Lectora is a very user-friendly authoring tool, used to develop rapid, highly engaging and interactive eLearning courses. What is good about it is that it is not a plugin but an authoring tool that is self-contained and functions independently. It may appear to be complex for a novice, but once you are familiar with the interface and tools, you will be surprised at the extent to which you can customize your eLearning course.

The main advantage of developing courseware with Lectora is that it does not require programming skills such as HTML, CSS or Javascript to develop the courses. If you have creative designers in-house Lectora provides all the features where they can put their creativity to good use. The latest version C.6 has a tool that makes it even easier for designers to create online courses such as websites or presentations.

eLearning courses developed and published in Lectora are supported by multiple browsers and can have multi-lingual support. With a publishing option in the newer version, it is easy to prepare material that is compatible with section 508. All video controller buttons can now be read by screen reading software. There is also another feature where one can check if all images and buttons have alt tags.

One of the biggest benefits of using Lectora is that it has highly customizable Templates, Interactivities and Quizzes. It comes with additional tools such as an image editor, audio and video editor, making you less dependable on external software resources such as those provided by Adobe.

It is also very easy to integrate and control flash interactivities through Lectora. Lectora also makes it easy to publish content in dynamic html which may be the limiting factor in other authoring tools. Lectora delivers all formats of eLearning such as SCORM, AICC, which can run successfully on any learning management system that complies with the required standard. No additional programming is required.

Most developers feel that Lectora has a very low learning curve and an average instructional designer or developer can get comfortable with using the tool in less than a week. In short, Lectora scores high on the fact that it is easy to develop a course that is compatible with all industry norms and it is easy to integrate existing content in any format such as ppt, swf or images.

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1. Customizing Table of Content Easy with Lectora
2. Tips on Using Lectora for eLearning Courseware Development
3. Pros and Cons of Articulate Studio ‘09, Lectora, and Adobe Captivate

Lectora is an authoring tool that is popular because it is user-friendly and can be used to develop rapid, interactive and engaging eLearning courses. It is also popular because of its highly customizable Templates, Interactivities and Quizzes. Here, we would like to introduce the manner in which an Audioscript can be customized through Lectora.

In the given example, we added additional actions to the buttons “INDEX” and “SCRIPT”. On clicking the Index button, the table of contents is displayed and on clicking the Script button, in the same place, the Audioscript is displayed.

Please download the PDF file by clicking on the link below, for a step-by-step instructions on customizing an Audioscript in Lectora.

Download PDF

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1. Customizing Table of Content Easy with Lectora
2. Using Lectora to Build Custom Functionality for eLearning Courses
3. Steps to Customize Rollover Component in Lectora

Rollovers are one of the most frequently used components in Lectora. They are similar to ‘Click on tabs’ but differ in the way the action takes place. Here, the content gets displayed when the learners rollover their mouse over the images. This feature is used when one has to show parts of a product or demonstrate the different components in a software program.

You can create rollovers by using the rollover action on the buttons so that the respective content is displayed or hidden. CommLab India has developed a step-by-step guide to customize rollover actions in eLearning courses. Click on the following link to download the PDF with step-by-step instructions.

Download PDF

For those who have good technical skills, Lectora offers many features that can be customized. One such feature is the ability to customize the final quiz in an eLearning course instead of using the default final quiz.

In this quiz, we created our own questions and presented the layout changing the ‘look and feel’ to suit the client’s specifications. Our client also requested for a customized “Summary Page” at the end of the Quiz, displaying the number of questions given and the correct and incorrect answers. A completion status was to be sent to the Learning Management System, based on the passing grade. We were to control access to the certificate based on the score secured.

So how did we set up this interactivity? This was a little more complex than other interactivities, because we needed to use variables for each question to store the score of each question and add conditional action to control the navigation and force the learner to complete the question to proceed to the next question. At the end of the course, we needed to set up other actions to calculate the number of correct/ incorrect answers and the total score. These additional actions would send the score and completion status to the Learning Management System to track the Quiz data.

Click on the link below to check out the step-by-step instructions to the method adopted.

Download Pdf

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1. Checklist for QA Process at the Storyboard stage
2. How to Customize the Questions Functionality using Variables in Lectora?
3. Using Lectora to Build Custom Functionality for eLearning Courses

Lectora is being increasingly used in eLearning development. The fact that it is easy to convert Microsoft PowerPoint presentations into eLearning course makes it even more attractive. Apart from that, content developed using Lectora can be published into a wide variety of formats such as HTML, exe files or in CD-Rom format. Let’s look at a few best practices that help in maximizing the benefits of this tool.

Instructional design: We recommend that instructional designers keep the following tips in mind when using Lectora as the authoring tool:

• Do not use images with large file sizes. It is best to break them into several images to avoid slow loading.
• Text on images should be separated from the graphics. They should be typed separately in Lectora. This will help in easy localization.

File Management – Below are a few suggestions for managing files:

• Configure the auto save option available in preferences to suit your individual requirements.
• At the time of development, manually take back ups of the course files.
• Remove unused resources using the Resource Manager. This will reduce the file size.

Development: Here are a few guidelines for development.

• Avoid unnecessary actions to avoid complexity.
• Group related objects together so that it becomes easy to add actions.
• If large-sized videos are used in the course, adjust the quality accordingly for quick download.
• When using variables, trace them using a dummy textbox if you want to see the value of the variable.
• It is best to create your own variable naming convention. This will help in modifying them easily.

We hope that you would find these recommendations useful. If you have anything to add to these tips please do share with us.

Related posts:

1. How to Customize the Questions Functionality using Variables in Lectora?
2. Adding Effective Interactions with Lectora [Click on Tabs]
3. How to make Lectora Courses Compatible to Cross LMS?

Lectora is the authoring tool I recommend most highly for e-learning when there is a lot of content on the screen. It is also recommended for users with low Internet bandwidth and for the ease of translations. It is very easy to develop Flash interactivities using Adobe Flash and integrate them into Lectora, but the concern here would be loading of Flash interactivities which could create problems for learners.

But Lectora’s amazing tool called “Actions” helps to develop engaging and interactive activities with small file size and no programming skills needed.

In this blog, I would like to explain to you the step-by-step process of developing engaging and interactive activities in Lectora on the assumption that you have a very basic knowledge of Lectora actions and objects designing.

Step 1: Here is the Interactivty page with title and instructions text. Please create the design based on your requirements.

Step 2: Create Tabs as mentioned below. You can place the tabs vertically, if needed.

Step 3: Create respective content for each tab and group them as mentioned below. It is very simple to add Actions if you group the objects for each tab separately and give group names. Each group will consists of a highlighted state tab.

Step 4: By default, the Groups will be in visible mode. You need to set initially visible “False” by deselecting the Check box for “Intially Visible” option for all the groups objects.

Step 5: Now you need to add Actions for each button as mentioned below.

Step 6: You can set up the actions to show/hide a particular group on mouse click. Here is the action for “show.”

Step 7: Here is the action for “Hide.”

Step 8: Login to create the Click on Tabs functionality. On each tab button, you need to add these actions:

• Add actions to hide all the groups.
• Add action to show respective groups.

When you click on a particular Tab, initially all the groups will be hidden and the last action will show the respective Tab content. Similarly, for all the other Tabs buttons.

You can check this video for better understanding:

Also, download the example source files from the following link:

http://www.commlabindia.com/downloads/click-on-tabs.zip

Related posts:

1. Steps to Customize Rollover Component in Lectora
2. Using Lectora to Build Custom Functionality for eLearning Courses
3. How to Customize the Questions Functionality using Variables in Lectora?

By integrating ILTs into eLearning, you can develop a comprehensive curriculum approach to learning rather than dispensing discrete bits and pieces of instruction. You need to whip up the best blend for each training requirement so that your organization can stay on the cutting edge. And to do that you have to take decisions after a great deal of thought. Here are a few guidelines and recommendations for designing your perfect blend.

• Move as much of your content online as you can. Depending on your available time for the ILT component, optimize the classroom time by making sure that only critical content or learning activities are included in the ILT component. Use eLearning to provide fundamental concepts and pre-training preparation. Later get learners together into classroom learning for advanced concepts, practice and hands-on exercises.
• Check the organizational culture. If you are very enthusiastic about ILTs but your CLO is keen on moving to eLearning in a massive way, see what components cannot be met by eLearning and have a separate plan for them in your overall blended solution.
• Do not pre-select your learning delivery format without doing a thorough content, audience and task analysis. Maximize the potential of each delivery format.
• Cost is not always the best deciding criteria. Organizations are increasingly moving towards blended solutions – not in a bid to minimize costs but in a bid to provide the best possible learning solution.
• Get ready for converting most of your existing ILTs into eLearning. Your organization has a wealth of existing resources that can be utilized for your transition to eLearning. Check out a few rapid development tools such as Lectora, Adobe Presenter and Engage, and Captivate to help you convert your existing materials into eLearning. If this skill set is not available, consider hiring experts who can cut down on development time dramatically, leaving you to focus on critical components such as needs analysis and evaluation of training solutions. However a word of caution here, convert ILT into eLearning only is you see a real value addition and not for the sake of doing it. While you are designing your blended solution, you might also want to re-haul those ILT components you plan to retain.
• Long courses are likely to have more dropout rates. Go with the trend of keeping courses short. Nuggets of information are easier to handle than huge mountains of content.
• Be prepared to alter your course of action. Maybe you had decided on certain content being best delivered by a particular delivery format, but on closer study of the materials you decided it was not worthwhile. At this point don’t write it off as a wasted exercise- your learners will thank you for keeping them from an ineffective solution.
• Be realistic. You know intuitively what works with various audiences. Be realistic in your expectations from various groups. For instance, don’t expect your sales engineers to take hours of eLearning courses before they come in to attend classroom training. Knowing their preference, you might want to keep the eLearning component very short so that they can take them on their mobile phones even while travelling and then use the classroom component for advanced discussions. While we are not encouraging that you stereotype your learner groups, we do encourage you to identify core learning preferences that will in turn help you to decide on the best delivery format.
• Use assessments well. Whether you are using ILTs or eLearning, ensure that your learners are assessed at relevant points. The feedback on these assessments might just help them revisit basics that ideally should be available to them at all times. Assessments will also help them see where they stand and which bits require more focus. Their feedback to you will also prove to be valuable in further improving your learning solutions. An increasing trend especially in the case of standard trainings such as compliance trainings is to move all assessments online.
• Don’t camp around past victories. In an attempt to arrive at the right formula, we might be tempted to repeat the exact strategy we followed in the past that was successful. Do remember that your audience, content, learning goals vary, so your solution cannot be blindly applied.

Related posts:

1. Benefits of Blended Solutions – A Mix of eLearning and Classroom Training
2. A Sample Blended Solution for Effective Sales Training Implementation
3. The Benefits of Instructor Led Trainings to the Learner

Here are a few typical scenarios for training and let’s see which authoring tool would be most appropriate for eLearning development in such situations.

Scenario 1: A Product Manager says “I want product training for my sales team. And NOW!”

Scenario 2: A Compliance Manager says “We need compliance training rolled out globally in 13 languages in a month. Is it even possible?”

Scenario 3: A Director of HR says “My team has lots of content in PPTs. We need to convert this to online courses immediately. But HOW?”

Scenario 4: A Training Manager says “I need to get my in-house developer team trained on course development as a huge and complicated requirement is coming up. Any suggestions?”

Here is a quick look at when to use which tool:

Before selecting the tool for your elearning content development needs, think about what you have at your disposal in terms of the composition of the team and available skill sets. Think about your constraints in terms of nature of content, multilingual requirements and available development time. It’s important to think about what you’re trying to accomplish – your training requirement.

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1. 5 Key Criteria for the Selection of eLearning Authoring Tools
2. The Benefits and Limitations of Articulate

Lectora is the most popular rapid authoring tool used to develop HTML-based eLearning courses very quickly. Because the tool has unique built-in resources, you can get professional eLearning courseware developed in a reasonably short time frame. One of the benefits of Lectora is easy customization of the Table of Contents.

Read the complete article on how to customize the table of contents in Lectora.

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1. Steps to Customize an AudioScript Component in Lectora
2. Using Lectora to Build Custom Functionality for eLearning Courses
3. How to Translate and Localize Online Courses using Lectora for Rapid eLearning Development

Most rapid authoring tools have a mixed range of functionality when it comes to creating interactive and appealing training content. Let’s look at the pros and cons of some authoring tools that eLearning industries are using extensively for converting ILT materials to eLearning courses.

Articulate Studio ‘09

• Excellent Quiz maker.
• Easy, intuitive navigation.
• Pages load fast as there is background loading.

On the flip side, the navigation and interactivity is highly restricted, which can hinder learning.

Lectora

• Can develop multiple HTML pages simultaneously.
• Can develop simple interactive elements without the knowledge of either Flash or JavaScript.
• Can develop multi-lingual courses easily.

The flip side is that the screens load rather slowly as Lectora does not have the facility of background loading.

Adobe Captivate

• Very good for capturing screen-based simulations.
• Easy to develop interactive simulations without using Flash.
• Good collection of assessments.

On the flip side – each screen is considered an image. So, the file size is relatively high, leading to loading issues.

I would be pleased if you can share your experience with using these authoring tools to make eLearning courses better and interesting. Do also share your favorite tips on overcoming the limitations of each of these tools.

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2. CommLab India Develops More Than 500 Highly Interactive Courses Using Authoring Tools
3. Effective Use of Instructions in eLearning Courses