I think there is plenty of room for all types of e-learning. Some people want captivate/articulate stuff as the priority is to get it out the door. Some companies are thinking more long term and have the money to set a standard for themselves. What many of them find though is that by standardizing on a specific process their pool of vendors they can use shrinks-which purchasing does not like.

I understand the big picture make everything portable etc, i just see that the finances effect everything. In the end many clients have legitimate reasons for just wanting the content done in the fastest solution even if it is closed. They’ll just request a new budget if they decide they want it ported to iphone or something.

@phillip
“the ability to use standard HTML in flash”

http://deng.com.br/

Also take alook at adobe air-it has a html rendering.
http://livedocs.adobe.com/labs/flex3/langref/index.html fl.html package i think. It’s webkit based.

you know what I think would have a HUGE impact on elearning? the ability to use standard HTML in flash. Adobe has said they’ll never add that functionality (something to the effect of ‘why turn Flash into a web browser?’), but as a flash developer, the #1 thing i get hung up on is presentation of text.

on the flipside you can embed Flash into HTML. RE: ian’s comment about having to take courses made in HTML, that presupposes an HTML course is boring and static. i’m currently using Flash and Captivate SWFs in one of my HTML courses, and i’ve created custom MooTools-based interactions which add some very flash-esque dynamics to the course.

RE: javascript having cross-platform issues, this is a valid point, and has been a headache for many people over the years. but i think we’ve come to a point where browsers are (finally) more standardized, there are some very solid cross-browser DOM scripting techniques we can use, and there are cross-browser frameworks available for those who like frameworks (MooTools, jQuery, etc.). (and if anyone suggests it, i don’t buy the argument that JavaScript — with or without frameworks — is harder than ActionScript 3.) Plus you need to know some JS to work with SCORM, anyway.

but again, the whole point of eLearning development tools is supposed to be removing technical barriers and making course production easier. understanding this, there is a HUGE difference between something such as Lectora and FlashForm, or FlashForm and ThinkingCap Studio

in the end, i have no answers, only more questions.

the maintainability of our courses is certainly an issue. when i first signed up to do elearning five years ago, we were uploading swfs into a basic frameset using iauthor at 5k/month, which i despised. knowing absolutely nothing about the scorm, i made the mistake of telling my boss that we didn’t need iauthor. he told his boss and i was given a week to come up with a proof of concept. at the time, there was absolutely no openness regarding elearning whatsoever - it was so new that the people who were hip to it kept it to themselves so that they could make an easy buck. since then i’ve razed and rebuilt our framework no less than 5 times, each time getting a little closer to my personal ideal of ease of use and functionality.

in the meantime we have the scattered remains of discarded frameworks over hundreds of courses. frameworks which only i know the ins-and-outs of - which is great for job security but a bit of a nightmare for updates and revisions.

with this most recent framework i set out to make as modular and decoupled as possible so that even if everything changes in a year, the development process will remain the same.

thanks for the site and thanks for the link to pipwerks - both of you have great articles.

Ian, I would never suggest that we never ever use Flash elements in my courses, but like building your own custom AS3 framework, there’s something to be said for breaking out of the off-the-shelf solutions for authoring E-Learning content.

You’re doing what works for your organization and you obviously have the skillset internally to support and maintain it. Looking broader, I see a lot of organizations that don’t have that internal asset and that’s the appeal of the authoring tools.

I agree with you on developing standards-compliant courses all day, everyday, though. I’m really pretty much done with correcting CSS. Some people love it. I don’t.

in the past we’ve allowed the content developers (course writers) to use breeze and we’re looking into allowing them to use captivate in a limited capacity, but i’ve yet to be convinced that any of these lower-learning-curve authoring applications can offer the quality or flexibility that we achieve developing in flash. that said, i was impressed with how far captivate has come since my last encounter with it.

finally, while i completely support web standards, i think i would shoot myself if i had take courses developed in html and javascript, much less develop them all day every day.