Elicitus Content Publisher.Elicitus Content Publisher, CD-ROM CD-ROM: see compact disc. CD-ROM in full compact disc read-only memory Type of computer storage medium that is read optically (e.g., by a laser). , 2006, Harbinger har·bin·ger n. One that indicates or foreshadows what is to come; a forerunner. tr.v. har·bin·gered, har·bin·ger·ing, har·bin·gers To signal the approach of; presage. Knowledge Products, $1395. For an online demo of this product, use the "Product Preview/Demo" link to the left of the review. Imagine an instructional design Instructional design is the practice of arranging media (communication technology) and content to help learners and teachers transfer knowledge most effectively. The process consists broadly of determining the current state of learner understanding, defining the end goal of tool that allows you to build all of the components of e-learning right out of the box. With the Elicitus Content Publisher, you can do that and much more--you can, as the vendor's tagline says, "create more e-learning with less authoring." A key question about authoring tools used for training is how difficult they are to learn and use. I'll answer that question in the course of the review. Elicitus Content Publisher Features and Functionality Elicitus courses contain learning units with lessons and assessments. Each of the lessons includes topic pages with corresponding exercise questions and assessments that can include various types of questions. You can choose from more than 200 course templates, each with flexible built-in navigational features. Both templates and navigational features can be modified. Learner interactivity with course components can be customized by adding links or hotspots to other media, pages, and assessments within the course. Editing an Elicitus course is relatively easy using the Course Outline Editor, a user-friendly design tool with drag-and-drop functionality. You can use that functionality to easily change the order of course graphics, animations, text, slides, and voiceover files. Assessments, Learning Objects, Glossary A term used by Microsoft Word and adopted by other word processors for the list of shorthand, keyboard macros created by a particular user. See glossaries in this publication and The Computer Glossary. You use the Question Bank Editor to quickly build course assessments, choosing from 11 different item types such as true-false, matching pairs, fill in the blank, fill in the blank with wildcard See wild cards and wildcard mask. , drag and drop A graphical user interface (GUI) capability that lets you perform operations by moving the icon of an object with the mouse into another window or onto another icon. For example, files can be copied or moved by dragging them from one folder to another. , multiple choice, graphic choice, visual identification and sequencing items. The Question Layout Editor changes the item font font or typeface or type family Assortment or set of type (alphanumeric characters used for printing), all of one coherent style. Before the advent of computers, fonts were expressed in cast metal that was used as a template for printing. type and color or inserts Flash animations, images, or additional text boxes on the screen. Learner interactivity such as immediate or delayed reinforcement and correct text messages are part of the design layout. You can customize the assessment scoring pages by setting individual scores for each question or setting a passing score for the entire assessment. In addition, you have the ability to: * Email or print test scores * Customize and implement an assessment navigation policy * Enable learners to review and compare answers You can recycle re·cy·cle tr.v. re·cy·cled, re·cy·cling, re·cy·cles 1. To put or pass through a cycle again, as for further treatment. 2. To start a different cycle in. 3. a. e-learning objects from other Elicitus courses using the Import feature (see the graphic below). Learning objects can be learning units, lessons, topic pages, glossary items, assessment items, or any media resource. After completing the Import process, a detailed import log report is generated and saved. The Glossary Builder creates glossary items that can be classified in categories and illustrated with multimedia. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Publishing an Elicitus Course The Course Publisher feature publishes the course for viewing online or on a CD. Courses can also be deployed through one of many learning management systems (LMS's) when publishing content to AICC AICC anti-inhibitor coagulant complex. level 1, SCORM SCORM Shareable Content Object Reference Model (web-based e-learning standard) SCORM Shared Courseware Object Reference Model SCORM Shareable Courseware Object Reference Model 1.2, or SCORM 2004 standards. Standards compliant courses published with this tool can track test scores, bookmarks, and additional learner criteria such as time spent on completing the course. User Experience To test the capabilities of this product and to understand the user experience, I created a short course. The instructional goal of this course is to refresh (1) To continuously charge a device that cannot hold its content. CRTs must be refreshed, because the phosphors hold their glow for only a few milliseconds. Dynamic RAM chips require refreshing to maintain their charged bit patterns. See vertical scan frequency and redraw. customer service agents on a new order process for a product they are already selling. The course development process is initiated with the New Course Wizard button or Blank Course buttons. I chose the New Course Wizard because I wanted to see just how quickly I could develop an online course with the tool. On the Specify Course Metadata screen, I entered the course name, my name as the author, and the location of the course folder In a graphical user interface (GUI), a simulated file folder that holds data, applications and other folders. Folders were introduced on the Xerox Star, then popularized on the Macintosh and later adapted to Windows and Unix. In Unix and Linux, as well as DOS and Windows 3. . The Learning Objects Details screen was where I started to build the course design; using a dropdown list, I specified five lessons in my course and one assessment. In the lefthand pane A rectangular area within an on-screen window that contains information for the user. A window may have many panes. See menu pane. , the course hierarchy was clearly defined. I chose one of the Elicitus ready-made wallpapers and reviewed the 225-page design template document to find one that best met my instructional design strategy for this topic page. Finally, I set up the course assessment and was ready to build the course. The course design framework process for four lessons and one assessment took about two minutes to complete. Using the wizard-driven lesson template, I filled in the lesson title, learning objective, and prerequisite as shown in the following graphic. From there I worked with blank lesson templates in the Topic Page Editor. Development of the first topic page--including text and graphics--took about five minutes; topic pages with more complex concepts took about 10 minutes each. Finishing Touches finishing touches finish npl the finishing touches → der letzte Schliff finishing touches npl → ultimi ritocchi mpl From the Course Explorer, a link took me to the Assessment page (see the graphic below) where I chose question types, entered weighted scores for the items, and added correct answers, distracters, and learner messages--the reinforcement and corrective text. Development of the first assessment item took me about five minutes; some of the more complex scenarios took me about 15 to 25 minutes, depending on the learning objectives I wanted to test. My course has about 20 glossary items. The Glossary Builder allows you to build a list of terms and add media resources. I finished the glossary in about five minutes because I started with a glossary from existing new hire training. What took a little longer (another 15 minutes) was determining how many categories I needed and how to best title them for the learner. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] I wanted to deliver my course on CD-ROM so that users can access it on their home computers. The creation of the CD was smooth and trouble free. The graphic below is an example of a finished screen from the course. Slide Import Using the Elicitus SlideConverter, you can import PowerPoint decks or individual slides into a course. Once imported, the slides can be edited and saved in a standards-compliant e-learning format. SlideConverter promises accuracy--none of the original slide details should be lost during the conversion process. After the conversion process is completed, the developer can modify the slides or publish them to SCORM or AICC. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The SlideConverter import settings allow you to define the import criteria for the topic pages, media resources, and the lesson master topic page or the slide master. The slides can be inserted wherever you designate des·ig·nate tr.v. des·ig·nat·ed, des·ig·nat·ing, des·ig·nates 1. To indicate or specify; point out. 2. To give a name or title to; characterize. 3. in a course. I had five hours of content in a slide presentation that I planned to update with changes to the billing tool. New features and functionality needed to be illustrated and explained. Agents also needed to have the opportunity to practice contact handling to prepare for customer issues. Inserting slides into my course was easy and fast. The editing function saved back and forth between PowerPoint and the course files in Elicitus. Fast Start, Easy Use In less than an hour, I created a simple course framework. It took me just a few hours to learn Elicitus's user-friendly, wizard-driven authoring environment. Mastery of all of the authoring tool components will take longer. Efficiency gains can be realized by making changes at the master page level because they cascade to all of the topic pages within a lesson. This is a really nice feature of the tool when implementing multiple change logs during the key stakeholder-decision maker review process. Because assessments are another instructional learning component that can consume a lot of time and resources, I particularly like the pre-formatted design templates for assessments item types. Elicitus SlideConverter did everything it promised. Organizations that rely heavily on PowerPoint to present training will use this tool because its features are intuitive and the functionality suits the needs of most corporate training departments. Content developers can quickly convert and manage large slide decks using this tool. Although in my course example I used an imported slide as a topic page, I realized that I could import slides from existing new hire training as potential learning activities in the customer service course. This type of reuse reuse - Using code developed for one application program in another application. Traditionally achieved using program libraries. Object-oriented programming offers reusability of code via its techniques of inheritance and genericity. of single slides, build slides, or Flash animations can save large chunks of development time. Technical Requirements Elicitus recommends the following minimum configuration to use the tool: * Intel Pentium III The successor to the Pentium II from Intel. Introduced in the spring of 1999 at 500 MHz, the Pentium III architecture was similar to the Pentium II with the addition of 70 new instructions optimized for multimedia (see SSE). Processor (or higher) * Windows XP The previous client version of Windows. XP was a major upgrade to the client version of Windows 2000 with numerous changes to the user interface. XP improved support for gaming, digital photography, instant messaging, wireless networking and sharing connections to the Internet. or Windows 2000 with latest service packs * 256MB of RAM * 100MB available disk space * 256-color monitor * Internet Explorer Microsoft's Web browser, which comes with Windows starting with Windows 98. Commonly called "IE," versions for Mac and Unix are also available. Internet Explorer is the most widely used Web browser on the market. It has also been the browser engine in AOL's Internet access software. 5.5 or above * Mouse or compatible pointing device An input device used to move the pointer (cursor) on screen. The major pointing device is the mouse for the desktop computer and the touchpad for the laptop, although many road warriors bring along a mouse. * CD-ROM or DVD-ROM DVD-ROM: see digital versatile disc. A read-only DVD disc used to permanently store data files. DVD-ROM discs are widely used to distribute large software applications that exceed the capacity of a CD-ROM disc. drive * .NET Framework 1.1 Learner requirements are as follows: * Intel Pentium II The successor to the Pentium Pro from Intel. Pentium II refers to the CPU chip or the PC that uses it. Code named "Klamath," the Pentium II was a Pentium Pro with MMX multimedia instructions. Processor or higher * 64 MB RAM * 256-color monitor * Internet Explorer 5.0 or above, Netscape 7.02, 7.1 and 7.2, Firefox 1.0.2 * QuickTime 6 to play audio on Netscape 7.02, 7.1 and 7.2 Recommendation If your organization needs e-learning content development that is productive, efficient, and nimble nim·ble adj. nim·bler, nim·blest 1. Quick, light, or agile in movement or action; deft: nimble fingers. See Synonyms at dexterous. 2. , Elicitus Content Publisher provides all the necessary features and functionality. Productivity is probably the biggest win because you can build an e-learning product that contains all the primary instructional components quickly, and developers don't need to be expert users. Product Ratings Elicitus Content Publisher Overall rating ***1/2 Review by April Creasey |
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