Here at Brio, we specialise in writing bespoke e-learning courses using software called Articulate 360.
We’ve received many emails and heard through the E-Learning Heroes community grapevine that AI was on its way to Articulate. We knew AI was here to stay, so the Articulate rep sorted us out and the next thing, we dove into AI. Here’s some initial thoughts for those developers out there!
We are starting with AI in Rise360
The AI Assistant tool is easy to find. It pops up as soon as you click the +Create New course button. The AI assistant asks three easy questions and you load up source material for it to reference. Our test client had a lot of source material. Two large files (over 100MB) were rejected but for the most part it was extraordinary how fast all the files were uploaded. It’s important to note: the more source files you have uploaded, the more AI must sort through. This element of the AI is a dream come true.
AI then generates some courses titles. Using the instruction, “Call the Course….” can force the AI to list the course title you want. (This took a while to figure out). It does seem like with most AI platforms; some knowledge of basic questions and instructions is necessary. Otherwise, you might run into the frustration of thinking AI is useless or unnavigable. Articulate have tried to anticipate common questions and have a basic selection available which was helpful for a first timer.
At this stage, we ran into a hiccup, as the AI generated a Lesson Structure and dot points that we didn’t like, and needed manually rearranging. AI was asked to add, remove and reorder the lessons and sub lessons and it finally got it to the right place – but then the course outline crashed with an error message…multiple times. The time wastage was frustrating. Reducing the size of the course structure solved the issue, and bingo! It generated a course.
The AI Block Button can directly use specific source content which is a must if you want it to generate narrower, on topic content. (If you let it have access to all the source material the content ends up very generalised). Our favourite AI function to date, hands down, is the Instant Convert function, which magically transforms content from a paragraph to a list, flashcards, a sorting activity and more. Game changer!
It didn’t take long at all to finish the course using AI, but it left us in no doubt of the necessity to have a SME proof-read it for accuracy and do the human thing to make sure the end product is the quality we expect in bespoke e-learning, particularly for less generic content areas, such as emergency and disaster management and other regulatory issues. No leaving the AI all alone just quite yet!
We know further investigation and exploration is needed to discover the full benefits (and limitations) of Articulates AI. We are looking forward to discovering functions including the AI Image Generator and how we can make it work for the Brio team. We think it may be just that – an assistant to help us with some heavy lifting, but probably not a replacement for the wonderful developers in our team.
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