Make Over Your Rise 360 Course in 4 Easy Steps With Themes
Rise 360 has always been a fantastic tool for creating courses fast. And with the templates and other flexible options, even people without graphic design experience can feel confident that their Rise 360 projects will always look polished and professional. That’s why we’re so excited about Rise 360 themes. Themes give you even more ways to put your unique spin on the look and feel of your Rise 360 courses. And just like everything else about Rise 360, the themes feature makes creating beautifully designed courses easy—no graphic design skills needed. So let’s take a closer look at four easy steps you can follow to refresh your overall course design with a new theme, pique your learners’ interest with cover pages and lesson headers, reinforce your branding, and customize the course navigation experience. Step 1: Update the Overall Course Design With a New Theme The easiest way to give your course’s visual design a little facelift is to choose from the three prebuilt themes included in Rise 360. These themes are great for setting the overall look and feel of your project in one fell swoop. Let’s look at how to choose a theme and the available theme options, below. Choosing a Theme Start by opening any existing Rise 360 course on your Rise 360 dashboard. Select Theme in the upper right corner, and then click Change Theme. Rise 360 includes three professionally designed, ultra-stylish themes—Rise, the classic theme you’ve come to know (but with a few more customization options), plus two brand-new ones: Apex and Horizon. Following is a quick overview of each theme. Rise Our original theme, Rise, always looks modern and clean—a tried-and-true design choice that never goes out of style. Apex For a bold, contemporary, and striking design with angular finishes, choose Apex. Horizon When you want to give your course an elegant, sharp, and stylish makeover—complete with understated flourishes—Horizon is a great choice. They’re all so beautiful, right? Not sure which theme works best for your content? We’ve got you covered! Check out 3 Ways to Use Themes to Tailor Your Rise 360 Projects for some pro pointers. Once you’ve decided on a theme for your project, click to select it and you’ll see it applied to your project in the adjacent preview pane. Being able to preview your theme choice is handy because if you’re not in love with it, you can simply click another one. And if it’s love at first sight, click Save to apply it to your project. While you can use each theme as is, you also have loads of options for customizing key theme elements such as the cover page, lesson headers, and other features of the user interface, like colors, fonts, and navigation. We’ll explore some of these customization options in the next few steps. Step 2: Grab Learners’ Attention With a Custom Cover Page and Lesson Headers A cover page is your first opportunity to grab a learner’s attention, so why not customize it to fit the course topic or your company branding and really make it count? Select Cover Page from the menu and pick a stylish layout. If you’re opting to add a course image to your cover page, you can upload your own image or browse the wide selection images available in Content Library 360, which is built right into Rise 360. Pro Tip: You can also crop images directly in Rise 360. That means no hassling with a separate image editing app to tailor your course images to your project. To make your theme branded, upload your logo too. Customizing the Lesson Header option is another nice way to draw learners in and direct their attention to your content. You can choose from a variety of header designs or customize them with your own color or image. You can even adjust lesson headers to make them taller or shorter to create more or less white space, as you can see in the GIF above. Step 3: Reinforce Your Brand Identity With Custom Colors and Fonts The design choices we’ve walked through so far are quick but powerful ways to transform your course, but they’re really just the tip of the creative iceberg! You can also brand your course with custom colors and fonts to make sure it more fully aligns with your brand guidelines. Colors You can choose the Colors option to customize course accents like the menu and progress bar. Rise 360 makes picking eye-catching colors easy with curated options you can apply with a single click. But what if you need to bring in your official brand shades? No problem. Choose the Custom feature and select any color you’d like. Fonts Another easy way to brand your Rise 360 projects is to customize the fonts. Choose the Fonts option to find the perfect typeface for your project. Not sure where to start? Try the Recommended pairings—a fast way to make sure your headings and body fonts go together perfectly. For even more flexibility, click More to browse a selection of pre-installed options. And if you want to use your official brand fonts, just click Manage Custom Fonts to upload the ones you need and use them throughout your course. Step 4: Complete the Transformation With Custom Navigation and Button Styles You’ve got the cover page, lesson headers, colors and fonts fine-tuned. The final step in making over your Rise 360 course is to customize course navigation and button styles. Navigation In Rise 360, you’ve always had the option to show, hide, or disable the sidebar navigation. And now we’ve added more ways to customize course navigation so you can create the perfect experience for your learners. To start exploring your options, choose Navigation. Both Compact and Overlay navigation are great for making your content the star of the show. Choose Compact navigation to tuck your lesson menu away in a corner, where it can be quickly expanded with a click when learners need it. Another great option is Overlay navigation. When learners need to view the menu, they simply click the ☰ (hamburger) icon and the menu overlays the lesson, filling the screen. Love keeping things familiar? The always reliable Sidebar menu is a great choice with more options to choose from. Don’t want to include a navigation menu at all? No problem. You can remove it entirely—just as you’ve always been able to do in Rise 360. Buttons Want to continue customizing your course? Don’t forget about button options! Pick the button color that’s right for your course or branding. You can even refine your Previous and Next buttons by making them full width or floating—or you can remove them entirely. It’s totally up to you! Want to see how themes and custom settings can be combined for different effects? Check out the following example course. We present the same content three different ways and with minimal customizations so you can see for yourself. Explore Horizon Explore Apex Explore Rise Customizations: compact navigation, large header height Customizations: overlay navigation, small header height, custom color Customizations: sidebar navigation, medium header height, custom color Wrap-Up Not only does the themes feature give you a host of new ways to express yourself, wow your learners, and brand your Rise 360 content, it’s also streamlined the course creation process by consolidating theme settings all in one place—right at the top of the authoring environment in Rise 360. With so many options to customize your project's look and feel, you can rest assured knowing that whichever professionally designed theme you choose, your course will look fantastic on any device. And all of these thoughtful features and enhancements mean Rise 360 just keeps making it easier to create stunningly unique and stylish courses your learners will love. For more tips and inspiration on how you can start using themes in your e-learning, check out these helpful resources: Quickly Create Uniquely Stunning Courses with Rise 360 Themes 3 Ways to Use Rise 360 Themes to Tailor Your Projects How to Brand Your Rise 360 Course Want to try the new Rise 360 themes 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. If you have any questions, please share them in the comments.Quickly Create Stunning Courses With Rise 360 Themes
If you need to quickly create beautiful, responsive e-learning, Rise 360 is the authoring app for you. With stunning prebuilt themes and countless options for personalization, it’s never been easier to create unique, cohesive learning experiences. In this article, we’ll walk you through how to make your online courses look gorgeous and professional. 1. Choose a Theme In Rise 360, you’ll find three beautiful, prebuilt themes created by award-winning designers that you can apply to your courses in just a few clicks. Let’s take a look at each option. Rise Live Preview of Rise Our original theme—Rise—is modern and clean. It’s extremely versatile and works for all subject matters. Apex Live Preview of Apex If you’re looking for a bold, contemporary theme, Apex is a great option. Your learners will love its striking, angular finishes. Horizon Live Preview of Horizon For something a little more elegant, look no further than the Horizon theme. Its sharp and stylish feel with understated flourishes can set the right tone. To apply one of these themes to your next project, simply open a Rise 360 course, go to the Theme menu, and select the style you want. 2. Select Customization Options Once you’ve chosen a theme, you can further customize the look and feel of your Rise 360 courses to ensure they’re on brand. Let’s take a closer look at some of the options available. Cover Page Layouts Each theme includes a variety of stunning cover page layouts to make a strong first impression on your learners. You can use the same one for every course, or switch it up to keep things fresh for your learners. Here’s a peek at the different cover layouts you’ll find for each theme. Rise Apex Horizon As you can see, there are tons of possibilities! So you’re sure to find one that works well for your project. Navigation Types Another thing you can customize is the course navigation type. Let’s take a peek at each option. Sidebar The sidebar navigation option is tried and true. It allows learners to access the course menu and content simultaneously, while also giving them the option to hide it when they want to focus on learning. This versatility makes it a great option for any course. Compact Like the sidebar, compact navigation lets your learners decide to either view both the menu and content or minimize the menu for fewer distractions. The main difference here is that even when learners hide the menu, they can still see where they’re at in the flow of the course—allowing them to continue monitoring their progress. Overlay If you want to give your learners a more immersive experience, where they’re only focusing on one thing at a time, overlay navigation is a good option. When they open the menu, they’ll be able to give your course outline their full attention. And when they close it, the content will be the sole focal point. Button Styles You can also customize the look and feel of the buttons that guide learners from one lesson to the next. In addition to a few different color options, you can choose whether you want them to be full width like in this screenshot … … or floating, like in this one … Or you can remove them entirely. It’s up to you! Lesson Headers There are also a number of options for personalizing the lesson headers. For starters, you can choose whether or not you want one. If you decide you do, you can customize the background color or image. Then you can select the height option you prefer: low, medium, or high. And finally, you can opt to show or hide the lesson number and author avatar. Colors When it comes to colors, you can choose one of our default theme colors or select your own by using the color browser or inputting a Hex code. Once you’ve selected your theme color, it’ll be applied throughout your course automatically. Font Pairings Rise 360 gives you a variety of professionally selected font pairings, so your course text looks polished. Of course, you also have the option to create your own by mixing and matching default fonts or uploading your own for a truly personalized look. And that’s just the beginning! With all these customization options—and more—the possibilities are truly endless. Wrap-Up With Rise 360, it's easy to create cohesive, professional-looking learning experiences—even with no prior training or design experience. Ready to try it out for yourself? Simply head to your Rise 360 dashboard, create a new course—or open an existing one—and click on the Theme tab to check out the customization options. It’s that easy! Don’t have Rise 360? Start your free 30-day trial of Articulate 360 now. For tips and inspiration on how to use themes to create beautiful, branded e-learning, check out these helpful resources: Make Over Your Rise 360 Courses in 4 Easy Steps with Themes 3 Ways to Use Rise 360 Themes to Tailor Your Projects How to Brand Your Rise 360 Course And if you found this article helpful, be sure to subscribe to our newsletter to stay up-to-date on the latest product updates, e-learning examples, and expert advice directly in your inbox. If you have questions, please share them in the comments.3 Ways to Use Rise 360 Themes to Tailor Your Projects
Rise 360 is the perfect authoring app for quickly creating beautiful, inherently responsive, and engaging courses. And it just got even better, thanks to Rise 360 themes. You can now choose from a variety of gorgeous new looks created by award-winning designers to give your existing Rise 360 projects a brand-new look and feel if you’d like, and make your new Rise 360 projects feel more custom. With options for cover pages, navigation, lesson headers, colors, fonts, buttons, and more, Rise 360 themes give you loads of creative possibilities for making a course feel unique. You can customize courses for your topic, help learners focus on content by controlling the navigation experience, reinforce your company’s brand identity, and so much more. To give you a peek at some of the many ways you can use Rise 360 themes to transform your projects, I’m sharing three ideas you can steal for your Rise 360 projects—but there are almost infinite possibilities! 1. Quickly customize Rise 360 course templates I love saving myself some time by using the real-content templates included in Rise 360. Since they’re ready-to-go courses, most of the time I use them as is. But with Rise 360 themes it’s easy to give real-content templates a whole new look and feel in just a few clicks. Before After Before After I think this Sexual Harassment Prevention Training template already sets the right tone, thanks to its course cover photo, which hints at the gravity of this weighty workplace topic. But with Rise 360 themes, I was able to easily customize the appearance of this template to give it my own, sleeker look while still aligning with the seriousness of the subject matter. I transformed the course cover page with a split right image layout using the Rise theme, added a dark gray accent color to keep things grounded and neutral, and then selected a fresh font—Be Vietnam—to give it a modern edge. And by choosing smaller lesson headers with a background color to match the course accent color, I gave the lessons a uniform appearance that pushes the content front and center. I love how these small but mighty changes make this template feel more custom—and it only took a few tweaks to make it my own. 2. Focus learners’ attention with compact navigation When it comes to sharing critical information, it’s helpful to minimize distractions so learners can focus entirely on the content. This Emergency Response Plan course shares crucial details with employees about preparing for and responding to life-threatening workplace events. Before After Before After The course does an excellent job of parsing information into easy-to-understand, bite-sized pieces with the accordion block, so learners aren’t overwhelmed with too much content. But I wanted to focus learners’ attention on this critical content even more. To do that, I selected a split right image layout using the Apex theme for the cover page. To further enhance the course’s appearance, I also switched things up to a bold and easy-to-read font—Poppins. Within the course, I wanted to make sure that learners weren’t distracted by too many elements on the screen, so I chose the overlay navigation menu that learners can view only when needed. I also went with smaller headers and hid the lesson count labels. Once again, little changes like these can add up to a lot more visual space within each lesson. This means learners can focus their attention on the most important elements of the course. 3. Make your courses look more on-brand Most companies have style or brand guidelines—the consistent design choices they use to reflect their unique persona. In many organizations, the style guide also applies to internal content, including e-learning courses. And in this Style Guide course, learners are introduced to the essential design elements they should use when creating content to represent the organization. Before After Before After Because there are so many theme customization options available in Rise 360, you can design a course that fits right in—no matter how specific your branding guidelines. To transform the course cover and bring this style guide to life, I chose a centered image layout using the Horizon theme, a green accent color, and an on-brand font pairing—Oswald & DM Sans. I wanted to further reflect the brand guidelines once learners dive into each lesson, so I added a branded sidebar navigation menu, floating navigation buttons with an accent tint, and designed lesson headers using an image reflective of the organization. Thanks to these choices, I’m not just telling learners how to properly reflect the organization’s unique style in their content, I’m also showing them. Wrap-Up Hopefully, these examples made you as excited about Rise 360 themes as I am! Being able to customize templates to match course topics, improve the learner experience, and reinforce brand identity are just a few of the many ways Rise 360 themes can help you transform your Rise 360 projects—but there are tons more options to explore. How do you see yourself using Rise 360 themes in your organization? Share your ideas in a comment below. To learn more about customizing your course’s design, check out these articles: Make Over Your Rise 360 Course in 4 Easy Steps With Themes Why & How to Tailor Content to Different Audiences The Color Effect: How Your Palette Affects Learners Does Your E-Learning Course Need a Menu? Finding Fonts That Fit Your E-Learning Want to try out Rise 360 themes, 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. If you have any questions, please share them in the comments.Why and How to Create a Branded Prototype in Storyline 360
Take a look at the following images. Can you name each company? Pretty easy, right? Without words, you can still identify each brand. Beyond a recognizable logo or brand mark, branding is a company’s identity. It’s part of their story. It shows who they are as a company, what they care about, and what they do. And because branding is such an important aspect of a company’s identity, there will be times when a company requests that their online training reflect their brand. To ensure the course you create is in line with the brand guidelines, it’s a good idea to create a prototype before you get too far along in the development process. That way you can get feedback and make adjustments before building out the entire course. Now that you understand why it’s important to start with a prototype when you’re creating a branded course, let’s take a closer look at how to do it! Study the Company’s Brand Taking the time to understand a company’s brand can help you capture the essence of their brand in your course design. Does the brand convey a youthful and energizing tone? Or maybe a modern and muted design? It’s all in the details—from colors to image choices to typography. Studying and adapting these elements into your projects could help you narrow in on a course design that mirrors a similar tone. Here are some things you can do to ensure the course you create embraces the company’s brand. Look at the branding guide Branding guides include a lot of helpful information, ranging from typeface and logo variations to color palette, imagery guidelines, etc. If you’re unable to obtain a branding guide from the company, search for it online. For larger companies, you might get lucky and find one in your search results. Just make sure it’s up-to-date. Check out their website Companies spend a lot of money building websites that match their branding guidelines. Take some time to explore each page and read what they’re about. Look at the formatting of the text and the layout of each page. As you click on or hover over objects on the screen, what design elements do you notice? What types of images do they use—clean and simple or colorful and lively? Are the buttons rounded or rectangular? How do they behave? What other design details do you notice? Watch their online videos Videos are another great asset to help you understand a company’s brand in a new way. Oftentimes, you can find branded videos on a company’s YouTube, Vimeo, or other video platform page. Pay close attention to the animations, language, and type of music they use. Do most of their videos incorporate voiceover, or do they tend to rely on on-screen graphics and text to convey their message? You might want to include similar elements in your project. Visit their social media pages A company’s social media can be a great resource for design ideas. Some companies even hire people to specifically design branded online content they can post. View the content they share and look carefully at the design of their images, ads, or GIFs. These assets might serve as an inspiration for your slide designs. Search for PowerPoints or other documents online It can be super helpful to see additional examples of branding used in other creative ways. Some companies have a bunch of branded PPTs and PDFs searchable online, but they can be hard to find. For specific results, try searching—filetype:PDF <Company Name> or filetype:PPT <Company Name>. Here are examples of what that looks like: This will pull up a list of company-branded documents or presentations that are generally full of design ideas that you can use for your project. Check the dates to ensure the branding is up-to-date. Create a Prototype Once you have a solid grasp of a company’s brand, it’s time to apply those elements into a company-branded Storyline 360 prototype. A prototype is a halfway point between a storyboard and the final version of a course. I find that a prototype gives stakeholders a preview of what the entire course experience will be like. Another great use of a branded prototype is to streamline the development of a series of micro-learning courses in Storyline 360. I’ll choose the storyboard with the least amount of content and then build out a prototype so stakeholders can see an example. It’s a great way to get feedback and make adjustments before building out the entire series. So that’s when and why you should create a branded prototype. Let’s take a closer look at how to do it! Creating a branded prototype in Storyline 360 To show you how to create a branded prototype, let’s use this mock-up My Pet website. I’ll walk you through how to incorporate this company’s brand identity into a Storyline 360 prototype. Start with a blank template When you first create a new project in Storyline 360, it defaults to a story size of 4:3 with default navigation buttons and other slide properties. I recommend changing your slide size before adding content to your course so you don’t have to worry about reworking your slide design later. I like to use a blank story template that defaults to the story size 16:9, with the default next/previous buttons unselected so I can create my own custom navigation on each slide. I also edited other slide properties and player features. Of course, there are many ways to go about setting up your own project templates. This is just how I prefer to have my projects set up so I don’t have to make the same edits every time I create a new Storyline 360 project. If you’re an Articulate 360 Team Subscriber, you can share your template using Team Slides in Storyline 360 so everyone on your team can easily access it and reuse it. Create a branded color theme You can completely customize the default color theme to match the company’s brand. All you have to do is create a new color theme and input the branded color codes from the company’s branding guide. If you don’t have access to the branding guide, you can still create a branded color theme for your project by using the eyedropper tool in Storyline 360 to color-pick the prominent colors off the company website. I like to name the color theme the same as the company so it’s easy to find and select when creating other projects. Create a new theme font Use the company’s approved fonts or find ones that closely match to create a new theme font. If you plan to share the story file with another person to edit, then you might want to stick with standard fonts that closely match the branded fonts. One easy way to find a matching font is to type out a sentence from the company website into your project. Have the website open on one side of the screen and your Storyline project open on the other. Because Storyline 360 allows you to preview the font before selecting it, you can simply highlight the text in your project and slowly hover over each font option until you find one that matches the website font. Check out this article for more info on working with text in Storyline 360. If you still can’t find a good matching font, try searching—dupe for <font name> or alternative to <font name>. Customize slides Now it’s time to build your slides. Reference the website, branding guide, online videos, social media pages, and other documentation you researched earlier to guide your slide designs. If you’ve already created a storyboard, pull content from that and build the slides you want to showcase. This might include a title slide, content slides, a complex interaction, and quiz slides. Use master slides and feedback masters to significantly reduce your development time, especially if you plan to use similar layouts throughout your project. Want to see an example? Then check out how I interpreted this My Pet company brand … … into this My Pet Company Branded Prototype. Customize the player The last thing you’ll want to do is customize the player so it matches the rest of your course. To do that, start by opening the Home tab and clicking on Player Properties. From there, click on Colors & Effects and choose Custom. Here you can choose a custom accent and background color, You can also personalize the accessibility focus colors, which highlight clickable objects when learners navigate with their keyboard. For this example, I chose a pink accent color and a white background so it’s cohesive with my slide designs. Depending on how many of the player elements you’ve activated, you’ll see more or less of the accent color. In this example, I’ve unchecked everything except the accessibility controls, so the player pretty much blends into the background: But if I turn on more of the player elements, you can see more of the accent color that I chose: See how sleek it looks when the player and slide designs match? It gives your course a more cohesive feel. Wrap-Up By using all of these tips, you can create your own e-learning courses that visually embrace a company’s brand identity. Do you have any other tips or tricks you like to use when branding your Storyline 360 courses? Let me know in the comments below! Need to brand a Rise 360 course? Then check out this article to help you get started. 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.How I Designed This Personalized Decision Matrix
As a course designer, there are so many ways you can design and develop content. The outcome often varies depending on the time frame, budget, or other deciding factors. Whatever approach you take, it’s always important to keep the learner in mind. In my case, I was given this Eisenhower Decision Matrix content to design and develop. I transformed that content into this personalized decision matrix. View interactive version | Download template Let’s take a look at my process and why I took this approach. Setting the Scene Since I didn’t have an actual subject matter expert to work with, I decided to write my own backstory for this project. Audience: General Objective: To manage professional and personal tasks more efficiently Deadline: ASAP Note: Can make small changes to the content Having this background information helped me focus on what I needed to accomplish. I decided to design this project in a short time frame to showcase how something simple can still be effective. With time limitations, it’s important to come up with easy-to-implement solutions that still ensure an effective learning experience. My Approach For this project, I knew I wanted to create a custom interactive experience to introduce each of the four categories. So, it made sense to build it in Storyline 360. Rather than having all the content visible at once, I created a main slide to gradually introduce each of the four categories. As the user hovers over each quadrant, the rectangle—along with the accompanying labels—changes colors to help learners focus on the relevant information. When the learner clicks on a section, they’re presented with more details about that category. Since I was allowed to make small changes to the content, I elaborated on the original bullet points I was given to make it conversational. I also added a Text-Entry Field for the learner to reflect on their own tasks that related to the category. Even though I wasn’t given examples, I added a few to give the learner some ideas of what to write. Once the learner types out and submits their tasks, they’re brought back to the main slide where the category now displays their response. This was super easy to create in Storyline 360 using a custom state. If you’ve never worked with custom states before, check out our user guide to find out how they work: Adding and Editing States. Once I created my custom Complete state, I added a transparent shape to fill the box, right-clicked it to edit the text, and then inserted the corresponding variable reference (TextEntry1, TextEntry2, etc.). Pro tip: Using a shape with a predefined size—instead of a text box that’s only as big as your variable reference—ensures your learner’s response remains within that shape and retains the font size, even if it’s long. Thanks to this custom state, the learner can see their responses display on the main slide as they progress through the course. This gives them a concrete example of how to prioritize their tasks. Once they complete all four sections, they can see which tasks to do first, schedule, delegate/postpone, or remove from their list. To take this beyond an online training, I included a Print button so learners can print off their task list and begin checking items off once they’re complete. If you want to give learners the option to print something from your course, check out this discussion. More Resources And that’s how I came up with this simple solution to help people learn to manage professional and personal tasks more efficiently. Of course, this isn’t the only way to approach this content. If you want to see how my coworkers designed a course on this same topic, check out this article. If you’re looking for more time-saving tips to personalize content quickly, check out these helpful resources: 5 Tips for Creating Beautiful E-Learning Courses, Fast 3 Ways to Personalize Your E-Learning Courses Want to personalize your own content, 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. If you have any questions, please share them in the comments.5 Creative Ideas for Revamping New Hire Onboarding
New hire onboarding programs exist to not only orient a new employee with the organization’s resources, structures, and policies, but also with its culture and values. Typically, such programs are required to accomplish these goals within fairly tight time constraints and budgets—all while balancing the needs of the employee and their individual perspectives with the needs of the organization to quickly equip newbies with the knowledge and tools they need to be productive contributors. That’s a pretty tall order for a training program, isn’t it? So, what are some pro ideas for revamping a new hire onboarding program? That was the fundamental question recently posed by self-described e-learning newbie, Shannon Marshall. Thankfully the E-Learning Heroes community jumped in with some creative ideas to get Shannon pointed in the right direction. I’ve grouped their ideas into 5 common themes, below. Idea #1: Engage Learners with Scenarios One common complaint about many onboarding programs is that learners spend too much time reading bulleted lists of company policies and procedures. Not only is reading a bunch of legal mumbo-jumbo uninspiring, it’s also not an effective way to learn about the nuances behind the policies and procedures. Instead of lecture, E-Learning Hero, Daniel Brigham, had a few ideas for some more engaging approaches. “Create a few characters who perhaps go through the training together. What I'll often do is have two characters converse about a subject (in particular the questions they have about it/where they are confused), and then spring into content that answers those questions. …[or] set up a situation based on the content ("Clara is an employee who...") and then ask, "Given this situation, what should Clara do?" Idea #2: Encourage Exploratory Learning People love the freedom to learn by exploring, but when you’re brand new to an organization free-reign exploration can be a little intimidating. That’s where you can provide some structure to guide their exploration and help them learn in a safe, productive way. Daniel Brigham had this suggestion for providing some navigation assistance: “You often see in new hire training a sort of ‘geographical’ navigation...the learner takes the elevator to various floors for various parts of the training. Or makes progress by hitting various checkpoints on a map.” Another community member, Alicia Blitz, chimed in with a few more creative navigation examples: “A couple onboarding themes I have seen were quest-based: a passport activity where they collected stamps for each section of content, another was a cruise ship exploration activity.” Idea #3: Focus on Performance Support Another common criticism of onboarding training is that the information can be overwhelming to newbies. As you’re designing an onboarding program, try to keep this challenge in mind and consider other options for helping learners adapt to their new environment over time. Community member, Bob S., suggests focusing more on performance support, rather than training. “...make liberal use of reference-type materials, checklists, etc that they can access beyond the course itself. For example... don't expect them to remember who to call for what, instead create a reference for that information then teach them how to use it…” Daniel Brigham concurred with Bob and added, “Do your best to place the material in bite-sized chunks so as not to overwhelm. The job aids, checklists, etc. will also help to this end. You might even state a few times...'We don't expect you to remember all of this, so we've placed the crucial information in the X location.'" Idea #4: Use Short Videos They say showing is more powerful than telling, and it’s tough to beat the power of video in communicating the true essence of an organization’s culture and values. If your organization’s spirit isn’t quite coming across, community member Rita Garcia suggests adding some short videos to the mix. “For topics like presenting the company's story, mission and values a good, short video can go a long way as an alternative to text or PowerPoint presentation. You can make very cool and funny videos using tools like PowToon and GoAnimate.” Idea #5: Incorporate a Webinar In today’s world of remote workers and widely dispersed teams, not everyone can be face to face for onboarding. That’s where a blended approach incorporating some virtual interaction (or some face time) can be helpful in building connections. Alicia Blitz shared her organization’s approach to this challenge: “Our corporate New Hire program is a 2 hour webinar, and it seems to work well providing the basics all employees need to know. We follow up with resources and check in at certain time intervals. Additionally, most of our Business Units have their own ‘Orientation’ to onboard their employees as well.” Summary & Resources New hire onboarding gives you a unique opportunity to earn the trust, engagement, and commitment of new employees, right from the start. So whether you’re undertaking the design of a new program, or just looking for more ideas to revamp your current one, look no further than the free advice and resources available on E-Learning Heroes to get you pointed in the right direction. Need to acquaint learners with the roles of different departments within your organization? Snag this free PowerPoint template or this free Articulate Storyline template from Tom Kuhlmann. Want to help learners get to know their new colleagues? Check out these beautiful, free “meet the team” templates: Storyline: “Meet the Team” Interaction by Matthew Guyan Storyline 2: “Meet the Team” Interaction by Allison LaMotte Storyline: Folio Template by Tom Kuhlmann Powerpoint: A Day in The Life Template by yours truly Looking to build buy-in for trying something new or different with your onboarding program? Check out these helpful ideas and articles: E-Learning Challenge #43: Interactive Org Charts in E-Learning Making the Case for E-Learning First Minutes Are Critical in New Employee Orientation What are your creative ideas for new hire onboarding? Weigh in with your thoughts or ask us your questions by leaving a comment below. Enjoyed this article? If so, we’ve got even more ideas and free resources to share. Follow us on Twitter, where we post the latest and greatest news about everything e-learning.3 Ways to Personalize Your E-Learning Courses
As e-learning designers, we’re often looking for quick and easy ways to create a more personalized learning experience. There are many options for making courses more engaging and meaningful to the learner, but they all come down to this: letting the learner interact with the content and actively make decisions. Let’s take a look at three ways you can personalize your next course. Speak Directly to Your Learner Asking learners to enter their names at the start of the course—and then addressing them directly throughout the training—is a great way to add a personal touch. Here’s an example of what that could look like: View the Demo Find out how easy it is to add and display the learner’s name in Storyline 360 in this article: Add and Display a Learner’s Name in Storyline 360. Short on time? Grab this free download and the work is already done for you. Couldn’t be any easier! Select an Avatar Another fun way to personalize a course is to let learners select an avatar early on that either represents them throughout the course or simply guides them along. Here’s an example of how you can choose an avatar at the start of the course and have it appear later within a scenario: View the Demo This functionality is easy to achieve when you’re working with Content Library 360 characters (both illustrated and photographic) and variables in Storyline 360. Here’s a free template you can download: Storyline 360: Choose an Avatar Template. Another fun way to present this content is to let learners choose their avatar by dragging a slider, as opposed to just clicking directly on a character. View the Demo It’s the same idea, but includes a more creative way to allow learners to make the selection. If you like it, go ahead and download the free template and use it in your next project! Create Branched Scenarios Another exciting way to personalize your e-learning is with branched scenarios. In a branched scenario, each learner will have a different path through the course based on the choices he or she makes. This encourages exploration and decision-making and results in a truly personalized learning experience. Here’s an example of a branched scenario that also includes some other personal touches, including the learner’s name and a progress meter. View the Demo Seem like something you could use for your next project? Download the template. Remember these three techniques the next time you’re designing a course and want to offer a more personal touch to your learners. Do you have any other personalization techniques you like to use that we didn’t mention? Let us know in the comments! 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. If you have any questions, please share them in the comments.Personalization Principle: Speaking to Instead of at Your Learners
We’ve all been there: the moment you realize you’ve stopped paying attention and have no idea what you just read or heard. So you go back and reread or retake or review, but it keeps happening. Maybe you’re just distracted ... or maybe there’s another explanation. The vast majority of nonfiction texts and informational materials, including e-learning courses, are written in a formal style. Why? Because that’s how we’re taught to write in school. In their book E-Learning and the Science of Instruction, Ruth Clark and Richard Mayer suggest that people try harder to understand something when they’re engaged in a conversation. It seems our brains are hardwired to pay closer attention when there’s a social element in the mix. They call this the personalization principle. In sum, it states that favoring a conversational writing style and incorporating virtual coaches in e-learning courses can get learners to pay closer attention and retain more of what they learn. Let’s look at a couple of the quick and easy ways Clark and Mayer suggest for applying the personalization principle to e-learning courses. Use First and Second Person (“We” and “You”) An easy way to take your writing from informal to formal is by replacing the article “the” with the personal pronouns “we” or “you,” like in the following example: Formal: When exercising, the heart rate increases to supply more food and oxygen to the muscles. Informal: When we exercise, our heart rate increases to supply more food and oxygen to our muscles. Can you believe what a difference that small change makes? The first example sounds dry and academic, while the second feels more relatable. Ask Questions and Direct Comments to Learners Another way you can make your course sound more conversational is by addressing your learner personally. For example, instead of jumping right into an explanation, start with something like: “Did you know that …?” or “Now let’s take a look at …” Favor Polite Language over Direct Language The results of one study showed that when you use polite language instead of direct language, learners perform better. This was found to be especially true of learners whose prior knowledge of the subject matter was low. You might want to keep that in mind next time you’re writing feedback for questions in your next e-learning course. Instead of saying “Sorry, that’s incorrect. Try again!” you might encourage with “Sorry, that’s incorrect. Would you like to give it another try?” Use Human Voices for Narration You might be tempted to use a text-to-speech application to create voice-over audio for your course. I get it! Text-to-speech makes it super fast and easy to create and maintain voice-over audio. However, Clark and Mayer’s research shows that people learn better when listening to a human voice instead of a machine-generated voice. So next time you consider using text-to-speech narration, be sure to think about how it might impact your course’s effectiveness. Include a Visual Narrator Clark and Mayer also suggest that adding a visual narrator can simulate a person-to-person interaction and increase learner engagement. The idea is that learners who can visualize the person speaking feel more connected, as if they’re having a conversation with someone. They might even see the narrator as a guide of sorts, so they feel less isolated and more comfortable in the learning process. Wrap-Up Although personalization is a highly effective technique for increasing learner engagement, be careful not to overdo it. As they say in their book, “Good instructional design involves adding just the right amount of social cues to prime a sense of social presence in the learner, without adding so much that the learner is distracted.” Want to learn more about Clark and Mayer’s principles? Check out these articles: Multimedia Principle: Adding Graphics to Words Improves Learning Contiguity Principle: Keep Graphics & Related Text Together Redundancy Principle: Should You Duplicate Narrated Text On Screen? Coherence Principle: Less Material for Better Learning If you enjoyed this article, remember 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.How to Use GIFs as Cover Photos in Rise 360 (with Free GIFs!)
Adding a cover photo to a Rise 360 course is an easy way to make your course look beautiful, inviting, and customized. And you’re not limited to still photos! You can add GIF files to your Rise projects to make them really come to life. That’s why we’re giving away a bundle of six GIFs for you to use in your Rise 360 courses. Grab the download, then check out this simple tutorial to see how easy it is to update your cover photo with one of these gorgeous GIFs: And remember 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).Introduction to JavaScript for E-Learning
Have you heard e-learning developers talking about JavaScript? Are you wondering what all the fuss is about? Good news! This is the intro you need to understand what JavaScript is, why it’s relevant to e-learning, and how you can get started using it to create dynamic e-learning with Articulate Storyline. What’s JavaScript and Why Is It Useful for E-Learning? JavaScript is a computer programming language developers use to make websites interactive. How does that help your e-learning courses? Well, let’s imagine for a second that Mr. JavaScript is applying for a position at Storyline Corp. The hiring manager and Mr. Player are eager to learn if Mr. JavaScript is the right choice: If Storyline Corp. hires Mr. JavaScript, they’ll be able to use his expertise to help Mr. Player do even more. Let’s take a closer look. Why Would You Use JavaScript? Storyline lets you create dynamic interactions with the combination of triggers, actions, conditions and variables. That’s all available for you, out of the box, without JavaScript. Why would you use JavaScript then? JavaScript lets you do things to extend the power of the built-in tools in Storyline. For example, augmenting Storyline with JavaScript lets you create math functions such as generating random numbers, rounding numbers up or down, working with dates and time, and more. String functions are also powerful in JavaScript. String functions are things like splitting text to count the number of words, searching and replacing text, or checking text for keywords. Storyline's three variable types (number, text, and true/false) require different triggers to execute the actions. This means that when you're building very complex, highly interactive courses you may end up with dozens of triggers in the triggers panel. Using JavaScript allows you to group a bunch of variables together. This can speed up the course development process and streamline the number of triggers in the triggers panel. In other words, you can accomplish more with fewer lines of code. Where to Start with JavaScript Think of JavaScript as an ally that you can use to strengthen your Storyline power. I would suggest learning the basics of JavaScript before you integrate it into Storyline. It makes debugging easier. Here are some great ways to really get started with JavaScript: JavaScript Road Trip Part 1 on CodeSchool JavaScript Tutorial on W3schools Fundamentals of JavaScript on Codecademy E-Learning Challenge #132: Using JavaScript and Storyline Keep coming back to E-Learning Heroes regularly for more helpful advice on everything related to e-learning. If you have any comments, please share them below.
