A question to satisfy my curiosity.
Good evening all.
I read another very knowledgeable poster on the forum state that they get asked for more Non-Responsive projects over Responsive Projects (I believe I read that correctly). And to be honest, I was surprised by this based on my past career and work history in Marketing Communications.
I thought I would ask the question to the larger group to satisfy my curiosity to see if others have this same experience. So, what do you get asked for most often? Responsive or Non-Responsive projects? And just as a follow up to that, which do you prefer to work with?
Thanks for helping me with my curious inquiry.
any progress on this? I like Paul’s suggestion
I wonder – due to some comments – if the Topic title is what I understood? It looks like there is some confusion. It is NOT necessary to create a responsive project with Fluid Boxes (no one else except me mentioned the Breakpoint views) to make a project viewable on all devices. A non-responsive project published with the option Scalable HTML can be viewed on any device, with these restrictions:
- On mobile devices only landscape mode will be possible
- Non available features like rollover will not work on mobile devices
Couple of years ago I compared the 3 possible workflows on Captivate to make projects viewable on all devices.
http://blog.lilybiri.com/fluid-boxes-or-breakpoint-views
All the links to examples in my blog, except those for fluid boxes examples, have been created with Scalable HTML publishing. They can be viewed on tablets and mobile devices in landscape mode.
If you look at the most recent sample project I have posted here (Software simulation about using Shared actions as Template) on a tablet you’ll see that it is possible, but maybe not optimal because the browser resolution on your tablet is always lower than on a laptop/desktop. For a smartphone it will work, but you’ll probably not be able to do the training because the browser resolution is very small even for high resolution smartphones. It proves one of my main viewpoints: not every topic is suited to be viewed on mobile devices. If I knew that this tutorial will be used on smartphones, I would have created a completely different version from a lot of partial screenshots of the Captivate UI.
My apologies that a non-finished version of this comment appears as well. I had some issues with the portal this morning, and deleting a comment is not possible here as in the Adobe forums.
Please ignore this comment, due to a bug this morning.
Some great perspectives and thoughts on this subject. Some interesting things to think about. Thank you both. I wonder if we will get anyone else with different views. Let’s see how this plays out.
In my view, I don’t get asked for either. Usually, my stakeholders merely want eLearning. It comes up when I start asking them follow-up questions. The largest reason for not needing responsive design is that the company LMS is on a closed network, and employees don’t have access to the training on their mobile devices. When this is the case, I don’t waste the extra time needed to develop for a mobile view that nobody will see.
Also, responsive design in eLearning isn’t ready to be the de facto standard yet. While Adobe leads in this area, I don’t believe any authoring tool makers have cracked this nut. I do think that when we have a genuinely dynamic solution to the responsive design question in eLearning, anyone who doesn’t embrace it will be left behind. There is no doubt that it will be a highly competitive skill to have in our industry.
My experience has been the same as Paul’s in that they never ask about this. My clients (higher ed faculty) are focused on desktop views because that’s what they’ve used to build and view the work they’ve already done. But I know their students are likely to try to access the modules on a tablet or other mobile device (in one instance, students are given iPads upon entry to the program).
I’ve had faculty straight-up state that they do not care about designing for tablet/mobile; that their students should be using a desktop or laptop. Still, I try to design with at least a tablet-view in mind (not necessarily ‘responsive’ but with a clean, uncluttered interface that won’t look terrible when viewed through a smaller viewport). I develop modules with Captivate and with HTML/css/javascript (for more complex ‘game’ modules) and it definitely adds to the workload (in my experience, anyways) to design for multiple viewports.
Thanks for your perspective. It is interesting that some state that they do not care about tablet or mobile views. In some cases it would make it easier on students to be able to view on the device they are able to. Especially considering that some students work and do a lot of their review work while in transit.
I do like the idea of designing with at least a view on the tablet mode. While viewing on a phone may not be possible, I do think the phone is likely more suited to microlearning instead of larger course content. Just an opinion that someone might disagree with.
Thanks for sharing.
Sadly, I have had the same experience as Kim. Many professors that I have worked with are being forced to use an LMS simply want their content moved online and sadly do not care much for interactivity.
I too have had the same types of interactions at the University Level. I find that this is especially true with professors that are being forced to use an LMS for the first time. That said we need to meet learners where they are, and lets facing it college students are on mobile devices. The great thing is that Captivate makes it extremely easy to convert powerpoints to responsive presentations.
Because my clients didn’t really care about a mobile/tablet interface, but knowing that their students would definitely try to use mobile/tablet to complete the modules (because that’s what I would do, especially if the program I was in handed me an iPad), I had to design for desktop and tablet (at least) in mind, fearing negative feedback from students about the design would reflect poorly on any future work, *even* when they didn’t ask for it.
That was a point I was hoping to hear – Meeting students where they are. That was one of the things I was wondering. If ID/Developers are not being asked for responsive courses, are the clients really thinking about the learner.
But is this different when we look at higher ed vs corporate training? Maybe the taking corporate courses are working mostly on desktop and therefor needing a mobile version is not necessary. I’m not sure. I’m just asking questions are sharing in discussions.
In the past year I have been a part of 3 different higher ed organizations. And all 3 are the same. Using an LMS as their eLearning delivery tool. I have written previously about this, so I won’t get into it again, but I think things can be better. I want things to be better for the learners. But it involves investment. It involves time. And truthfully, Covid didn’t provide much time and everyone had hoped it would be better by now instead of much worse. So, some org’s are playing catch up and some aren’t, for a lot of reasons.
Anyway, a bit of a tangent, but not too far off my initial question. Let’s just finish with I am happy to have had this discussion and hope more contribute with their thoughts as well. I like hearing all the different perspectives.
I may already have talked about my bitterness that all my efforts to introduce eLearning assets in the department I have worked (and managed) in the university college just disappeared when leaving the college. Even in 2020 government still believe it is sufficient to install an IT structure in higher (and other levels as well) education. They forget the two most important factors are the ‘HUMANS’ and the non-hardware assets. Personally for some of my courses I have developed eLearning assets, interactive courses but it has cost me thousands of hours on top of my other tasks. Happy that most students were more engaged than my colleagues. I have used not only discussion forums on the LMS but used Twitter with my students for easier JIT communication. My colleagues proclaimed that I was crazy (maybe that is the case). Not sure if it is also the case in other countries, but team work in education is not always appreciated. I regret not having invested more time in engaging some colleagues but you need a stimulating management to be successful and that was completely lacking.
Indeed this discussion went bit off topic. Corporate training can either be more innovative than what is used in Education, or just very outdated. Interaction between Education and Corporate training would be a real surplus.
I have read you speak about the efforts you put in being abandoned once you left before, yes, but it is a valid point you make. There has to be someone that is willing to invest in it – whether higher ed or corporate side. We can only push the boulder so far ourselves.
In terms of engaging colleagues, I have actually recently done that starting with my boss and a few of my fellow ID’s and there may be a movement happening. I’m hopeful, but we will see what happens.
Keep pushing that boulder.
You did read correctly, because it was my reaction to a post about Draft.
There are many reasons why companies do not want to use Responsive projects:
- Security reasons in many cases. Only companies where workers need access to JIT training when they are abroad (like on ships) will be more open.
- Most topics in existing courses are not suited for watching on mobile devices, especially smartphones. Both pedagogically (duration, content itself) and linked to the limitations of that kind of hardware (device itself, browser resolution, bandwidth…)
- More expensive to develop. That answers you other questions. Specifically for Captivate: Fluid Boxes need more time than a non-responsive project and the features are lot more limited (I don’t talk about the extra learning curve). Breakpoint views give you more control, but need even more development time. I include the much longer testing time needed on all kind of devices for responsive projects, and the way the LMS will react.
Prefer to work? I feel limited when developing with Fluid Boxes. I feel frustrated when having to develop content for smartphones which will never work efficiently (learning result). Developing the right content to be used in an app (without access to Internet) or a HTML application where I use all the possibilities to reduce the file size, can be challenging and very rewarding if it doesn’t have to be ready… yesterday.
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