Articulate Storyline 360
So this tool lets you develop interactive eLearning experiences and you can develop anything from
to like
to
like
experiences,
courses. All sorts of stuff. It’s very flexible.
It's also the most popular tool in the industry, so this probably isn't the first time you're hearing about it. And we interviewed 101
last year and asked them, 'What are the top three tools that instructional designers should be familiar with when they are hired onto the job?', and 86% of them said Articulate Storyline 360 so... The next tool
trailed pretty severely.
So Storyline is definitely the most popular. If you're going to learn one tool from this list, I would recommend it being Storyline 360, at least if your goal is to
in the
space or freelance spaces.
Learning the tool, it's easy to moderate difficulty for
. So for a lot of, you know, for probably 90% of what you would do in most instructional design roles, it's going to be fairly easy to moderate difficulty to pick up, you could probably do it in anywhere from a couple of days to a couple of weeks to do most of these basic tasks. But as you try to do more advanced programing and more complex
, it can get quite difficult, quite fast as you get into
, conditions, putting tons of
on a slide. So the
is pretty high with this one.
There are free tutorials and
on YouTube here on the channel or the paid Storyline Project Lab if you want more structure, guidance and support, but the best approach to learn any of these tools on the list is to practice, so practice, practice, practice, dive into the tools, start building things, and just see what the experience is like rather than just watching tutorials and not actually practicing.
So alternatives to Storyline 360 are Adobe Captivate, dominKnow and the iSpring Suite and there are many others.
This is an eLearning development or eLearning
tool. So if you are interested in more alternatives, you could look those up, but if you want to be yeah, looking really appealing on the market, showing off some Storyline 360 skills on your portfolio is a very good idea.
Articulate Rise 360
Next up is Articulate Rise 360.
So Storyline and Rise are two different products. Rise is better at designing mobile friendly eLearning experiences, and it's very quick and easy. So it's pretty
. You can still create interactions, but it's kind of like pick the interaction you want and then swap out the text,
swap out the images. So this one is super easy, It's also very popular. So a lot of
are using it because it is included in the Articulate 360 suite.
So it includes Rise and includes Storyline.
I also have a full video breaking down Articulate Storyline versus Articulate Rise so you can decide which tool is best for which project. And I share my screen and show you examples and all of that good stuff, so check out that video if you're not clear on this distinction yet.
Again the best way to learn Rise because it is so easy is to just start practicing with the tool. So you can do your
, you can get some practice, and if there's something you're really
stuck on, you could just google it and look at Articulate’s documentation for Rise.
Some good
for this one for these mobile friendly, easy to use authoring tools are Chameleon Creator.
The designer Chameleon Creator is really, really good, very modern. It looks amazing and they have some pretty creative interactions, so check that one out. It's definitely gaining popularity.
And then Evolve too, which a lot of huge companies are starting to use. Probably a little bit
. I don't have a ton of experience with it myself, but check out Cath Ellis here on YouTube, I know she's been doing some really cool work with Evolve and I think she's going to start creating tutorials on it soon, so stay tuned on that, but that is also a really good tool. >
Adobe Illustrator
All right, Adobe Illustrator.
So now we're getting into the Adobe Suite and I'm going to share some alternatives for all these tools, but the Adobe Suite kind of lets you or the Adobe Creative Cloud, I should say, that's what it's called at the moment. It has a bunch of different tools in it, and they let you manipulate images, videos,
, all sorts of stuff. So we're going to look at a few different Adobe Tools but I will have some
if you're not in this ecosystem.
So Illustrator is for editing
and creating vec graphics from scratch. And you can even develop entire job aids or
with this tool. So when I say vector graphics, usually those are like illustrated graphics. I have a full video on how to use Adobe Illustrator, where I dive into like vector graphics versus
. But we're not going to dive into that here.
But this is the Adobe tool that I use more often than anything else when I was doing
. So this is a very good one to learn. It can be difficult to learn, but you don't need the advanced skills.
So when I first got recommended to learn Illustrator, I'm like, okay, I spend like probably 1 to 2 months going from, like, beginner all the way up through advanced tutorials, like I really
dove deep into the tool. And then once I actually started doing eLearning, designing, development work, I used basically only what I learned in that beginner tutorial.
So I way over did it and it did get pretty difficult. But if you, you could probably pick up the
in like a day or so and do most of what you need to do. And again, check out that video that I created on Illustrator because I show exactly what an eLearning designer would need to know how to do with the tool.
But they're also always great LinkedIn Learning playlists for learning Illustrator, so check that out. I learned in an earlier version with someone named Deke McClelland and that was a LinkedIn Learning series. And then there are also really good tutorials on YouTube.
The popular alternative here is Affinity Designer, and Affinity is like a much lower cost alternative to Adobe. You can do most of the same, pretty much all the same stuff as you can with the Adobe Tools, but you pay for it once instead of having a
and they have a few alternatives, but Affinity Designer is the alternative for Illustrator.
All right next up we have Photoshop. >
Adobe Photoshop
So this one is more for editing photos and images. If you want an easy way to think about it, you can use Illustrator to edit these like illustrated images and Photoshop to edit the photorealistic images.
So there's some more nuance to it than that, but that's an easy way to think about it. Again, Photoshop is difficult to learn, but you can pick up the more quickly. It's just a very, very powerful tool with a very . And as an instructional designer or an eLearning developer, you don't really need that level of skill.
Tons of tutorials on LinkedIn, learning and YouTube, and then the alternatives here are Affinity- Affinity Photo or a program called GIMP, which is free, so.
Photoshop I haven't used very much. I never did any like formal tutorials or anything like that. I kind of just pieced stuff together as needed maybe use a YouTube tutorial like when I knew that Photoshop was capable of something, but I didn't know how to do it yet.
But yeah, I used Illustrator probably ten times more than I use Photoshop. For designers who do a lot of work, like with photorealistic images and assets that may be flip-flopped, so both of these tools are good to know your way around in. >
Adobe XD
Next up we have Adobe XD.
So this is a . So we use this to design , design the for your screens and to even prototype some like simple interactions.
Generally, most IDs don't do the prototyping in Adobe XD because we could just use a tool like Articulate Storyline. But yeah, I've used this and the people I work with use this to design the visual mockups and piece everything together to see how it will look before bringing it into a tool like Articulate Storyline.
The good news is that Adobe XD is a lot easier to learn and use than the other Adobe tools. So the idea is to make it quick and easy to put together these prototype- or these mockups and layouts. You can learn it via LinkedIn Learning or YouTube just like the others.
It's good like learning the Adobe Suite tools is good because there are just so many out there and so many resources to help with these tools. I do have a full video on how to use Adobe XD in your eLearning workflow here on the YouTube channel so I will link that.
But yeah, you can pick this one up. I mean, some people really don't like this tool, which is where alternatives come into play and Figma is the most popular Adobe XD tutorial.
At the time of recording this Figma is free, but Adobe did recently acquire Figma, so we will see what they do with on that front. But two really good tools with basically the same function. Um, and it's good to add a tool like this year toolkit if you want to design more professional layouts more quickly. >
Adobe Premiere Pro
Next up the last Adobe tool we're going to take a look out here is Adobe Premiere Pro.
And this is what you use to edit videos.
So nothing I mean, you can do pretty fancy stuff with this, but this is just a video editor.
So if you need to add simple effects to videos or cut videos up and spin them back together, or add animations, Premiere Pro can do that.
After Effects can get way more like intense with the animations and stuff, but again, Premiere Pro has been fine for all I've needed it for as an ID and eLearning developer.
I'd say moderate difficulty to learn, maybe even easy difficulty. I think it depends. I mean, I grew up using tools like Windows Movie Maker and iMovie to use these like video editors. So if you're comfortable with tools like that, you could pick up Premiere Pro very easily, at least for basic video editing.
Same thing it's an Adobe tool so LinkedIn Learning and YouTube are great resources and the most popular alternative here is TechSmith Camtasia. So Camtasia is easier to use, probably a bit more . Some people may prefer it, some teams may prefer it, but if you can use one of these video editors, you can pick up another video editor very easily. >
Canva
Okay next up we have Canva.
So this is an easy to use design tool with a very rich and like they have a ton of funding, they're constantly rolling out like new features. It seems like they're starting to try to take on like Google Docs or some other feature sets.
Um, they have kind of a very all-in-one tool and like their main idea is to make design accessible to non designers.
So I haven't used this one too much like I got into the field using the Adobe Suite. But if you want like a more accessible intro and you don't want to get your hands, get hands-on with the Adobe tools yet, check out Canva. They have tons of like that already look pretty good and you can just swap things out so it makes design much more accessible, but you're going to be a bit more limited, most likely than if you're using the Adobe Suite.
If you want to learn how to use this, Canva does have their own design school. That's just how they've branded like their free resources and tutorials and all of that. So definitely check that out if you're trying to learn Canva.
Now we're going to move on a little bit so that's all like the design and the development tools. >
TalentLMS
Now, let's get into an LMS, which is TalentLMS.
So this is a , and you use learning management systems to host , manage who can access those eLearning packages, and then around like who completed them, what scores they got and all of that good stuff.
So TalentLMS is just like one of the easiest ones to learn.
But they are. . .
it's the same kind of idea- once you know how to use one LMS, you can probably pick up different ones quite easily because their are all quite similar.
I do have a full YouTube video, I think it's called “How to Use a Learning Management System”, and we actually like start a trial of TalentLMS and take a look at it together, so check that out. This is definitely a good thing to get your hands-on with. f you are new to instructional design, you'll see this as a requirement in most job postings you look at.
So learn via YouTube, TalentLMS documentation, or whatever LMS you're using documentation and then just practice. So you can you can do this in a day. You can get practice uploading an eLearning package, enrolling some people in it and then accessing some reports. And that's basically the . I mean, of course, it can get more complex, but you'll get the main idea pretty quickly if you watch that video I mentioned.
The alternatives here are Docebo, Moodle, and Canvas and probably 50 plus more. So there are so many. TalentLMS and Docebo are quite popular in the corporate space. Moodle is and has a bit steeper of a learning curve and then Canvas and Blackboard are more popular in higher ed. >Vyond
Okay, moving right along Vyond, great tool here.
So you can use Vyond to create animated videos in your browser. But the best part about it is that it has this
,
.
So yeah, it's
, it's a video, it functions as a video editor, you can like upload your own assets to use, but that's not how most people use it. Most people use Vyond's asset library.
So they have a few different like art styles, and then you can just type in what you need, like a dog or a building or an office or a hospital or whatever it is, and they just have tons of assets that all look like on-brand cohesive. So you can do really powerful work with the combination of Vyond and a tool like Articulate Storyline. And you don't really need to do much graphics work because Vyond gives you most of the assets you need.
So very easy to use and learn. And the best way to
is just start a trial and learn by practicing. I mean most people pick this up pretty easily. Of course, there are some
and some advanced techniques you can use to make your videos more effective and Vyond has plenty of tutorials to help you with this, so pretty easy to learn. Yeah, I would say give this one to go and you'll be able to pick it up without too much trouble.
The most popular alternative I've heard of is Powtoon, but I'm sure there are many others who follow this model of like giving you an asset library and then letting you edit videos with that asset library. But Vyond is the is the best one that I've seen and
it's picking up a lot of steam in the instructional design and
. And a lot of teams are using it, so good tool to show off your skills with. >
Snag-It
Next up, we have Snag-It.
So this one's pretty simple you take and edit them quickly and easily, and the best way to learn is just by using it. So I had to include this one on here just because of how much time it saves. You can just press your print screen button and then based on how you have it configured, like you can either like click and or you want to take a screenshot and you can just click the whole screen and then it will instantly open it in an editor and you can just like, you know, it very easily, add arrows to it, add text to it. So just a super easy way to like take and then edit and like in an instant, so. Very good tool there and it's pretty inexpensive. So it'll save you, it'll save you a lot of time if you grab that one. >
Next Steps
So yeah, so those are the ten instructional design software tools technology, the ten best ones, the ten most popular ones. I'm going to include a bunch of links in the description for you to follow along, so check that out.
If you would like me to create like videos on some of these tools that I don't already have videos for, like let me know. If I missed any tools also let me know.
So feel free to let us know we'll, we'll keep an eye on the comments. I'm always happy to create more videos about the ID tech to help you out.
And then if you're watching this because you'd like to become an instructional designer, then make sure you check out that full ‘Become an ID’ playlist because that's always growing and it’s helped a lot of people get their first Instructional Design job.
So thanks for making it to the end and I will see you in the next video.