Is 'Articulate' worth it?

Is 'Articulate' worth it?

by trish sutherland -
Number of replies: 9

Does anyone use Articulate software - the plugin with powerpoint, to convert powerpoint to SCORM compliant stuff to upload to moodle? If so, is it any good, would i be wasting my colleges money investing in it, or is it a worthwhile investment?

If it is no good, or if you don't use it,  are there any other suggestions about software that would be good to use to convert (primarily) powerpoints to scorm stuff for moodle? We have course genie for word docs (which i dislike but that's a whole other thread!!)

looking forward to your replies

Trish

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In reply to trish sutherland

Re: Is 'Articulate' worth it?

by Hassani Hachim -
Try camtasia studio. it's easy to use, and allows converting powerpoint to flash... I did use articulate, but for a couple of days only. It seems a bit like camtasia studio but it was a bit complicated in my mind.
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In reply to trish sutherland

Re: Is 'Articulate' worth it?

by Brian Warling -
We use Articulate Presenter here at UCSF. We have a copy in the multimedia lab I manage. It's quite popular, and the faculty who have used it really like it. We have a faculty member in Dentistry who has created dozens of presentations with it.

Here's a link to an article recently published in Advances in Physiology Education titled "Hybrid lecture-online format increases student grades in an undergraduate exercise physiology course at a large urban university" where the prof used Articulate.

http://advan.physiology.org/cgi/content/full/32/1/86

I hope this is helpful.... Brian
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In reply to trish sutherland

Re: Is 'Articulate' worth it?

by Timothy Takemoto -

I am not sure why you want to put your powerpoint in a SCORM. I have not used it to make SCORM compliant stuff but Articulate is the best Powerpoint to Swf converter I have tried. Very good.

I am not sure why you want to put your powerpoint in a SCORM.


If SWF will do, then there are lots of threads (some recently, try the forum stearch for a product name) about this and sites introducing lots of alternatives.
There are two types of this sort of software
1) Screen video grabbers
Camstatia studio(free), Wink (my free recommendation) and Captivate (perhaps the best/most expensive)
2) Those that convert powerpoint to swf
OpenOffice.org Presenter and other free software does not seem to support animation
Many many others
Articulate

The lesson module sometimes accepts powerpoint.

Tim 


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In reply to Timothy Takemoto

Re: Is 'Articulate' worth it?

by trish sutherland -

thanks guys, that's helpful info.

Timothy - i might have got my terminology a little mixed up. I know how to upload scorm packages to moodle, i don't know anything much about anything much else!

thanks for the info and advice.

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In reply to trish sutherland

Re: Is 'Articulate' worth it?

by Timothy Takemoto -

Trish
I probably have my terminology mixed up toosmile

If you are successfully uploading scorm packages to moodle then you are in luck. Upload away.

If, however, you are uploading powerpoint files, then consider whether you really need them as SCORM.

I am very behind the times on the scorm module and to what version of Scorm it is now compatible. There is a SCORM Module forum. 

As I see it, the advantage of SCORM and the SCORM module is that can include at least one test (not sure if moodle SCORM is now multiple test - is that SCORM 2004?- compliant, it probably is) that will be reflected in the gradebook.

But  powerpoint files do not include tests (AFAIK?!). So a powerpoint file is essentially a (passive) "resource," in that it contains no testing, so there is no need to use an "activity" (gradebook logged) module rather than a "resource" (something that students can just see). 

So you can

1) Just upload the powerpoint file as a resource. Occasionally, depending upon the type of file you save to in powerpoint and or whether the user has powerpoint or a powerpoint viewer, it may not be displayed depending upon the user's computer, and  it is easier to copy. All the same, this is usuallly the method I use.

2) Convert to flash and link to the flash file. There are lots of threads on how to convert powerpoint to flash. Articulate is super but expensive but there are many many options including OpenOffice.org which does it for free without animation. This make copying a little more difficult and facilitates integrated audio.

3) Use the lesson module which I believe can (sometimes? I hear tell it is a bit hit or miss, but perhaps not) accept power point. In a sense the lesson module is the moodle inhouse version of SCORM, in that it can do everything that SCORM does, and more probably.

4) Convert to a SCORM and use the SCORM module. But why bother?

A lot of people use SCORM because someone higher up the educational food chain requires them to. But it does not seem to be a tight standard, leading to all sorts of compatability problems, on any and every LMS, and when it comes to powerpoint has few advantanges over powerpoint, or powerpoint-converted-to-flash (passive) "resources".

By the way, the main moodler says this of SCORM: 
"Personally though, I think the SCORM model is detrimental to education in general. It's all dump and pump. I wouldn't use SCORM for any significant part of any course I was creating. "

The following thread is informative.
http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=95946


Tim

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In reply to trish sutherland

Re: Is 'Articulate' worth it?

by ben reynolds -
I'm working with a music theory teacher who is a powerful powerpoint user. Timothy's bifurcation is accurate. There are ppt>swf converters and there are (more accurately) lecture capturers.

The intent has a lot to do with sound issues. My guy has lots of short music notes attached to his ppt slides, so I need a converter that captures sound and animation.

The lecture capturers do not capture sound files from ppt slides. They capture your spoken narration.

Interestingly, articulate does NOT capture mouse click to animate from ppt slides.

OpenOffice Impress does a nice job of converting ppt. But, if it were me, I would learn to do Flash. It isn't rocket science anymore, and you're going straight to something designed for the web, not something designed as an aid for f2f lecture. Nevertheless, we're working with Powerpoint.
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In reply to trish sutherland

Re: Is 'Articulate' worth it?

by Cyrelle Gerson -
Articulate and Camtasia are complementary programs that fulfill somewhat different functions.

With Articulate you can convert a Powerpoint presentation to a set of Flash files that retain almost all PPT animations and interactions and can include narration. In addition, you can include other Flash interactions within any slide. Articulate includes quite a few question types in its Quizmaker software and outputs SCORM compliant files if you want to track Articulate quizzes in Moodle or another LMS.

To me the big features are that you can retain the interactive functions within each slide and can add in your Flash animations/interactions and videos.

Camtasia Studio (which is not free) is more of a screen capture program that can include narration and a more limited quiz functionality. Camtasia is really good for recording your screen as you use a software program and is used by a lot of developers to create tutorials on how to use software. Camtasia can ouput various types of video files including Flash. I don't think that it retains the interactivity that you can build into a PPT presentation.

I think Articulate and Camtasia could be used together effectively, depending on what you are trying to do.

Summary
If you are trying to convert PPT presentations to a format that can be viewed online and might also include narration, either of these programs could work. If you want to retain interactivity and have more quiz options Articulate is better. If you want to record on-screen activity Camtasia is better.

These tools are meant to make development of elearning go faster, and in my experience they are effective for that purpose.

Adobe Connect and Captivate are also possibilities, but I think are more costly unless you have many users.
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In reply to Cyrelle Gerson

Re: Is 'Articulate' worth it?

by Timothy Takemoto -
Sorry, I was thinking of Camstudio which is much more primitive than Camtasia Studio, and free.
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Re: Is 'Articulate' worth it?

by Matt Bury -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers
Personally, I'm a fan of Captivate but yeah, it's expensive. If you're going to do a lot of on-line stuff though, it'd probably pay for itself with the time you'd save, otherwise, go with the free-bee open source stuff. It's kind a clunky but pretty good once you get around the idiosyncrasies.

It's the usual consideration: Time vs. Money!

And I'm no fan of SCORM either. Yeah, very dump and pump and incredibly inefficient to boot!

If you want to track student activity or record results, there's currently no way of doing that past Flash MX2004 (version 6). The e-learning friendly version, CS3 (version 9) is totally incompatible with the Moodle FlashMod. You'd have to package it as SCORM and manually code the interaction since support for SCORM in Flash ended with Flash MX2004, although I believe some clever bunny has written an AS 3.0 SCORM class... you could go chasing your tail for months!
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