Marc deGuzman | Value through agility
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Round 1: Adobe Captivate vs. Articulate Storyline
e-Learning was once bound by clunky click-through portals. You had to login to a dedicated site, and the modules were utilitarian and sometimes that content was less-than exciting. However, I remember those carefully designed learning rituals were very effective. Today, e-learning is a ubiquitous term, more often than not describing video-based learning: demos, how-to clips, Youtube tutorials, influencer tips, etc. Gone are the days where the learning management system (LMS) was just a site you used for web-based training (WBT), now it’s another data-driven marketing tool dependent on other applications to control the overall learning experience.
Times have changed.
While a social post can be considered e-learning, organizations still use more permanent training products built to affect performance outcomes. Two common tools used to develop e-learning courses are Adobe Captivate and Articulate Storyline.
I started using Adobe Captivate around 2015 and Articulate Storyline around 2016. I gave both a fair shot while I developed a variety of e-learning products. Both have upgraded their tech significantly in the past 5 years. I’d like to circle back and share my first impressions after 1 year of use on developing modules that were live and measured as part of talent management systems for clients.
My less than Captivate-ing start
My graduate program and work at the time was using Adobe Captivate 9 as the primary rapid authoring tool for e-learning. Client work used PPT but mostly as ancillary documentation or as materials for ILT events. Adobe Captivate wasn’t as beginner friendly as PPT at that time and was prone to freezing or crashing routinely.
Companies like e-Learning Brothers [link: https://elearningbrothers.com/] offered packages that provided free templates and assets. They also had plug-ins so you could download assets as needed from the Captivate workspace, while in the project. This was a huge help, especially because I was “learning while doing” and didn’t have time to waste filling a repository. I didn’t have a design team available so ad-hoc stock images were on me to source.
There was a community of Adobe Captivate users, but you had to dig to find them and go to their individual sites, accounts, etc. The tutorials on the Adobe site were insufficient given the price tag to purchase the software. Many users had training resources, free to use, for JIT learning of the many features and regular updates. I referenced Paul Wilson’s great videos on a number of occasions.
I should also include that Adobe was intermittently hosting events to educate its users at that time. There was a 1-day event with subject-matter expert workshops. Now there is a certification for developers and the entire production is a multi-day conference rather than a 1-day event for the community of practitioners.
Improved outcomes by using Storylines
I began using Articulate Storyline 2 shortly after I started using Adobe Captivate, later Articulate Storyline 3. Frankly, I actually purchased Storyline because they had a huge vector asset library that is free – which was a look I needed for some products at that time. Unfortunately, their library was only able to be used for Articulate Storyline and I was primarily using Captivate.
Just as with Adobe, Articulate has a loyal and dedicated community. Their community is very generous, with many developers sharing skills and methods. There were great demos and samples shared often – I wasn’t seeing this in Adobe Captivate communities at the time. In fact, there were portfolios of gamified learning made with Articulate Storyline that are still amazing! You won’t find that for Adobe. The knowledge shared by the e-Learning Heroes is worth a graduate certificate, at a minimum. *applause*
Articulate Storyline is very user friendly! If you can user PPT you’ll love the GUI of Storyline, which is basically the same.
Round 1 Scorecard
While that was only a few years ago, many client projects were still published in Flash and that tended to be buggy in Adobe Captivate – for new developers that’s just one of the many learning curves. HTML was my preferred option, but this was at times challenging to deploy with Captivate. Thankfully others agree and have improved the enabling technologies to really create immersive learning experiences. Both had the ability to import PPTs for rapid authoring, but I felt Adobe Captivate was too robust to only use it for modernizing PPT-based courses; slide development is so simple in Articulate Storyline it could even replace PPT unless you like maintaining huge decks. The impression after a year of working with both: Articulate Storyline is the winner. Storyline is so easy to use for novice developers and capable of delivering great interactive, immersive learning experiences. Stay tuned for round 2!