Like a lot of us in the elearning industry you’ve probably found yourself a little curious about Articulate 360’s new cloud-based responsive content authoring software, optimistically dubbed ‘Rise’.
What can it do? What can’t it do? Is it easy to use and is the output truly responsive? How is it different from Articulate Storyline and how might we integrate it into our technology mix when identifying the best solution for our clients?
These were the questions floating around the office following Rise’s launch so I figured I’d dive in and take a look. I explored all of the key functions and created a mock course on a subject I know well so I could just focus on the tool, then followed that up by recreating one of our blog posts.
It was an interesting process to use mock content like a blog post as it changes the feel of the blog. I should also mention we haven’t actually reviewed this R&D work in the way we would QA the work we do for our clients, but happy to share it in the spirit of ‘working out loud’ (view it here). Or if you are more interested in a more comprehensive demonstration of Rise’s features (and/or rock n roll), see this build here.
I also shared my creations with our team of developers, instructional designers, graphic designers and account managers, and asked for their input. What follows are our key takeaways.
Rise vs Storyline
Here are just a handful of key differences:
Storyline is more flexible in terms of what you can create visually
Rise’s HTML output is geared for responsive decoding, making it better suited to mobile devices
Storyline offers a deeper level of control for developers
Rise is faster and easier to use; anyone can create content with zero prior experience
Where Storyline’s primary output is Flash-based, Rise’s is HTML
Rise is much better for creating ‘scrolling’ pages of content (very cumbersome in Storyline)
Storyline enables more flexibility and customisability when designing interactions
Rise is a cloud-based app, where Storyline is installed directly on your computer
Ease of use – 9/10*
First of all, Rise was a pleasure to work with. Very intuitive, fast, flexible. You couldn’t ask for much more from an authoring tool’s user interface. So why not a 10? We’ll get to that shortly…
What the team had to say…
“This is a fast way to produce mobile/LMS friendly content. The limitations are obvious but they contribute to the speed of development. Really powerful for product training, refreshers and even for light communications when you want higher engagement.”
Brenden Carter, Creative Director, The Learning Hook
“9 out of 10!? That’s a bit rich. It’s good.. More undo steps would be great. Also, I found some of the syntax getting in and out of the settings to be a bit clunky. Like when you have to go back a few steps then forwards again to return to where you were instead of being able to go directly back to your last step.”
Brendan Lewis, Lead Developer, The Learning Hook
Responsive HTML output – 7/10**
While creating, the preview function allows you to quickly preview your course on the mock device of your choice (choose from computer, tablet and phone, including landscape and portrait orientation options for the handheld devices), very handy, especially when deciding on images and how best to frame/crop them, and when tailoring text elements to ensure they fit well on the interface.
Generally, the content translated well once outputted (in our case, to the ‘standalone’ or ‘raw’ HTML output which we ran directly from a server, no SCORM packaging or LMS involved). Interactive elements played nicely and we didn’t come across any ‘freezes’ or breaks’.
**I would have given a 9 or 10/10 if I hadn’t noticed a section divider’s number was misaligned with its containing circle (I was looking over our lead developer’s shoulder as he viewed the course on his desktop computer) creating the impression of poor quality design work. This is the kind of confidence-killer that makes me think twice about offering this technology to a client.
What the team had to say…
“… the tool has issues with older browsers and some cross browser differences i.e. test it thoroughly before deciding it will meet your roll-out environment (your browsers, PCs, mobiles, laptops etc).”
Brenden Carter, Creative Director, The Learning Hook
“The template design is very much influenced by current trends in material design and the responsive capability of the interface is excellent. The general UX is quite fluid, making good use of animated transitions.”
Kane Marevich, Senior Designer / UI & UX, The Learning Hook
“That display issue we noticed (see above) was in IE11; I couldn’t replicate it in Chrome. This tells me the output isn’t yet fully cross-browser compatible. You could always hack the output to fix things like this… it’s just you’d have to do it every time you output the course; not ideal.”
Brendan Lewis, Lead Developer, The Learning Hook
“These courses look great and they’re easy to use across desktop and mobile.”
Damala Scales Ghosh, Learning Designer, The Learning Hook
Visual design capability – 6/10
Despite what is ultimately a very limited design template, with deft use of images and colour, you can make some beautiful looking courses. The range of options are quickly exhausted though. This became apparent after looking at a bunch of courses made by other people (see the link at the end of this article)… they all start to look and feel the same.
The biggest surprise (*and the reason for discounting our ‘ease of use’ score) was the lack of control over text colour, which becomes a problem if you want to place text on a dark coloured or black background.
The text colour can be hacked by anyone with basic coding skills by altering the outputted code, so it’s not a deal-breaker, but a definite limitation that we’re expecting will be rectified on future releases.
What the team had to say…
“I would like to see more customisation options…. colours, images, themes… to keep it fresh and differentiate modules from one another for the user.”
Kane Marevich, Senior Designer / UI & UX, The Learning Hook
Interactivity features – 7/10
Rise includes a suite of interactive elements that are easy to construct, tailor and edit. The use of animated input and feedback elements adds a layer of sophistication consistent with current trends in user experience and material design
‘Drag and drop’ interactions played nicely on touch-screen devices and the range of interactions is sufficient to cater for a wide range of learning design applications.
What the team had to say…
“Transition animations on all the activities I’ve seen so far are a big strength, visually, but the feedback elements lack visual prominence (specifically in ‘drag-and-drop’ and ‘hot-spot’ activities).”
Kane Marevich, Senior Designer / UI & UX, The Learning Hook
“Only one type of drag-and-drop activity is available. A bit more variety would be great.”
Damala Scales Ghosh, Learning Designer, The Learning Hook
Multimedia features – 7/10
It’s almost too easy to add video, images and audio; you might go overboard. The ability to use animated GIFs in place of still images also provides a great opportunity to add a lot of life, eye-candy, and ultimately enhance user engagement while keeping course sizes relatively small.
While some of the content templates enable you to add audio directly (creating a neat read-or-listen option for the user), I was surprised to see that feature not carried through to the primary text content templates. This can be overcome by adding audio discreetly, although this process is more cumbersome.
What the team had to say…
“I’m also wondering how we can customise audio delivery, e.g. I can’t see any settings to allow audio to autoplay when the user loads a lesson… but then again that’s probably due to the limitations driven by Apple’s iOS.”
Damala Scales Ghosh, Learning Designer, The Learning Hook
Structural and course design – 8/10
Rise includes enough options and controls to enable the creation of well-structured, easy-to-navigate courses. You might be familiar with Articulate’s default side menu. This concept has been carried through here but thankfully users now have the option to hide it.
Our main complaint was that we couldn’t select from all the activity-based elements when inserting into the scrolling (or vertical ‘blocks’) style pages. Some of these had to be placed as their own standalone ‘lessons’, no doubt to ensure a robust responsive output. All things considered, we’ll notch that one up as a fair trade-off. More control over the ‘assessment completion’ message would also be an improvement.
What the team had to say…
“Any training, learning or communications solution that is less than five minutes could suit this format. For longer pieces, a lot more thought should go into design to ensure it’s suitable and stays engaging.”
Brenden Carter, Creative Director, The Learning Hook
“I’m digging the completion timeline with the option to hide.”
Kane Marevich, Senior Designer / UI & UX, The Learning Hook
“Thinking this is best suited for shorter courses. It would be good if the course outline was collapsible by section… that’d prevent the ‘scrolling nav from hell’ type of experience you could run into on longer courses, particularly explorative, nonlinear courses.”
Damala Scales Ghosh, Learning Designer, The Learning Hook
Assessment features – 6/10
The running theme here is ease-of-use winning out over flexibility and control, and that rings true when setting up assessments and quizzes, which are limited to multiple choice question types.
Here are some other limitations we picked up on:
- Unable to set quiz to allow users to retry individual questions
- Unable to tailor feedback for specific answers
- Unable to have multiple-choice questions with multiple correct answers
LMS connectivity – 7/10
While we haven’t tested the output on an LMS, Rise includes a fairly comprehensive range of SCORM options for setting up your course to collect and report data on user inputs. And while not currently available, it’s good to see TinCan compatibility is coming soon.
What the team had to say…
“The SCORM settings look similar to Storyline, but a little more basic. All the main options and functions are there and they’ve stripped out a lot of the functionality that we never use anyway. The end result is a more streamlined, user-friendly dialogue when exporting/publishing.”
Brendan Lewis, Lead Developer, The Learning Hook
Would we use Rise to create elearning content for a client?
We’re on the fence here because most of our clients come to us for highly customised, on-brand solutions. Ultimately, the killer is the potential for all courses built using Rise to look a bit ‘samey’ due to the limitations in the design options and the highly templated menu/course interface. The key to countering these limitations is through clever, tasteful use of media, colour and layout to create visually engaging content.
With that in mind, Rise is an incredibly powerful tool for working rapidly where time, budget and responsive design are the primary considerations, so I’d happily recommend this solution for projects matching those criteria (and when customisation of the look and feel is not a priority, and where minor layout breakages on desktop browsers can be forgiven).
What the team had to say…
“One concern is that, like most authoring tools, there’s a danger to think ‘everything’ can be done with one. At times, complexity in large enterprise environments leads our clients to want just ‘one’ answer i.e. one pill to make the complex environment headache go away. But the problem is there really isn’t just one answer. It doesn’t have to be too complicated either, but a number of solutions are always required to match to technology playback needs (browsers, LMSs, devices) and suitability for learning solutions (long, short, micro, blended, curated etc).”
Brenden Carter, Creative Director, The Learning Hook
“If you’re worried about the designs looking ‘samey’ I’ve had a look at the code. If need be, we can hack fonts, font size and font color, button style and progress bar color. Seems possible to change icons as well. Of course this all comes down to budget. I didn’t find a quick way to put new functions in or edit their default functions… I noticed there is a big block of encoded data in index.html, maybe something hidden there?”
Kevin Lee, Senior Developer, The Learning Hook
If you missed them earlier, the samples I created to assess Rise can be viewed here (basic blog recreation) and here (exploring most of the capabilities). You can also check out the sample courses (made by others) I referred to earlier here: 6 Rise Examples for Mobile E-Learning. My favourite was the one that used animated GIFs; you’ll notice how it influenced my approach.
Over to you
With Rise still being fairly new and industry take-up just starting, we would love for others to provide their thoughts on the outputs, their experience with using the tool or any other commentary on the product.
What do you think, is Rise the next big thing or just one small step towards better responsive design in elearning?
Justin Cruickshank is a media production specialist with 12+ years industry experience across film and video production, journalism, music and audio production, digital production and elearning production. He’s now enjoying life with The Learning Hook as our Lead Learning Designer/Project Manager.
For more eLearning, visit www.learninghook.com.au
