Hi Everyone,

I am in the process of reviewing eLearning tools with the intent of developing courseware for Software Training. I want to incorporate simulations from Adobe Captivate and some text based material.

I am finding it difficult to find exactly what I want. My intention is to have a Menu like structure to the left of the screen and allow the user to navigate through the course at their own speed.

Evaluation and assessment is also very important, how the data is collected for review is important.

Currently I am embedding the flash files published from Captivate into HTML but I want to have a more of a template where I can generate courseware more easily.

I also want to hold a number of courses in one location and prehaps allow users to login. I know Adobe Connect can do this but it is very expensive.

Any suggestions? All comments greatly welcomed.

Many thanks
Mary

What we have used very successfully is the combination of two low cost elearning tools:

Articulate and Captivate

We purchased the Articulate suite that includes Presenter, Engage, and Quizmaker last June.

We purchased Captivate this January.

You can do a lot of nice things with Articulate, but not demos/simulations. So, we create those in Captivate and then import those .swf files into Articulate.

Articulate gives you exactly what you are looking for regarding a menuing system that it creates. You also can create templates, control user navigation, etc. It can be used with an LMS for tracking/registration/etc. We just deploy it through SharePoint.

We don't have an LMS so I can't help you there.

As for virtual classroom software, there are many companies on the market and I'm sure their prices vary greatly. We use WebEx. Others to look at include Elluminate, Centra, Adobe Connect Pro, Citrix Go To Meeting, Microsoft Live Meeting. Some are better than others, which I am sure varies with price.

Hi Amy,
Many thanks for list of products I am going to check them out now.

I looked at Articulate and your right it has the perfect menu system that I need but when you embed Captivate the navigation gets a little tricky. My experience was that the user either has two naviagations (_skin from Captivate) and Articulates. This in testing caused problems. There is the option to include the flash file without the skin but then the user cannot pause the simulation or go back a step or two.

But it is something very like Articulate that I am looking for.

Will get googling on the other products now.
Thanks again.
Mary

You can also change the navigation in Articulate.

So, on the slides where you want Captivate navigation change to slide only on the Slide Properties Manager in Articulate for that one slide, then back to Standard.

Have you looked at Moodle? It is a free LCMS. When I have taken courses using it I found it easy to navigate. You can even make it work (easily, I understand) with Articulate. Oh, and lots of schools use Moodle so it is probably pretty easy to configure.