for managing images for projects. SCORM Bench Run a SCORM package against a logging LMS runtime, without uploading it. Every API call visible, live data model, the manifest checked. Works with SCORM 1.2 and 2004. And a quick question; what's the thing in your workflow that still doesn't have a tool? These only existed because I moaned about something enough and then got annoyed enough to fix it!elearning as an evidence package for legal team
I'm looking for some advice from others using Articulate Storyline and Rise. Our organization is responsible for providing copies of completed training to our legal team when courses are involved in litigation or other legal matters. Historically, this was straightforward because our courses were primarily click-and-read, and we could provide a Word document containing the course script. As our courses have become much more interactive, with scenarios, branching, knowledge checks, drag-and-drops, simulations, and other learner interactions, we're finding that a traditional script no longer accurately represents what the learner actually experienced. For those of you using Storyline or Rise, what do you provide to your legal, compliance, or records management teams when they need a legally defensible copy of a course? Do you still create a script? If so, what does it include? Do you archive videos, screenshots, source files, SCORM packages, or something else? Have you developed a standard "evidence package" for each published course? If your legal team prefers a searchable document, how are you balancing that need with accurately documenting interactive content? I'm especially interested in hearing from government, healthcare, financial services, or other highly regulated organizations, but I'd appreciate insights from anyone who's established a sustainable process. Thanks in advance for sharing what's worked or what you've learned the hard way!The Red Pen
AI drafts fast, confidently, and about half of it is wallpaper. This course teaches you to edit it, spot the six tells, fix them without swapping one kind of slop for another, and check the numbers a model will invent with a straight face. The Red Pen | Rise Tools used: Canva, Gemini and Rise CanvasHow Rise Canvas was created
I’ve had several requests to detail how I created Rise Canvas Rather than trying to respond to everyone via DM, LinkedIn etc, I thought I’d detail everything here in one post. I’m a web/app designer in addition to being an ID (and some other side hustles that pay the bills!) so this has been a bit of a background passion project initially started for my own work… This will be a long read, so I’ll write it in several parts… This will be fairly non-technical as this isn’t really the place to discuss technical detail.. Part 1 coming next…
