Elearning development tools: only Adobe? Over the last ten years or so, major elearning developers have preferred to use tools like Flash, Authorware and Director from Adobe (earlier Macromedia). In recent years, with the inclusion of various features in Flash and the vast installation base of Flash Player amongst internet users, Flash has become be first choice for eLearning development and delivery over web. One of the other major advantages of Flash is that is supports close designer-developer collaboration. Is there a competitor to Flash? MORE >>

The Articulate Studio has been incredibly popular and some developers have achieved impressive results. You can build templates and themes and share these between projects and developers. managed to have a quick chat with Michael Allen and he explained just what a major undertaking the development of this tool has been. Michael was, of course, the creator of Authorware, a highly powerful tool from the CD-ROM era, which Adobe eventually gave up on after they inherited it from Macromedia. Anyone who wanted to do top-end development had to do serious coding in Flash. MORE >>

Authorware , Toolbook ) to the new generation of WBT authoring tools (e.g., We are seeing a significant shift in development away from mostly creating courseware to creating more-and-more reference materials designed to be just-in-time support. Just when you've made the transition from the prior generation of CBT authoring tools (e.g., Captivate , Lectora ), it looks like things are slowly shifting again. The shift I'm seeing is away from the design of pure "courseware" solutions and much more to "reference hybrid" solutions. Often there's period quizzing to test understanding. MORE >>

My posts around the Beginning of Long Slow Death of Flash and my post from a CTO perspective that I Cannot Bet on Flash for new development stirred up quite a bit of response. Jeff Goldman in Development Tools I Would Learn If I Were You - Jeff's response to June’s Big Question tells us: Flash: Yes, Flash is still very much alive and well in e-learning and because it is so embedded in our industry and there is nothing at this time that can provide the rich interactive elements that it provides, I do not see it being “dead” in our field anytime soon. eLearning Technology. MORE >>

Allen is a leader in the field of design, developing and delivering online instruction. He founded the computer-based course authoring tool Authorware in 1984 and later formed Macromedia through a merger which was then bought by Adobe Systems. He has just released a new book, Leaving Addie for SAM: An Agile Model for Developing the Best Learning Experiences in which he describes what he calls the Successive approximation Model (SAM). We work quickly to develop something we can actually test out with prospective learners. For those of you who may not know, Michael W. MORE >>