(With apologies for cross posting)
Many thanks to all those who responded to my query about using online tools for creating interactive IL resources and especially for the links to resources created. It's been interesting to hear about others' experiences of using these
tools and seeing some of the very impressive results. I've summarised the feedback received in the attached document.
For our own evaluation we tried Articulate Storyline and Captivate on a free trial basis as well as experimenting with Xerte. We also looked at the in-built facility for creating learning objects within Blackboard, which we use for our
VLE. We found that Articulate has the capability of creating quite professional resources without too much technical know-how but that the cost may be prohibitive if it needs to be available for several users across different campuses. Articulate appears to
be quite intuitive to use if familiar with PowerPoint and there are plenty of useful tutorials as well as online support whereas Captivate, although capable of creating very impressive resources, seems a bit more complicated to use and supporting material
is less helpful. Xerte has the advantage of being free and now that it outputs to HTML5 is more versatile as well as having the advantage of in-built accessibility features. Having already used Xerte myself to create resources I found Xerte quite easy to
use once I'd got the hang of it and it does allow for a good variety of activity but it does have a slightly less polished feel than the commercial alternatives. Although I did feel that with Articulate and Captivate they were primarily aimed at a business
market rather than an academic one.
But the main issue we found with all these tools is the time it takes to initially get to grips with how they work and then to create something that looks professional, and so as well as cost it's necessary to factor in the amount of
time and effort to be invested in training and in creating resources. Cost and whether or not we'll have time to make best use of them will probably determine our choice of which if any of these to choose.
Sally
Sally Reeve
Assistant Information Adviser
Queenwood Library
University of Brighton
Eastbourne
tel: 01273 643680
Sally Reeve
Assistant Information Adviser
University of Brighton
Eastbourne
Tel: 01273 643680
Queenwood onTwitter:
https://twitter.com/QWLibrary