Alright all you Articulate Online users. .. Here is the Articulate Online that never was.

This is one of the original, prototype designs for Articulate Online and it was what Articulate Online almost looked like.

This is actually the second design of Articulate Online, the first one was so ugly that it will never see the light of day.

Things that really stick out about this design:

1. Has a real alien feel (alien as in UFO and little green men)
2. Articulate Online logo is really, really small
3. Very dark and drab
4. Bad use of screen real estate

We tried really hard to make the screen width be viewable without horizontal scrolling at desktop resolutions of 800x600 with this design, so this design is really narrow. This is a common mistake of many websites, they design for 800x600 and very few people still run resolutions that small, and the people that do, probably are not going to be buying our software.

We also use a considerable amount of real estate for the notes on the right, when this stuff is likely never going to be read, and adds nothing to the value of the program.

Initially we went with a design approach where each page was dedicated to a different function. The page above was all about access, controlling who could and who couldn't access your content. We had a separate page for inviting users, setting permissions, and another page for collecting guestbook information. It is not apparent in this design how you get to those other features.

Compare the design above, with the design to the left. Notice how clean, and easy this feels?

The colors are much brighter, and don't make you feel as though you are watching an episode of the X-files.

We also consolidated everything you would want to do on a single page. Everything you would want to do with this content is right there. You can quickly and easily run reports, assign permissions, setup the guestbook, and invite users. Everything that you had to do in several busy pages in the old design were put on a single clean page. We fit more in on a single page, but made it a lot easier.

The old design was hard and dark, and the new design is light and "cheery". The initial design was done in February, and the later design was done in summer, maybe that influenced the designers.

It is pretty interesting looking back at this and seeing how the design changed so much.

Labels: Articulate Online

Last evening we rolled out a significant update to Articulate Online that contains many new improvements.

Not that Articulate Online has ever been slow to respond, but a big portion of this release was targeted toward improving the performance and speed of the site. As Articualte Online's user base continues to scale, we wanted to get out this release to ensure that Articulate Online would continue to perform optimally as our user base grew.

So if you are browsing around Articulate Online today, you might notice that the site is a little faster.

Other features we added in this release:

• Ability to make content private by default (availible under Settings tab>Other Settings)
• Removed ability to see attempt detail report in the user portal when history reports are turned off
• A boat load of bug fixes

For more detailed info on the bug fixes see the Articulate Online 1.5 release notes.

Labels: Articulate Online

We just added a significant new feature to Articulate Online.

Since the release of Articulate Online back in January, one of the suggestions that we have heard time and time again from customers is that they wanted a "User Portal" in Articulate Online. To show you that we are listening, today we added a User Portal to Articulate Online!

Question: What is a "User Portal"?

Answer: The Articulate Online "User Portal" is a place where your private users can securely login to a personalized training site to view and access all content items that administrators or publishers have assigned to them.

When we originally designed Articulate Online we didn't include a "User Portal" because we wanted to focus on creating a platform for easily hosting training content that could then be incorporated in existing websites, blogs, or linked to in emails sent to users. I think we did a pretty great job on this front.

However, shortly after release of Articulate Online in January we started to get requests from customers who also wanted a "User Portal" added to Articulate Online as another means of distributing their training. They wanted a place where users could login, view a list of content they are assigned to view and be able to view the content.

Question: So what does the "User Portal" include?

Answer: By enabling the "User Portal" in Articulate Online, you have the option of allowing your users to do the following in the "User Portal":

• Show a list of all content items the users is given permission to view
• Show user history reports
• Enable users to print the History report (a list of all items viewed) or Attempt Detail report (a print out of the specific attempt at a quiz), which can be used as a completion certificate
• Manage their e-mail address and password settings in the "User Portal"
• Give your users a customized message in the "User Portal"

Question: Cool, so what is this going to cost me?

Answer: Nothing! Great part about it is that all of our existing plans will be able to enable the "User Portal" in Articulate Online, so it won't cost you a thing.

So that's it. I hope you guys like the "Users Portal" and thanks for reading my blog. :-)

For more information on the User Portal visit this Knowledge Base article.

Labels: Articulate Online

Want to know why Articulate Online was designed the way it was?

Much of Articulate Online's design actually came from what we found users didn't like about their current learning management systems.

Check out this presentation that explains the top 6 complaints we heard about traditional Learning Management Systems, and how we attempted to address those complaints in Articulate Online:

Labels: Articulate Online

A question came up this morning...

Here is the scenario (from large manufacturing company, utility, and hotel chain):

Our users do not have company assigned email addresses or a dedicated
PC. They share a PC in a break room, front desk, or shared kiosk environment. It
is in this type of venue that they take their mandatory e-learning courses and would then subsequently take their quizzes to ensure compliance on company wide matters (diversity training, protection of company assets, corporate ethics policies).

The suggestion has been to use employee id or badge number as the unique log-in. The challenge for us would be how to get the password to the private user if the content is private and email is not provided to distribute that. Also, in a shared environment, there would be problems with cookies for guestbook and perhaps also for would you like to resume where you left off from the course? So, we would need to look at a workaround option for that (Shared computer option so as not to use cookies?).

Question: So given the above environment, how can you track your users in Articulate Online, if they don't have an email address and only use a shared computer?

Answer: What you could do is create your user accounts as if they had email addresses like this:

[userid]@[somemadeupdomain]

The users wouldn't actually get any e-mail here. (It's not a real domain anyways.) They just are using a format that the system requires so it looks like a valid e-mail address.

So if I'm a employee at ACME and my id is: 343219, and Jennifer works with me and her id is: 974311, we would log in as:

343219@acmetraining.com

974311@acmetraining.com

You could create your users by using the bulk upload feature in Articulate Online, which would allow you to specify a password for the user, and wouldn't send any emails to the bogus email addresses. You would just need to get your users that password.

Then, just make any content private that you want to track user progress for. This will avoid any problems that might arise from relying on capturing Guestbook data in a public environment.

You will now be able to track your users progress in Articulate Online even though they don't have an email address.

Labels: Articulate Online

Want to update your user's profiles but don't want to update them manually or import an updated CSV? (for info on bulk updating via csv see this kb article)

In Articulate Online if you make content private, and require guestbook information, user profiles will be automatically updated with information entered in the guestbook.

So a quick, easy way to get all your user profiles updated (or filled in) would be to send your users a content link to content that requires a login, and has required guestbook fields.

Labels: Articulate Online

Check out this review of Articulate Online by Robin Good:

Track Online Course Delivery And Student Performance Without A LMS - Articulate Online

Even includes a YouTube remix that is really cool.

Labels: Articulate Online

One of the features I am really glad we included in Articulate Online is added security. Articulate Online uses SSL for login pages and for publishing. This will ensure that your login information can not be stolen by a malicious user.

It is a cool feature that I a glad we added. For more info on SSL, and what it means see the following wiki post:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_Layer_Security

Labels: Articulate Online

If you have ever worked with a Learning Management System before you probably have noticed that uploading content from any eLearning development tool can be an arduous and confusing task. For example, check out the blog posting I did several months ago on uploading content to Moodle. When working with an LMS you will quickly realize what a pain it is to upload content to a Learning Management System.

The typical workflow for uploading content to a Learning Management System is as follows:

1. Start your authoring tool of choice - Articulate Presenter and Quizmaker recommended :-)
2. Select the LMS standard that your LMS uses, either AICC, SCORM 1.2, SCORM 2004
3. Set your tracking options
4. Publish your content as a zip file
5. Log into your Learning Management System
6. Upload your content to your Learning Management System

If you are unfamiliar (or even if you are familiar), publishing to a LMS can be very confusing.

Questions you might ask yourself:

• what LMS standard does my LMS use?
• what does AICC or SCORM mean?
• how do I upload content to my Learning Management System?
• why are there so many damn acronyms?

When we designed Articulate Online we definitely saw this as a problem that we didn't want Articulate Online users to experience.

That is why we created a simple one click publishing process for Articulate Online.

At this point I was going to create a presentation that compared how easy it was to publish content to Articulate Online as opposed to Moodle or Breeze, but then I realized how much work that would be, and Alli Starr's presentation documents pretty well how easy it is to publish to Articulate Online.

But, if you want to see an example of how easy it is to publish to Articulate Online compared to Moodle, check out Alli's presentation to see publishing to Articulate Online, and this blog posting for publishing to Moodle.

So if you haven't done so already, sign up for a free trial of Articulate Online to check it out yourself.

Labels: Articulate Online

Since the Articulate Online beta launch (and subsequent release) I have moved some of the presentations (Articulate Video Examples, Custom Color Schemes) that I have previously posted on my website to Articulate Online to take advantage of Articulate Online's reports.

The reports that Articulate Online offers are by far one of the most visually appealing set of reports offered by any LMS or LMS-like system on the market.

Articulate Online also allows you to export any of the reports to PDF, CSV or XML...which is pretty sweet, because I can take the PDF and email it to a colleague, take the CSV or XML and import those results into a database or into another program.

Example exports of the Progress Report for my Custom Color Schemes presentation:

Progress Report PDF

Progress Report XML

Progress Report CSV

As you can see from the reports above, the progress report shows me how far the viewers of my presentation have progressed, and where the average person stops viewing (slide 7) my presentation. This can be useful in determining where my users are losing interest in the presentation.

The Progress Report is just one of the 12 reports that Articulate Online offers. The reports tell you virtually everything you could ever want to know about how your students are viewing your presentations, and taking your quizzes.

So if you haven't checked out Articulate Online yet, you can sign up for a free 30-day trial account at http://www.articulate.com/free.aspx.

Also, if you haven't already seen them, the demos of Articulate Online created by Alli Starr are pretty awesome. You can find them here.

Labels: Articulate Online

Finally...an easily affordable, simple to understand way to track your presentations and quizzes...Articulate Online. Check it out, it is what I (along with many others) have been working on for the last year.

Articulate Online

Release Date 1/30/07.

Labels: Articulate Online