Toolkit: Articulate 360 Review, Continued

Last month, I gave an overview of Articulate’s new 360 Suite, which includesboth updated existing tools and new tools. I then went into depth on theupdated Storyline 360 and discussed Articulate Review. This month, I’ll coverthe other tools you see in Figure 1. Again, the suite features four desktoptools, including the Storyline update; four web-based tools, includingArticulate Review; and one iPad app called Preso.

Figure 1: The tools in Articulate’snew 360 Suite

Studio 360

Studio 360 includes Articulate Presenter, Engage, andQuizMaker. It is the update to Articulate Studio ’13.

Presenter

It can be argued thatthis PowerPoint add-in is how Articulate first made its mark in the learningtools market. First offered in 2002, it has continued to be a popular tool foreLearning developers. As a PowerPoint add-in, it provides a ribbon of optionsthat you use to enhance your PowerPoint files. See Figure 2.

Figure 2: The Presenter ribbon 

In 360, Presenter has improved in the same areas asStoryline 360:

• There are many more characters available than in previous versions (and more will beadded over time) through the new Content Library.
• The Content Library also offers many slide templates (and these too will expand inthe future).
• Like Storyline, a Translate option will let you export text to an external Worddocument, make changes therein, and then import the updated text. However, thisworks only with text that is part ofthe items you inserted from Articulate. (PowerPoint has a separate utility fortranslating other text.)
• You can now publishin four different ways. See Figure 3.

Figure 3: The new publishing options

• The narrationeditor has had a big upgrade: atimeline, as you can see in Figure 4. This makes synchronizing animations and annotationsmuch easier. You can also now rearrange the panels in the narration editor.

Figure 4: The narration editor 

• Like Storyline, Presenter’s HTML5-publishedfiles are somewhat responsive, meaning that on mobile devices the content willadapt itself to the screen size and orientation of each device. You are notable to customize each view, so you cannot change the positioning or sizing ofoptions; be sure to test the published files on your mobile devices to see ifyou need to change the size of screen objects in the desktop view so that theyare not too small in other views. However, you can also lock the publishedlesson to just show in portrait, landscape, or both.
• As part of Studio 360, you can publish yourfiles online to Articulate 360 and share the URL with reviewers, who can entercomments online via Articulate Review.

Replay 360

Replay has not changed much. Articulate did add a few usefulediting options, as seen in Figure 5. As before, you can mix video of yourselffrom a webcam and a screen recording, then edit, mix and match with additionalaudio, images, videos, and lower thirds. One feature I see lacking here is theability to brand or customize the resulting video skin in any way. That’s not aproblem for some folks, but it’s a show-stopper for others. You also cannotchange the background behind you in Replay, even if you use a green screen.

Figure 5: New editing options inReplay

Peek

Peek is also a screen-recording application, availablefor both Mac and Windows, that creates (noninteractive) video demos. Think ofit as a light version of Replay. It doesn’t record from your video camera, justscreen actions. If you choose to have Peek launch on startup, it will always beavailable in your system tray. Whenever you click it, the dialog seen in Figure6 will appear, in which you’ll see asnapshot of the last recording performed and the time when that recordingoccurred. Click the New Recording button, much in the same way that TechSmith SnagItworks, and you’ll see a snapshot of all open applications and screens. Note inFigure 7 that I have three screens and it shows I’m able to choose any of themfor full-screen recording. If you open any other applications while this dialogis up, the dialog will show those too.

Figure 6: The Peek dialog box 

Figure 7: Choose a screen or open application 

You will then see the thin panel in Figure 8. At thispoint, if you wish to record your voice while capturing your screen recording,you can choose from a list of any microphones you may have on your system.Click the red “record” button; the recording will begin and the word Cancelwill change to Done, so that you can click it when you’ve finished recording.There are also keyboard shortcuts you can use to start and stop, which you canassign yourself.

Figure 8: The Peek recording panel 

Next you’ll see the dialog inFigure 9. Here, you can now change the title of your video and play your video.After beginning playback, you can also change to full-screen playback. Finally,click the Upload button.Immediately, you’ll be able to access your screen recording, share it with reviewers,and save it as an MP4 file on your local drive.

Figure 9: Upload options from Peek 

Rise

A new addition to Articulate’s cloud-based tools, Rise isnothing like the other tools in the suite. It’s made to be simple, which meansit’s not as powerful as Storyline, but it’s more powerful than Studio.

The first step in setting up a Rise project includes:

• Titling your course
• Choosing whether the learner can navigate freelyor must follow the order of the lessons and activities
• Uploading your logo
• Customizing the theme, which includes the fontand color schemes

You can always return to change the above by clicking Settings.

Next, you create your course structure. Note you don’t haveto do this all at once. You can add lessons as you go.

Each lesson can comprise a series of activities, as seen inFigure 10. You can’t mix and match these on one screen as you would inStoryline (or Presenter). Rather, the learner will move from one activity tothe next. Activities include (Figure 10):

Figure 10: Lessonchoices

• Video:You can upload videos and then choose which one to show. You can also insert videosthat have been uploaded or published to Articulate 360 (from, say, Replay,Preso, or Peek) directly via this lesson type. In fact, when you load (orpublish) videos to Articulate 360 in any manner, not only can you comment on themvia Articulate Review, but you can also insert the videos directly into a Risecourse or export them back out with an LMS wrapper. That means you can create aSCORM (or xAPI) package and track it via your LMS.
• Labeled graphic:You can provide an image and markersand have the learner click the markers to learn more.
• Process: Youcan provide a title, description, oraudio that you record or upload, and one of the following: an image, a videofile, or a weblink. The weblink will show a bit of text from the site and letthe learner click it to open the link in a separate tab, unless it’s, say, aYouTube link. This will embed the YouTube video right within the lesson.
• Timeline: Youcan define a number of events that have occurred, such as in your companyhistory, and put them in the order you wish. In each case, you have the sameoptions as you do with the Process activity. They will be shown in the orderyou specify. Note that it’s up to you to put the dates in order; this does nothappen automatically. It’s nice that when editing the timeline, you can clickthe event number to edit it (see Figure 11), but it would be even nicer iflearners were able to click the numbers to jump to that date’s event.

Figure 11: Timeline events

• Sorting: Youcan define a few categories and a number of items in each. The learner willthen be able to drag each item into the correct category. If incorrectlyplaced, the item will vibrate and be placed back on top of the pile of items.At the end, the learner will be told how many were correctly placed.
• URL: Youcan type or paste a URL and part of the website will be shown, usually an imageand description text. The learner can then click to see the entire website in aseparate tab or see it within the lesson when you use an embed code.
• Quiz: Youcan let the learner answer a series of multiple-choice questions. In each case,it appears you can have as many distractors as you wish (I tried up to 14 withno problem), but you can have only one correct answer for each question. Youcan provide one text feedback for the question, which will be shown whether ornot the learner answered correctly, or you can choose to not provide feedback.You can also show an image as part of the question.
  While you’re editing, all the questions are shown in order on the left side ofthe screen, and you can drag them up and down to reorder them.
  There is a Settings option for each quiz that lets you choose: whether to showfeedback and the correct answer after each question submission; how many triesthe learner should have to pass the quiz (from one to 10 or unlimited); whatthe passing score is; and whether to randomize all the questions and/or shufflethe answer choices.
  You can have multiple quizzes in a course. Each is scored separately.
• Blocks: Unquestionablythe most powerful of the options allowed, this area lets you choose to assemblea series of blocks in linear fashion, from those you see in Figure 12. Some ofthe blocks are interactive; others are to display text or an image. All of theblocks include several options. For instance, the Interactive activitycurrently includes Accordion, Tabs, Flashcard Grid, Flashcard Stack, Button,and Button Stack. Buttons, by the way, can allow learners to jump to adifferent lesson or to a website outside of the course.

Figure 12: Block activities

Riselends itself more to responsive design. Whereas neither Storyline 360 nor Riseallows you to customize each view individually (desktop, tablet, and mobile;portrait and landscape), the nature of Storyline is to design a screen wherethe learner normally doesn’t have to scroll up and down, nor left and right.When shown in a portrait mode, Storyline leaves gaps at the top and bottom soas not to change the aspect ratio of the content. Rise, on the other hand, functionslike a responsive website because we usually don’t mind scrolling up and downon websites. Therefore, it has more freedom to make each view fuller, with nolarge gaps. In short, the way you build learning in Rise makes it easier topresent itself as responsive. Rise automatically detects screen sizes and flowsthe content accordingly. Therefore, there’s little need to customize each view.The tradeoff is that you are using a preset approach.

See Figure 13 for an example of each.

Figure 13: On the left, how a Storyline slide looks in portrait mode on a mobiledevice; on the right, how Rise looks in both portrait and landscape views

A word of warning: If you make a mistake in typing a URL fora website or choose the wrong image to show, in most cases you cannot simplyedit the URL or swap the image. You must delete the link or the photo and tryagain. This can be annoying, so take care to enter the correct information thefirst time. On the other hand, if the URL you typed doesn’t exist, you are toldso and allowed to try again.

Content Library

Last month I showed how you can access the Content Libraryfrom within Storyline, and I also mentioned at the start of this review that youcan access the Content Library from within Presenter as well. You can also viewthe Content Library online. Though you cannot download templates and charactersfrom the online Content Library site, it’s a good way to peruse what’savailable to download from within Presenter and Storyline. See Figure 14.

Figure 14: The Content Library options

Articulate Live

This site lets you choose from upcoming free live trainingevents, each about an hour in length. There doesn’t appear to be a way ofaccessing recordings of past events except by those who attended the originalevents.

Preso

Preso is a new app that runs on iPads. It allows you tocreate training presentations by combining text and images and drawing on thescreen. You can also import from any PDF file, though this makes most sense ifthe PDF file was generated from a slide-based application like PowerPoint. Youmay also record audio on each slide. See Figure 15.

Figure 15: The Preso iPad app

Preso is easy to use, and you can make some attractivepresentations with it, but it is limited in several ways. You cannot insertvideos or interactions of any kind. The colors you see on the bottom right arefor freeform drawing on the screen, but you’re limited to the colors you see;and there is no control over line thickness or constraining lines to bestraight or form a polygon, so drawing a rectangle or a circle would bedifficult.

Preso does include multiple undo/redo options, which isnice. The eraser tool to the right of the color choices lets you erase a partof the slide or the whole slide. Of course, you can position and resize imageson the slide. Text options include color and size, but not font choice, norother formatting such as boldface or italics.

One odd aspect I found in Preso is that once you recordaudio for a slide (you can’t import audio that has already been recorded), itis basically locked down at that point. All the other options disappear, so youcan’t make any changes to the slide nor add any more elements to the slide. Ifyou do need to make changes, you must discard the audio you recorded. In otherwords, you shouldn’t add the audio until the slide contents are all included,sized correctly, etc. There is no Save option; everything is automaticallysaved.

Preso lets you reorder the slides and upload thepresentation to Articulate for others to review and comment on yourpresentation at your invitation.

I believe Preso is a nice utility, but it needs a lot morein terms of features to truly be useful in more cases.

Pricing

See my review last month for pricing and discounts.

My thoughts

All in all, Articulate has created a suite of updated andnew products that the company hopes you will find attractive in terms offeatures and pricing with its new subscription model. Those who do tend to useseveral of the tools will benefit from a cost savings, especially becauseArticulate will continue to update the products with new features. Like mostsubscription models, however, when you no longer need the tools, you’ll nolonger have access to them, including Storyline and Studio.

It may seem a bit disingenuous to include as part of the suitethe ability to view the Content Library, because you can’t download from itexcept from inside Storyline or Studio, or to include Articulate Live as a toolwhen the free webinars have always been available as part of Articulate’scommunity outreach, though now these webinars will be held each and every week.In short, there are really only two tools in the web category, not four, but Ido find it nice that Articulate has tried to position everything under oneumbrella. I would suggest that, rather than just a link to upcoming webinars, theyalso include the link to the full Articulate community because that has alwaysbeen one of Articulate’s greatest strengths.

Have you checked out Articulate 360? Are you usingit? Tell us what you like and don’t like about it in the comments below.