Articulate 360 is one of the best eLearning development tools on the market today. Articulate Storyline has been a staple of eLearning development for the last 10+ years and Articulate’s newest development tool, Rise, is an incredibly lightweight and easy-to-use tool. While Articulate’s development tools are top notch and feature-rich, their LMS, Reach 360, is a minimalist approach to distributing and tracking learning. This type of design isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it is somewhat narrowly focused on the type of digital learning strategies that will be successful with Rise 360. Since Articulate has made Reach 360 part of the Articulate Teams Subscription, review Articulate Reach 360 to learn how you can best leverage this LMS in your own digital learning strategy.
Strengths of Articulate Reach 360
Integrated Content Creation: Reach 360 seamlessly integrates with the Articulate suite of development tools. That means you can directly publish to Reach from Rise and Storyline. You don’t have to export SCORM .zip files and import into your LMS. You publish to Reach 360 like you publish to Articulate Review. In my opinion this is one of the best features of Reach, it seamless fits into one of the most popular development ecosystem, Articulate 360.
Scalability: Articulate Teams subscribers start with 300 users for free. However, you can easily scale to additional users by upgrading your Reach plan. Articulate assures us they can scale to an organization of any size. (Although its unlikely that a large organization would use Reach as their primary LMS…. see more under Weaknesses).
Mobile Design: Reach 360 boasts a fully responsive design ensures that learners can access courses from any device.
Simple Design: The UI is minimalistic and simple. It’s easy to get in, take your training, and get out. You’re not going to find social learning, gamification, blog posts, and other features you might find in other LMS solutions. However, that’s kind of the beauty of Reach. It delivers and tracks training and doesn’t try to be anything else.
Weaknesses of Articulate Reach 360
Reporting: Reach 360 tracks completion data by learner, course, group, and learning path. Its a high level view that give you the basics of what most organizations need. However, that’s about it. There are no options for custom reporting or report automation.
User Management: Reach 360 allows admin to import users or invite them with a link. What’s lacking is an integration with HR systems to manage the user records. Larger organization will struggle with keeping records up-to-date without a connection to their HRIS. Users can be organized into Groups. Groups are given access to Libraries (or catalogs).
Course Types: While Reach 360 seamlessly integrates with Storyline and Rise, there are few options to create and manage courses beyond the Articulate products. SCORM .zips can be uploaded, but there is no option for non-eLearning modalities like Instructor Led Training.
Best Use Cases for Articulate Reach 360
Like any LMS, whether Reach 360 is a good choice for your organization will depend on your unique requirements. Reach is not the primary LMS for an organization with large and complex learning strategies. So where does it make sense to use Reach 360?
- Your First LMS: If you are just starting with a digital learning strategy, Reach 360 is a great place to start. Articulate Rise is a good tool for new eLearning developers because of its ease of use. Rise courses will seamless move into Reach without having to worry about SCORM. Reach can easily manage smaller audiences (<100 users). So if you’re only training an organization of fifty employees, its a great way to get started.
- Direct Distribution to Unnamed Audience: If you are running a pilot program or a special training that requires distributing courses to a group of learners, but you don’t know exactly who they are, Reach might be a good option. Reach allows for self-registration and self-enrollment in a course through a QR code or link. For example, you can have a course that is not “required” and promote it through email, text, etc. If someone is interested, they can easily launch the course from the link.
Overall, Articulate Reach 360 is a fantastic value if you’re already part of the Articulate 360 Teams ecosystem. Its included in your subscription cost and provides some immediate value if you don’t have an LMS solution in place. Even if you have an existing LMS solution, the course distribution feature might have a role in specific programs that need to run outside the confines of the traditional LMS.
At Tang Technology we help our clients find the right LMS solutions for their unique learning strategies. If you’re interested in learning more about Reach 360 or want to get a quick sense of the LMS market, drop us a note using the form on this page.