In today’s economy, budgets are shrinking and yet expectations from training programs keep increasing. The classic - ‘Do More with Less!’. While that’s easier said than done, it’s certainly not impossible. Using tools makes the job easy. However in a market flooded with interactive course creation tools, deciding which tools will best serve your needs and hence prove to be the best use of your budget can be rather confusing. For this purpose, we have organized a free expert webinar to discuss the challenges facing course creators, and how those can be addressed while staying within the boundaries of technology, customer requirements and budget!
Join us as a panel of industry thought leaders discuss best practices and tips for creating "Interactive Courses on a Shoestring Budget". The panelists will also share information about several tools that they believe offer a great Return On Investment (ROI), ranging from free tools to others that are moderately priced.
This session will cover the following topics:
Constituents of a Learning & Development budget
Common challenges facing course developers
Situations where the budget exceeds the limits
Tools for every budget
Scenarios with different budgets, and recommended tools that prove effective in those situations
Key Speakers:
Interactive Courses on a Shoestring Budget Webinar
Q&A from "Interactive Courses on a Shoestring Budget Webinar"
How many HTML5 interactions does Raptivity support? Can I get the slide deck for later usage? [Vikas Joshi] Raptivity has HTML5 starter pack which contains various interaction models to create interactions for various eLearning stages. These interactions have been designed to create interactive learning which can be seamlessly used in both eLearning and mLearning environments.
How is Raptivity for the mLearning? Are there templates to create content for mobile devices? [Vikas Joshi] Raptivity has many learning interactions that go into multiple devices, including mobile phones that support Flash - Android, BlackBerry and others. To know about them please click here- http://www.raptivity.com/touch-raptivity.html.
Do the Raptivity objects work on an iPad? [Vikas Joshi] Yes, there is a subset of interactions which are in the HTML5 format and another set of interactions which can be published in both HTML5 and Flash. Such interactions are feasible to be viewed on an iPad.
With the abandonment of flash mobile is it worth investing in a flash only tool? What are some HTML5 native tools on your radar? [Vikas Joshi] While there are some devices & essentially the only devices are iphones & ipads at this point that have abandoned flash. So, it seems HTML5 has not been standardized across all browsers & platforms. Flash based tool is critical in designing interactivites. tools like raptivity are encouragable as HTML5 templates are in picture.
Can we soon expect to see more HTML 5-compliant interaction options from Raptivity? [Vikas Joshi] At present, we have 17 interaction models based on HTML5 and there are more to come.
Which format is Raptivity output? Shockwave File object (.swf)
How rapid is Raptivity? [DJ Paxton] The interactivity you create using Raptivity can be easily embedded in your eLearning content through your favorite authoring tool. You can also take an interaction you created or customized using Raptivity, and reuse it in another place, such as a PowerPoint presentation, a product web site, an online meeting or a help file. With Raptivity, you can harness the adding of interactivities to your content while continuing to use your existing authoring environment and processes. The content published by Raptivity is industry standard, easily distributable over the Internet, and does not require any proprietary plug-in. This is the rapidity of Raptivity.
Will Raptivity have a Chinese version? The Raptivity interactions can be customised in Chinese as it supports unicode characters.
Can the Raptivity tools be embedded as code into a Googlesite? [Vikas Joshi] Yes, Raptivity creates flash objects and they can be included /embedded into a googlesite as a SWF object.
What are the scenarios where custom building cannot be avoided as per your experience? [DJ Paxton] None. Raptivity provides a rich library of interactions which meets most of our requirements. Also, with the increasing flexibility options provided by Raptivity with the new release it is getting better and better each day.
What length of time for mentoring a new user through the instructional design process for e-learning? or any other html pages such as in Moodle? [DJ Paxton] A couple of hours is enough for any person to get comfortable with a tool like Raptivity. The challenge is that you have a variety of interaction templates to choose from. Raptivity has 170+ interactions so the Instructional Designer needs to be clear about the objectives of the course to choose the right template from a varied choice.
I find that many organizations have different interpretations of what eLearning includes and that much of it can be completed without investing in an LMS. How are you all defining eLearning? eLearning can be explained here by various contexts. One of them could be synchronous versus asynchronous self paced learning. For this session, we have taken asynchronous self paced learning as opposed to virtual classroom or video based synchronous eLearning.
Is the interactivity tracked through an audit trail? Interactivity can be tracked thru an LMS
Self-Paced learning seems not to help too much for technical courses, like Java, Databases. What kind of interactive learning modules would you advice for such courses? [DJ Paxton] Introduction of remote laboratories are solving the technicalities of designing a technical learning scenario. Students get the hands on experience as well as all this is set up in asynchronous self paced learning setting.
I have one question related to image repository. Buying images for e-learning courses is expensive. How can we make this cost effective? There are some websites like pixer.us, Picasa (free version) which can help you with inexpensive or free images.
How do you define eLearning for the purposes of this presentation? [Jim Hanlin] People mean different things when it comes to eLearning in different contexts. There are two kinds of scenarios such as synchronous learning and asynchronous learning. Well, in this context we had asynchronous self paced learning as opposed to a classroom based setting.
How do you deal with piracy of the products? Raptivity is based on a strong licensing model which helps protect it from piracy.
