Tips for weaving together Articulate Storyline and Rise

Articulate boasts one of the most popular authoring tools on the market today, and here at Like-Minded both Storyline and Rise frequently deliver to our clients’ needs. As a developer, it has been fun experimenting with triggers, layer, settings, activities, block and publishing settings. Many users barely scratch the surface of the capability and functionality of these applications, but both Storyline and Rise not only have their own place in the current market, they also can work neatly together.

Articulate Storyline

Storyline is an incredibly powerful tool that if it weren’t for budget and time constraints, would be limited only by the creatives’ minds. The layout, the menu, the sequence of learning, the interactives, and the output, are all in your control if you have the time and energy and work hard to develop the expertise. Like any skill, it takes effort before you are producing effective learning modules and it doesn’t happen by chance, you need some training or at least guidance. Even with templates and a robust process, you still need that drive to dig deeper and master your craft when it comes to using this tool.

Storyline is best when you want a truly unique learning experience; when there are activities or key learning points that need a level of complexity. Flexibility means you can better present your learning experiences in line with company brand and it integrates well with a learning management system for reporting purposes.

Articulate RISE

If Storyline is the Ferrari of authoring tools, then Rise, in contrast, is more like the family saloon. It is designed to be quick and easy but that comes at a cost, albeit often a bearable cost, of reduced flexibility. Most basic interactive needs are there, it offers a clean design, but you are limited by how much you can tailor the elements. Rise does offer high responsiveness that works fluently across desktop, tablets and mobile platforms, which is a big draw card. However, the rigid structure presents a risk of multiple courses becoming ‘samey’ and that becomes boring. If you are lucky enough to have access to a graphic wizard, the real individuality of courses comes from including highly effective visuals. Articulate’s extensive content library can help, but again limits you to stock photos and characters which can reek of ‘Articulate’. If monitoring results matter, it’s not such an easy route for knowledge checks to be accessed by teachers and tutors.

Get the best of both worlds!

With advantages and disadvantages for both tools – wouldn’t it be great to get the best of both worlds! Well, you can! Rise with a dash of Storyline. That’s where we find ourselves most of the time in our effort to deliver the best outcome for our clients.

Celebrating the Rise storyline block

One of Rise’s most underrated blocks is the Storyline block, a simple block that allows you to embed a more complex interactive into the simplicity of Rise. This can lift the learning back up to a more engaging level and lets you deliver more complex learning activities inside Rise.