Articulate 360: Conversation with Tom Kuhlmann

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Tom Kuhlmann is Chief Learning Architect for Articulate where he writes the Rapid E-Learning Blog which is published weekly to over 150,000 readers. He led the development of Articulate’s 500,000 member e-learning community and is known throughout the industry for his practical, no-nonsense approaches to e-learning. And his core focus is on helping people succeed and grow as they learn to build eLearning courses.

In this conversation, Tom talks about Articulate 360, a subscription offering from Articulate that contains their software applications.

Geetesh: Articulate recently announced the Articulate 360 subscription. Can you tell us more about moving to this subscription model?

Tom: In the past, Articulate sold perpetual licenses of the e-learning software. That meant you installed it once and used it forever. And you can still purchase Articulate Storyline 3, this way.

Recently we added, Articulate 360 which is a subscription service which gives you a better value than the perpetual license.  You get access to all of Articulate’s great authoring tools and a whole lot more.

The value for the customer is that the software is updated frequently with new features and enhancements. And because it comes with an online project review app and millions of assets, it saves a lot of money compared to buying those things separately.

Geetesh: Articulate 360 is more than just access to newest Articulate programs; it includes video tutorials, asset libraries, and a course review app. Please share some thoughts.

Tom: Many course developers have to build great courses with limited time and resources. This requires a means to author courses and having the appropriate assets to make them look great.

Articulate 360 is designed to meet the diverse needs of those who need to build online training. Let’s take a quick tour of what you get.

Authoring Tools

Articulate 360 includes award-winning course creation apps like Storyline 360 and Rise. Use Storyline 360 to develop courses with custom interactivity and Rise to quickly build gorgeous, fully responsive courses right in your web browser.

Many people are familiar with Storyline. Rise is new.

I think Rise is one of the best e-learning products on the market because it’s super easy to use, requires no programming, and is ideal for delivering courses to a mobile audience.

Here’s an example of a Mars Rover demo I created recently for a workshop. I use it to show some of the different types of content you can add to the courses. And it looks great on the smartphones as well as the computer.

Other Rise Examples

• Operation Outbreak
• Demonstration of Inexpensive Mics
• How to Avoid a Conflict of Interest

Articulate 360 also includes Studio 360 which works with PowerPoint and some additional screencasting applications for software training and demonstrations.

Basically, with the Articulate 360 subscription, you get everything to build great training.

Assets

One of the biggest course design challenges is having assets or the design skills to build them yourself. Many people either scrounge around for free assets or purchase expensive subscriptions. For example, a typical subscription to an e-learning image library starts at close to $400/year and goes up from there.

With Articulate 360 that’s not required because it includes Content Library which has more than 2 million stock photos, images, templates, and characters that make it easy to create beautiful courses faster.

With Content Library you can choose from hundreds of professionally designed, ready-to-go slide templates. Every template is architected by the industry’s best e-learning designers, so you have all the elements you need to create an effective course.

And even if you don’t build courses in Storyline, you can use the templates for presentations in PowerPoint since Articulate 360 includes Studio 360.

Content Library also includes more than 100,000 combinations of photographic and illustrated characters, expressions, and poses. You can also access the Character library in PowerPoint, that’s a big win.

Articulate Review

Articulate 360 includes a web-based project review app that lets you easily collect consolidated feedback from all your reviewers.

Publish the course to Articulate 360 and then share it with others. They can review the course and make comments. It’s one of my favorite features in Articulate 360.

This a big, time-saver because it’s easy to solicit and manage the feedback process when working with clients and subject matter experts. Before this, people had to manage multiple documents and emails. It was a real pain.

Articulate Live

As you can imagine, there’s a lot you can build with Articulate 360. People come into the tools with different skill levels. Some have built courses for years and some are just getting started.

Articulate Live offers ongoing webinars to help people learn the tools and all sorts of practical tips and tricks. We try to keep the tone light and the information practical. Ideally, you’re learning things you can take back to your projects.

As you can see, the e-learning industry has evolved and moved past the PowerPoint-to-Flash authoring from a decade ago. Today you can build all sorts of content that’s highly interactive, engaging, and ready for a mobile world. And with Articulate 360 you get it all.