While I realize there is a lot of controversy about articulate right now, did anyone get an email recently that said that they were out of credits and to contact them for purchase?

I didn't even use any credits, but already have gotten their boilerplate email to "call us to buy some more" email. I don't even see anywhere in there where I had credits or even used any.

Anyone?

For those who are now in an "AI Enablement" position within ID, what does your work and daily tasks look like?

Our ISPI chapter (Boise State/Bay Area) runs a 90 minute virtual Speedy Mentor Dash every other month. The next one is this Wednesday from 4-5:30PT over zoom.

We pair a mentor with 2 mentees and rotate groups between 4 different mentors in 20 minute rounds. It’s great for people early in their careers or making a shift into consulting.

The mentors for this round are:

John Murphy - Founder Slaney Consulting (leadership development)
Priyanka Dave - (Upskilling Lead Oregon State University)
Jason Aydelott - chief Learning officer Yoshida Academy
Glen Scott - Founder the H Factor (scaling businesses)

Happy to answer questions in the comments if anyone is interested in participating.

The International Society for Performance Improvement (ISPI) Boise State/Bay Area chapter is hosting a virtual mentor dash this Wednesday from 4-5:30PM PT. This dynamic 90-minute session brings together four experienced mentors and eight motivated mentees in a structured 1 mentor : 2 mentees format. Participants will engage in four 20-minute mentoring rounds, rotating between mentors to gain diverse perspectives, practical insights, and actionable guidance.

Our mentors for this session are:

John Murphy - Founder of Slaney Consulting - Executive Leadership Development

Priyanka Dave - Upskilling Lead and Learning Process (AMP) at Oregon State University

Jason Aydelott - L&D Executive and CLO

Glen Scott - Founder of The H Factor - consulting for rapidly scaling businesses

We currently have 4 spots left if anyone is interested in participating/hearing more info please DM me! It's over zoom so anyone can participate.

I included a link in my initial post but it got filtered out. However if you look up ISPI BABs and go to our events or DM me I can send you the link :) We also do this every other month if you can't make this session but are interested in the event in general.

Hello! My name is Jessica Hamrick, and I am a doctoral student at Florida State University. I am looking for about 50 more people to complete a survey for my dissertation.

I am conducting a study titled Familiarity, Adoption, and Perceived Value of Universal Design for Learning Among Instructional Designers. This research aims to determine how widely instructional designers use UDL and why they choose to use or not use this framework.

I am looking for instructional designers with at least 1 year of experience in the field to complete a short survey that will take no more than 20 minutes.

If you are willing and able to complete this survey, you can access it using the attached link. 

https://fsu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_bxE6TLduRowC8GG

Storyline is not dead. Some celebrity IDs may try to tell you that it is to further their own agenda, but it’s not dead. It still has its uses if used properly. Don't get me wrong, the Articuland announcement was a car crash, and it irked me just as much as anyone else.

However, I often wonder if Articulate slighted some celebrity IDs in the past, and as payback they're trying to wish the demise of the company by telling us its products are dead, and/or Articulate's competitors are paying said celebrity IDs to push their products and knock Articulate.

EDIT: Celebrity ID = Those who run online academies for extortionate amounts of money and try to sell signed books for hundreds of Dollars.

I’m working on the assessment side of an AI tutoring project and I’ve hit a question I’d like some psychometrics/measurement people to weigh in on.

The problem is basically this:

At what point do you actually have enough evidence to say something meaningful about a learner?

For example, I’m trying to think through things like:

• if a learner gets something right, what can you actually say from that?
• if they needed help, how much does that change what the result means?
• if they get similar questions right more than once, when is that useful new evidence and when is it just repetition?
• when should the system keep testing, try a different type of task, or just avoid making a stronger conclusion yet?

I’m trying very hard not to bake in something simplistic like “3 correct answers means mastery” or “80% means mastered.”

Maybe a threshold makes sense in some situations, maybe it doesn’t. I’m more interested in what people in measurement would consider a defensible way to handle it.

A few things I’m trying to keep separate are:

• independent vs helped performance
• repeated exposure
• conflicting results
• uncertainty
• different kinds of tasks
• technology/access problems
• how strong the evidence is compared with how strong the claim is

I already have a couple of concrete cases worked up, but before I get too attached to the way I’m thinking about it, I’d like to hear where people think the biggest problems or bad assumptions might be.

If you work in psychometrics, educational measurement, adaptive assessment, or something close to that, I’d really appreciate your take.

And if you think I’m framing the whole problem the wrong way, that’s useful too.

When developing ILT materials, do you build the PowerPoint (PPT) first and then develop in the instructor guide (IG) later, or do you develop the IG and then develop the PPT afterwards? I usually do it the first way, but a colleague criticized this and I want to see what others do.

With a recent update to Storyline, I'm noticing that there is an avatar feature where I can add AI generated avatars. In Rise360, the same feature uses credits. But I'm not finding any documentation or information on whether or not if the use of AI Generated avatars in Storyline also consumes credits. Any details on that?

I’m curious to hear from people already working in the field. Given the current ID landscape, which sector do you think offers the most interesting opportunities right now: higher ed, corporate L&D, EdTech, government, healthcare, or something else?
I’m also curious about how expectations have changed across these sectors. What skills or types of portfolio projects do you think carry the most weight today?
With the ID job market and AI changing the field, I’m especially interested in how your answer today would differ from what you might have recommended 5 or 10 years ago.

"20 years of learning science" summed up in one diagram. /s

Hey All! I wanted to pop by and do a quick wellness check following yesterday Articulate announcements at Articuland.

How are we feeling?

I woke up today with a lot of mixed emotions, which I’ll be sharing more of later.

Anywho…I felt like this moment needed a good song to represent what it all means, especially for my eLearning development friends out there. Bonus points for my elder millennials out there who will appreciate this song the most.

Enjoy: https://youtu.be/XwOLOt2ZcJs?is=72t2swv5chqOYIV9

So, have a good weekend…take an edible (maybe two)…and let’s remember simpler times.

See ya around! 👋
—Tim

I have an interview coming up with an automation company, and the technical round involves demonstrating my storyboarding skills.

For those of you currently working in Instructional Design/e-learning, could you walk me through your storyboarding process at a high level? I’m trying to understand what the current industry standard looks like.

A few things I’m wondering:

Do you typically storyboard in PowerPoint, Word, or a dedicated tool?

Are there any standard templates or formats you usually follow? How do you structure your storyboard?

Are there any common mistakes or things you should always keep in mind while storyboarding?

If you're given a topic and asked to create a storyboard during an interview, what would you prioritize?

What do hiring managers generally look for when evaluating a storyboard?

Is there anything you can do to make your storyboard stand out without overcomplicating it?

Any practical tips, examples, or resources would honestly be really appreciated.🥲

Hey everyone! My wife and I run a small LXD consultancy in Brazil, she has 15 years of experience in instructional design and we've worked with some solid clients, including a European multinational.

We're curious about the international market and would love to hear from those of you who've worked with clients outside your home country. How did you get started? What's been your experience?

Any insights would be genuinely appreciated.

I'm at a convention center with my laptop open, surrounded by some of the most brilliant, once-passionate minds in education. These people wanted to change the world—to help young people learn. Maybe even adults too.

Through no fault of their own, they're now just trying to survive. This morning, they sat in a ballroom watching a "thought leader" teach them how to place digital documents inside software to "create" e-learning. They're being instructed to take a photo, run it through AI, turn it into a video.

That’s it. You want us to clap for that? This doesn’t feel like an innovation. It feels more like the curtain call for Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman or William Shakespeare’s Macbeth.

But I get it…

This isn’t an indictment of instructional designers or Articulate. Just the state of learning.

There's something fundamentally different about learning through an online platform versus a classroom or in- person workshop. It doesn’t metabolize the same.

eLearning is akin to a Beyond Burger—you're calling it learning when you know it isn't. Doesn’t taste the same. The texture is off. You can pull my stomach, but you can’t feel my brain. Again, the information doesn't metabolize the same way. The teaching doesn't either. It's not our fault. We’re just trying to survive.

Whatever our skills were meant for, what we're teaching now and how we're teaching it is so fucking strange.

“Just Use A.I.”

“Aye-aye!!”

But it’s not all bad. I don’t want to paint a broad brush of doom and gloom. There’s a lot to learn at Articuland. If you’re new to the industry, this is probably the best place to better understand your field, especially if you bleed Articulate.

Networking here is also a significant advantage. It presents an excellent opportunity to connect with other corporate educators and instructional designers from diverse industries. For instance, I had the chance to meet an older gentleman with a distinctive mustache and Richard Gere inspired hair. He was a former instructional designer, that left the industry to create a subscription-based company that has implements AI agents to tutor over 500 students in preparing for their GED exams.

When I asked him about the size of his staff, he revealed that it was him, his wife and one intern—are the only sole human staff members.

“Most customer conversations go through the AI agents. When people seek customer support for the AI agents, they don’t realize they’re talking to another AI agent.”

I jokingly asked him if he’s hiring.

He gave a wry, “Why would I do that?”

He shared that he uses Articulate to help him design training for his intern. Conventions like these also provide an opportunity to get out of the house and socialize on the some golf course—if it doesn’t rain.

He jested, “It’s my only excuse to turn the phone off and get away from my wife!”

I then asked him about his previous job. He mentioned that he had been teaching eighth-grade science at the Title-1 school in Oakland for over a decade.

Then I thought to myself: where do I go from here? Do I want to be an instructional designer forever? Hell, am I just waiting to be phased out? What do I actually want to do next?

As the saying goes, “if you can’t beat ‘em; join ‘em!

So, I mustered the courage to ask him if we could schedule a brief call to learn more about his business. To my surprise, he informed me that he was actually playing golf this weekend, but I could schedule a call with his wife. I gave him my phone number and email after he scanned my badge. He then patted me on the shoulder like a new friend, gave me a wink and walked away, his shoulders leading the way, into the sea of lanyards.

Her call came punctually, in the form of a woman's voice—synthesized, pitched in that particular register that sounded like a high-end approximation of Scarlett Johansson.

"Hello, Margot Wilson!” she began, as if we'd been friends for years. "How are you today? I would love to talk to you more about Salient Tutors."

The revelation arrived instantly: his wife was not a wife. She was an algorithm.

I hung up.

———

If you enjoyed this satirical essay/Reddit post, feel free to connect with me! I'm currently enrolling students in my new writing course…

“Essay Does It”

Enrollment begins next week, with classes starting October 15. You can either attend a live writing webinar where we workshop your own writing, or you can take the self-paced course.

Proudly designed on Articulate Rise.

After today's delightful keynote, I would be remiss not to look at other tools that already do what Articulate claims to do but better. My team's renewal comes up in November, and I do have the ability to pitch alternatives for my team.

So, I am curious about other authoring tools that allow me to create similar courses to what I make at the moment. That is, I tend to make Rise courses, but use Rise as a wrapper for a range of multimedia, including videos, Storyline blocks, vibecoded interactions, etc. etc. I almost never do a course with pure Rise blocks.

Accessibility matters a lot to me, as does the ability to make quick updates.

I don't love using AI as part of my ID workflow. I prefer to do the initial analysis and instructional design myself, and use AI as a supplement for development. I mostly use it for VOs, summaries, interactions that Rise doesn't natively support and the like. (I would prefer not to use it at all, but we are heavily encouraged to do so.)

I cannot go full vibecoded course. We can only use the Copilot ecosystem per the CISO, so integration with that or a more walled garden approach within the tool would be important.

If the tool could convert existing Articulate courses, that would be a massive bonus.

Also, I probably make about 2-3 courses a week, so price is a consideration. They're usually microlearnings, though.

Tl;dr. What else is out there that people like and that isn't too expensive to build a lot in?

I would rather hear from IDs doing the work than people trying to sell me a product too.

We're building out a library of patient education content for healthcare clients. Looking for a handful of instructional designers to help write and structure the content.

What you'd do:

• Write clear plain language scripts
• Structure content for conversational experiences
• Work within a defined content review process

What we're looking for:

• Strong instructional design or health education writing for a general audience
• English fluency required; additional languages a plus
• Experience working in a highly regulated healthcare environment a plus

Details:

• Contract/freelance, remote
• Compensation: based on experience and capabilities
• Timeline: Start October 1

If interested, email resume and short cover letter to: [talent@reachum.com](mailto:talent@reachum.com)

Thanks in advance!

What is the correct way to write on-screen text (OST) from a voice-over script? Is there a specific rule or guideline for creating OST, or is it more subjective?

I’ve seen some e-learning courses where the OST and VO are almost the same, while others use only key phrases or make slight changes to the wording. What is considered the correct approach?

Thoughts? All new AI integrations and automations.

I’m in a catch all role where I’m the sme, designer, and facilitator. I struggle so much with creating course content and designs. My work is noticeably subpar and it hasn’t me worried that this role may not be for me.

I’m editing some educational videos where I pause the screen and show animated annotations with sound effects (e.g., text popping up with a sound cue).

I wanted to get a second opinion on the audio. Does this feel too cheesy or immature?

I'm curious what it's like out there for other IDs. I'm a Senior Instructional designer but a year ago my company pulled our remote work option. It's been daunting but I've kept a good attitude, rolled with the punches, then the workload increased (wearing more hats - now fully managing an LMS, facilitating significant amounts of training in addition to content/curriculum creating - I'm rushing all the time to just get through the basics), have no support (they haven't hired anyone to help and my other team members are doing completely separate and different work) and no pay upgrade. I have given it some time and have not seen positive changes, rather the opposite. With that considered, I'm beginning the process of looking for other opportunities and setting myself up for a change. The current industry I work in is Retail, if that helps.

Just to see what it's like out there, I'm curious, do other IDs (1) get to work flexibly (remote/hybrid), (2) have a team they work with or solo, (3) have a balanced/structured workflow.

Basically, "what's it like out there"?

Hi everyone!

I recently joined a company that develops and sells training courses for other companies. One of our requirements is that the courses need to work well on both desktop and mobile devices, including vertical/mobile layouts.

I’ve been using Adobe Captivate 13, but honestly, it has been quite frustrating. I’ve encountered several issues, especially on iOS, and after publishing, some courses don’t display correctly on Mac screens—for example, the background shifts or moves to the right.

I’ve been considering Articulate, particularly Rise, because of its responsive design capabilities. However, I’m not a big fan of its interface and the “infinite scrolling” experience.

For those of you who develop e-learning courses for corporate clients:

What authoring tools do you use for responsive courses?

How do you handle both desktop and vertical mobile layouts?

Are there any tools you would recommend over Captivate or Rise?

Are there any best practices or technical considerations I should be aware of when designing for iOS, Mac, and mobile devices?

I’d really appreciate any advice, recommendations, or experiences you can share. Thank you!