Universidad Afirme Develops Courses 134% Faster Articulate With 360 AI

The Challenge

Build high-volume, confidential training without relying on outside vendors

Universidad Afirme’s Instructional Design team coordinates instructional designers who produce training across a broad and demanding content portfolio. This includes onboarding training for new employees joining each week, Expert and Master certifications for employees advancing their careers, specialized product certifications covering credit cards, mortgages, and auto loans, regulatory courses for all bank employees, and leadership and competency development programs.

Over 450 active courses require ongoing maintenance. That volume puts real pressure on the team to produce training quickly without sacrificing quality. The team’s reach also extends beyond Afirme employees—Universidad Afirme develops training for microfinance clients on financial education topics. The university also partners with the Faculty of Administration and Public Accounting at the Autonomous University of Nuevo León. Dual-enrollment students complete part of their coursework at Afirme facilities.

For years, the available tools didn’t match the company’s needs on a large scale. Early course development was defined by slide-based training. Later attempts to use another e-learning provider stalled because the team lacked the specialized knowledge necessary to use the provider effectively. After migrating to a new learning management system (LMS), the team experimented with its built-in authoring tool, but found it to be limited.

A bigger structural problem was that much of Afirme’s content, including internal processes, proprietary systems, and product details, could not be handled by outside vendors due to confidentiality requirements. A large portion of the most important training simply had to be built internally.

The team needed an authoring tool that their designers could genuinely master and that could handle the volume, variety, and pace of the business.

The Answer

Efficient, interactive training with Articulate 360 AI

Universidad Afirme’s training programs cover a wide range of topics, including weekly onboarding cohorts, product certifications, regulatory compliance, and leadership development. Most of this content is built in Rise and includes customer service training for branch offices and contact centers, operational risk and fraud prevention courses, mobile banking simulators, and business process content.

Rise’s intuitive interface was a key factor for a team that included early-career designers with basic experience with authoring tools. The team adopted it quickly, and the results showed it.

“Rise’s interface is simple and approachable,” says Diana Lagunas, Academic Manager. “Rise makes it easy for people to create training content—even without extensive experience with authoring tools.”

For more complex learning experiences, the team turns to Storyline, building simulator-style exercises that mirror the actual software interfaces employees use on the job. The result is training that feels relevant and grounded in the real work employees do. Review keeps collaboration with subject matter experts organized and on track, consolidating feedback in one place.

The team has also used Storyline to build a “Knowledge Leaders” certification—an internal train-the-trainer program designed to cascade expertise across the organization. “It drives profitability and productivity,” says Lagunas. “The knowledge stays right here within the company and gets passed on exactly the way we need it to.”

Articulate’s AI features have changed how quickly the team can work and reduced its reliance on external tools. “With the AI capabilities already built into Articulate, we don’t need additional AI tools to quickly create high-quality courses,” says Laura Barajas, Director of Training and Development.

Designers use Articulate’s AI to draft content, refine text, and unify the tone across courses. The team has also embraced Rise’s code block functionality, using AI to generate custom interactions such as accordions and image layouts. These are the types of interactions that their designers build with visible enthusiasm. What used to require specialized technical knowledge now happens inside the same tool the whole team already uses.

“We’re excited by how quickly we can create more engaging experiences with Articulate’s AI features,” says Lagunas. “We’ve created custom content, interactive accordions, image-based activities, and even themed experiences, such as video game–inspired modules.”

Unlocking Human Potential

134% faster course creation and strong learner feedback

The impact of Articulate 360 AI has been significant. After adopting Articulate’s AI features, the team could create training 134% faster compared to the previous year. This reflects how dramatically AI-assisted text generation and correction have shortened the development cycle for high-volume content.

“Once we started using Articulate’s AI features, our productivity increased,” says Lagunas. “We can now develop training materials 134% faster. Tasks that used to take hours, especially writing and editing content, now move much faster with AI support.”

Learner feedback reflects the change as well. NPS scores have risen to an average score of 91 since the team adopted Articulate, with employees leaving unprompted feedback praising course quality—and even making requests for new features like music and mini-games. “People are genuinely eager to learn,” says Lagunas. “They’re not viewing it as an obligation.”

For a bank that trains new cohorts weekly and certifies employees at every stage of their career path, maintaining an in-house training program is both a competitive advantage and a compliance requirement. Afirme’s training covers processes, systems, and products that cannot leave the organization. The result is a high-volume training operation that is fully in-house and consistently well-received—exactly what a bank growing at Afirme’s pace needs.

“It’s rewarding to see our investment in Articulate paying off,” says Barajas. “We’re constantly discovering new ways to get more value from the platform instead of just using the basics.”

Universidad Afirme’s Academic Team uses Articulate 360 AI to develop in-house, confidential banking training programs, creating training 134% faster and consistently high learner satisfaction among its 4,300 employees nationwide.