Articulate Storyline is a learning content creation platform. It provides prebuilt and customizable content, along with gamification capabilities. Articulate emphasizes user-friendliness, including mobile accessibility. It is offered on a perpetual license.
$1,398
Renaissance Accelerated Reader
Score 9.5 out of 10
N/A
Renaissance Accelerated Reader® is designed to save educators time by empowering them with Learnalytics® to make differentiating independent and close reading practice effortless – all while maintaining the flexibility necessary to fit within existing classroom routines. Students are engaged in reading self-selected authentic books and articles.
Short comprehension quizzes and built-in close reading practice activities, combined with automatic and educator feedback, keep students…
In an office where you're planning to do a large amount of module-based training, Articulate Storyline will prove useful. A consideration to make, however, is whether your team members focused on training design will have the capacity to learn the software enough to create interesting and effective training modules. The basic functions can be simple, but the more advanced capabilities of the software take considerable effort to master and employ to create the more visually appealing presentations/modules you see in much of the promotional materials. If you have a small training team (or even without anyone dedicated specifically to training and development), Storyline is not a wise choice as the cost and effort required to fully make use of the software would be far too much of a commitment to make it worthwhile.
I have found Renaissance Accelerated Reader to be well-suited for elementary readers. I don't have experience using it with high school students; however, I know that for our elementary readers, there are no shortages of tests available. Our students can read trade books, articles within the program, or even stories from our textbooks and take tests on them
Storyline integrates with the Canvas LMS fairly seamlessly. There have been a few glitches, but for the most part, the interactions we have created will play directly in the Canvas LMS.
Storyline is great for creating short drag and drop interactions for self-reviews or even graded assignments. Its many options for quizzes such as "answer reveal" or using tabs help the student get a different perspective on the content rather than just an "A, B, or C" answer.
Storyline is great for tutorials or training sessions. There are many options to help guide the learner (or employee) through a process. it is not just linear, but you can branch the slides based on the answers. A great way to engage the learner or employee.
Automatically calculating ZPD ranges. Student level ranges are automatically calculated within the system to ensure that students are correctly choosing the most appropriate books for them.
Easy goal setting. Whether you want to set a blanket goal based on 20 minutes per day of reading time for the class, or you want to individually set goals up to an hour a day, AR makes it very easy to manage and set goals for your entire classroom. Goals can be adjusted as needed easily as well.
Comprehension monitoring through testing. I can easily see which students are struggling on comprehension through AR book quizzes. From student scores, I can either motivate students who are rushing through books to slow down and take time to thoroughly read, or I can help students who are possibly struggling to read harder books with specific strategies that will benefit them the most. Without the testing feature of AR, I would have a lot more work to check how students are doing on their independent reading.
Data that is easy to understand and share with students. From either running a report on the entire class or school to just a specific student, AR makes data tracking easy. I can share reports with students and have detailed discussions about their progress towards meeting their goals or steps to take to overcome reading challenges they are currently having.
I wish that you could customize the UI ribbons to bring features you use frequently to the front and to hide options you rarely use.
It would be great if there was a way for non-technical collaborators (SMEs, management, etc) to be able to open a *.story file directly and provide comments. You currently have to publish the course, load it to the LMS, update the LMS, and then hope that users can find it in the LMS. A Storyline Viewer/Previewer standalone application would be awesome.
The price is too high for freelancers to purchase and use. I no longer contract and work exclusively for the firm, but even with our resources, the high price limits the number of licenses available to use.
Lately, Accelerated Reader has been adding "New Reports" which would help single class users such as a teacher with one class. But for a person with administrative rights, it creates a bit of a hassle to get the information needed at times.
Cost - Accelerated Reader is expensive. For the price paid, I feel Renaissance should include some features instead of having additional fees paid.
We are moving away from the standalone eCourse model, so depending upon when that shift happens, we might choose not to renew since we won't be supporting eCourses built in Articulate Storyline anymore. As long as we are still selling and supporting those eCourses, we will continue to renew the licenses we have.
[Renaissance] Accelerated Reader is a great way to track student progress, motivate students to read, and measure their comprehension. Accelerated reader gives both teachers and students immediate feedback. There are countless options of books for students and can help increase student interest in books and improve students' reading ability.
The basics are easy to learn but you won't get really robust activities from using just the basics. However, if you can invest the time in learning how to use all of Storyline's features, you'll have tremendous learning development power at your fingertips. I do have to say, though, that there is a beautiful logic to how everything in Storyline works. Once you learn a few of the advanced features, you can learn them all because there's a similar underlying logic. The interface is also very appealing and friendly.
I would say that Accelerated Reader is a pretty user-friendly tool. The platform is easily used by teachers, administrators, and students of all grade levels and technical abilities. That being said, it would be nice to see some tweaks to the user interface to make it even easier for everyone to navigate.
They are support-superstars and the software they use for support is excellent too (I don't know what it is). The model they use for support should be followed by all companies. It is a conversation/discussion forum model that shows everyone's questions in a knowledge base capacity so you can get the help you need in a speedy way.
Renaissance Accelerated Reader is a program I have used with students for 9 years. It is so flexible and easy to use! I have seen the amazing benefits and an increase in the minutes my students read each day. I look forward to using this program next year and learning more about how it can help increase reading in our school.
I love the fact that both a demonstration AND text version of the tutorials are available. Our firewall was blocking the demos until I requested my company allow them! Having the text version available still enabled me to learn from the tutorials. They are very well done and informative, and there is a tutorial for just about anything you need to learn to do with Storyline. I have always been more than satisfied with the support and training available to us for all Articulate products and I love the community!
Outside of having to dedicate a powerful enough PC for the installation and having to update Flash in our browsers there really isn't much pain involved in using Articulate. For the most part this is an easy to implement and roll-out product. The installation occurs quickly and smoothly with no additional steps needed.
Extensive training on Ren Place is necessary. There are a myriad of reports that we need help understanding. I have joined Ren Royals and have learned a lot from that support piece.
Articulate Storyline is the only authoring tool we have used with our LMS to date. We are seeing different platforms now, as opposed to LMS platforms. And, many of those have their own content. However, we will always need to create/author our own because of the nature of what we do and how we do it. I'm a big fan!
I have not used any of the products listed. However, AR has been my choice of product. My school system choice this product because it interfaces well with all other reading and testing programs that have been purchased. It is an excellent product, but that is a given since it was developed by a teacher to address a problem that all educators deal with (How do you help a struggling reader best?). AR is the answer for me.
It is easy to train new users and manage content. Being able to import older projects and PPT files makes it very easy to use for a lot of "moonlighters" in our department.
Allows for on-demand training that is accessible to anyone in the organization instantaneously.
Heavily reduces travel expenses by eliminating the need for in-person training classes.
Gives my department creative liberties in designing content that can be customized to each and every subject/business group in the organization. No two courses are ever the same.
The goal of AR is for kids to enjoy books, spread their wings, and experience a variety of literature & genres. Children need copious amounts of reading to become good readers. Incorporating Renaissance Accelerated Reader 360 into our day sets a purpose for reading and holds children accountable.
Renaissance Accelerated Reader 360 is research based. The single biggest predictor of academic success is time spent reading. This program allows for that.
Renaissance Accelerated Reader 360 allows for scaffolding of reading material to get the kids into more challenging material. This program allows children to be successful and build on their strengths.
Renaissance Accelerated Reader 360 empowers students to take ownership in the learning process. It gives them a voice.
Renaissance Accelerated Reader 360 is a program that lets students practice and apply skills and strategies learned during mini lessons and strategy-group instruction.
