Your Learning Management System Includes An Authoring Tool, Flash And PowerPoint
When choosing your format of choice, PowerPoint can be used to create a storyboard for your online training content. Many training managers tell us they don’t want their training content to look like a PowerPoint.
Converting your content from PowerPoint to Flash can be accomplished with a number of affordable software products. This will give you a faster and more efficient web-based delivery. Some of the products are FlashSpring, Captivate and Power Converter, and offer numerous options, features, and levels of complexity. An integrated authoring tool, such as FlexAuthoring, offers the content developer an option to move from PowerPoint to online course production with ease.
The integrated authoring tool and web page template, FlexAuthoring, allows the user to link to a web page or pull in an external URL. The frame of the FlexAuthoring learning screen displays the content. The bookmarking and navigation features function just as they do for other templates. The training designer can insert web deliverable content into the FlexAuthoring learning screen, even if has been crated in a third party authoring tool. This might include PowerPoint, Flash, HTML, a Web URL, or other formats. These sources of external training content can be used an single course sections or included as part of a larger section.
Ability to create Flash Slides (FlashSpring option). Flash slides are an important advancement for PowerPoint conversion options. You have the option of converting the entire PowerPoint to a Flash Movie or HTML format. These are excellent options but don’t allow for bookmarking to the specific slide where the student leaves the section. PowerPoint provides the option of saving JPEG image slides that can be used in FlexAuthoring to achieve the bookmarking functionality, but it is difficult to create the same quality in the image compared to actual PowerPoint. Also, since the image is static, any animations or audio created in the PowerPoint are lost. Audio for image slides need to be imported to the FlexTraining Media Library and then matched to the image and learning screen.
To capture the animation and audio that are part of the original PowerPoint, choose Flash slides, which can product a single Flash object slide that matches the original quality. As with a single slide image, you can place the Flash object in a FlexAuthoring learning screen. The student will have the ability to navigate and bookmark the specific learning screen for future reference.
Two options are available. In option one, the Flash slides can be imported into the Media Library and can be embedded via the standard MultiMedia template of FlexAuthoring, the integrated authoring tool. With option two, you can point to the Flash slide by utilizing the new external URL template.
Converting your PowerPoint to the “web content look” offers more options and relative simplicity.
Want to find out more about learning management systems, then visit Christine Sheeran’s site on how to choose the best online training system for your needs.