Engage your learners with Interactive Elements on Articulate Rise
Have you ever played a Lego game? How do you construct a building a vehicle, or a farm using Lego? You have some building blocks. These blocks are so basic that you can use them to create any structure. But then, doing it every time could be really tedious. So, what do you do?
If you have to construct a major structure like a shopping mall or a college building, what will you do? Perhaps combine mini-structures to create slightly bigger blocks and then use them on your layout for full construction. For instance, you might create blocks to represent cars, an apartment, a traffic light, etc.
Just like the Lego game, Articulate Rise also makes your work easy by creating blocks that you can just fit into your online lesson. When to use what is what you need to know. These blocks can be as basic as a text block that consists of a heading, plain text, and an image put together as a block or a highly interactive element like a story with characters, dialogues, questions, and responses.
In this article, I will take you deeper into the interactive elements of Rise. The idea is not to give you a tutorial on the interactive blocks of Articulate. For that, you can refer to the Articulate tutorials on the portal or join a course. The idea is to help you understand how to select the right block to create interactivity between your learning system or course and your online learner.
Identifying the Right Block to interact with your learners
Thinking about designing some interactive elements to engage your learners online? What do you have on the plate?
Case 1: Some terms they must know and understand, just the knowledge might suffice. Take an example of a Marketing Mix – Product, Price, Place, Promotion – perhaps you want your MBA students to know what each of these means.
Case 2: Or do you want to train your customer service staff on how should they interact with a complaining customer? Perhaps how to handle a difficult situation?
Case 3: Or you want a newbie employee to map the layout of your factory or office! See who (an important contributor to your organization) sits where? Or where are your specific machines placed inside your factory, the sections in a warehouse, or departments in your floor plan?
Depending on the knowledge you want to deliver or the skill you want to impress, you can choose the right element of interaction on Articulate Rise.
Case 1: A mere introduction of terms might go well with flash cards but if the explanation is more detailed, you might want to choose an accordion.
Case 2: A skill that involves interaction between people is best acknowledged with a story shown on screen and you might want to go with the storyline block.
Case 3: To map out the physical or virtual elements on a layout, you can use labelled graphics on Articulate Rise.
If you are a total newbie on Articulate or still an enthusiast trying to figure out how this easy tool to create eLearning content and courses actually works, you might want to dive into some fundamentals here. The blog explains the concept of blocks and introduces interactive elements on Rise that you can use while developing online courses to engage your learners well.
Let us take a snapshot of each interactive element available to you on Rise.
Accordion Blocks: In a typical Q&A pattern, use Accordian to give flexibility to the user to display an answer or any text only when desired. You can add titles and add descriptions to them in a collapsible format. A learner can then click the + sign to expand the section and display the description. Use this block to present content that has multiple sections such as outlines, and FAQs.
Interactive Storyline Blocks: Interactions within your courses and between user and the course can be embeded through the storyline block. Use this to create scenarios, quizzes, and simulations.
Labeled Graphics: On an image, you can add labels at any place you want such that when a user overs over or clicks those labels, more information is displayed. This can include textual description as well as image. Use this to explain tangible objects, layouts, products, or anatomies that have specific parts shown in an image that you want to explain.
Sorting Activities: This block allows users to drag and drop selected items into specific categories or put them in a sequence. Use this to create exercises or quizes categorization, sequencing, or prioritization. An example could be sequencing events based on their date of occurrence.
Knowledge Checks: Simple quizzes or questions can be added to test user’s understanding of concepts. This can have multiple choice questions, multiple response questions, match-the-following and fill-in-the-blanks. Use this to check basic comprehension and reinforce key concepts to learn.
Flashcards: This block offers content that can be flipped like a real card while you see only one side at a time. You can have a pair of question & answers, terms & definitions, title & description, words & meanings, etc. on either sides. Use this for reinforcment of knowledge bytes in short forms.
Process Blocks: When you have a ste-by-step process or a workflow to present, use the process block to introduce the process and then cover steps one by one with each detailing description and an illustrating image. This can be used or informing any sequence of information to your learners.
When do your learners need interactive elements?
Imagine a child who is learning a a new subject for the first time, let’s say, science. The subject appears both difficult and curious as it has a lot of new insights to gain. While on one side, the difficulty might make the child fear the subject, curiosity on the other side will keep the child exploring.
Your learner is like that child who is pulled by two strings – complexity that creates resistance and curiousity that pulls. But what is your reader curious about? The answer lies in another question that your learner has in mind –
How will my life change when I use this information or insight?
Will this help me solve a problem? A list of tips on how to communicate with difficult people at work might help an executive deal with a difficult boss or colleague.
Will this help me save my time? Lean methods to reduce customer waiting at a service center can help a company save time.
Will it help me look better before others? If I can not just say that planning is important in project management but can also illustrate the difference it creates, I will surely appear more knowledgeable.
Will it help me do the work I need to complete? Learning the software Audacity can help me reduce the noise and delete the repetitions and mistrakes in my voice recording.
Will it add value to what I do for my customer? Learning an invoicing software will help me generate invoices fast and even keep record of all invoices and transactions with a recurring customer, making my process transparent and fast for my customer.
Will it help me engage others if I share the information? If I can explain people why we behave the way we due on a psychological note, it can surely initiate an engaging discussion.
Will it help me make my conversations more interesting? How a virus interacts with our body after it goes inside is defenitely an interesting peice of information that can make anyone curious.
Aishwaryam Melody, Ravet, 
+91 8451996380
