📖 Glossary

Articulate 360 Trial / Paid — The subscription toolkit for building e-learning. It bundles two authoring tools (Storyline, Rise) plus supporting apps. No permanent free tier, but there's a full 30-day free trial.

Rise 360 — The browser-based authoring tool. You build responsive courses by stacking ready-made blocks. Cross-platform (works on Windows, Mac, Linux, Chromebook). Fast and hard to make ugly.

Storyline 360 Windows only — The flagship authoring tool: a Windows desktop app built around slides and a timeline, for custom interactions, simulations, and branching. Mac users run it in a Windows virtual machine.

Review 360 — Publish a course to a private web link so reviewers leave comments right on the slide or block; you revise, republish, and resolve.

Content Library 360 Trial / Paid — A large library of templates, slide layouts, icons, photos, videos, and illustrated/photographic characters you can drop into either tool.

Reach 360 Add-on — Articulate's own lightweight LMS for delivering courses to learners and tracking completion when you don't have a separate LMS. Seat-based; often billed separately.

AI Assistant Add-on — Built-in AI helpers that draft text and outlines, generate quiz questions, summarize, rewrite, and more. Usage is metered.

Studio 360 — A legacy set of PowerPoint add-ins (Presenter, Quizmaker, Engage). Still ships with the suite, but almost all new work happens in Storyline and Rise.

Accordion — A Rise interactive block: stacked sections that expand one at a time. Good for FAQs or a few related sub-topics.

AICC — An older LMS tracking standard, predating SCORM. Still supported for legacy systems; rarely the first choice today.

Alt text — A short text description of an image, read by screen readers. Write meaningful alt text for informative images; mark purely decorative images as decorative so they're skipped.

Block — The basic building unit of a Rise course: text, image, quiz, interaction, and so on. You stack blocks to build a lesson.

Branching — A course path that changes based on learner choices (e.g., a scenario where different answers lead to different outcomes). Built with the Scenario block in Rise, or by jumping between slides in Storyline.

Button — An interactive object learners click. Storyline buttons have built-in states (Normal, Hover, Down…) and can carry triggers. Rise has Button and Button Stack blocks.

Character — An illustrated or photographic person (with poses and expressions) from Content Library 360, used as a guide, mentor, or scenario actor. Trial / Paid

Closed captions — Timed on-screen text for audio/video, for accessibility. You can import caption files or use the built-in editor; an auto-caption feature may be available (varies).

cmi5 — A modern LMS profile built on xAPI that standardizes how courses launch and report. Combines SCORM-like structure with xAPI's richer data.

Condition — The optional "on condition" part of a trigger: a rule that must be true for the trigger to fire (e.g., "…on condition NumVisited = 4"). See Trigger.

Content Library 360 — See The Suite above.

Cover page — The title/landing screen of a Rise course (image, title, description). Part of a course's theme and first impression.

Cue point — A marker you place on the Storyline timeline to sync animations, audio, or triggers to a precise moment.

Dial — An interactive Storyline object learners rotate to set a value; often paired with variables and conditions for what-if interactions. An advanced object.

Distractor — A wrong answer choice on a quiz question. Good distractors are plausible, not silly — they make the question meaningful.

Drag-and-drop — An interaction where learners drag objects onto targets. In Storyline it's a freeform question type; useful for sorting, matching, and labeling.

Event ("When") — The "when" part of a trigger: what causes it to fire (user clicks, timeline starts/ends, state changes, variable changes). See Trigger.

Flashcard (Flashcard Grid) — A Rise interactive block of cards that flip to reveal a back side. Good for term/definition or question/answer practice.

Focus order — The order in which keyboard/screen-reader users move through objects on a slide. Storyline has a Focus Order editor so you can set a logical tab order per slide.

Freeform question — In Storyline, a question you build from ordinary slide objects and then designate as gradable: drag-and-drop, pick one, pick many, text entry, or hotspot.

Hotspot — An invisible clickable region placed over part of an image or slide. Great for "click the area that…" interactions and hotspot questions.

HTML5 — The web output format Articulate publishes to. Modern courses run as HTML5 in a browser (Flash is long gone).

Knowledge Check — In Rise, an ungraded practice question block (multiple choice, multiple response, fill-in, matching) that gives instant feedback without affecting a score. Contrast with a graded Quiz.

Labeled Graphic — A Rise interactive block: an image with clickable markers that reveal text/media. Perfect for "the parts of a thing."

Layer — In Storyline, stacked content on top of a base slide (feedback pop-ups, detail panels) that you show/hide with triggers. Different from the timeline, which controls timing.

Learning objective — A statement of what a learner will be able to do after a lesson, written with an observable verb ("identify," "calculate"). Your compass for what to build.

Lesson (Rise) — A page within a Rise course; a course is made of lessons (and optional sections). A lesson is a stack of blocks; there are also Quiz lessons.

LMS (Learning Management System) — The platform that hosts courses, enrolls learners, and records completion and scores. You publish for an LMS using SCORM, xAPI, AICC, or cmi5.

Localization — Adapting a course for another language/region. In Storyline, export to XLIFF or Word, translate, and re-import; Rise has a translation export too. See XLIFF.

Marker — A pin/hotspot-style object (in Storyline, and in Rise's Labeled Graphic) that reveals a label or pop-up when clicked or hovered.

Microlearning — Short, single-topic learning. Rise offers a microlearning course format for bite-sized content. Part of the suite/plan. Trial / Paid

Mock-up — In this course, an original, simplified drawing of an interface used instead of a real screenshot, so the material stays clear as Articulate's design evolves.

Normal / Hover / Down / Visited / Selected / Disabled — The built-in Storyline states of an object. Hover and Down happen automatically on mouse-over/press; Visited, Selected, and Disabled are set by interaction or triggers. See State.

Objective — See Learning objective.

Process — A Rise interactive block that walks through ordered steps one at a time. Good for procedures.

Publish — Turning your author file into learner-ready HTML5 output for a target (LMS, Web, Review 360, Reach 360, Video, or Word). See the target-specific terms.

Question Bank — In Storyline, a reusable pool of questions you can draw from — often a random subset — so each learner sees a different mix.

Quiz — A graded assessment (in Rise, a Quiz lesson; in Storyline, graded question slides with a Result slide). Has question types, feedback, attempts, and a passing score. Contrast with a Knowledge Check.

Reach 360 — See The Suite. Add-on

Responsive — Content that adapts to screen size. Rise courses are responsive automatically (great on phone, tablet, and desktop) — one of its biggest selling points.

Result slide — A Storyline slide that reports a quiz score and pass/fail, and feeds completion/score tracking to an LMS.

Review 360 — See The Suite.

Ribbon — The tabbed toolbar across the top of Storyline (Insert, Slides, Design, Transitions, Animations, View…), much like PowerPoint's ribbon.

Scenario — A decision-practice interaction: a situation, choices, and outcome feedback. Rise has a Scenario block; Storyline builds scenarios by branching across slides, often with characters and variables.

Scene — In Storyline, a group of slides — like a chapter. Story View shows scenes and the slides (and branching) inside them.

SCORM — The most common LMS tracking standard. SCORM 1.2 is the safe, widely supported default; SCORM 2004 adds finer sequencing and status. Packaged as a zip you upload to the LMS.

Screen recording — Capturing your screen in Storyline, then inserting it either as a single video or as step-by-step slides for a software walkthrough. See Software simulation.

Section 508 — A U.S. accessibility requirement for federal (and often federally funded) content; in practice it aligns with WCAG. See WCAG.

Slide — The basic canvas unit in Storyline, holding objects, a timeline, layers, and triggers. Scenes contain slides.

Slider — An interactive Storyline object learners drag along a track to set a value; paired with variables and conditions for interactive/what-if content. An advanced object.

SME (Subject-Matter Expert) — The person who knows the content deeply. Even with AI drafts, an SME should review for accuracy before you publish.

Software simulation — A Storyline recording published in one of three modes: View (watch a demo), Try (practice with guidance), and Test (perform without prompts). Signature feature for software training. Windows only

Sorting Activity — A Rise interactive block where learners sort items into categories; great for "which bucket does this belong in?" practice.

Stage — The main editing canvas of a Storyline slide, where you place and arrange objects.

State — A visual version of an object (Normal, Hover, Down, Visited, Selected, Disabled, Hidden, plus custom states). Changing state is how objects react visually. The first pillar of Storyline interactivity.

Story View — Storyline's map view of all scenes, slides, and the branching arrows between them — the big picture of your project.

.story file — The Storyline project (source) file you edit and save. Keep good versions/backups; don't rely on the cloud alone.

Storyboard — A simple plan (often a table) of each screen's on-screen text, media, and interaction, made before you build. Saves rework.

Tabs — A Rise interactive block that organizes content into tabbed panels. Good for a few related topics viewed one at a time.

Theme (Rise) — A course's fonts, colors, cover, and logo. Set it once, up front, and everything inherits a consistent look.

Timeline — In Storyline, the bar at the bottom that controls when each object appears and disappears (start time, duration). Drag the bars to sequence content.

Timeline (Rise block) — Note: Rise also has a Timeline interactive block that lays out events chronologically — not to be confused with Storyline's editing timeline.

Tin Can — The original nickname for xAPI. See xAPI.

Trigger — The engine of Storyline interactivity: an Action + a "When" (event) + optional Conditions (e.g., "jump to next slide when the user clicks Start"). Triggers run top-down. The second pillar.

Variable — A container that remembers a value. Three types: Text, Number, and True/False. Set/adjusted by triggers, read by conditions, and referenced in text. The third pillar.

%VariableName% — The reference syntax that inserts a variable's current value into on-screen text (e.g., Hello, %Name%).

Video — A publish target (an MP4 of your course) and a media type you can insert, trim, and place on a layer or slide.

WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) — The core accessibility standard, summarized as POUR: content should be Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, and Robust.

Web (HTML5) — A publish target that produces a self-contained course you host on a site or share by link, with no LMS tracking.

xAPI (Experience API / Tin Can) — A modern tracking standard that records granular "statements" about what learners do, enabling richer analytics via a Learning Record Store — beyond simple pass/complete.

XLIFF — A standard translation file format. Export a Storyline project to XLIFF (or Word), translate it externally, and re-import to localize the course.