AI FACE-OFF

Articulate Storyline Vs Articulate Rise

Articulate has recently introduced AI to its e-learning authoring tools - Rise360 and Stoyline360. But which would win in a fight? Sam Harold puts them through their paces.

We’re going to take a look at how the AI improves the user experience, production speed and the all important ‘wow’ factor in each product.

Storyline360 is always going to have more potential than Rise360, due to its support for variables and richer customisation features, but we are only looking at how far the AI moves you forward to the final release.

Artificial Intelligence is constantly improving, so this is not intended as a conclusive final assessment, but a snapshot of its current capacity. Further, in researching this review we saw some impressive developments utilising the javascript functionality of Storyline360, but as these required the use of external AI tools to prompt and generate code, it will not be included.

Rise360

Off the bat, Rise360 hits hard. Through its AI assistant, you will be taken from the conception to the cradle of your new project; AI will generate your title, outcomes, chapters, subjects, outline, lesson blocks, assessment questions and summaries.

These blocks are not limited to text. Accordions, Tabs, Sortables, Lists and Flashcards are all included. Practically the entire suite of block types… AI has you covered.

Generating the text itself, or utilising your provided resources. You can prompt your assistant to better meet your specifications… make it shorter or longer… add, take away, change focus, change the audience, etc…

Sprucing up your lessons is also easier now, with the Image Generation tool. You can prompt your AI assistant with descriptors, and see it generate appropriate images. These generations can be better directed by using the styles to direct the art style.

When the time comes for a knowledge check, the assistant can help, providing a multiple-choice or sortable activity from your text, these can also be prompted further to revise the output.

I would still recommend checking the output for accuracy. But this shows the confidence the Articulate team have in their tool’s robustness.

Towards the end of your lessons, your AI assistant can be used to generate entire summaries of your learning content, capturing the key points for you. This referential usefulness also extends to modifying your blocks and converting them into new ones. You can ask the AI to swap some tabs, to a flashcard block and it will. Duplicate a block and you can ask it to revise the copy. A useful way to create multiple blocks covering the same subject matter.

This AI wizard is truly magical and fitting for the term. It recalls your lesson outcomes when providing suggestions for topics and will provide suggested improvements based on your prompting.

I enjoyed asking it to make suggestions exclusively in emojis… but that is just my humour.

Where the AI was lacking, was in referencing prior lesson subjects or blocks. Whilst the quiz builder was able to reference prior lesson material, you had no way to specify what material to reference, and referencing prior blocks or lessons within a chapter, was not possible.

Finally, the AI lacked a little human touch. Many AI programs come equipped to greet and accept thanks. Whilst such assistants are simply unfeeling software, they add a charm that feels missing. Still, this is just a superficial criticism and not a structural issue.

In conclusion, this AI provides a substantial boon to any designer, enhancing your Rise development substantially. You will still need to take the directing role for the development and manage its theming, but altogether, this AI Assistant can cover almost all bases.

Storyline360

Initially, we didn’t have as much to say for Storyline360 as we did for Rise360. Whereas Rise360 saw its AI intend to hold us close from conception to delivery, Storyline360 saw its assistant sit on the sidelines, waiting on our request.

This AI assistant provides much less under its toolbelt, but the offerings still present a great benefit to its users.

Unsurprisingly, Storyline360 sees its AI assistant unable to fully generate activities for you, restricted instead to the subject text itself, but you are still provided the same options when revising these prompts as you do under the Rise360 assistant. Tragic, but understandable, that the greater customisation potential has left a barrier that held back the AI’s generative capability.

But whilst lacking in some of its generative content features, it still exceeds Rise in its quiz-making capabilities. Users can specify content within the course to reference, and request quiz questions be generated based on the subject matter contained; although it appeared its output is currently restricted to one question per slide referenced.

On top of this functionality, we have the Image generation tool shared with Review360, so you can produce the same beautiful images for your courses with the exact same prompting potential… but this is on top of an additional and intriguing AI generative audio tool. This tool can generate narrations and even sound effects for your project. A standout addition to your developer toolset.

Sadly, this leaves us with a much-reduced potential to utilise AI to generate our content. Triggers, Master Slides, Design Templates etc, all appear absent from the AI capabilities at this time.

Whilst we can still see great improvements to the developer’s arsenal, the space that must be occupied by the developer remains the majority, AI is not yet ready to generate triggers or variables, or populate ready-made templates quite yet… but we can remain hopeful.

And so, my winner, unsurprisingly, is Rise360.

Whilst both saw substantial enhancements, the relative size seen in Rise360 was honestly impressive. This is likely the result of its more constrained design options. As such it has seen a much greater transformation through its AI adoption than its peer, Storyline360.

It has never been easier to build a Rise360 course than it is today, but the disparity between Storyline360 and Rise360 may have grown even greater as a result.

Of course, this is only with where the technology currently resides, some day soon we may see Storyline360 utilise AI further, to create custom triggers or populate its already existent library of prebuilt templates.