Which E - Learning authoring tool and LMS to buy

Jun 15, 2012

Hi everyone,I was wondering if i can have some suggestions on buying a e learning authoring tool and LMS for my company.

This the first time we are implementing an e Learning platform and was wondering which authoring tool and LMS will best suit us.The programs which we want to convert into an eLearning platform are the corporate induction program which is in word document,occupation health and safety and scenario based training for our new CRM software.

I have heard of Articulate storyline and online as LMS.I was wondering if it will be best thing to buy and implement as going for a wrong one can risk the project.

Please suggest a simple to use authoring  tool and LMS to begin with for an year or so which will produce quality content and help to distribute the courses and record results.

Thanks

9 Replies
Jeanette Brooks

Hi Amanda! Both Articulate Storyline and Articulate Studio are great tools for developing all sorts of content, and both are very easy to use. I'd suggest downloading the free trial and just play around with them for a little bit. Create a few slides, quiz questions, or interactions, and see which tool you prefer. The trial also includes a 30-day subscription to Articulate Online, so you can even experiment with uploading some content and doing some reporting and tracking.Articulate Online is super easy to use, and it gives you a lot of great reporting options, including the ability to create custom reports.

As far as authoring, one of the main differences between Storyline and the Studio suite, is that Studio relies on PowerPoint as the "hub" where you build your content. Articulate Presenter works hand-in-glove with PowerPoint, so you build your slides in PowerPoint and use the Articulate menu within PowerPoint to add movies, narration, web objects, a player, control the slide properties, and more. You can also fold in quizzes and interactive slides into your course by using Quizmaker and Engage if you want. (Those products are also part of the Studio suite.)

Storyline, on the other hand, is more of a one-stop-shop... it doesn't rely on PowerPoint, and it gives you all the authoring features you need (content building, quizzing, interactivity) in one tool. It's also got a great simulation and screencasting feature, which is wonderful if you do any kind of software training. If you're interested in building scenarios, it includes a great library of 40 illustrated characters and 1 photographic character (but you can add more). Each character has a whole bunch of different expressions and poses.

A great way to get familiar with both tools is to attend a free daily webinar on either or both products ...here's where to get more info on that:

Articulate Daily Demo

Amanda Coliette

Thanks Jeanette. Will download the free trail both forArticulate Storyline and Online to get myself familiar with them.

Iwas wondering if you could please clarify the following for me:

1.   Does Articulate online allows to distribute courses among 200people in the organization and track their progress?

2.   How many users we can set up with one Articulate Onlinesubscription to distribute the courses?

3.   If we have Sharepoint Server 2010 in our organisation, do westill need Articulate online as an LMS or we can use Sharepoint 2010 as LMS.

4.   Can we integrate Articulate online and Sharepoint Server 2010for one stop shop or they are completely different

Appreciateyour assistance

Amanda

Jeanette Brooks

Hi Amanda,

  1. Yes.
  2. You can find all the plan options on this page. As you'll see there, the premium plan allows up to 500 user accounts. If at any point you think you would need a larger plan, you could contact us; it's likely that we could set up a custom plan to meet your needs.
  3. I'm not a Sharepoint user, but my understanding of Sharepoint is that while you could place your content on a Sharepoint server, it's really not designed to track or report on learners' progress.
  4. If you use Articulate Online, your content would be hosted within Articulate Online (it doesn't integrate with Sharepoint).
Amanda Coliette

Thanks Jeanette.

Also I was wondering if you can help me with this new e-learning project assigned to me .

It's an e-learning course for new employees (new hire induction) which involves business overview with some intros, org charts,process info, Compliance, Corporate Structure, overview ofdifferent business areas where different department heads in the organisation comeand address the new group, emergency evacuation procedure and an evaluation.

I have the training material prepared in a worddocument and have to convert it into e – learning course.

I was wondering if I can get some examples to get started or any suggestions on how to proceed to create the e-learning course.

Thanks

Amanda

Jeanette Brooks

Hey Amanda, your situation sounds a lot like the challenges that another Articulate user named Bill Corwin faced when he developed a new-hire orientation for Experian. He too had a lot of existing resources that he wanted to use, but he also wanted to make the orientation e-course fresh and inviting. You can read about the approach he used here. He also created a follow-up screencast which he shares here.

You might also like to review the ideas shared in this thread:

New Hire E-Learning Orientation

Regarding your question about how to proceed, I'd recommend investing some time talking with your project sponsors about what exactly they want to achieve with the course. What are the specific objectives they want to achieve with the training? Do they need learners to develop some specific skills or knowledge? How will the learners demonstrate mastery (in other words, how will you know they learned what they were supposed to learn)? What on-the-job evidence of their learning will help you to know that the course was successful? Or, is the course really more about compliance requirements? If so, how can you make the course as painless as possible while still fulfilling the required compliance obligations? 

This recent blog post from Tom Kuhlmann is a great resource for how to craft online learning when you already have a set of existing training materials that you need to basically transform.

I hope that helps! Once you have a clear picture of your course's specific objectives, you might consider starting a new discussion thread in the forums, so that others can chime in and offer their advice.

Peter Zimak

Amanda Coliette said:

Hi everyone,I was wondering if i can have some suggestions on buying a e learning authoring tool and LMS for my company.

This the first time we are implementing an e Learning platform and was wondering which authoring tool and LMS will best suit us.The programs which we want to convert into an eLearning platform are the corporate induction program which is in word document,occupation health and safety and scenario based training for our new CRM software.

I have heard of Articulate storyline and online as LMS.I was wondering if it will be best thing to buy and implement as going for a wrong one can risk the project.

Please suggest a simple to use authoring  tool and LMS to begin with for an year or so which will produce quality content and help to distribute the courses and record results.

Thanks


Hi Amanda,
In my opinion is better if you buy first a modern LMS which support the current standards (scorm, html5 and so on...).

Normally you can upload to the LMS all kinds of documents for rapid sharing. But If you want to produce good learning objects you have to buy (or download for free) an authoring tool. I use captivate in the last version that is the most complete authoring tool but it also need some specific training, you can try with ispring that is a free converter (form ppt to scorm) or with the whole suite. Articulate storyline is interesting but also limited to some functions... For example captivate allows you also to do very good screen recording.


I currently use Docebo as LMS for my company and we find it very friendly and complete; you can upload Scorm Learning Objects and large variety of training materials.
Best
Peter

Morten Skoglund

If you need a LMS to plug into Sharepoint the Elearningforce is an option. I haven tried their LMS myself but that was the option that the last company I worked for looked at. Not sure if they went for it.

http://www.elearningforce.com/products/Pages/SharePoint_LMS.aspx

 On the development side I highly recommend Articulate Storyline for putting it all together. Probably the best tool out there 

Frank McConnell

I'm currently experimenting with Moodle which is a free open source LMS for the Moodle LMS itself. You can confer with your IT Department about hosting Moodle on your company's server or there are a multitude of low cost hosting options for Moodle. I've uploaded an Employee Safety Orientation course that I created with interactions and quiz slides.

When I previewed the course after uploading it, there were no issues at all. Moodle 2.3 is the most stable version of Moodle at the moment from what I understand. For more information, visit www. moodle.org.

This discussion is closed. You can start a new discussion or contact Articulate Support.