I have been using Captivate for a few years at work along with Articulate. I am impressed with the latest features to be updated in Captivate in the last few weeks. While my first dive into building online course was years ago with MOOC, the last 10 years or so have made development of eLearning so much faster, easier, and have definitely made for a better learning experience for students. The enhancement to the VR immersive experiences are greatly improved and will make the future of learning that much better and easier to produce and learn with/from. The automated Click and replace is a well needed addition and allows for a fast and simple way to duplicate multiple slides with similar content within the project, which can greatly reduce the development time. The ability to add overlay slides on recorded and streaming videos is fantastic for the learners! One of the features that I looked most forward to was the integration of the PPT to Captivate import and conversion, it still requires some editing to get the features and functionality as you may need, but it sure cuts down development time for the Passive and Simple IMI projects.

While work continues to utilize Captivate, they are beginning to switch over to Articulate, while I am uncertain why, I believe it may because their interface is very much like Power Point and it allows more personnel to create content. My fear is that the content created may not be of the highest quality nor in the best interest for the student. Just because an interface is easy to use, does not mean that anyone who can use it should be allowed to create a course. We have all heard the “Death by PowerPoint” Statement in past years, and to an extent it is true. But Power Point is a tool and you cannot blame the tool for how it is used, you have to blame the person using the tool, after all it is not the shovels fault that the hole is not dug right, it is the person using the shovel who is at fault. I feel that IMI and eLearning may be headed in the same direction because of simple interfaces and low cost authoring tools that allow simple cheap templates to be used by those who have no training, education, nor experience in Instructional Design or eLearning in any regard.

I am glad to see that Adobe is leaning forward with the Captivate Platform and making tools and features that are made for those who have experience and education in Instructional Design and eLearning. For me it makes a difference to have an Authoring Tool that is focused on the end product and not the ease of use for just anyone on the planet to create a course. It may take a while to learn the nuisances and shortcuts and maybe even some of the navigation of Captivate, but once you learn it the tool is easy and fast and even fun to create courses with varying levels of interactions and features.