Peer Pod Coming Soon: “New to Instructional Design” — Who’s Joining Us?
We’re kicking off a brand-new Peer Pod for anyone who’s new to instructional design and you’re invited! 🎉 Peer Pods are 4-week learning groups where community members explore a topic together through weekly prompts, curated resources, and shared discussion. Whether you’re a few days or several months into your role, this is your chance to connect with peers, reflect on key topics, and build confidence together. Here’s what we’ll explore: ✨ What to focus on as you get started 📦 Intro to Articulate 360 + course design best practices 🤝 Tips for working with SMEs 💻 Best practices for incorporating AI By the end, you’ll walk away with a stronger foundation and a group of peers cheering you on. 🗓 Start Date: Monday, January 12, 2026 Participants will be added to the private Peer Pod group about a week before we begin. 👉 Want to join? Fill out the registration form. 💬 Your turn: What Peer Pod topics do you want to see next? If you could join a focused 4-week learning group, what topic would you choose? Drop your ideas below so we can build pods around what you want most. 🙌Rise Competency-based Quiz - Early Access Group - Closed
Update 11.13.2025 Thank you to all who participated during our limited beta! Your feedback was incredibly informative. We'll be incorporating updates based upon your feedback over the coming months. -------------- Our team is testing a potential new feature in Rise that lets authors choose a lesson learners will automatically skip to when they complete a quiz correctly. We’re especially interested in hearing from those who want to use Rise for competency-based or similar course structures. Volunteer to participate here .AvatarGrid (Unfolding UI) for Storyline
AI video is everywhere in learning design, but the experience hasn’t caught up. Too often, video is dropped onto a slide and left to do all the work. AvatarGrid challenges that approach. Built for Articulate Storyline, AvatarGrid is an unfolding UI system that uses purposeful motion and cinematic transitions to reveal content progressively. AI videos/images, created with Higgsfield AI, Nano Banana, and HeyGen AI, feel integrated, not pasted in, supported by layered vector UI. The result is an immersive, modern learning experience where motion has meaning. Every interaction supports the story. This is what video AI-first, motion-driven UXD looks like in practice. Watch the short tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLXJ_-K4vXIWhat’s the Difference Between Training, Education, and Learning?
Ever sat across from a client or Subject Matter Expert (SME) as they asked you to help create “training,” “education,” and “learning”—all in the same breath? While these terms might sound academic and share some DNA, they’re not interchangeable. They all have slightly different meanings. Failing to clarify and build a shared understanding of these terms with your clients can contribute to misunderstandings and rework later. So let’s unpack the meaning of each of these terms—training, education, and learning—and place them into a workplace context. Understanding them will help ensure that you and your clients are on the same page right from the start! What is training? The Merriam-Webster Dictionary gives many different definitions for the word “training,” but the most applicable is “to undergo instruction, discipline, or drilling.” And when you look up the synonyms for training, it shows “drill,” “exercise,” and “practice.” Hmm. I don’t know about you, but I’m getting a pretty clear mental picture of a runner being trained by a coach. Training a runner is the act or process of instructing them to improve their performance. It’s a form of education that’s focused on a defined goal or task—in this case, making it through a marathon and shaving a few minutes off the time. Taking an example from a workplace setting: let’s say your sales team needs to learn to use new software to process returns. This is a task-specific goal that can be easily addressed with training. What is education? If training is a form of education, what’s the difference between being trained and being educated? Turning to my trusty ol’ dictionary once again, we see that “education” is defined by Merriam-Webster as “knowledge and development resulting from the process of being educated.” Development implies a change that happens over time as you absorb knowledge. That means that, unlike training, education isn’t a task-oriented one-off experience. Another key difference between training and education is that education is more conceptual in nature. The skills and knowledge we acquire through education are often more theoretical and less practical. Again, using our new software example, most of us would agree that it’s probably not the best use of company time and resources to send learners who only need to know how to process returned merchandise on a new system to a multi-week, intensive sales education program. So, if the goal is discrete and skills-based, like learning new software to perform a task, training is a more appropriate solution than education. What is learning? If training is the act or process of formally instructing someone on how to perform a task or perform it more efficiently, and education is the long-term process of developing knowledge, what is learning? Learning is the desired outcome of training—and the path to being educated. And the best part of learning is that it happens naturally through life experience. Of course, the likelihood of learning something new can be increased by our environment, upbringing, work, and mindset, among many other factors. In a workplace setting, learning occurs when people internalize information or skills, retain it, apply it, and then make additional connections to something else they’ve learned. It’s that connection of knowledge to ideas and experiences all woven together that forms the fabric of learning. Not only do we learn all the time, people learn in different ways—through formal training or, more often, informally, through their own experiences, or through the shared experiences of others. Regardless of how people learn, the process of learning equips them to take on more complex challenges. For instance, if we use our new software training example once again, a team member who’s been successfully trained to use the new software to process returns is a training win. But even better is the employee who’s learned how to marry their knowledge of the new software with their understanding of the latest changes to your company’s 30-day return policy and uses their customer service skills to do what’s right. That kind of layered, dynamic thinking and problem-solving is where training, education, and learning all intersect. Wrap-up If it feels like the devil is in the details, you’re not wrong! These terms are similar and related but with slightly different meanings that might escape all but the nerdiest of instructional design pros. Understanding these nuances can be helpful for navigating tricky client conversations with ease and confidence. What other common threads do you see with these terms? Would you define them differently? Let me know with a comment below, or strike up a new conversation in the Building Better Courses forum and hear from all our resident e-learning pros! Like what you read here? Be sure to follow us on Twitter and come back to E-Learning Heroes regularly for more helpful advice on everything related to e-learning.Reset / Retake Rise course if user fails assessment
Hi there, I noticed that the problem I have been having has already been discussed in the community 5 months ago - See community discussion thread: https://community.articulate.com/discussions/discuss/retake-rise-course-if-user-fails-assessment/968741 I wanted to reach out to the community again in case someone has come up with a workaround since this was last discussed. I would like to be able to offer learners the option to retake a whole course after they have failed the final exam. It would also be necessary that the course is completely reset for the learners and that they cannot jump from the start to the final exam again. As I understand it, this is not possible by adjusting settings in Articulate. However has anyone managed to achieve this by adjusting the SCORM drive code? If so, your guidance would be thoroughly appreciated. Thank you!Issue with Play/Pause button on base layers
Hi! I am working on this project, and the play/pause button will work on the base layer, pausing and stopping the audio when pressed. When it goes into one of the other layers of the slide, there is only a play button; it will not pause, and when clicked, it restarts the layer and its audio. I would like for viewers to be able to pause the slide and audio and rewind it if they need to rewatch. I'm not sure what I should do outside of maybe creating custom pause/play buttons, but why is the system play/pause button not working?Storyline 360 now supports transparent WebM video
Hello and welcome to 2026, Storyline users! Toward the end of the last year, we quietly shipped something pretty powerful. You can now import WebM videos into Storyline, including those that use real alpha channel transparency. In the clip below, I’m dropping a WebM onto a slide with a textured background so you can clearly see that texture showing through the video. Then on the next slide, I add a few objects that animate behind the video while it’s playing. No boxes. No masking tricks. Just actual transparency doing what it’s supposed to do. This wasn’t a big splashy launch, but it meaningfully expands what you can create. If you’ve ever wanted motion graphics or visual effects with transparency that feel native to the slide, this opens that door. One important note: support for transparent WebM is solid in Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and other Chromium-based browsers. Safari and Apple devices don’t currently support WebM transparency in the same way, so this works best when your learners are on those supported browsers. I’m really curious about how you'll use this. What kinds of transparent video would be most valuable in your courses? Where does browser support influence your design decisions? What other video capabilities should we be thinking about next? Looking forward to the feedback.Can you add Hotspots to Videos in Rise?
Hi - is it possible to add hotspots in videos in Rise? So that when the user clicks or hovers over the hotspot, text is revealed and the video is paused? I believe you can do this in Storyline but can you do it in Rise? Also question 2 is whether you can create a video with hotspots in storyline and import it into rise? Thanks for your help :)How being neurodivergent shapes my work in learning design
Hi everyone, Something I do not talk about often is how being neurodivergent, specifically ADHD, has shaped the way I approach learning design. For a long time, I thought of it as something I needed to manage quietly. Over time, I realized it has actually helped me see learning experiences in a very unique way. It makes me pay close attention to clarity. It makes me sensitive to moments where a learner might lose their place. It helps me notice when information is doing too much or arriving without enough context. And it reminds me that people process ideas in many different ways. When I build or review a Storyline or Rise course, I often think about: What helps someone stay oriented • What reduces unnecessary cognitive effort • What keeps the experience predictable enough to feel safe • What gives the learner room to pause and understand These are things I learned because I needed them myself. I have come to see neurodivergence as something that sharpens my awareness rather than something separate from my work. It helps me design with more empathy, more structure and more intention. Did you know that ADHD is over-represented in creative and human-centered fields? It often shows up as strengths in structure awareness, flow and learner perspective. If you feel comfortable sharing, I would love to hear how who you are influences the way you design. Which parts of your own lived experience shape your approach to learning?20+ Tips for Writing Great Quiz Questions and Response Options
If you’ve written quizzes in the past, you know how hard it is to write really great questions and realistic response options. It’s a tricky balance between something that’s an incorrect answer, but still plausible enough that the learner doesn’t dismiss it outright. To make sure you get the best quiz questions and response options possible, refer to this checklist of 20+ tips when writing your quizzes: All questions are related to learning objectives and course content All questions present the learner with feedback that supports the correct answer All questions avoid the use of humor, analogies, and cultural references All questions avoid complex sentences, ambiguous terms, and slang All questions avoid trick responses (this includes multiple correct responses, ambiguous answers, and overly abstract responses) Avoid true-or-false questions, if possible Response options that do not begin with the same word (if so, this word should appear in the question) Consistent number of response options for all questions All questions have at least 3-4 response options All questions and correct responses have been vetted by an SME or expert Avoid use of “all of the above” and “none of the above” in response options All response options are realistic and plausible All response options follow correct sentence structure to fit with the question All response options are approximately the same length All response options are parallel in grammatical structure All response options contain the same amount of detail Response options do not overlap or are too similar Response options avoid the use of negative items (“Which of these items is NOT…”) If response options must include negative items, negative words are all in CAPS All correct response options are covered in the course material Double-check all questions and response options for grammar, punctuation, spelling, formatting, contradictions, and use of active voice. All questions and response options avoid the use of absolute terms like “always” and “only” By checking all of your quiz questions and response options against this checklist, you can greatly improve the quality of your quizzes, and improve your learner’s experience taking your quiz. Do you have any tips you’d like to share about writing more meaningful and relevant quiz questions and responses? If you do, please leave a comment! You can always sign up for a fully functional, free trial of Articulate software. And don’t forget to post your questions and comments in the forums! We’re here to help. For more e-learning tips, examples, and downloads, follow us on Twitter.
