Earlier this month, I was given access to an Articulate 360 license which included a whole load of goodies developed by Articulate; Storyline 360, Studio 360, Replay 360 and Peek 360, Review 360 and Rise 360. From this bundle, I was most interested to try out Articulate Rise 360 as I have previously explored this but it was only on a 30 day trial period.
So what is Articulate Rise 360?
Articulate Rise 360 is part of the Articulate 360 bundle and is a web-based app that will allow you to easily build online courses and web content. There are templates available to get you started or you can build a course or site from scratch, whichever method you choose, Rise enables you easily insert content by selecting from a menu called Block Library. The block library is categorised into different elements where you decide what type of content you would like to add to your course.
The great thing about Rise is that it is really simple to use and the published course has a really professional look about it. If you are building your course/site from scratch, you will need to create the initial lessons by selecting the ‘Add a lesson title…’ text and renaming it (this is similar to creating a folder to insert content). Once you have created a lesson, you can select the Edit Content button and use the Block library to insert content.
How we have used Articulate Rise?
We have used Rise to pull together various written articles and videos produced during the lockdown period to create a more coherent course that will provide top tips and tricks to help stakeholders within the university to produce their own video content.
The course is called Filming at Home: Video production survival kit.
Can I publish to the web?
Rise lets you publish for the web. When you have assembled your course, select the Export button, and use the export type ‘Web’. When you press the Export button, Rise will publish, zip, and send the files to your download folder. Simply copy from your download folder onto your local drive.
You can easily upload the published file onto Edshare.
If you want to open and view the project prior to uploading onto the hosting server, remember to unzip the content otherwise the project will appear blank. One important thing to note about uploading onto Edshare is that when you update and republish your Rise course, you will need to replace the content on your Edshare site so that you retain the same url.
Is it compatible with Blackboard?
Similar to Articulate Storyline, you can publish your course to Blackboard LMS. Use export type LMS and Scorm 2.1. When you press the Export button, Rise will publish, zip, and send the files to your download folder. Simply copy from your download folder onto your local drive and upload on to Blackboard as a Scorm object. Rise will also send you an email with the option to download the course as well.
The Advanced Options setting in Blackboard enables the SCORM player to be displayed in various ways, ie open as a separate window or replace the Blackboard window.
I have written a separate brief document with my recommended settings for this.
Publish as a PDF
Rise will also publish your course as a PDF if the content is text, images, links and downloads. Unfortunately, videos and audio elements will not be playable on PDF’s.
Review 360
Rise will allow contributors to review your course. Simply select the Review button and publish. Once the course is published, you are able to open the course in Articulate Review 360. Copy and send the URL to your reviewers.
Reviewers will be able to write comments as they view the page, an email is sent to you for each comment, which can be quite annoying as you will end up with a lot of emails in your inbox. Once the reviews are complete, open your course and the feedback will indicate the number of reviews there are.
Rise will make a screenshot of the review and also there is a box to for you to leave your comment to the review.
Sounds amazing, what are the cons?
Unfortunately, Articulate Rise comes at a price! The annual subscription for Articulate 360 is £1055.00 but it may be less for an educational license.
Accessibility issues – This is a major stumbling point with Rise 360. At the time of writing, Rise 360 is not fully accessible; keyboard accessible navigation is available but screen reader support is still yet to be added. Other accessible features such as alt text for images and closed captioning for videos are already in place. Looking at the community discussion page, there are plans to get Rise 360 to WCAG 2.1 compliant by the end of 2020.
Overall, I am very impressed with Rise 360 for the following reasons:
- Ease of use: The Block Library makes it easy to insert content and is very intuitive.
- Professional looking: The published file looks great and is fully responsive for use on different types of screens; desktop, laptops, iPads and mobile phones.
- Hosting: The published files can be hosted on Blackboard, Edshare, or on a server.
- Interactivity: A good range of interactivity and quiz scores that can be passed onto Blackboard Grade Centre.
The only element that dampens my enthusiasm for using Articulate Rise for course content is that it’s not fully accessible. If you do use Rise to create content, please be aware that the University of Southampton is committed to providing digital content that is inclusive and accessible to the widest possible audience and Rise as it is, does not fully meet this requirement.
