E-Learning Help & Advice Please

Mar 20, 2013

Hello everyone...im relatively new to the world of e-learning. I use PowerPoint to create a lot of our e-learning. We do have Articulate & Captivate, however, i tend to use PowerPoint more. With this in mind our company is only just buying into the power of e-learning; they have seen what we can with the tools we have available, however, I would like some advice on what other tools i can suggest to my company that will help us achieve a better e-learning suit. I have heard about Story Line & that this is a good add on to Articulate; then the old faithful Photoshop...any other suggestions would be great...thanks everyone

11 Replies
Judith Blackbourn

Hi Dan, welcome to the community.

Storyline can replace your combination of Articulate, Captivate, and PowerPoint. In fact, having experience with those tools can make it easier for you to get up to speed quickly with Storyline.

You may find Storyline a little frustrating at first, because it doesn't work exactly like PowerPoint, but has many similar capabilities. However, you have discovered an excellent resource in this community. Many posters can answer your questions on how to specifically solve a problem or how to generally approach your task.

Why not download the trial version, read the tutorials, and give it a dry run? You may be heading into a new frontier!

PS  - I'm not a paid spokesperson for Storyline, I just love to use it! jb

Jerson  Campos

Hey Dan

Welcome to the Articulate Community. Just to clarify something, Storyline is not an add on to Articulate presenter, quizmaker, and engage. Storyline is it's own standalone product. It can do almost everything that the other software + powerpoint can do. Now I said almost, there are a few things it cannot do, but they are few and storyline makes it up with other powerful features. If you are already familiar and comfortable with powerpoint, you will feel at home with storyline. It has a very similiar interface. At first glance you could almost swear it's powerpoint. 

Here are my suggestions for sofware selections. I suggest to research each software and make sure they meet your needs. Each have their strenghts and weaknesses. I'm sure other members will have tons of software to add.

**********Elearning *************

Powerpoint ,Articulate Presenter, Engage, Quizmaker   or

Storyline   or

 Adobe Captivate

**********Screen Captures ***********

This is built into Storyline and Adobe Captivate or

Snag it

Camtasia (video)

***********Image Manipulation *********

Photoshop

Powerpoint (I use powerpoint to create very simple and fast graphics like charts, buttons, and other mockups)

 Gimp - Not very familiar with this program, but it is free and available to use for business purpose.

Photoshop Elements - little brother to Photoshop

*********Sound/Recording ******

Audacity - Free but powerful, slight steep learning curve

Adobe Audition

There is also some editing features in storyline and captivate.

*Note - Adobe has gone to a subscription only option for most of its products. This is a good option if you want access to a majority of their software at little upfront cost, and always have access to the latest software upgrades. This might pose a problem if your organization is like mine where they are slow to upgrade computers and OS and the new software may not work on older systems. I suggest doing some research on this and make sure that this is a viable option for your organization.

Madeline Goepp

Hi Dan,

Some great comments above, just thought I would add my two cents.

I have seen a lot of course creating with Storyline, although I am no expert, I have seen some great things come out of it, probably better than most other authoring tools.  

Powerpoint, although not that exciting, if you approach it well, I think some great courses come from using it.  That being said, I am really sick of seeing PowerPoint courses full of bullet points!

If you are going to use a screen capture tool be prepared for some funny encoding issues.  Again, not an expert on video, but from my experience a lot of them have their own file types or just encode them in a funny way. **cough cough** Camtasia.

Photoshop is, of course, awesome but I personally use GIMP.  It's not as pretty and can be difficult to use at first but now that I'm use to it I think I prefer it over Photoshop.

Scott Hewitt

Hi Dan,

There are a whole host of free and paid applications available to you. From your post you have already looked at Articulate Studio and Storyline. To support your development efforts you might want to look at some development tools and applications.

Here are a few of the tools that we use that help us in our work:

http://basecamp.com/ - online project management tool

http://animoto.com/ - create great videos online

http://www.screencast-o-matic.com/ - great screen capture tool, has a free version

I'd created a list of 40 free tools for learning that was a mix of applications, tools, websites, authoring tools and videos that you might find useful. It is a more detailed list.

Thanks,

Scott

Poonam Agarwal

Hi Dan,

With my personal experience, I would make a strong recommendation of Raptivity for you. Whether you want to use it with PowerPoint, Articulate or Captivate. It would be a great interactive solution for you. It helps you take your eLearning content to the next level using variety of interactions like presentation aids, games, quizzes, simulations etc. You would be able to create your first interaction as fast as 10-15 minutes. You need not be an experienced eLearning developer to use Raptivity. And since, you would be entering into eLearning, this definitely would be an added point for you to look into.

Bruce Graham

Poonam Agarwal said:

Hi Dan,

With my personal experience, I would make a strong recommendation of Raptivity for you. Whether you want to use it with PowerPoint, Articulate or Captivate. It would be a great interactive solution for you. It helps you take your eLearning content to the next level using variety of interactions like presentation aids, games, quizzes, simulations etc. You would be able to create your first interaction as fast as 10-15 minutes. You need not be an experienced eLearning developer to use Raptivity. And since, you would be entering into eLearning, this definitely would be an added point for you to look into.


Just to qualify this, and it's my own perception:

1> Raptivity have the most convoluted pricing and bundling policy I have ever come across, and

2> I have never successfully found a way to make a Raptivity interaction "feel" like the main bulk of the work I am creating. There is customisation available, but I have just never had much luck with it.

3> For me anyway, a huge % of the available interactions are too frivolous for my customer base. Obviously, they may be fine for you.

Bruce

Ron Starc

My Screen Recorder Pro is a better screencast software tool. Records your screen and audio from the speakers or your voice from the microphone - or both simultaneously. The recordings are clear and look great when played back on your PC or uploaded to YouTube. It will record directly to AVI, WMV, MP4, or FLV. Just perfect for creating tutorials, demos, and presentations. Plus, java is not required and there are no limits on recording length. Also, the recordings play back on any device.

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