Of the questions asked of me during DemoFest, I think most were regarding development tools. In regards to development tools used, the course is truly a Frankencourse, a term I believed coined by David Anderson (@eLearning).
So here are the development tools I used for this project.
Adobe Flash - The initial interface was built in Flash. This provided greater ease of animating the characters, creating the navigation, which is non-linear and not as simple as adding next and back buttons of which it has none. However, the Flash movie sits within Articulate Presenter and navigates to an assessment made in Articulate Quizmaker which also sits within the same Presenter project (more on this later).
Adobe Captivate - I used this for creating every simulation in the course. I find Captivate to be a great tool for software simulations, plus I could easily edit instructions in the sims, add graphics including the Captain and Ossie 7. It also afforded me the opportunity to have several sims be more exploration than just task driven. For example, the sim where Ossie 7 lets you explore each ribbon at your own pace and direction. Note: All the sims are "try me" sims in which the participant completes tasks and/or explores the application. They are not demonstrations were they simply watch the application being used.
Articulate Quizmaker - Very easy way to create the assessment at the conclusion of the course. Most of the questions in the quiz were scenario based and involved clicking the correct button on a graphic representation of the Office application (e.g., an Outlook ribbon). Quizmaker easily accommodated this, plus worked well within Presenter - it should since it is also part of the Articulate suite.
Articulate Presenter - This is what I plopped the Flash and Quizmaker into. Essentially, the first page of the Presenter project is the Flash course, which has numerous pages and opens all the sims and links to its additional resources. It also has a button that takes you to the quiz. It actually takes you to the next presenter page introducing the quiz. The third page is the Quizmaker assessment. And because it is in Presenter, I could easily publish the presenter course as SCORM compliant that would work well on my learning management system (LMS).
Social Media - Ongoing support includes the use of social media, including Twitter, Screenr videos, and Diigo social bookmarks.
That's it. I know to some it may seem insane to use so many tools, but with so many different aspects of the course it did require these tools to get this project done. Don't believe me? Take a look - Introduction to Office 2010.
Note: Microsoft Office 2010 was used to the extent that it was the subject of the sims, job aids, etc., but not actually a development tool itself.
View the course - Introduction to Office 2010
