As a start-up company, our enterprise relies on good tools to create online learning, which is one of our core capabilities as part of a suite of offerings we provide to help people work together collaboratively.We had chosen Adobe’s ELearning Suite as our vehicle for online learning development. Over the last month, Captivate and the ELearning Suite were problematic at every turn. Adding PhotoShop layered files lost critical visual elements. Running quiz previews crashed the system over and over. Navigation was stodgy; flash animation was rudimentary.
Although Adobe tech support was on the spot and helpful, there was no good solution to the problems we encountered. Captivate has community support, but the community is out-of-date, with the exception of a few wide-awake and talented people. Captain Captivate was especially helpful when I tweeted him, and he got back to me quickly with an understanding of the problems that had us mired in technology mud.
In desperation and with a deadline looming ever closer, we turned to Articulate, and it seemed to have great finesse with PowerPoint integration, keeping graphic elements separate so we could work with them. Articulate has a robust and vital community of Articulate experts. They are responsive, proactive, and provide helpful support.
Still, our design and development team missed the time line functionality of Captivate. The time line is useful for developing a learning program so that it moves forward and keeps the learner engaged. We also found we need the integration of the Adobe products such as Sound Booth, PhotoShop, Flash, and Bridge.
It came down to a choice between two quite adequate online learning suites of programs, one with a long-term possibility of integrating with the Creative Suite on the Mac, the other with good functionality, but not the best solution for our long-term goals and immediate business direction. Our decision to go with Adobe Captivate is largely due to the dangling carrot of a pending release of Captivate 5, e-Learning Suite 2 and future Mac integration. The new features in this upgrade appear to be solutions to the shortcomings of the current version of Captivate 4. However, with a general release date of June 2010… we’re left in technology limbo!
As the clock continues to click towards project deadlines, we find it necessary to go forward using using the ill-fated Captivate 4 in a Windows environment, which is plagued with numerous bugs and incompatibilities. This short term work-flow required an investment in hardware, upgraded operating systems, and a move away from our beloved Macs. With our fingers crossed and list of work-a-rounds, we move forward creating an online employee development program that is a fabulous program. We have a vision of how it is suppose to be… and a commitment to complete the project sooner than technology glitches will allow. The tools we have chosen must help get us there!
