BLOGPOST: Articulate Storyline or Adobe Captivate?
I often get asked 'which authoring tool is better?' Captivate or Storyline? The way I usually explain it is that both Captivate and Storyline rock. My sense is that if you take two equally bright people with identical skills and you gave one Storyline and one Captivate, then after a couple of days your Storyline user's content would appear to be better. It would be the same story after a week or a month, after three months they'd maybe be neck and neck, but after six months your Captivate user would be limited only by their imagination while your Storyline user's material would start to look 'samey' (which isn't to say it is better or worse learning).
Put simply, Storyline has a much shorter learning curve and you'll look great quickly. The flip side is that you'll also hit its capability limit sooner and be using hardcore workarounds to extend capability when you attain mastery in a way that you would not if you had mastered Captivate.
So, both tools are great. I'd recommend either. But remember they are just tools. Having a saw and workbench doesn't make you a carpenter. Having a rapid authoring tool will not make you an instructional designer. Enthusiastic or even reluctant amateurs can and do make brilliant material with these tools. In the modern workplace budget constraints often mean that option is all you can do. However, if you want to train thousands of people, if you have a proper training budget, if you want to concentrate on your day job rather than the technology and if you want the training to truly engage then the DIY approach is misguided. You would likely be better commissioning a professional agency such as ourselves to build your online training for you. If this is you, we'd love to talk. Details are here.
But back to the initial question, if I really had to pick just one, which would I go for? I'll say just this: my company makes eLearning for third party clients, we are doing it all day every day, and we choose Captivate.
Guy McEvoy is MD of GuyKat Solutions. The company is agnostic about clients authoring tools, but happens to use Captivate itself. GuyKat are partners of Docebo, an LMS that handles both Captivate and Articulate output equally well.
Aim to Exceed Client Expectations
"If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you always have"
We are proud of what we do. But we still like to get better as we go on. To do this we listen to client feedback. As part of our RAID (Rapidly Applied Instructional Design) methodology the last step at the end of an engagement is to get structured feedback from our clients. We do it as an online questionnaire so we cannot influence their answers. We solicit some open ended questions which can give us qood insights. We also have some standard survey graded questions about how we have done.
The detailed results are commercially sensitive. However, the one really gratifying headline stat that stood out in 2012-13 was:- we either 'Met' or 'Exceeded' Client Expectations on 100% of survey returns*.Nobody expressed a neutral or negative opinion of our work. We're working hard to make sure we always 'Exceed' client expectations. Obviously, the higher we set those expectations the harder it becomes. It's still what we shoot for. If your eLearning vendor isn't meeting or exceeding your expectations, then why not give us a go?
* Client Surveys were taken in H1 2013 and covered 37+ project deliverables for work undertaken in 2012-13 of minimum value £1000
TinCan API v Experience xAPI.
Recently, a colleague and I attended D-Conf in Milan. Hosted by our partners at Docebo, the event focused on cloud apps and eLearning. As usual at conferences the agenda documentation was teasingly thin. You have little more than the session title to guess exactly what the speaker will cover.
Day 2 had interesting sounding back-to-back sessions. One was on 'Tin Can API' by Mike Rustici and one was on 'Experience API' (or just 'xAPI') by Aaron Silvers. Both were engaging speakers worth listening too. Both spoke of a new API in an infant state. They evangelised about how with a little momentum they will be on the cusp of the beginnings of something that will eventually change everything. Good. SCORM sucks.
For me, the really interesting insight was clocking my colleague’s reaction to these talks. She is a bright, switched-on, graduate, eLearning professional. She is no mug. She’d been looking forward to the Tin Can presentation having followed some of the buzz about it over the last year. She hadn’t previously heard of the Experience API. She listened to both forty-minute presentations in full. Yet when I spoke to her about it afterwards it dawned on me that she hadn’t connected that both presentations were talking about exactly the same thing.
Neither script referenced that there was any debate about the name. Yes, there were aggressive questions alluding to it after Mike’s talk, but these had a level of assumed knowledge in the way they were asked and answered that went over the audience’s heads. For those who live and breathe working on delivery of the post-SCORM standard, any vibrant debate about the name and any trademark issues may be boring and done to death. However, outsiders being introduced to the topic for the first time will not be aware there has even been a discussion.
My colleague is the target audience that these pioneers want to convert into the first wave of early adopters and sales-people. They diluted their message to her. Not because she is stupid, far from it, but because they didn’t explain themselves properly. She cares about this stuff. If they confuse her, they'll certainly confuse more generalist HR professionals.
The dual branding is plain confusing. Having folk going on road-shows and calling it two different things in the same meeting is simply nuts. The confusion will delay that last bit of momentum they crave to get vendors like us to tell our clients they have to jump on this wave. Only when we're pushing compatibility as an essential feature in any buying decision will it truly take off.
If I had a vote, and I don’t, nor do I deserve one, I’d say Experience API is a far better, more obviously relevant name. I’d go for that. I appreciate that there has been a chunk of work put into pushing the ‘Tin Can’ brand out there over the last few years, but let’s face it, it does sound like the code-word for a product in beta. You’d also struggle to sell something with such a whimsical name as an essential upgrade to a typical knee-jerk finance director. Worse, it does sound ‘suspect’ having a private company trademark the name of an open standard. I say that no matter how honourable or benign their actual intent.
Whichever name they settle on, they need to settle on it quick and stop the road show confusion. The benefits of this new standard, whatever it is called, means promoting this stuff to eLearning professionals should be pushing on an open door. Adding this confusion pulls the door back. Guys, sort it out.
Guy McEvoy is Managing Director of GuyKat, he’s looking forward to Tin Can or Experience or whatever it’s called freeing up eLearning content from the restraints of SCORM compliance. He hopes if you take nothing else from this article it’s that, for now, Tin Can API and Experience xAPI are exactly the same thing. Oh, and that whatever it is called Docebo LMS already supports it!
Getting Business Going In the UK
GuyKat Managing director Guy McEvoy was a guest at an event hosted by Goldman Sachs in London. Also present were entrepreneurs such as Sir Charles Dunstone (Carphone Warehouse and TalkTalk), Gerry Ford (Cafe Nero), Julian Metcalfe (founder of Pret A Manger and Itsu) and about 300 other leaders of small businesses who have received support from the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Business Programme.
Much of the day's discussion focussed on the economic outlook for the UK in the near-to-mid term. The Global CEO of Goldman Sachs Lloyd Blankfein comments at the event were picked up by much of the media.
Opinion remains split between optimists and pessimists on the UK's prospects. However, everyone seemed to agree that it will be growing SMEs that eventually kick-start the economy. GuyKat are proud to consider themselves of one these growing businesses, and proud to help our peers achieve the same through developing their people and lowering their training costs.
Are you ready for Tin Can?
Did you know that Tin Can API version 1.0 is scheduled for formal release on April 26, 2013?
The Tin Can API is a new standard for data flow between learning technologies. It's tempting to describe it as an update to the venerable SCORM standard. For years SCORM has been allowing eLearning modules developed in authoring tools such as Adobe Captivate, or Articulate Storyline to 'talk' to the Learning Management Systems on which they are hosted. However, saying it's just a SCORM replacement sells Tin Can short - it brings much more to the table. There's a great description of Tin Can here.
At GuyKat we're proud to be working with our partners Docebo to ensure that clients can release the benefits of Tin Can quickly. We can help them wrap their heads around the new concept of the LRS (Learning Record Store). You're all going to be hearing a lot about Tin Can API over the next few years. If you want to know more now - get in-touch.
GuyKat is UK's First Docebo Partner
We've been keeping an exciting secret. Back in November we signed an agreement with Docebo to become the first of their UK Partners. You may be familiar with the concept of a Learning Management System (LMS). You may also be familiar with the concept of Software-As-A-Service (SaaS). Docebo brings these together. With style.
Since November, without fanfare, we've been learning about the Docebo product in depth and have begun introducing it to several clients. Selecting an LMS partner was a challenging process and we trialled numerous alternative products. At the end of our assessment exercise we found Docebo the most compelling value proposition. In our opinion it balances being user-friendly, feature-rich and simplicity-to-deploy whilst still being surprisingly competitively priced. Docebo is the LMS we use ourselves. We think our clients should too.
Keep an eye on the website. In the coming months you will see far more information about the Docebo product and the formal launch of the additional services we can provide to help you get up and running. However, in the meantime if you are based in the UK and want a free-trial or demo then please find out more by clicking here.
This article was published Jan 2013
GuyKat in the Community
Global corporations like to blow their trumpets about their 'work in the community' and 'putting something back'. Small businesses aren't quite as good at the PR, but we like to think we quietly do our bit. So, with that in mind here's an interesting factoid about GuyKat in 2012: We have a timesheeting system that records how long people are working on various things. Of total hours booked in 2012 around 5% was on non-billable community focused work (mainly relating to Schools and the NHS). OK, that hardly gives us the virtue of the Bill Gates Foundation, but it is a little something.
Developing in Captivate 6 as Standard
GuyKat have been trialling Captivate 6 since its release last summer. Since then our default development platform remained Captivate 5.5, but we have used the new software for a number of pilot client projects. The pilot testing is now over. Following our evaluation we're confident that the new version brings numerous advantages that speed up our work-flow, and that the few bugs at release have now been resolved. Therefore, from Jan 2013, our standard development environment will now be Captivate 6.0.
For legacy projects (or by request) we still retain the ability to develop in 5.5, pure Flash, or with Articulate/Storyline however our starting position for client projects is to develop with the technology that we think is best: Captivate 6.0
This will be an invisible change for most clients - hopefully all you will notice is that our deliverables look ever better, and our production time gets ever quicker!
DevLearn 2012
The GuyKat contingent managed to avoid the worst of Hurricane Sandy and make it to Las Vegas for this year's DevLearn 2012 conference. To keep up with the lastest eLearning technology changes, to meet the major software vendors, to talk about industry issues and best practice with peers from across the globe DevLearn is the place to be. Every serious eLearning professional who can be is there.
Adobe Learning Summit 2012
Monday saw the Adobe Learning Summit in Las Vegas. The lion's share of GuyKat production is done using Adobe tools, given they'd scheduled the event the day before the DevLearn 2012 conference it made sense for us to be there.
These summits are always great for signposting the way technology is drifting. Vendors share their roadmaps, latest thinking and showcase alpha version products. Unsurprisingly there was quite a bit of focus on how to output content to HTML 5 During the panel session the Adobe folk came under some fire from the audience over their mixed messages on long term commitment to Flash. Whilst every vendor is shouting that their latest products output content in both Flash and HTML 5 the ugly reality is that dual-output workflows force you to 'dumb down' to the current lowest common denominator of supported features. Whatever vendors boast the fact is the feature sets the main development tools currently output to Flash are not fully supported in HTML5. So whilst HTML5 may well represent steps forward in the future developing for it at the moment feels like taking several steps backwards.
It's clear that Adobe are grappling with this and there were a few teasers and show-and-tells of products in development to ease the issue. The next few years of transition between technologies are going to be a pain in the backside for the industry. The first vendor that can get a product to market that truly delivers the full feature set of an Adobe Captivate or Articulate Storyline product in HTML5 output will clean up. Such a magic solution still looks years away. In the meantime, whilst the technology gurus grapple with this, GuyKat are going to continue to create our full featured content using our existing technologies. We see no advantage in being 'bleeding edge'. We can and will develop for the iPad when specifically commissioned to do so, but given that the overwhelming majority of our content is intended to be consumed on the desktop, we'll develop for that environment without compromise.
One thing that did excite at the conference was some demos from the fabulous Aussies from Infosymantics. They develop plug-ins for the Captivate platform to extend out-of-box functionality. We've used their stuff in the past to help us rapidly reduce the development time for things like drag-and-drop games. They gave some cool demos of what they're working on. Safe to say, as soon as these are released we'll aim to be the first to implement them and we're looking forward to be able to ramp up our output another level without any impact on development time or cost to the client.
