Best practice forum (Archived)

Authoring Tool

 
Wendy Leversuch
Authoring Tool
by Wendy Leversuch - Thursday, 31 May 2018, 6:14 AM
 

Hi,


We're starting to look at getting an authoring tool to make our training course more engaging.  

Does anyone have any tips or hints around this?


Thanks


Wendy

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Thursday, 31 May 2018, 7:09 AM
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Vijay Rudraraju
Re: Authoring Tool
by Vijay Rudraraju - Thursday, 31 May 2018, 12:08 PM
 

Hi Wendy,

We use Articulate 360 for teams https://articulate.com/360/teams in our company.

It includes multiple products:

  • We create interactive courses with Storyline. Previously I have used Captivate and find it very clunky compared to Storyline.
  • For simpler visually stunning presentations we use Rise. 
  • You could use Studio to easily transform PowerPoint to e-learning.
  • We find Review indispensable - rather than circulate PowerPoint files for annual review of our compliance training, we simply publish Storyline or Rise projects to review where business units can provide comments.
  • The built in content library of pics and videos is really good - helps you create visually stunning presentations in no time. 
  • It includes Peek and Replay to create videos - i heard from my colleagues that they work fine. I use Camtasia Studio since I already have a license.


Thanks,

Vijay


Jani Lemmetyinen
Re: Authoring Tool
by Jani Lemmetyinen - Monday, 19 November 2018, 2:19 AM
 

Hi Wendy,

I've used both Adapt Builder and Articulate products - both are great tools!

In addition, I can recommend also these tools:

  • H5P.org - probably best open source authoring tool. There's a Moodle activity plugin available and it works in Totara as well. 
  • There's also a commercial SaaS option as well: h5p.com - it can be integrated with Totara via LTI.
  • Easygenerator is also a good option, supporting both SCORM and LTI.

Cheers,

Jani

Oliver Conrad
Re: Authoring Tool
by Oliver Conrad - Tuesday, 20 November 2018, 11:18 AM
 

This is a great thread. Does anyone have any recommendations around Captivate and Totara? Or any engaging Totara plugins in general?

Marina Zelinskaya
Re: Authoring Tool
by Marina Zelinskaya - Tuesday, 20 November 2018, 11:47 AM
Group Partners

We use Captivate to create our training.   It's a pretty robust tool.  

Marina Z.

Jani Lemmetyinen
Re: Authoring Tool
by Jani Lemmetyinen - Wednesday, 21 November 2018, 1:14 AM
 
Hi,


I think Captivate is also a good option - but maybe it has little bit steeper learning curve if comparing to Articulate Products, H5P or other tools mentioned earlier on this thread. 

An important question in authoring tool selection is do you need a rapid authoring tool (like some Articulate products or iSpring) or maybe more versatile tool with more options (like Storyline, Captivate or Lectora). 

This is a little bit old comparison (2015) but I think it could be useful: 
http://jennifervalley.blogspot.com/2015/10/adobe-captivate-9-v-articulate.html

Also, eLearning industry is a great place when selecting authoring tools, you can compare products and check product reviews there: https://elearningindustry.com/directory/software-categories/elearning-authoring-tools

Good luck finding right tool(s)!

Best regards,

Jani



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Wednesday, 21 November 2018, 1:53 AM
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Lyn Williams
Re: Authoring Tool
by Lyn Williams - Tuesday, 20 November 2018, 12:01 PM
 
Kia Ora Wendy 


we also use articulate 360 for creating course content. Using RISE a lot currently, love its clean simple look and our learners seem to prefer modules created in this style rather than storyline 360. Also find that RISE is easier to work with making development a lot quicker and simpler. 


Good Luck in your hunt :)


Lyn 

Jordan Ash
Re: Authoring Tool
by Jordan Ash - Wednesday, 21 November 2018, 3:56 AM
Group TotaraGroup TXP Site Administrator

In the Totara Academy we use a few different tools to create our training courses:

Techsmith Camtasia: Camtasia is a really good tool for creating screen recordings and syncing them in time with voice over. 

Articulate Storyline: Storyline is a really flexible tool that has an interface that is very similar to PowerPoint, so it is really easy to learn the basics. In the academy we use Storyline for our software simulations, I recently ran a webinar showing how we had built the simulations that you can access here

Adapt Authoring Tool: Adapt is a free and open source authoring tool that is responsive and works great on mobile. The setup is a little tricky but once it is set up is is fairly straightforward to use. Here is an example of what the finished output can look like.


Thanks

Jordan

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Wednesday, 21 November 2018, 4:22 AM
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Oliver Conrad
Re: Authoring Tool
by Oliver Conrad - Wednesday, 28 November 2018, 8:41 AM
 

These are all great answers. Thanks. I'm an intermediate Captivate and Totara user. I am looking for plugins to gamify courses for learner engagement. Or any other plugins really where people, for example, can collect points and unlock levels. I found this Moodle plugin:


https://moodle.org/plugins/block_xp


I'm not sure if it works out of the box with Totara 11.

Does anyone know similar/different/better tools?

Jani Lemmetyinen
Re: Authoring Tool
by Jani Lemmetyinen - Thursday, 29 November 2018, 12:26 AM
 

Hi Oliver,

We have great experiences about using H5P Moodle plugin in Totara.

See general info in https://h5p.org/ and plugin installation info here: https://h5p.org/moodle

This activity plugin is very easy to use and has really great interactions for learner engagement - also for gamification. 

It sends grade data into Totara's Gradebook. Setting the activity completion > "...when conditions are met" > "Require a grade" + setting "Grade to pass" in Gradebook setup enables to use any H5P content as course completion criteria.

Cheers,

Jani

Craig Trousdale
Re: Authoring Tool
by Craig Trousdale - Thursday, 29 November 2018, 2:53 AM
 
Jani,   Just had a look at H5P and signed out to their free account.  Did you use your Totara provider to install the plugin or did you go for it yourself.


Looks great BTW


Craig

Jani Lemmetyinen
Re: Authoring Tool
by Jani Lemmetyinen - Friday, 30 November 2018, 4:55 AM
 

Hi Craig,

I am working as Totara Product Manager in Discendum - we are Totara Partner and have installed this plugin to several of our clients. I suggest you to ask your Totara provider to install it. 

BTW, if you create content in h5p.org (free account) you can easily download the files, and after plugin installation upload them to your Totara installation :-)

Cheers,

Jani

Craig Trousdale
Re: Authoring Tool
by Craig Trousdale - Friday, 30 November 2018, 5:31 AM
 
Thanks Jani,


If we are not able to install the plug in.  Is there still a way to benefit from teh features of H5P.  e.g does it export to SCORM/tin can?


Craig

Rickard Skiold
Re: Authoring Tool
by Rickard Skiold - Friday, 30 November 2018, 7:11 AM
 

Hi Craig,

Like Jani, I also represent a Totara partner who ships H5P along with Totara Learn to our clients ...

But, if you're not able get the plugin installed, one way to solve that would be to use H5P's commercially hosted platform h5p.com - and to use LTI (the External Tool activity) in your Totara courses. I've tried it out a bit, and seems to work fine. H5P does not support SCORM, but most of the content types support xAPI/tin can. 

//Rickard

Jani Lemmetyinen
Re: Authoring Tool
by Jani Lemmetyinen - Monday, 3 December 2018, 5:54 AM
 

Hi,

Good point, Rickard! 

I also recently tested h5p.com via LTI (External tool) in Totara, it works fine!
It was quite easy to integrate h5p.com by following instructions in Totara Documentation.

Cheers,
Jani

Stefan Blom
Re: Authoring Tool
by Stefan Blom - Tuesday, 22 January 2019, 6:08 AM
Group PartnersGroup TXP Site Administrator
Hi


How did you install HP5 via LTI? I have never used the LTI functionality before...

The Totara instructions does (of course) not include any info. about the URL to use.


/Stefan

Jani Lemmetyinen
Re: Authoring Tool
by Jani Lemmetyinen - Wednesday, 23 January 2019, 12:07 AM
 

Hi Stefan,

LTI support is only included in HP5 SaaS version, h5p.com

It is a service - you'll not need to install anything to Totara, but instead of that create h5p.com account (30 free trial is available) and then plug h5p.com into Totara. 

This is quite straightforward: 

  • When you get your H5P.com account, go to Manage organization and add Totara as a New Consumer in H5P.com LTI setup, then you'll get the URL, LTI Key and Shared secret needed
  • Go to Totara, add H5P.com into course as external tool (activity plugin).
    You'll only need to add URL, LTI Key and Shared secret provided by H5P.com.

Cheers,

Jani

Angela Grollmisch
Re: Authoring Tool - HP5
by Angela Grollmisch - Tuesday, 8 January 2019, 4:00 AM
 

We did install it on our own. Works well with Totara. Response from Joubel is great when you have questions. Also the community response time is good. The good thing is that you do have browser based tool, different options to choose from, and easy to reuse (no sharing, no additional place to store files).

Angela