Posts Tagged ‘Articulate’

Adobe Captivate 5 — Simulations on Tap

Posted by Jason Willensky on . There have been 1 comment.

Greetings, global citizens of the Litmos eLearning community!

Last time—we talked about authoring tools, and we answered a few common questions about Adobe Captivate 5 and Articulate Studio ’09. As we dive more deeply, we’ll look at the strengths of each platform. This week, we’ll begin our analysis of Adobe Captivate 5.

To clear up a question, you can acquire Captivate 5 in two ways. First, it’s available as a stand-alone program, for $799.00 USD (or $299.00 USD for a qualified upgrade).

Second, Adobe Captivate 5 is available as part of Adobe’s eLearning Suite 2 ($1799.00 USD, or starting at $599.00 USD for a qualified upgrade). The eLearning Suite combines some of Adobe’s best offerings for eLearning (e.g.. Captivate 5) with elements of its powerful Creative Suite.

If you have the budget, consider Adobe eLearning Suite 2. It’s a beast—the package contains Captivate 5, Flash Professional, Dreamweaver® CS5, Photoshop CS5 Extended, Acrobat® 9 Pro, Presenter 7, Soundbooth CS5, Bridge CS5, and Device Central CS5. You’ll probably get your money’s worth from Captivate, Soundbooth, and Photoshop alone. If you already have some of these programs, it probably makes more sense just to add applications a la carte.

As the weeks go by, we’ll look at different feature sets. As we’ve said before Captivate 5 is a loaded eLearning solution that works beautifully as a blank canvas. You can perform layout magic and manipulate fonts, graphics, and animations. You can go quick ‘n’ dirty (but cool) with Captivate’s stock functions, or get crazy and be elaborate.

For now, though, let’s look at Captivate’s magic bullet: screen recording. Imagine you’re in charge of creating eLearning to take your people through a new system (a pretty common situation). If you have to design and develop eLearning for systems, there’s no rapid development tool quite like Captivate.

The image above is from a sample on Adobe’s site. With Captivate’s autorecording modes, you can go in one, two, or three different ways:

  • Demonstration mode (“show me”): Records what’s going on on-screen, but with no user interaction in the Flash movie output. Useful to get your learners oriented to a process or user interface (or just to show them how cool your new system is). Captivate automatically adds text captions that label what’s happening.
  • Training simulation mode (“try it”): Captivate automatically adds click boxes, text entry boxes, and feedback (failure/hint captions). Your learner can interact and perform within the simulation.
  • Assessment simulation mode (“test me”): The click boxes and text entry boxes are there, but the feedback isn’t. You can actually assess your learner’s ability to use the system.

Here’s the kicker: you can rig Captivate to capture in all three modes at the same time. You don’t have to capture three different times; separate output is available for all three modes.

There is also a custom mode available that allows you to create hybrid “demo-sims.” You can use your imagination as you get more comfortable.

Think about it. If you’re short on time, you can take your learner through a rapidly-built “show me-try it-test me” process that actually requires them to perform in a closely simulated environment before they have to go live.

Is it perfect? No way. You’ll need to polish your captures before you publish. Don’t worry: it’s fairly easy to edit the text captions, straighten/speed up the mouse pointer, and make sure the timing is correct. Still, it’s remarkable how quickly you get get something effective to your learners.

The output is also SCORM-compliant, and can be tracked easily by an LMS (such as Litmos). We’ll soon look at ways to use Captivate with your LMS, but here’s a teaser: Captivate’s Advanced Interaction screen allows you to set or disable tracking/scoring/reporting for every action your learner takes.

If you have mission-critical systems training (like financial or electronic medical records), you may want to know how your learners perform on a click-by-click basis. If you don’t want to look under the microscope, you can just track whether or not they’ve looked at parts of the course. It’s your call. Talk to your Litmos team about how to use Captivate output with the Litmos system.

Tip: There’s lots of great conversation about Captivate on Twitter. According to soon-to-be Adobe eLearning Evangelist RJ Jacquez (@rjacquez), a good bet is to search for and use the #AdobeCaptivate hashtag. If you’re new to Twitter and hashtags, here’s a Captivate demo from RJ on how to add a column on TweetDeck for the #AdobeCaptivate hashtag (how meta!).

We’ll look more deeply at Captivate 5 and look at its feature set (this version, for instance, allows you to set up master slides much as PowerPoint does). We’re also going to look at Articulate Studio ’09 and its own magic bullet(s). Stay tuned!

Cheers,

@jwillensky

How Do I Get My Stuff Online?! Intro to Authoring Tools

Posted by Jason Willensky on . There have been no comments.

Hello, Litmos community! For those of you tasked with making an organizational transition to eLearning, we salute you—in all your overworked glory.

In a previous post, we emphasized the point about having an eLearning philosophy (and standards) in place to encourage you to begin at the beginning. Tools change and evolve. You will probably master multiple platforms. Your personnel may come and go. Nevertheless, the philosophy you adopt and build will work across tools, and can be shared with different people.

We’re going to shift our focus to rapid eLearning authoring tools. Most of our attention will be on two industry heavyweights: Adobe Captivate 5 and Articulate Studio ’09. Nothing against excellent tools like Raptivity or (cloud-based) Udutu, we’re just thinking about what our broader audience is likely to use.




What to look for

As an organizational learning person, you probably have lots of source material (often PowerPoint presentations) to convert. Here are some questions you might want to ask when investigating authoring tools:

What does the software look like?

Captivate 5 operates (primarily) as a stand-alone tool. Articulate Studio ’09 has several components—the typical user scenario involves using these components from an additional ribbon tab within Microsoft PowerPoint 2007 and higher.

Can I work with existing PowerPoint presentations?

Captivate allows you to import PowerPoint presentations and even perform “round-trip” edits back to PowerPoint source files—you can keep the files in sync. This feature is useful if you work with subject matter experts (SMEs) who can use PowerPoint but not Captivate. Articulate components, as we mentioned, are typically accessed within PowerPoint via an Articulate ribbon tab.

Can I create good-looking output from scratch?

Yes—both Captivate and Articulate function beautifully as a blank canvas. You can:

–create text captions.

–import graphic elements.

–control sizing and layout.







What about learning interactions?

Both Captivate and Articulate feature ways to incorporate Flash-based interactivity (no programming knowledge required). As we talk further about tools, you’ll learn about creating learner interactions, judiciously using animation, and building quizzes.

How do I get new ideas and support?

Both products are thoroughly supported by the manufacturer, but the great joy in using these tools comes from interacting with their respective user communities. Adobe Captivate has both a forum and an exchange, where users make their work (such as widgets) available for use. Articulate has a helpful and passionate user community, and the company itself sponsors @tomkuhlmann‘s wonderful Rapid E-Learning Blog.

Can I create simulations?

Many users need to create systems training. Captivate got its start as a Macromedia product called RoboDemo—it made its bones as a simulation tool, and it’s one of the great strengths of the program. You can create demonstrations, interactive simulations, and even hands-on assessments.

Articulate is often used in concert with other tools (such as Captivate or TechSmith’s Camtasia) to create a simulation environment.

If Captivate handles simulations as well, why would I want to use it with Articulate?

It’s subjective, but many people swear by the gorgeous output from Articulate. Inserting a simulation built in Captivate gives you the best features of each tool.

Do these tools play ball with my LMS?

Always check with your LMS vendor, but both Captivate and Articulate are SCORM-compliant. Litmos customers: ask the team any questions you might have about compatibility.

We’re going to look at these tools in detail. Next post: a look at Adobe Captivate’s features, and how to think about them from an organizational perspective.

Cheers!

@jwillensky


How Do I Get My Stuff Online?! Philosophy Break

Posted by Jason Willensky on . There have been 2 comments.

Greetings, worldwide Litmos community!


This was going to be a post on the nuts and bolts of Adobe Captivate, but… it’s not. A few people have asked me what I meant by choosing an eLearning philosophy (subtle, gently probing, questions like “What are you talking about, fool?”). OK,” philosophy” was a bit grandiose. We, the people of Litmos, are nothing like these four guys you see at left.


Philosophy? The idea is to pick an initial set of guidelines or principles for development. As long as these guidelines are clear, valid, tested, and learner-centric, it almost doesn’t matter what you choose. The idea is to pick a set of rules and get started. Let’s talk about it.


OK, you’re ready to strap on your jetpack and visit the fantastic world of eLearning. You’ve identified content that’s sitting there in old PowerPoint decks, PDFs, and whatnot. You’ve fielded crazy training requests from stakeholders in other units. What’s next? Get an authoring tool? Fun! No—that’s not it. Stop.


Think before you play with authoring tools. Keep this (not genuine) Zen paradox in mind: it’s not about the tool—it’s about the learner. It doesn’t matter what tool you’re using. By thinking ahead about the look and feel of your eLearning, you can take your practices and use ‘em with any authoring tool. You can also use them across different delivery platforms, such as mLearning for mobile devices.



Did you read your Ruth Clark? No? OK, we’ll let you cheat. Here’s an article from Learning Solutions magazine that encapsulates Dr. Clark’s six main principles.

Get these six principles down in advance, and you will save yourself a lot of heartache and revision.


There are plenty of ideas that work, but starting with a sound philosophy— and being consistent with it— will put you (and your projects) on the fast track. If you choose another set of principles, fine. Just pick something. I chose the Clark principles as an example because so many practitioners I respect have used them for years. It’s a great, concise set of guidelines.


Why do I say “it’s not about the tool?” Consider Dr. Clark’s contiguity principle: at its heart, this principle states that “placing text near graphics improves learning.” You can, and should, do that sort of thing with any authoring tool you use—Captivate, Articulate, Raptivity, etc.


As we talk about tools, and as you experiment, keep your basic principles in mind. These principles will also help you evaluate tools to see if they are appropriate for what you need to do. With a set of guidelines, you will also set the tone if you bring in or mentor other developers.


Without these principles and guidelines, you will have to reinvent your plan of attack from project to project, and from developer to developer. This process would be as futile as trying to dunk a basketball on a giraffe (hat tip to eLearning wizard Tracy Parish, aka @hamtra, for the metaphor).


We’re going to talk extensively about authoring tools, but I hope you take this piece to heart. No matter what tool you use, no matter what medium you develop for (mLearning, anyone?), you have to have some basic guidelines in place.


Next time: We talk about authoring tools.


Bonus question: Can you identify the painting at the beginning of this post?


Cheers!


@jwillensky




How Do I Get My Stuff Online?! The Fun-filled World of Authoring Tools

Posted by Jason Willensky on . There have been no comments.

Let me wish you a happy and productive new year from the Litmos blogging team! It’s time to continue with our occasional manifesto on how to bring eLearning to your organization (and maximize the use of your LMS). This is a food-for-thought post on authoring tools.


Many Litmos clients (and others tasked with magically converting an organization’s assets into eLearning) struggle with process at the outset. There is a seemingly endless stream of information, and quite a high percentage is good information. Nevertheless, making a choice is difficult. In our last post, we took a look at how to resist the tyranny of choice and begin to approach (attack?) your organization’s content.



An immediate suggestion was to devise an approach to eLearning (using maybe one or two sources from books, from noted practitioners, or from courses or workshops) that appeals to you, and base your initial design/development guidelines on that approach. You will always have time to refine and expand your organizational philosophy—the important thing is to get started.


Getting started often means choosing an authoring tool. There are stand-alone tools. There are tools that function as plug-ins. There are screen capture tools. There are cloud based-tools. That tyranny-of-choice thing is going to pop up again. Newly minted organizational eLearning gurus and neophyte instructional designers are often paralyzed by one-best-way thinking; with so many tools in the

marketplace, where to start?



Here’s an idea: Jane Hart, founder of the Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies (C4LPT), has put together an excellent directory of learning tools. In addition to the heavyweights (e.g. Articulate and Captivate) the directory includes some fantastic task-specific tools like Jing that can make life a lot easier. Check the directory out. Bookmark it. Think about what you need to do (PowerPoint conversion? Simulation? Screen capture?). Consider this–there doesn’t need to be a single solution. Many of these tools complement each other.


After you’ve come up with guidelines for your eLearning approach (Look and feel? Use of audio? Level of interactivity?), you can start experimenting with authoring tools. If you haven’t adopted principles from a source like e-Learning and the Science of Instruction, this is an excellent time to do so. You’ll save yourself a lot of time and pain later on.


At the beginning, you may want to choose a tool that provides muscle (different ways to create input, Flash output) and a great deal of flexibility. Two giants of the industry are Adobe Captivate and Articulate Studio ’09. If you are taking an organizational lead, I strongly recommend experimenting with these tools. Both are available as full-featured demos, and you should be able to master the essentials very quickly. Here’s why these tools are a good place to start:


1. Both allow you to work effectively with existing PowerPoint files, yet both are an excellent blank canvas for scratch projects.

  • Captivate allows import of PP presentations (and round-trip editing).
  • Articulate Presenter is integrated with PowerPoint itself (see below).







2. Both have extraordinary support communities (soon, we’ll be looking at these resources in greater detail).


3. Both allow you to judiciously add interactivity and graphic elements (buttons, arrows, quiz interactions, etc.) to static material with ease.


4. These tools come from stable, well-staffed companies. If you invest in either (or both), you will likely see long-term support and improvements.


In the coming weeks, we’ll take a look at both of these tools in greater detail. They are by no means your only options, but using them will help you get moving. The key is to practice and use those guidelines you’ve developed.


Until next time!


@jwillensky




How Do I Get My Stuff Online?! The Beginning

Posted by Jason Willensky on . There have been no comments.

Here’s a secret about your learning management system (LMS): it’s rarely used to its full potential. The Litmos crew tells me that clients often have questions about how to “get stuff online.” The questions may seem strange, but the same dysfunctional process plays out all over.


If you’re relatively new to the process of getting your organization’s knowledge ready for eLearning, take heart. There is an extraordinary amount of information out there. Over the coming weeks, we’re going to talk about strategies to get your stuff online, and we’re going to direct you to some favorite resources. Of course, we can only scratch the surface—we encourage you to add your favorites in the comments.

Why is it so hard to get that good stuff online? Here are a few typical LMS-client scenarios:

  • A client engages an LMS vendor as part of a single, extraordinary training effort (New system! New product! Merger! Revolution!). A consultant builds fabulous eLearning, the LMS people create a model for a repeatable (and scalable) user experience, employees learn and perform, the LMS tracks and reports—but that’s it. No more engagement. There’s no momentum, because nobody at the client organization is empowered to fully use the LMS by getting additional content into the system.
  • A client has an LMS relationship in place, and all kinds of assets ripe for conversion: PowerPoint® decks, PDF files, Word® docs, static intranet material, new hire/orientation packages, etc. Unfortunately, the mass of collective knowledge sits there, diffuse, gathering dust…
These scenarios are just two illustrations of what goes on. It sounds like institutional paralysis (and maybe it is), but consider your assets:

  • You have an LMS environment in place (such as with Litmos), or you are in a position to set one up. This environment gives your learners a place to go when they need to build knowledge and skills, and allows you to monitor what your learners find most effective.
  • You have content. Lots of content. Reams of content. This is the hard part. Your people could have access to organized and engaging, rather than semi-accessible and static, content. Example: imagine how your workforce could (really) internalize your company’s marketing strategy, if only they actively participated in eLearning modules instead of just doing some reading.
So, how do you get stuff online? First things first: a content dump is doomed to fail. This maxim is what’s known as a “painful elaboration of the obvious.” Taking text, a few pictures, and (maybe) an intern’s voice and throwing it all into a slide show just won’t work. So, a good first principle is to build a short philosophy for your organization’s eLearning.

How will it engage learners? What’s effective? What part of the process is repeatable?

Taken another way, this philosophy answers the question “How do I treat content?” The sexy part of eLearning may involve learning authoring tools and adding effects, but it’s critical to have a solid foundation in content treatment before you start.

Building that foundation is the challenge. There is a paralyzing amount of theoretical and procedural material about building eLearning—websites, academic journals, social networks, conferences, and on and on. Most of it is valid, but getting through it all would take several lifetimes. Suggestion for new eLearning philosophers: read a few books and focus on what the authors have to say. Develop some guidelines. They will serve you well and eliminate the need for a lot of re-work down the road.

A graduate student in instructional design recently asked me to pick two books that I felt would have the most value as she made the transition to a corporate training job. She was going to be tasked with starting a medium-sized company’s eLearning efforts, and the company had a good deal of scattered content. My suggestions:

e-Learning and the Science of Instruction (Ruth Colvin Clark and Richard E. Mayer): Fantastic first read about eLearning. and a terrific example of theory-into-practice. Consider this: if you practice what the authors preach, you’ll have a strong idea of how to use text, visuals, audio, and interactivity. As important: you’ll know why.

Better than Bullet Points—Creating Engaging eLearning with PowerPoint (Jane Bozarth): Let’s face it. This software is everywhere. That’s why I like this book. It’s an excellent complement to e-Learning and the Science of Instruction. If you are just getting started, it might surprise you to realize that PowerPoint is a perfectly fine blank canvas for eLearning. Furthermore, you probably already have some PowerPoint skills. Why is this a foundational book? You will not only gain a wealth of hands-on experience (that transfers to other tools), you will also avoid the monsters of bad eLearning: page-turners and endless bullet points.

Please add your suggestions for foundational reading in the comments. As the weeks go by, we’ll continue looking at the essential elements of getting your good stuff online. Next up: authoring tools.

@jwillensky

Which are the Favorite eLearning Authoring Tools?

Posted by Nicole Fougere on . There have been 5 comments.

Here are some more interesting figures from a different Tagoras report this time called “Association E-Learning: State of the Sector” (my last post focused on a report about LMS costing / implementation time). This one was released over a year ago in March 2009 so the figures may have changed a little, but this time they are in relation to eLearning authoring tools and who’s using what.

From the summary: The report is primarily based on a survey of associations from November 20 – December 19, 2008. Out of the 488 responses received: 61.1 percent were from individuals who indicated that their organization is currently using e-learning. An additional 26.2 percent indicated they plan to start using e-learning within the coming 6 to 12 months, while 12.7 percent indicated they have no plans to start using e-learning in the coming 12 months.

Anyway – on with the interesting figures that reveal who’s using what to design their online learning content:

  • 60.4% Microsoft PowerPoint
  • 24.8% LMS/LCMS tools
  • 13.5% Articulate Presenter
  • 8.1% Adobe Captivate
  • 7.2%  Camtasia (Techsmith)
  • 3.7% Adobe Connect
  • 1.4% Lectora (Trivantis)

Looks like PowerPoint is still the favorite by a long shot, probably because Microsoft Office would be the all-purpose product suite of choice for most organizations – even before moving in to eLearning – so it’s a natural extension. Plus, it is the base tool that many of the others listed above build on and also because of the familiarity we have with using Microsoft tools.

I see they have done a February 2010 follow up to this report but I couldn’t find an update to these particular figures; it would be interesting to know how things are changing. Maybe it’s time to put together another survey…I’ll work on that.

 @Schnicker

eLearning Content Authoring Tools: Articulate

Posted by Nicole Fougere on . There have been 1 comment.

This is the first post in a series I’m doing on eLearning content authoring tools. I should clarify that I’m not affiliated with any of the products I have included in this series.

Founded in 2002 by Adam Schwartz, eLearning company Articulate has grown over the years to offer a full suite of eLearning authoring tools which can be purchased together as ‘Articulate Studio‘ or separately as outlined below:

  • Articulate Presenter ’09 – Presenter is a PowerPoint plug-in that allows you to instantly and easily add narration, animations, Flash movie and interactions to your PowerPoint presentation then publish it to Flash. Presenter also enables the integration of quizzes from Quizmaker (below). With SCORM and AICC output for Learning Management Systems (LMSs) this is the perfect tool to liven up your presentations and really involve your learners.

  • Articulate Quizmaker ’09 – This is Articulate’s quiz building offering with which you can create interactive, multi-lingual quizzes and surveys filled with multi-choice, fill in the gap, drag ‘n drop, image hot spots and many more types of assessment scenarios. To make quizzes more exciting you can incorporate slide designs and color schemes. All of your essentials are there: question randomization, time limits, passmarks and more. When you’re happy with the end result quizzes can be published to the web directly or connected to an AICC or SCORM-compliant LMS. As mentioned above, quizzes can also be integrated in to Articulate Presenter to be a part of a more comprehensive learning module.
  • Articulate Engage ’09 – The specialty of Engage is creating interactive models to explain processes and concepts. The best part is you don’t have to create them from scratch! Engage opens with 10 options for interactions ranging from a process, labeled graphic, circle diagram, time-line and more. Once again, the finished interactions can be integrated in to a PowerPoint Presentation to be published to Flash using Presenter.
  • Articulate Video Encoder ’09 – This highly useful tool allows you to record new or convert current rich media video files to .FLV format. During the process you can add in narration, trim and crop the media, brand the content with your logo, and tweak visual and audio settings.

These guys also offer an LMS called Articulate Online which can be used to deploy and track content created using their proprietary tools only.

I have always liked the Articulate brand, but I haven’t used their products until recently. What I’ve always liked about them is they have a thriving and friendly online community. It is definitely a huge resource to take advantage of should you decide to go with Articulate. In fact, they have just published a great list of resources called “How to Get Articulate Support, Training and Tutorials” which just demonstrates how much they want you to succeed.

Finally, with a whole page on their website dedicated to the numerous awards their products have won (see here), it’s no surprise that Articulate has ‘more than 15,000 organizations in 115 countries’ using their products.

@Schnicker

10 Tips to Becoming a Rapid E-Learning Pro

Posted by Nicole Fougere on . There have been no comments.

I’ve been reading Tom Kuhlmann’s eBook as pictured on the right. Tom is the author of The Rapid E-Learning Blog (part of the Articulate website) and although the book has been around for a wee while, there are some really great ideas and relevant tips in there. I extracted a few of the ones I liked the most for this post:


10 Tips from ‘The Insider’s Guide To Becoming a Rapid E-Learning Pro’:

  1. The difference between a novice and pro is that the pro knows how to contribute to the organization’s bottom line. Remember, while training is important and e-learning is vital to effective training, the organization’s true goal isn’t to create more training. Instead, the goal is to meet performance objectives. E-learning is just a means to an end, and performance results are the pot of gold at the end of the e-learning rainbow.

  2. The more relevant the course is to the learners, the more engaged they would be, even if the course isn’t “best in breed” multimedia.

    On content authoring tools…
  3. START WITH A TOOL THAT LEVERAGES POWERPOINT. PowerPoint is a very flexible application and most people have access to it, and there are many products that leverage PowerPoint to create Flash-based e-learning.
  4. The secret is to step away from the PowerPoint look. Treat it like a blank canvas and you can do some really nice things with it.
  5. Effective e-learning requires assessment, and there are many similar quizzing tools on the market. What I’d look for is SCORM compliance, ability to publish to flash, and ease of use.
  6. To get the most out of your authoring tool you need to leverage multimedia to make quality e-learning courses.

    On images, audio and video recording…

  7. One of the main considerations is whether the image can scale without losing quality. Those that can are called vector images and are preferred when working with most e-learning tools.
  8. When it comes to audio, start with the best quality you can, because you’ll never have better quality than your source file. [Here are some more tips on recording audio]
  9. Before you commit to using video, ensure that your organization has the infrastructure and investigate the technology available to your end users.
  10. Make it a habit never to exceed 3-4 minutes on a single video and you’ll avoid losing viewers.

I would definitely recommend giving the full eBook a read as it’s free to download here.


Photo courtesy of www.articulate.com

@Schnicker