Item: Articulate 360
Rating: 8
Author: Jessica Ventre

Overall Satisfaction with Articulate 360

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use the product to generate E learnings for our biannual upgrade. We also use it to generate E learnings for our new hire training. We do not use it for all of our new hire training. Specifically, we use it for some of our shorter classes, that have less needed interactivity. Lately I have been using it to make some mini or even micro E learnings for smaller workflows to present a different opportunity for our visual learners.

Pros and Cons

Pros

I really appreciate the ability to pull together an e-learning very quickly. Rise is incredibly user friendly. I was able to learn that and generate an e-learning with almost no learning curve as a technically savvy person. The product that I created was very professional looking for the amount of skill that I had coming into the project.
Rise does a great job of marrying the access to different tools allowing for reasonable amounts of interactivity with a really low barrier to entry. While also providing enough non-interactive tools to generate simply informational slides. It also provides ways to test knowledge that I've really come to appreciate. And the way the preview function works and the ability to easily test and squirm and then upload to an LMS is just so incredibly seamless.
While the barrier to entry is much higher, Storyline is an incredible product allowing for such specialized training and learning. I know I've only barely tapped the beginning of what it has to offer. And while it takes a significant time investment to generate a truly quality product, the ROI has the potential to be exponential if applied in the correct circumstance. Specifically with Storyline, I appreciate the deep level of customization that is available for each of the tools so that I can really drive and e-learning and the learner to a higher level of learning while keeping a flexible and asynchronous modality.

Cons

On occasion I have found myself deeply frustrated with the limitations in Rise. I wish there was a way to access additional customization opportunities with the interactive features. If there were an advanced menu of options for an advanced user so that it maintained that low barrier to entry and low learning curve but had some of the higher level of customization opportunities afforded to it that would be ideal.
The way images crop in rise repeatedly drives me insane. I have yet to find a way to crop those myself and I'm just limited to changing the tool that I'm using to display my information. There have been many times I wish I could have used flash cards for things but because of the size of the flash card or the image on the flash card I was unable. I would have liked to have had the opportunity to put 2 to 3 words and the picture on one side of the flash card before.

Comprehensive Platform

My organization does not use reach. I use Rise primarily. I like the preview function, and I grab the link that I send to my peers. I have them send me their feedback typically via e-mail because we have a limited number of licenses so my peers who do most of the training don't have licenses. It's the instructional designers who have licenses. Once I've completed my e-learning, I publish it into a format that I can send to scorm for testing before we post it in our own LMS which is currently work day. I did use the AI assistant this time around to help me generate a couple of images for the cover photo and then an image for one portion of my elearning. But I'm training in electronic medical record so I use screenshots of our test environment more than anything. and I didn't have a lot of time to test out the other features of the AI assistant this time around

Integrated AI

I haven't experimented much with the AI assistant yet as I stated. I did really enjoy using it to generate photos though. Some of them were pretty hilarious. And I was able to get enough that did a good job to represent the staff who will be receiving my E learnings it was nice to have a representation that wasn't a stock image that they've been used to saying over the past seven years.

Usability

I think it's difficult to rate Articulate 360 overall. If you asked me to rate the Rise product, I would have given that a 10 out of 10. It's incredibly straightforward. But Storyline is a very challenging product, though a great product. Storyline just has so many quirks and facets to learn and it takes time which I just don't have right now. Generally you can tell that Articulate 360 puts a lot of emphasis in its user experience. The learning curve on everything but Storyline is extremely manageable. I did inherit some templates to work from which helped, but even without those everything is so user friendly that I don't think I would have required those to generate my first e-learning with limited challenge.

Alternatives Considered

Camtasia

So far I've only used Camtasia for its video editing. I don't know what else it has to offer really. But I am sorry to say that articulate doesn't hold a candle in the wind to what Camtasia has to offer in terms of the video editing capacity. Camtasia is a amazing product. I did find its user experience incredibly straightforward. That might be in part because I'd already been playing around in Storyline and they had similar structures so I might owe some of that to you, thank you. But I had edited a video project in articulate recently and been a little frustrated with the limitations and was amazed by just how much and easy it was in Camtasia, though my computer had a harder time keeping up, to be sure.

Key Insights

Do you think Articulate 360 delivers good value for the price?

Not sure

Are you happy with Articulate 360's feature set?

Yes

Did Articulate 360 live up to sales and marketing promises?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of Articulate 360 go as expected?

I wasn't involved with the implementation phase

Would you buy Articulate 360 again?

Yes

Other Software Used

Snagit, Camtasia

Likelihood to Recommend

Articulate 360 is a fabulous tool for quickly generating professional looking straightforward e-learnings using their Rise 360 tool. To generate the highest quality e-learning using Storyline, you'll need a much more significant amount of time and likely significant training or access to resources. If you need to edit and transition between multiple videos for part of your eLearning, this is not an ideal tool; however, if you are recording a screen and using picture in picture functionality you can generate a solid recording with some on screen graphics using articulate functionality. Aside from Storyline, which is their top tier eLearning generation tool, I have found everything in Articulate 360 to be very user friendly and professional looking. I've also been fortunate enough to have an organization that is allowing us to use the AI functionality which has added a fun twist to e-learning generation.

Comments

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User Friendly, Efficient Product with a few options for advanced work