Are you looking for a new course authoring tool? “Trial” it out first

Articulate content view in Moodle in 1024 x 768

Articulate content view in Moodle in 1280 x 1024

Okay… so after all Articulate’s support isn’t so bad after all. After making a loud “noise” posting a blog spot “complaint in Articulate’s community forumI received some extra good attention. I had a 53 minute conference call with their Costumer Service and I was walked through Moodle to upload Articulate Studio zipped content in Scorm 1.2.

In Moodle, turn you editing mode on (as course editor) and select the drop-down menu “Add Activity” and select “Scorm/AICC”. In the new window, type this activity’s name and description, and select “Choose or Upload a File”. If you haven’t uploaded your ZIP file yet, you can do it so right now. Then click in Save – return to course or display, either one will work. When you chose to view your content you will visualize your activity’s description and, in the lower part of your window, select mode Normal and click Enter.

The screens you will get it’s are the ones above. One is in 1280×1024 and the other is 1024×768 resolution [which represents most of the web users population]. The content area is too little. My students will probably not be able to view Articulate’s left menu. You can see from both images that the area is too small. In Moodle Forum, I share my screen on this Articulate/Moodle area of content.

I don’t know if this is an LMS or Articulate setup, but regardless they don’t go together. At the end of our conversation, I asked Articulate if they could recommend an LMS that can read Articulate’s Scorm1.2 packages well.

Higher Ed institutions have specific CMS/LMS that matched several criteria either set by institution, staff, Faculty or developers. Once they select a specific LMS/CMS [ which in our case we're evaluating Angel, BBLearn 9, Moodle or eCollege] you can’t change your LMS to adjust to your authoring tool.

Articulate and Raptivity go really well for corporate usage. But not higher ed who can’t afford these  technical differences and difficulties.

Articulate will not make your life easy with Moodle or Angel

Articulate support is horrible. If you could choose which service to select through a “support service” criteria, Raptivity and SmartBuilder would be much better. I’ve been emailing Articulate’s support [which email address is not on their website - I had to call and ask them] back and forth now… and after 4 long emails nothing has been resolved.

First, I’m trying to publish stand alone files from Articulate Studio so I could upload them myself to Moodle. But it doesn’t do that [even if you have the option on the software] because of [they argue] Flash’s security reasons.

Second, I decided to select the option publish to LMS. I exported it in Scorm 1.2 and generated a zip file to upload in Moodle. Moodle unzipped it but it doesn’t read any of the HTML files. player.html, nor index_lms.html, neither blank.html.

Third, I emailed both issues to Articulate support folks but they told me to read instructions – which I had already read before using Articulate. Now… they don’t know how to respond to my questions. Not to mention that Angel (LMS) also doesn’t read those files.  You have to be really careful.

What bothers me it’s not these “technical difficulties”. But Articulate’s attitude in not giving the answer I need.

If you use Articulate Studio 09 and wish to upload content to Moodle, read this forum post first.

I posted a discussion at Articulate’s Community Forum at http://www.articulate.com/blog/9-ways-to-troubleshoot-articulate-lms-issues/

…. and the response I got on March 30th, 2009 was

Hi Julia,

I would submit a case regarding this issue if you haven’t already:
http://www.articulate.com/support/contact/

Justin Wilcox  |  Posted at 09:41 am on March 30th, 2009 |  #

Which is what I did… But instead… I got someone telling me to read instructions! Seriously… Is it worth to pay Articulate $ 1,395 for this type of support?