I’m working with the demo of Articulate Engage and Quizmaster. Overall I am impressed but it’s not as flexible as HTML pages. Fore example:
- In my interaction I’d like to let the user go back to pages he has already completed but not jump ahead. It seems that the configuration only allows users 2 options – user can go to any page or only linear progression.
- I’d like to have quizzes dispersed through the interaction. It appears that quiz files and interaction files are separate.
- I’d like an interaction mode with multiple choices, but not a multiple choice quiz question. It’s more like a choose-your-own adventure where each choice takes you to a different page. This was easy with html.

The output of Quizmaster and Engage are flash files. My question is.. are these flash files editable? If so, can I open them in some type of visual editor? I don’t know flash, is it pure coding? Are the changes I describe trivial for a flash programmer? Thanks.

When Articulate publishes your files, it publishes them as .swf files, which, to my knowledge, are not editable, even using Flash.

I have very little experience with Articulate, but can you accomplish what you need if you built the multiple choice interactions as hyperlinks to pages within the PowerPoint deck?

This may be too much hassle, but you could use a swf decompiler, change the code and republish. Not sure how the code would come across, though.

A lot of what you want to do is able to be done when combining quizmaker and engage with presenter. Most of the swf files (.fla are the source files for flash) are fed by xml, and those xml files are editable. Flash isn't very easy to learn.

Looks like you are already running into the limitations of a PowerPoint converter. Luckily, you're only in the demo mode.

If you have the budget, the best alternative is to have a Flash e-learning developer create a course exactly the way you want it, with the source code so it can be updated in the future. I was going to recommend a Flash quiz template, but it looks like you want branching in your course, which is more involved than a simple multiple-choice quiz.

Average development cost for a one-hour Flash course is in the neighborhood of $20,000, but branching tends to drive up the cost, depending on how much content you have, media usage and amount of interactivity.

If you have a small budget, you might consider using HTML to develop a branched course, but the user experience will be slow as compared to Flash, and Flash has much better media handling capabilities.

Hope that helps.

Sheldon Murphy
Solid State Learning
E-Learning Consulting