Since writing my reviews of Xerte and eXe, Media Services have started authoring using Articulate. Unlike Xerte and eXe, Articulate is a proprietary desktop system built on top of PowerPoint. Its main advantage is that it combines ease of use for those familiar with PowerPoint (nearly all lecturers at this stage!) with tools for creating quizzes, surveys, interactions and for basic video editing. There are about 20 templates for creating questions including variations on multiple-choice, open answer and drag and drop. Media can easily be incorporated into all question types. Quizzes can be made SCORM compliant. Articulate Engage Interactions allow the creation of specialised pages such as labelled images, pyramids and glossaries. Flash developers can develop their own Engage Interactions using the Engage Software Development Kit. They are encouraged to share them with the Articulate community.
Importantly, the templates allow for considerable flexibility in question design and layout. The standard styles are quite attractive too giving a professional look to learning materials created. Its ease of use, familiarity and special pricing through the NDLR all led me to select Articulate for the latest elearning projects where content would be created by academics.
Articulate is well-supported through its own forums and through active online communities. It hosts the Rapid eLearning Blog which has regular, practical tips for articulate developers. Its Community Showcase highlights work from members around the world.
Using Xerte, I grew to like web-based development for team projects, this has the advantage of a single master version that everyone works on. With Articulate we are back to version control management with multiple versions on different PCs (and it does not run on a MAC). Apart from that I am very pleased with our experiences with Articulate.
August 24th, 2010
XOLT is distributed free of charge under the GNU public licence. (Note: XOLT should be distinguished from the original desktop Xerte authoring tool, a different product, which is available from the same address.)
 Wizard for Reflective Case Study |
XOLT is easy to use, allowing authors with no programming skills to build elearning activities through a simple browser interface. Authors use a wizard to enter text, media and interactions into a range of template pages. There are nine types of interaction available including multiple choice, gap fill, open answer, hotspot and diagram labelling. |
Images, movies and multimedia elements can be added to XOLT. A template for adding movies to interactions is under development and will be available shortly. Authors can also integrate content from external sources such as Wikipedia, YouTube, Flickr, Google Maps and Delicious.
As a server-based system, XOLT enables team members at multiple locations to collaboratively develop content.
Xerte was designed from the outset with accessibility in mind. The interface is consistent with navigation buttons on the top strip. The user can resize text and select a contrasting colour scheme. All interactions and navigation can be controlled by the keyboard as well as the mouse. Text to speech is enabled to allow all content to be heard as well as read.
Completed Xerte projects can be exported as zip files for web publication or as SCORM 1.2 compliant learning objects for importing into a VLE such as Blackboard or Moodle.
Like Flashform, Xerte projects are written in XML and interpreted by a Flash player at runtime. Programming skills are necessary to create new templates or additional functionality.
In comparison with eXe, XOLT is also easy-to-use and suitable for use by academics or other authors without programming skills. XOLT has several significant advantages over eXe:
• Additional interactions such as drag and drop and open answer questions
• Entire project can be exported as a SCORM compliant object
• Allows collaborative online development
On the downside, XOLT
• Lacks a visual interface for text formatting which has to be done manually using HTML tags
• Is difficult to install (or at least would benefit from better installation documentation) Having said that, the development team provided excellent support.
XOLT is undergoing considerable development at the moment. The developers are quick to answer questions and it has an active online community.
For these reasons, Media Services have decided to use XOLT to develop elearning materials in Psychiatry for the UCD School of Medicine and Medical Science.
September 1st, 2009
With the growing interest in user generated content there has been a decline in the perceived importance of authoring tools. However, UCD Media Services has developed several lessons on taking medical case histories using Flashform (now ProForm) from RapidIntake. Flashform allows less technically-minded users to create Flash content by filling in forms. It is possible to create a range of question and page types incorporating audio, video and other media. We have created some templates (forms) of our own. Flashform is quite a powerful product though more attractive layouts could be created with a visual interface.
After several years the time has come to evaluate the alternatives. I looked at eXe a few years ago when it was in its infancy. It seemed promising but not developed enough for our needs. We also evaluated Course Genie (now Wimba Create). This time round I will only look at open source mainly for practical, budgetary reasons. eXe, developed by an academic consortium in New Zealand, now seems quite widely used and definitely worth a second look. Xerte, a web-server based tool developed by Nottingham University, also seems promising.
Through the ALT mailing list, I have come across a series of podcasts, Crossing the Foord by Dave Foord. Episodes 7-10 cover authoring tools. I would be interested in hearing the experiences of other users of either of these tools.
February 19th, 2009
