Articulate has me lost for words

I've been a user of Articulate Studio now for about three years. Although I have decades of experience using (and at one stage designing) more sophisticated e-learning authoring tools - you know, the highly configurable ones with their own scripting languages - I now find myself turning more and more often to the so-called rapid development tools. These do the job for me because it seems that nowadays I rarely need to create the sort of lengthy, stand-alone, highly elaborate, self-study courses that were so prevalent in the 80s and 90s. When I do need interactive online content, I need it in the form of short learning objects which can be deployed in versatile ways for reference, in a classroom or, more likely, as ingredients in a blended learning course. When e-content is used in this way, you don't want it to come with a lot of embedded navigational features and add-ons, because these are more flexibly provided separately. And you don't always need a lot of built-in interactivity, because this can be provided in other ways, perhaps with a forum or a live discussion.

Now, let me make clear that developers of top-end content really do need the most sophisticated tools, but for the rest of us, as we approach 2009, we're looking for something different:

• a very modest learning curve;
• highly-professional looking results without having to be highly professional;
• enough flexibility to allow us to generate materials that really deliver on the learning promise.

I've been beta testing the new Articulate Studio 2009, which has just been released and I reckon this does the job for anyone looking at a desktop rapid development tool. No, it's not online, so not ideal for collaborative projects, and no, it doesn't include a software capture tool (although there's nothing to stop you working in Captivate or Camtasia and importing the results into Articulate), but in all other respects this is a big step forwards.

I must confess to being more than a little suspicious of software upgrades, particularly when the software has already evolved to extremely high levels of sophistication (M/S Office, Adobe Creative Suite, for example) - often the new features are highly esoteric and of minimal practical use. But rapid development tools are not at that stage of evolution, so expect the new versions of tools like Articulate to deliver good value for the upgrade price.

The ingredients of Articulate Studio (Presenter for PowerPoint conversions, QuizMaker for assessments, Engage for innovative interactions) are well-established and deliver good functionality. What I haven't been too impressed with in the past is the way they integrate - they didn't look like they belonged together. This has been addressed with the new version; the products are cosmetically enhanced and are much more easily combined. If you're keen to stretch Articulate beyond simple rapid development, you now have many more options, including the ability to create branching scenarios. And, last but not least, Articulate is much better equipped for rich media: incorporate Flash videos in your slides, perform simple video edits and conversions using the new Video Encoder, edit audio, output to podcasts or for mobile delivery. The competition from Adobe Presenter (see my review) is strong and that's the way it should be. I'm looking forward to seeing what both parties will dream up for 2010.