The market and demand for eLearning is increasing at an enormous pace, with it the need to build eLearning content in an quick and easy way is also surfacing. We have reviewed several eLearning content creators in the past. Our subject for this review is Raptivity.  Now make no mistake, this is not a full fledged eLearning content creator but serves as an add-on to them by helping to add STUNNING interactivity in no time.

Intro

Raptivity – A Rapid Interactivity tool provides you with pre-built interactions which are based on best practices in the industry.These pre-built interactions can be called the back bone of Raptivity.  On the one hand they are capable of providing nice looking interactivities in a short span of time, and on the other hand – for the whiz amongst us – they provide a lot of customizations options. The output is in the form of a Flash (SWF) file which can be integrated with almost all eLearning tools out there. Raptivity can also help track  score and responses and can provide this information to eLearning tools for SCORM/ AICC tracking with any LMS.

Raptivity has these products to offer:

• Main Raptivity Software: ( also known as Raptivity Essential)
• Raptivity Turbo packs: Used for 3D, Games , Videos and Simulations
• Raptivity Standard Packs: which are further subdivided into Pack1, Pack 2 and Pack3
• Raptivity Booster Packs: Consists of additional 235 interactions

We wish they could mention the usage of all these packs in some easily accessible location. There seems to be some overlap between usage of various packs. A first-time visitor might feel lost on the website. Also we missed “Getting Started” Links on the homepage.

Installation

• Raptivity essential is about 200 MB in size. Installation was a breeze. It took around 3-4 minutes for end to end installation. We would have liked to find a mention of the size in front of the downloadable, so that one knows the approximate time to download.
• Raptivity provides a free trial for 14 days. The trial version allows you to create 20 interactivities from 35 interaction models.
• Once the trial is over you would need to purchase and activate the software. It took us 30 sec to activate Raptivity using online activation mode.
• If you decide to format your machine or transfer the current license to another machine, make sure that you deactivate the Raptivity software before formatting your machine.
• At the time of review it consumed about 50MB of memory when seen from the Task Manager. Not so resource heavy we can say.

Getting Started

As soon as you double click on the Raptivity icon on your desktop you will be greeted with the screen shown below. UI looks pretty slick. They have kept up with the tradition of Web2.0

To start creating your first Interactivity, click on ‘New Interactivity’. You will get ‘All Packs’ screen which will list Raptivity essentials along with any additional pack that you have installed.

Creating an Interactivity

For the purpose of this review, we will create a survey. Choose Essential Pack > Surveys > Smile Sheet. After specifying values for Size and no of survey questions, you will get this screen.

Survey questions, their font etc can be customized using the text editor on the bottom (marked with arrows).

Output

Here is an output of a quick little survey we created in under 5 mins. Needless to say it was a simple exercise and the task was well done by Raptivity.

Cost

The basic – Raptivity Essential – set up will cost you $550 during the offer period, (normally it goes for $750). If you’re interested for other packs, they have various combo offers on their sales page.

Trivia:

• Other than Raptivity Essential, the rest of the packs are about 50 – 70 MB in size.
• We tried enrolling for their Free Weekly webinar. We did get a canned reply saying we will receive another email on instructions on how to connect, but that mail never landed either in our inbox and or in spam folder. This may be a small issue, but things like this make a long-lasting impression on a prospective customer’s mind.

Parting Comments:

While I would strongly like to recommend Raptivity to focus on usability testing for their website and try to make it more user friendly, Raptivity has left me impressed me thoroughly. Other than the minor points of improvements noted above, Harbinger group has created a rock solid product. It looks like Raptivity is all set to make a level playing field for the small players in the eLearning industry where they need not worry about spending a fortune hiring designers. At a fraction of a cost and time, now they too can create impressive interactivities.

Important Links

• For a quick official overview refer Raptivity’s DataSheet.
• 6 Things you may not know about Raptivity
• Free Trial
• Buy

PS: Thank You Amitabh for the review copy.

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Last week we discussed and reviewed Learning Management Systems. Today we will review some of the best eLearning softwares present in the market.

The first question that comes to mind is – what is the difference between an LMS and an eLearning software? Well, an LMS is used to host training content and track results while an eLearning software is used to create the training content, such as presentations, quizzes, which can then be hosted in an LMS.

For our review we have picked three most popular eLearning softwares. Articulate Rapid ELearning solution, Adobe Captivate and Lectora.

Articulate Rapid ELearning Solution:

Articulate is one of the favorite tools for providing e-learning solutions. It enables you to create high quality e-learning products quickly and easily. The Articulate Rapid e-learning  solution makes use of Microsoft Power point for all of its functions. Once installed successfully, it adds an extra option labeled ‘Articulate’ on the same. What sets the e-learning solution apart from many other of its competition is the ease of use. Once you are done with creating a presentation, you can use the ‘Articulate’ option on your power point software and add animations that you want and make a Flash file.

Any learning software also needs the ability to handle questions. ‘Articulate’ does just that. It has a range of built in question handling options with various question types. If these aren’t enough, you could always use the ‘Quizmaker‘ software which is a separate software and develop your questionnaires in a better way. It has the ability to publish SCORM and AICC compliant courses and the ability to incorporate graphics and media.

Articulate Studio Standard edition is priced at $999 while Professional edition ‘09 is priced at $1,398.

Adobe Captivate:

Adobe Captivate is part of the Adobe e-learning suite and it allows users to create elearning courses without any programming or multimedia knowledge. Adobe captivate has a wide range of features such as Text-to-speech functionality, ability to produce the output files in a wide range of file formats that includes AVI, which can be used for web streaming and publishing on youtube.

An exciting feature of Adobe Captivate is the ability to let users customize the widgets. Widgets can be created using software such as Adobe Flash and then customized to meet the requirements of the particular course. Existing Power Point slides can also be involved in the projects you create using Adobe Captivate. Presentations can be imported and synced with the captivate files by using the options provided.

The software also has built in templates to make it easy to provide good instructional material without having to incorporate a lot of changes. Adobe Captivate is priced at $249 and does not include other Adobe software such as Flash, which need to be bought separately.

Lectora:

Lectora is again one of the most popular eLearning tools which is developed by the Trivantis Corporation. It can be used to create elearning courses and presentations. Lectora also has the ability to import files from the Microsoft Powerpoint format and incorporate the content to produce elearning content in various output formats raning from a HTML web page, video files and even an executable file.

Lectora supports industry standards such as SCORM, AICC etc which allow for the development of open architecture guidelines for interoperable learning content.

Among the various features of Lectora include the ability to import questions, use multimedia content to produce stand out elearning courses. Lectora supports a large number of automated tools such as title wizards, table of contents, media library, resource manager etc. These tools can be used out of the box and thus provide a great value for money. The basic version of the software is priced at $495 . Add on features can be obtained for a nominal price.

Check out Articulate Rapid eLearning suite, Adobe Captivate and Lectora.