Articulate versus Captivate

If you do a web search on "articulate versus captivate," you will find a lot of opinions about how the two programs compare. One of my clients asked me about the merits of Articulate versus Captivate. The answer that I gave him is copied below. I hope it offers a different perspective for you when deciding between Articulate and Captivate.

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Ah yes, the great Articulate versus Captivate debate. Ford versus Chevy, Coke versus Pepsi, Yankees versus Mets...I'm kidding about that last one. The Yankees are, after all, a professional sports team.

First, I would recommend they get the 30-day trial before purchasing. It's fully functional and free.

Both Articulate and Captivate will read in a PowerPoint and then enable you to add interactions, audio, and quizzes to the presentation. Then, they enable you to export the resulting activity as a Flash file.

Articulate makes it a little easier to start with PowerPoint. I think it brings in more of PowerPoint's advanced features, such as custom animations. However, the other things that you can do in Articulate are a little more limited. That's because Articulate's raison d'etre is to take a Powerpoint slide deck from a subject matter expert and enable the e-learning specialist to turn it into an online activity.

Captivate lets you add more features. It also enables you to take screen shots and full motion video of your screen and add it. Captivate just does more. And, it's more popular among e-learning specialists.

If your client is starting with a subject matter expert who knows just basic Powerpoint, then either tool will do. If the SME knows advanced PowerPoint, and will supply them with a slide deck that has advanced features like custom animations and timing and embedded files, then go with Articulate because it interfaces better with PowerPoint's advanced features. If your client wants to be able to create e-learning without PowerPoint, and start right from within the tool, then try Captivate.

Moodle versus Sakai

I received a question about how Moodle compares to Sakai. I'd like to share it with you.

What are the advantages to a ... university of 20,000 faculty and 5,000 students to using Moodle over Sakai?

I found several advantages to Moodle over Sakai:

1. Moodle is better documented from every angle than Sakai. Administrators, Teachers, Students, and Developers all have better documentation in Moodle.

2. There are more official vendors ("Partners") providing service for Moodle than Sakai. Note that the term Moodle Partner is a trademark, and is managed by the founder to ensure that anyone awarded that label knows their stuff.

3. There is a much larger active community for Moodle. It's no advantage to have the most popular software in a category if the community of users don't help each other. But Moodle's community is both larger and more (inter)active than Sakai's. Put simply, if you don't want to or can't pay for consulting, you have a better chance of finding answers from the Moodle community than from the Sakai community.

4. Moodle's user interface is more consistent than Sakai's. And I don't just mean in the traditional sense, where you compare the icons, colors, menu actions, and layout on each page to ensure they match. As you go through a Moodle site, things look, feel, and function consistently. But more importantly, you interact with each activity, your classmates, and the teacher in a consistent way, whether it's in the chat room, a forum, or leaving feedback on a workshop.

This is because Moodle is designed around an educational philosophy called "social constructivist learning." Sakai, on the other hand, is designed around a technical framework. Try as I might, I could not find anywhere on the Sakai websites a statement of their instructional philosophy, or what instructional strategies they strive to support. To an IT person like those I work with every day, this isn't a big deal. But to teachers and students, it is a key point.