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My quick thoughts on H5P and Articulate Rise 360. The good, the bad, the ugly.

retro 50s style image of a lady thinking about Rise and H5P

Recently, I have been using the popular e-learning authoring tools, H5P and Articulate Rise. Here are some quick points that I’ve noticed about the two products when making responsive e-learning courses.

Two screenshot of work. One done in Articulate Rise the other done in H5P
Some screenshots of recent work I have done. Note that the H5P example is a “Column” content type.

H5P

  • H5P is an open source and versatile tool that comes free with Moodle and Canvas (and other LMSs)
  • It comes with many responsive interactive content and assessment options.
  • The user interface for building things can be clunky, but hopefully efforts are being made to improve it (apparently an AI upgrade has just happened so I’ll be checking that out).
  • The results look OK but still a little ugly in places and could do with some cosmetic touch-ups.
  • H5P is suitable for formative assessments, but for rigorous, more bulletproof evaluations, LMS-based assessment tools are recommended.

Articulate Rise 360

  • Articulate Rise is very user-friendly to build in. It is also visually appealing with its white space, nice templates and “swooshing” effects.
  • The tool is much more expensive than H5P, requiring an annual subscription that costs more than my Adobe Creative Cloud subscription. But that cost includes Storyline 360 and the handy Review 360.
  • There are a lot less options for interaction and assessment types than H5P. You can build things in Articulate Storyline and bring them in, but you may have issues when viewing on different screen sizes.
  • Its built-in assessment tools may not be as robust as LMS-based options.
  • No backup? I cannot see how I can backup my courses. If I stop paying my subscription I lose access to the courses. If a client wants a small change a year later I will need to pay for another year’s subscription.

Conclusion

H5P is powerful, free, and integrates with LMSs, but has a clunky interface. Articulate Rise is easy to use, visually pleasing, but expensive, has no backup features and has limited options for content types. These are just some quick observations that I hope help you choose the right tool.

Want more?

To see examples of H5P go to their website at https://h5p.org/content-types-and-applications

To see what Articulate Rise 360 can do, go to their website at https://articulate.com/360/rise

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