Adobe Captivate

Adobe Captivate is the Cornerstone of My eLearning Business

Opmerkingen: I started using Adobe Captivate with version 2. It was okay but obviously there was room for it to improve. At the time of writing this review, Captivate is on version 11 and it has matured into a robust solution. I will continue to use it for all my professional eLearning work for as long as they continue to make it available.

Pluspunten:

I have been using Adobe Captivate since the mid-2000s. Each release has brought new and innovative features that allow me to continue to impress my clients. Features like virtual reality and interactive video make Adobe Captivate the industry leader in eLearning Authoring tools

Minpunten:

A complicated piece of software means that the learning curve is steep but the reward is that in return it does so much.

A powerful player in the e-learning arena

Opmerkingen: While I am just jumping into the platform as my current job requires it over other software platforms, I am impressed. Having used the entire Adobe CC and other e-learning software, this platform is not difficult to transition into.

Pluspunten:

Having used many products for developing e-learning, Captivate is among the top-tier development programs but has a high cost to entry. The platform is powerful and has a lot of nuances that allow for digging deep into options for developing truly custom courses and user experiences.

Minpunten:

While you can dig deeply into advanced interactions, data reporting, etc, the learning curve is immense to begin to understand elements such as advanced actions, keywords, etc. Variables become buried and are not as easy to manipulate as in Articulate Storyline, but they are buried for very good reason in that you can actually do more in Captivate than with its rival program with such features. If I am to further nitpick, I am not excited by the filmstrip display for slide storyline. This is a feature I love in Articulate's e-learning in that non-linear branching is highly encouraged whereas the linear filmstrip does little to entice users to develop complex learning opportunities, reinforcing the linear death by slides commonly seen in virtual learning.

Adobe Captivate not the choice for me

Opmerkingen: I understand this is a great tool but the price, large time investment required to be proficient, unintuitive navigation, and high bandwidth it takes up made the product not worth it.

Pluspunten:

Even though I didn’t have a great experience with this product, I recognize you can create really awesome courses, elearnings, microlearnings, etc.

Minpunten:

My issues with Adobe Captivate can be boiled down to three things:1. Despite the interface looking familiar, I found it very difficult to navigate and perform basic functions.2. At the time I was using a virtual desktop to work and found this software put a great strain on my computer…so much so that everything moved at a snails pace.3. I acknowledge that, with time and effort, I could have learned to be proficient with Adobe Captivate. But that time investment, for the high the price, wasn’t feasible (especially considering if we chose this software, we’d have to teach others to use it as well).

Using Adobe Captive for delivering interactive E-learning content

Pluspunten:

Offers a way to use your old powerpoint presentations and convert them into interactive modules and upload it into your LMS of choice. Lots of assets available and other features such as screen capture and 360 simulations

Minpunten:

The price is a big factor, it is a bit expensive. Not much updates since 2019.

Adobe Captivate - What you'd expect from an Adobe product

Opmerkingen: I've authored over 300 courses with Adobe Captivate in the last 6 years and overall, I'm very satisfied with the product. For all its faults, it's really forced me outside my box and helped me learn a lot about instructional design.

Pluspunten:

Adobe Captivate allows you to author amazing and beautiful coursework if you don't mind spending a little extra time to learn some coding. The product is fairly intuitive and it has a lot of capabilities. It's a very deep and robust product.

Minpunten:

To really get the best out of Captivate, you do need to spend quite a lot of time learning about creating variables, some beginner coding, and occasionally some javascript. You can make the program do whatever you want, but it takes a lot of patience and, sometimes, some wonky workarounds.