Raptivity.

Raptivity, CD-ROM, 2006, Harbinger Knowledge Products, $1995.

Support: user materials one year tech support.

For many years, I've been urging instructional designers (and others developing instruction) who build online and blended instructional materials to have, at a minimum, basic authoring and programming skills.

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My rationale has been that these skills are critical for understanding what the tools and code are doing. These skills help designers understand what can and cannot be done and often translate into better storyboards and less iteration because people who possess them are able to understand what developers need to know (descriptions of how a rollover should behave, for example).

And here's another reason. Perhaps you are easily able to get your developers to make small changes quickly, but I find that changes often take longer than desired. If I have basic authoring and programming skills, I can often make these changes myself far faster than it takes to document them for developers and then wait for them to be completed (and reviewed by the team).

And here's another reason. Developers may occasionally try to snow you or blow you off. (Yeah, yeah, I know this has never happened to you ...) These skills help you head this off and make it less likely it will happen again. I'm in favor of making life less stressful so this makes lots of sense to me.

Stopping trouble in its tracks

Here's a real-life example of what I am talking about. My instructional design team was in the midst of developing online applications instruction for a client and wanted certain pages to be formatted in a very specific way for printing.

We developed print standards but the developer told us that what we wanted couldn't be accomplished. They suggested adding notes to learners about how to print the page in landscape rather than portrait mode.

Nuh-uh, bad idea. We showed the developers references on how to use Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to accomplish what we asked for and voila, it was done. Better instruction, less stress.

Maybe you're thinking I'm a crackerjack multimedia developer and web programmer so of course this is easy for me. Not so. I can author decently in some of the most commonly used authoring tools, but I'm not an expert compared to folks who do authoring and programming every day. Here's what I am proficient at: knowing what different tools can and cannot do, when to use one tool rather than another, and how to tweak pages and underlying code when not-too-big changes are needed.

I still think those of us who build online and blended instruction benefit from these skills, but I'm far less emphatic about being able to read and tweak code than I used to be. In the last few years, a number of authoring tools have become far more feature rich and easier to use (see my review of Lectora Publisher, for example), and it's quite often simple to make changes without having to dive into the code.

I am truly glad this has happened because it means the design and development process can be streamlined.

Writing storyboards, waiting for developers to develop them, rounds of internal iterations with developers, and then rounds of external iterations with the client--they take a long time, cost a lot, and are fraught with problems--as if too much time and money aren't enough of a problem.

To a large degree, some of the newer authoring tools allow a designer, subject matter expert, or content developer to think right inside the tool and develop decent end products without all the in-between steps. Less time, less iteration, lower cost. Good things.

I was really excited to play with Raptivity when I examined the list of interactions it develops and saw that many of the typical interactions we storyboard could easily be built using this tool. Here's what I thought: if it takes the same time to build the interaction as to storyboard it, it could reduce the time and effort required for time consuming-but-predictable iterations when the client has some text changes, or the developers don't program the interaction exactly as written.

In other words, I was psyched to play with this tool.

[square]Initial experience

I had very high hopes when reviewing this authoring tool .... but the reality left me wanting. Normally, this means that the tool I'm reviewing will be deleted from my hard drive as soon as I am done reviewing it, but that's not the case here.

And that's weird, but I'll try to explain. Suffice it to say that the tool needs work and is frustrating to use, but it's still very valuable.

The first problem occurred when I easily installed the tool and was confronted with a zillion interaction options and almost no documentation on how to use them. I was overwhelmed ... and I don't overwhelm easily. Part of this is because the organization of the interactivities (what they call interactions that can be edited and published) isn't helpful enough.

So, for example, I wanted to find all the drag-and-drop interactivities in all the packs but needed to peruse all the interactivities in all of the packs one at a time. The interactivities really need to be organized at a more granular level, in the way instructional developers think about interaction types. The current organization by learning theory is interesting but not terribly helpful.

Another thing that frustrated me initially was opening a "New Interactivity" from the startup screen. In my view of application usability, to open or edit a file, you click or double-click on it. Not so here. It took me numerous tries to figure out how to begin building the interactivity I had selected. You click on the sample rather than on the interactivity name within the list--that's counterintuitive.

Interactivies

Here is a run-down of my experience with each of the interactivities I used.

Pros and frustrating cons

Here's what I liked about Raptivity:

* I was able to closely replicate the Flash interactions we typically use. Great news!

* The most commonly used interactivities can be saved in a My Favorites folder so they are easy to find later (a VERY good idea).

* The Explorer view's "All categories" make it easier (but not easy) to find what you need.

* The tool is fun to play with despite the frustrations, once you find what you need. And fun is a very good thing.

Here's what frustrated me a lot:

* Inputting text into interactivities and having it appear as desired is a frustrating trial-and-error process. The character limit for each text field isn't obvious and requires far many iterations to get right (and I was unable to get it right on some of the interactivities I built). Note to self: start a how-to guide where I keep notes about how to optimize each interactivity so I'm not forced to do this level of iteration next time I use the same interactivities. (And why didn't the Raptivity developers do this so I don't have to?)

* While editing an interactivity, the amount of space to input text into text boxes is far too small. I had to write and edit text outside the application and then paste it into the field. Then I got weird characters because of copying from a Word document into Raptivity. Sigh. Note to self: write text in Word so I can check spelling, then copy and paste into Notepad (and get rid of weird Word characters) and then copy and paste from there into Raptivity. Can you spell t-i-m-e c-o-n-s-u-m-i-n-g?

* Attributes of imported graphics aren't specified so it takes far too much trial and error to figure out what types, dimensions, etc., are needed (notice a recurring theme here?). This was irritating. Note to self: put media attributes in the how-to guide so I don't have spend time messing with this again.

* The help files provide little help on performing specific authoring tasks. If you are going to have SMEs use this tool, I suggest you develop clear directions on how to build each interactivity.

Further cons

There are a ton of interactivities to choose from, but some are far more useful than others and it takes a while to figure this out. And some of the interactivities aren't interactive.

The Traffic Signal Timer interactivity, for example, goes from green to yellow to red in the amount of time you specify and makes little sense to include in instructional materials without additional context. I could see adding it to a PowerPoint presentation as a timer to be used when participants have a task to do, but it's not an interactivity.

Another frustrating aspect of the tool is what you can edit and not edit. Certain aspects of each interactivity can be edited but sometimes what you want to or need to edit isn't editable.

This is especially frustrating when you can edit that same aspect in another interactivity. For example, you can edit colors in some interactivities and not in others. What's the difference? Beats me.

Here is a list of things I really want the tool to do but it doesn't do:

* Intermingling text, text plus graphics, and graphics-only screens instead of being locked into choosing one type.

* Adding "Back" and "Home" buttons and other navigational elements as needed.

* Adding hints.

* Documentation for each interactivity type with guidance on how to use it and the character limit of text fields and size and other information for graphics.

* The ability to set global standards for text, color, alignment, etc., at any level (all interactivities, this set of interactivities, this interactivity). Lectora does a truly spectacular job with this and it reduces development time immeasurably. This functionality ought to be standard in ALL authoring tools.

* When I edit and fix an existing interactivity and publish again with the same title, the program should ask me if I want to overwrite existing files. It just overwrites them.

* Spell check ... REALLY important. Then I wouldn't need to do the Word-Notepad-Raptivity text shuffle.

* The ability to format text, including color, bolding, italics, bullets, and alignment. The inability to do any of these is truly maddening.

* Additional MCQ item formats (especially bring in a graphic).

Still, it's worth trying

This authoring tool is a robust 'beta' (my opinion, not theirs) with some major flaws, in my view. It suffers from a lack of intuitiveness, difficulties finding applicable interactivities, and an inability to adequately edit needed parameters.

OK, so this next sentence is going to seem weird in light of these misgivings. I do think it's worth purchasing Raptivity because there are enough good interactivities to provide a good return on investment.

So the tool is frustrating, but if you are currently paying outside vendors to build identical interactions and can deal with the limitations, the tool can be very valuable.

I interviewed someone else (who didn't wish to be named) who regularly uses this product, and he said that in his department, the tool is able to do the work of one developer so the ROI is very clear. That makes sense to me. He likes some of the interactive games the best. I can't wait to try the more complex branched scenarios.

The tool allows you to easily make a variety of Flash learning interactions, but whatever you make is only as good as your writing and design skills. But that's not the tool's fault, of course. I found myself wishing that the tool's development team had worked with some crackerjack instructional designers and concentrated on making fewer interactivities that work better. Note: the newest release of Raptivity is now fully SCORM compatible.

The bottom line is that the tool needs serious work, but it is still quite valuable. Those are words I didn't think I'd ever say, but there you have it.

Recommendation

I don't think I have ever recommended a tool that frustrated me this much, but if you normally build the kinds of Flash interactions that are included in this authoring tool and can deal with its limitations, you should consider buying it.

Pit the cost of a Flash developer against the cost of this tool, and the positive return on investment is obvious.

I'm hoping the developers of this tool are reading this because if they improve the product, it might take over the world. OK, that's hyperbole, but you get my drift.

Review by Patti Shank 

Raptivity interactivity                   My results

System Flow Diagram Practice--Six Parts   I couldn't get the text to
                                          work right despite numerous
                                          tries. The interactivity
                                          looked one way while editing
                                          but quite different in Quick
                                          view and the published
                                          version.
Interactive eBook                         I couldn't get the title page
                                          and last page to show the
                                          right text. Totally
                                          frustrating.
Flash cards with text and images          Worked exactly as expected.
Smile Sheet-Advanced                      Worked well, but the submit
                                          button functionality is
                                          counterintuitive and opens an
                                          email. It should automatically
                                          send data without the learner
                                          seeing it. (The survey in
                                          Standard Pack 1 is better for
                                          this purpose.)
Memorize and recall text                  Worked exactly as expected.
Create a Tree                             Worked exactly as expected.
Simulated Situation with text and images  OK, but frustratingly hard to
                                          get the text to fit right on
                                          the screen.
FAQ on Demand                             Worked exactly as expected.
Multi-page Assessment                     I liked that I can select from
                                          a number of different question
                                          types, but the question text
                                          scrolling is awful and the
                                          final score makes no sense to
                                          me. If I answer none of the
                                          questions and click "Submit,"
                                          I am given credit for one
                                          answer no matter how I tweak
                                          the scoring.

Product Ratings

Raptivity

Interface             **
Ease of use           ** 1/2
Ease of installation  ****
Documentation         *
Value for the money   *** 1/2
Overall rating        ** 1/2