Blog: How Does Rise Measure Up?

As an Instructional Designer who has used TechSmith’s Camtasia and Adobe Captivate for almost 10 years, and Articulate Storyline 360 for about 2 years, I have to admit I’ve been somewhat reluctant to even investigate the abilities of Articulate Rise. I think there’s an “old school” part of me that hasn’t made the leap from having to use HTML scripts to having things pre-coded for optimal use…but I’m working on it.

I reviewed a variety of courses that have been created in Rise: Creating Social Change, Animal Guessing Game, Food Allergy Awareness, Designing Learning Objectives, Maintaining a Professional Workplace at Pixomedia, and The Growing Power of Social Media. Below I outline the things I really liked about the use of Rise in these courses, as well as the things I was not as impressed by.

The Good

Some of the techniques that were used across multiple courses that I found particularly useful was the ease of creating a consistent look and feel that is overall very clean and organized. I found my eyes knew where to go in the courses to follow the content and my mouse was easily used to navigate down and across the various interactive features.

With multiple ways to conduct knowledge checks (not just multiple choice) was nice to see. Learners can benefit from the use of different types of knowledge checks because they access different parts of the brain, allowing the learner to access more learning knowledge.

The course Maintaining a Professional Workplace at Pixomedia is an interesting example of an HR course and provides a great sorting exercise as a knowledge check.

Reviewing the Animal Sounds Guessing Game was somewhat addictive – I had to keep clicking to see what other animals had been included! It started to make my dog a little crazy, so I figured out you could go to the image without having to play the audio. This course also had great use of images.

Several of the courses made use of flashcards – this was a great way to do a different kind of interactive knowledge transfer and broke up the scrolling with some more interactive movements.

The Food Allergy Awareness course had great use of graphics and colors, that helped keep me engaged. This course also provided an interesting dial graphic showing the results of your knowledge checks. Also integrated into this course is the use of an avatar for some scenario interactions discussing the information being presented. Using multiple modes of communicating the same basic content helps it become more firmly planted in the learner’s mind.

I was pretty impressed with the Creating Social Change course. It showed me that there really is no end to how much content you can look at wrapping up in Rise. I appreciated the use of the condition applied to the Continue buttons that required the learner read (or at least expand) all of the subtopics before moving on to the next segment or lesson.

One of the other things I appreciated about Creating Social Change was the use of different reading patterns – not just scrolling down the page, but also scrolling right/left to access all of the content. This helps the brain keep from getting into a reading rut and not remaining completely engaged in the content.

The Meh

Upon reflection, it seems that many of the things I wasn't as happy with in these courses may be able implementation more than it is about Rise. Here are some specific examples.

In the Creating Social Change course, I found the use of boxes as bullet points to be somewhat distracting. I kind of get that they were used to be checked off (at least metaphorically), but I would have preferred to see a check mark or a check mark inside a box as the icon used. This indicates more of a sense of action than a simple box.

I found a few more aspects of the Designing Learning Objectives course off-putting. I could not make a connection between the use of any graphics and the choice to use purple as the “accent” color. That made me feel like I was missing something and I wondered if it would impact my ability to process the content. There were also areas where the use of subheadings and text got hard to follow because some of the changes in heading styles were difficult to differentiate.

The Designing Learning Objectives course also had some very text-heavy areas that could have been broken up to allow the brain to breathe between content blurbs. Finally, this course also introduced a red font into the mix. The purple text boxes included an icon to indicate it was making a special point, but the use of red text seemed very random.

My Verdict on Rise

I have to say, I was surprised to find that the Good far out-weighted the Meh. I can definitely see a place for the development of courses in Rise – and not just for others, but within my own ID work. Initially, I thought that Rise was just applicable to simple topics, the most basic of interactivity, and the simplest of topics and knowledge checks. I was wrong. I’m impressed.

Rise-developed courses are easy on the eyes with the built-in buffers between scenarios to keep concepts together and give the eyes a break between sections and main thoughts. The flow of the blocks from one to the next is always smooth and professional. Some of the things I saw in these courses are not easily implemented in Camtasia, Captivate, or Storyline.

As for some of the things I wasn’t so fond of…I will have to do more personal work in Rise to know whether those issues are inherent in Rise or if it was just how it was implemented in these particular courses.

I’m ready to dive in!

References

Admin. (2020, January 23). 6 Essential Graphic Design Principles to Guide Your eLearning Course Design. https://www.shiftelearning.com/blog/graphic-design-essentials-to-build-good-lookin-elearning.

Articulate. (n.d.). Creating Social Change: A Guide for Everyday Citizens. https://examples.rise.com/creating-social-change/index.html#/. Accessed September 14, 2021.

Billington, J. (n.d.). Design Learning Objectives. https://jamiebillingham.com/wp-content/uploads/articulate_uploads/Design_Learning-_Ojectives/index.html#/?_k=kpjdm5. Accessed September 14, 2021.

Chyung, Y. (2007). Learning object-based e-learning: Content design, methods, and tools. https://www.learningguild.com/pdf/2/082707des-temp.pdf.

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LaMotte, A. (n.d.). Animal Sounds Guessing Game. https://rise.articulate.com/share/ohxJBgernTWSYrg1_d_pEbYaZIyncQvP#/. Accessed September 14, 2021.

LaMotte, A. (n.d.). Food Allergy Awareness. https://rise.articulate.com/share/8WXeEWwufOjFadod2R3OdIn7yd9wqOBW#/. Accessed September 14, 2021.

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Pastore, R. (2020). [Video]. Articulate Rise: Intro, Review, and Walkthrough. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eoWB8AKLFmM.

Rimmer, T. (n.d.). Maintaining a Professional Workplace at Pixomedia. https://articulate-heroes-authoring.s3.amazonaws.com/Trina/View%20this%20in%20action/maintaining-a-professional-workplace-at-pixomedia/index.html#/?_k=zqer69.

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Tomanio, T. (n.d.). The Growing Power of Social Media. https://rise.articulate.com/share/Q_VYg28SrTW9nePl_GIzx1oxCnE17QA0#/lessons/6KgYhXlRUfl3HodCPWcYXx9cdUiyL03D. Accessed September 14, 2021.

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