I am a huge fan of Captivate. I believe it’s a powerful tool that fosters a variety of training – simulations, demonstrations, courses, knowledge checks.
- Do users in the community find they primarily use one authoring tool or multiple?
- If multiple, are there examples or best practices you’ve discovered for blending authoring tools?
I look forward to hearing from the community.
Jaclyn, what a beautiful post. I’m sure your courses are fantastic. You have a nice story-telling way of writing.
I truly have heard Lectora is a great software. As you mentioned Captivate is a must for video captures and simulations.
Do you mind me asking which Lectora package you have? Inspire, Publisher, or online?
I have been lucky enough to work for employers who let me get any tool I wanted. I find when I am developing I use a variety of tools to change up the modalities and make my course fluid and engaging. My tools of choice are Lectora (absolutely LOVE), Captivate, Camtasia, and Adobe After Effects.
My love for Lectora was a huge surprise to me. I joined an organization who was paying an outside vendor to create a course. Since my job was to finish the course and I didn’t want to reinvent the wheel, I forced myself to learn it. I am so glad I did! It is definitely my go to in a crunch but I also love using Captivate for video captures and simulations.
As far as best practices or examples, I don’t have anything I can really share unless you want some 1:1 time to discuss. Happy to do it for a new developer. I kind of just go with the flow and let the “mood” take me. I feel developing is such a creative process and I don’t really have a set plan when I begin.
John, thank you for your feedback. It’s appreciated.
Do you have resources – books, blogs, etc that can help with creating a strong course design?
I use several tools. In my day job I use Lectora. For my own work I use Captivate but I’m not restricted to that alone. I also develop within Dreamweaver and Animate CC (formerly Flash). One of my newest ventures is create HTML5 animations and “widgets” in Animate and embed them in a Captivate project. It works really well.
I’ll also use Photoshop to optimize my images, Audition to edit my audio files and Premier Pro to edit and optimize my videos. While these tools are not development tools, they are needed to create and edit learning assets.
Phil, thank you for posting.
My organization is going through a process to decide the authoring tool(s) for our newly formed team.
Your insight on Lectora, Captivate, and other Adobe tools (HTML 5) to add to content within Captivate is useful. Thank you for sharing your insight. Understanding where the industry is going – and areas to focus is helpful.
Hope you have a great weekend, and thanks again for replying.
Phil, as an ACI instructor/educator/developer I think you have nailed it. Captivate, Storyline, Lectora are the key tools that elearning developers use to act as the containers and manipulators of course content.
We craft that content in tools such as Photoshop – image creation, Audition, audio editing, Animate, oam animations for HTML5, Premiere, video editing, Illustrator, svg file creation, InDesign, storyboarding and content layout,Dreamweaver for html remediation, Acrobat pdf documents. I personally liked it when Adobe Packaged the tools in the Adobe eLearning Suite the last one being eLearning Suite 6. It implied that a developer used a range of tools to accomplish the task and it gave me access to all tools save Premiere, Illustrator and InDesign. Perhaps Adobe will look at adding Captivate into the Creative Cloud as an offering and still offer it standalone as they do with Acrobat for the casual user.
Hi Chandra, good question, most people would only have the budget for 1 tool, and given the pressure people are under they would tend to stick to the tool they know best.
I firmly believe that the tools should come second, the design should be the most important thing, and most tools can do everything the others can do anyway. Captivate does responsive well with fluid boxes, but only if the design is top notch.
You must be logged in to post a comment.
