Turning Tough Subjects into Memorable Training With Articulate 360

El reto

Make complex, sometimes dry content engaging and easy to learn

Pfister has spent her career focused on making learning fun, engaging, and effective, dealing with what many consider the driest subjects. It’s a tall task with high stakes for her clients. 

At one university, a core series of anatomy and physiology courses was losing enrollment despite being among the institution’s highest-revenue programs. Learners were overwhelmed by dense, text-heavy content and struggling to retain what they were studying. The university hired Pfister to revise the content in a way that would re-engage students and bring revenue back into the program. 

Another challenge Pfister regularly faces is making learning flexible for diverse audiences, like those in remote communities. For example, one of her clients needed to deliver basic accounting training to Aboriginal communities in Australia where internet access was either unreliable or nonexistent. A web-based or LMS-hosted solution wouldn’t work—Pfister needed to build training that could work reliably even with connectivity issues. 

Pfister needed tools that would allow her to unlock her creativity as an instructional designer to solve each client’s unique challenge.

La respuesta

Training that engages learners wherever they are, built with Articulate 360

Pfister has used Articulate 360 since 2013, and it’s allowed her to not just meet client expectations, but surpass them. “Articulate takes it to that next level of being able to make a course more exciting, more visually enticing,” says Pfister.

For the project in Australia, she used Storyline to build engaging accounting modules, then packaged them for offline distribution on flash drives that were sent directly into communities. Learners were able to successfully move through interactive content—dragging dollar amounts across accounting ledgers, moving sliders to watch as assets and liabilities shift—no internet required. 

For a training on clinical reasoning, Pfister used Storyline to layer real videos of nurses in lab settings into an interactive course. The training included comprehension checks, branching paths that sent learners back to rewatch sections they hadn’t mastered, and simulated phone calls with nurses in the field. Such features allowed learners to immerse themselves in the material as active participants, paving the way for real behavior change.

Desbloquear el potencial humano

Training that stands the test of time

For someone who specializes in turning dry subjects into courses that sparkle, Articulate 360 is a staple for Pfister. “I cannot envision how we would’ve created such engaging learning without Storyline.”

One of the most telling measures of Pfister’s work came in an unexpected phone call. An old friend reached out to say she’d just seen Pfister in a course—a video shot in a clinical lab, embedded in anatomy and physiology training Pfister had made over 10 years before.

The friend said she had seriously considered dropping her degree midway through—until she hit Pfister’s course and felt, for the first time, that she might actually make it. She was finally retaining the material. She said it was the best course she’d ever taken, having given her the sense of hope she needed to finish the course. 

The university client saw this sentiment reflected in their enrollment numbers, which brought an underperforming program with a high earning potential back to life. Ten years after Pfister originally created her physiology and anatomy course, the university was still running it due to the impact it had on learners. 

On a more recent project, Pfister delivered five complete training modules by the end of July against a November deadline—months ahead of schedule, thanks to Storyline’s speed and ease of use. Stakeholders reviewed the finished courses and told her the online versions were better than the face-to-face training. For Pfister, that outcome captures what Articulate 360 makes possible: not just faster production, but a higher ceiling on what online training can do.

Articulate 360 gives one instructional designer the tools to meet learners where they are, whether that’s a remote community without internet access or an unengaged student.