Many thanks to everyone who voted for me in the MyDomain Brand .ME contest.  Because of your votes I won the Best Personal Brand in the Subject Expert category of the contest.

As I mentioned in this post, if I won the contest I was going to give away my iPad.

And the winner of my iPad is @LindaLor!

View on Screenr

If you are curious about the stats of the contest…

• 70+ took part in the #WinDavesiPad contest
• Over 260 people voted for me
• Almost 1300 people clicked on the http://mozealo.us/6 link in the #WinDavesiPad tweets

Another huge thanks to Adam Edgerton and the other good folks at http://www.mydomain.com for putting on the contest.  If you need a domain, or domain hosting I highly recommend them.  They sponsored a great contest!

Congrats Linda, I’ll be contacting you about the iPad.

I was recently picked as a finalist for the MyDomain Brand .ME contest for having the best personal brand in the Subject Expert category.  The cool thing is if I win, I get $1,000 in Apple gift cards.  This is obviously cool for me, and I encourage everyone to vote (for me), but really, other than helping me out what does this get you?  Well, now if I win I have decided to give away my 16GB Apple iPad to one lucky person.

Dave's iPad

I didn’t really like the thought of asking people to vote for me just so I can win something, so I decided to offer up my iPad to YOU if I win.

Here is what you can do to win my iPad

1. Go to http://www.mydomain.com/brandme and vote for Dave Mozealous by April 28th
2. Follow me @dmozealous on Twitter
3. Post a message on Twitter that says:
   

   I voted for Dave Mozealous in the MyDomain Brand .ME contest for a chance 2 #WinDavesiPad you should vote for Dave here: http://mozealo.us/6

4. Tell all your friends to vote for me too. I am giving the iPad away only if I win, so the more people that vote for me, the better my odds of winning and giving away my iPad.

If I win the contest I will randomly select one lucky person who tweeted the message above to win my iPad.

Have you ever wanted to develop your own custom Articulate Presenter player to give your eLearning courses that extra bit of customization?  Have you ever been tasked with developing eLearning content for a client who didn’t want you to use the Articulate Presenter player?  Did you know it IS currently possible to develop your own totally customized skin, and it actually isn’t that hard?

I built my totally customized #Articulate Presenter skin in less than an hour and you can too.

Here is what you will need to do to develop your own skin:

1. Build a skin using the Articulate SDK to mask the actual Articulate Presenter skin (a 980×640 SWF file that we will load on top of the Articulate Presenter Player).
2. Build an ast_remote.swf file to load our custom skin on top of the Articulate Presenter player
3. Package our skin in a format that can be easily shared and installed.

Worried that you don’t know how to use Flash?  No need to worry.  I don’t know Flash either.

Let’s check out the player I developed.  The idea was I wanted a small sized player that I could fit in my blog and would play well on devices with smaller screens, like mobile devices that have the Flash Player.  I also wanted to make it Zen, so it has only a few buttons.  So here it is below, click the play button to start playback.

View at Mozealous.com

Notice the big play/forward/back buttons, the mute icon, and the slide counter.  Very minimalist and blog friendly right?

1. Let’s build a skin to mask the Articulate Presenter skin

So how did I build it?  Well the first thing I did was build my custom skin in Flash.  What we are going to do is build a Flash file that will mask (hide) the actual Articulate Player.

Check out the 4:15 screencast below to see how I created the skin.

If you want to play along, download the FLA for this file here. You will need Flash CS3 or CS4 to edit the FLA.

View at Screenr

Easy peasy huh? I suck at Flash, and seriously this took me less than an hour to build.

Now let’s…

2. Build an ast_remote.swf to load our new custom skin

What is the ast_remote.swf file?  Well, it is a file that the Articulate Presenter loads on launch.  So what I have done is modify this file to load my own custom skin on top of the Articulate Presenter player.

You can download my ast_remote.fla file here to create your own ast_remote.swf.

Once you download it, the only thing you will want to change is this line:

loadMovieNum (“player/custom_player.swf”, 100);

Change the custom_player.swf to point to your custom skin.  So for example, with my skin the line looks like this:

loadMovieNum (“player/API_Tester.swf”, 100);

What does all the other code do in the ast_remote.swf file do?  The other code in the file makes sure that your custom skin is loaded before the rest of the player, so that you won’t ever see the regular Articulate Presenter player.

So now that we have created our skin, modified the ast_remote, it is time to…

3. Package our skin in a format that can be easily installed.

One of the cool things we added in Articulate Presenter ‘09 Update 5 is the ability to create and install custom skin packages.  What is an Articulate Presenter custom skin package?  Check out this screencast for an explanation.

View at Screenr

So now let’s get to creating our Articulate Presenter Skin Package…

Download my Blog Player.artpkg file here so you can follow along.

View at Screenr

Did I go too fast in my explanation of what the .ARTPKG file contains?  If I did no sweat, here is a recap of what it should contain:

• ast_remote.swf
• your custom skin.swf
• Any other files you want to contain
• **<templatename>.xml should be a template configured to match the requirements of the template needed. Remember to set the <communityplayer> tag to “true”.
• Package.xml – the XML that describes the package

And the package.xml should contain the following:

• uniqueID – (a GUID) that identifies the player (create a GUID here).
• content title –  the name of your template
• version - the version of your player
• presenterTemplate – the player template that is included in your package
• playerFiles – List of all files you want included when a presentation is published with your skin

** To create my template.xml file this is what I did:

1. Started PowerPoint
2. Went to Articulate>Player Templates
3. Added/Removed options that I wanted included in my Player Template
4. Select File>Save As…
5. Navigated to the folder that template was saved:
   (WINXP: C:\Program Files\Articulate\Presenter\templates\ )
   (WIN7/VISTA: C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files\Articulate\Presenter\templates )
6. Added that template.xml file to my .artpkg

That is it, you have now developed your own Articulate Presenter skin

More info…

Get the Articulate Presenter SDK

In order to build your community skin you will probably want all the SDK documentation.  You can purchase the Articulate Presenter SDK from our store here or if you are an Articulate PMP customer you get access to it for free by contacting our support department here.

If you want to see everything that is possible to do in the SDK you can find the sample documentation here.

Get help developing your custom skin

Need help developing your skin?  Send a support request asking for access to the Articulate SDK forum here. This is a special forum setup for people with questions related to the SDK.  If you want you can also post questions in the comments here, but I suck at Flash, so if you have Flash related questions I might direct you to the forum.

Got a pimped out skin you want Articulate to see?

Awesome, we would love to see it.  Upload it here so we can check it out.

Having trouble finding all files referenced in this post?

No worries, you can download all files referenced here:

• My blog player FLA file
• ast_remote.fla
• Blog Player.artpkg

Want a custom skin, but suck at Flash worse than I do?

So you want a custom skin, but you don’t know or have Flash at all?  I can recommend a couple of people who have made some pretty sweet custom skins.

• Articulate MVP James Kinglsey – developed this sweet skin here for a customer of his, and he can build you an entirely custom skin for a price.
• e-Mersion – has built many custom skins, and even gives one away for free.  You can find out about all the services they offer here.

Note: Articulate Presenter ‘09 currently supports ActionScript 2.0.  In the next version we do of Articulate Presenter we will be migrating our content to ActionScript 3, so players you develop for Articulate Studio ‘09 will not work in future versions.  Just thought I would give you a heads up.

By now you have probably heard about the release of Apple’s new toy the iPad.  One of the biggest disappointments about the device so far is that again it is an apple device that will not initially support the Adobe Flash Player, much like the iPhone/iPod Touch.

Checking Twitter for comments about “Flash” and “iPad” you find a lot of disappointment:

@invaderkong: Wait….STILL NO FUCKING FLASH…yah iPad….I think I’ll wait till google copies ya and then makes you better

@sethruffer: iPad looks incredible….but no flash????without FlashI’m skeptical.

@tvilling: No it’s not a tablet computer – it’s a giant iPod Touch that does not do webpages with Flash #ipad #Apple pls. make a tablet macbookish.

Even Engadget chimed it support with a story about it within 15 minutes of the iPad announcement concluding.

Why no Flash Player on mobile devices hurts mLearning

The news of the lack of support for Flash on the iPhone and iPad is especially important to those involved in the learning industry.  Why?  Well the vast majority of eLearning training is delivered via Flash (using tools like Flash, Captivate, Articulate), and with so many prominent mobile devices (iPhone, Blackberry, Android -yet)  that don’t support any Flash Player eLearning developers are left waiting for devices to either support the Flash player, or another delivering system for eLearning content that doesn’t rely on the Flash Player.

If you listen to the folks at Adobe they will tell you that some form of Flash is available on most mobile devices, or will soon be coming to almost all mobile devices.  Well if you believe this, I have a bridge to sell you.  I left Macromedia/Adobe 4 years ago, and at the time everyone knew that the mobile platform was going to be the future.  Mobile is the future everyone would say.  Well here we are 4 years later and nobody I know actually has a mobile device that supports the Flash player.  I could go on and on about the incompetence of the leadership at Adobe, but that isn’t the point of this post.

Why adding Flash on the iPhone/iPad doesn’t solve the mLearning problem

If Steve Jobs had announced that the iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch would come with the Flash Player would the entire eLearning industry jump up and shout for joy because now mLearning would be achievable?  Unfortunately no.

Why?

Not only do most mobile devices NOT support the Flash Player, but they also don’t support Java.  Why does this matter? A big part of eLearning revolves around being able to not only VIEW content, but to also TRACK content.  Tracking is fundamental to delivering formalized eLearning training, which usually involves Learning Management Systems.  Here is the second part of the mLearning problem.  Many Learning Management Systems use client side Java (meaning Java runs in the browser) to do the actual tracking with SCORM and AICC content.

I don’t know the specific percentage of Learning Management Systems that use Java, and given that there are several hundred to a thousand different LMS vendors on the market it is difficult to get an accurate count, but I did ask a couple of SCORM experts (Tim Martin and Mike Rustici from SCORM.COM) if they had any idea how many used Java.  And the responses I got were:

• too many (Tim)
• few new deployments use Java, but hard to estimate the installed base of legacy SCORM implentations. (Mike)

So to Mike’s point, “few new deployments use Java,” this is good news.  Problem is that many people are stuck on older learning management systems that still do use Java.  Licensed versions of Learning Management Systems can be several hundred thousand dollars, and upgrading can either be prohibitively expensive, or difficult to manage, so organizations elect to not upgrade.

Conclusion

So my point is, even IF by some miracle the people at Adobe get the Flash Player on the iPhone/iPad it doesn’t completely solve the mLearning problem.  Without also adding Java support we still won’t have tracking.

As a note: Articulate Online is and always has been Java free.  So if the Flash Player problem is solved Articulate Online won’t have the tracking problem.

In case you are wondering, I left Adobe, I was not fired.  I own Adobe stock, and the incompetence of Adobe leadership bothers me as a stockholder in Adobe and stakeholder in the eLearning industry that relies on Flash.

It’s 2010, and you are dying to do something that embraces mobile learning. Why not create a Video Podcast of all your Screenr screencasts?

Here is how you can create a Video Podcast of your Screenr screencasts in 4 easy steps.

A little background

One of the cool things about Screenr, is that you can view your Screenr Screencasts on an iPhone. Articulate’s CEO @GetAdam created this Screencast to show you what Screenr Videos look like on an iPhone:

View at Screenr

Cool, so Screenr screencasts play on an iPhone…how did we do that? Only certain video types will play on an iPhone (like MP4 for example), and will only play video up to certain dimensions (640×480). In order to provide the best video quality for both iPhone users, and normal web users Screenr creates two separate video files for each screencast you create. A smaller 640×480 video that is optimized for the iPhone, and a larger full resolution video that matches your recording dimensions for web users.

When we build our Video Podcast feed we are going to link to the iPhone version of your Screencast to make sure that it will play nicely on an iPhone and iPod Touch.

Step 1: Install some tools

You need a few tools to follow these steps. Go ahead and install them now if you don’t have them.

• Firefox + the User Agent Switcher Add-On
• A text editor to edit some XML (I recommend Notepad++)
• iTunes

Step 2: Get the video links

We need to get the links to the iPhone version of the MP4s. In order to get the iPhone version of the MP4’s you will need to trick Screenr into thinking your Firefox browser is an MP4.

Here is how you can do that:

1. Install the User Agent Switcher Add-On in Firefox if you haven’t already.
2. Select Tools
3. Select Default User Agent > iPhone 3.0
4. Go to Screenr.com
5. Find the video you are looking to include in your Podcast
6. Select View > Page Source to view the HTML (this will help us find the link)
7. Find the <video> tag..hint, it should look something like this:
   <video width=”290″ height=”161″ poster=”http://c0203141.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/81e750d1-56dd-4e55-97e0-72f3cb445e79_thumb.jpg” controls=”controls”>
   <source src=”http://c0203291.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/81e750d1-56dd-4e55-97e0-72f3cb445e79.mp4″ type=”video/mp4″ /><!– Safari / iPhone video –>
   </video>
8. Copy the link to the MP4 and save it for later
9. Repeat for all the videos you want to include in your podcast

Confused by those steps? The screencast below will walk you through it.

View at Screenr

Step 3: Create the XML feed

There are easier ways to do this, but we are just going to create the XML feed for the Video Podcast by hand. This XML feed is what iTunes will use to build and update your Video Podcast. So let’s get started.

1. Grab my sample Video Podcast XML feed here (Right-Click and select Save As).
2. Open up the XML file in your favorite text editor (like Notepad++).

Ok, now a little explanation about the Podcast XML structure. A Podcast XML feed is made up of a channel, and a channel has various different items, somewhat like programs. This is kinda similar to like TV channels being made up of various different programs. Like how ESPN is a channel, and has various different programs like Sports Center, Monday Night Football, etc. The Podcast XML will be similar, we first create the channel, and then we will add a bunch of items, and the items will be the individual screencasts.

Create the channel

So lets take a look at the XML file. The first thing you will want to do is update the tags in the channel. The channel has the following tags, most of which are self-explanatory, but here is a short explanation of each:

• <title> – This is the title of the Video Podcast.
• <link> – I just made this a link to my homepage (http://www.mozealous.com).
• <language> – Assuming you can read this, you can probably leave this as is. It is set to English.
• <copyright> – This is your copyright statement.
• <itunes:subtitle> – A subtitle for the Video Podcast.
• <itunes:author> – This is you. The creator of this Video Podcast.
• <itunes:summary> – A short summary of the Video Podcast. What topics does this podcast cover?
• <description> – I just made this the same as the summary.
• <itunes:name> – Your name, the owner of the Video Podcast Feed.
• <itunes:email> – Your email address.
• <itunes:image> – A picture that will appear in iTunes next to your Podcast.

If you want to see how these items relate to what is seen in iTunes check out this diagram by clicking the image below.

So update the channel tags with your info, and let’s move on and…

Add items to the channel

Now that we have created the channel, we need to add some “items” or screencasts to our feed. Most of the item tags are pretty self-explanatory, but again, here is a short explanation of each:

• <title> – This is the title of the specific screencast.
• <itunes:author> – The creator of the specific screencast.
• <itunes:subtitle>- I just made mine the same as the title, but you want to provide more info.
• <itunes:summary> – A longer description of the screencast.
• <encloure url=”link to podcast” length=”size in bytes” type=”video/mp4″/> – The enclosure tag is made up of:
  • The URL to the screencast (from step 2). I linked to the MP4 on Screenr.
  • The length, which is the size of the screencast in bytes. I couldn’t think of a really good way to get the size of the screencast without downloading the video, so that is what I did. I downloaded it and then checked the size on disk (right-click in windows and select Properties). The size should be listed with numbers only, and in BYTES (ex. 124444. Not 124,444kb).
  • type, which should always be “video/mp4″ for screencasts.
• <guid> – A unique identifier for the screencast. I just used the URL.
• <pubDate> – The date this screencast was added to the feed.
• <itunes:duration> – The duration of the screencast (you can get this from Screenr).
• <itunes:keyword> – Keywords to help users find your screencast in search.

If you want to see how these items relate to what is seen in iTunes check out this diagram by clicking the image below.

You will want to add items for each screencast you want to include in your podcast. You can update the feed at any time to include new screencasts by adding additional items.

After you have finished updating the XML feed, save the file.

Making a Podcast is an official explanation of all this from Apple. Read it if you have trouble sleeping. Or re-read this post, it should help you sleep too.

Step 4: Submit to iTunes

Now that we have created the XML Feed for our Video Podcast we will want to host it someplace so that we can submit it to iTunes. I just hosted mine on my website at http://www.mozealous.com/vodcast.xml. Once you have it hosted you can submit it to iTunes. This will allow people to find your podcast in the iTunes Store, and to subscribe to your feed.

To submit a Video Podcast feed to iTunes

1. Launch iTunes
2. Select the iTunes Store
3. Select the Podcasts tab
4. Select Submit a Podcast
5. Enter the URL to your Podcast Feed and follow the steps outlined

Within 24 hours your Screenr Video Podcast feed will be available on iTunes.

You are done. What’s next?

It might seem like creating this Video Podcast feed was a pain in the ass…well, it was. I know I know, I said that this would be 4 easy steps, and it was closer to 40 complicated steps, well ha, I hooked you anyway. The good news is that once you created the feed it is fairly easy to update, all you need to do is add the screencasts as <items> to the XML feed and the changes will be picked up by iTunes in about a day.

If you create a Screenr Video Podcast feed let me know in the comments below. I’ll highlight them in this post.

So congrats, you are done! You have created your first Video Podcast feed of your Screenr screencasts.

Quick post here. I just created a screencast showing how you can use HTTPAnalyzer to debug reporting issues between content and a Learning Management System. You can get HTTPAnalyzer from the good folks at IEInspector here.

If you are a QA Engineer working on any type of Web Application, HTTPAnalyzer is a must have.

So you know you want an LMS.  Good. This article isn’t here to tell you why you need one, or why you should use one, this is a guide for anyone who already knows they want an LMS, just wants a guide for what to check for.

Over the years I have spent many hours testing content and trying various different Learning Management Systems, and have even done some LMS (like) design work with Articulate Online.  Over that time period I have had the opportunity to learn a lot about what does work well, and what doesn’t work well in a lot of systems, so based on my knowledge on the subject, here is my list 10 things to consider before choosing in an LMS.

1. What LMS Standard does it use (AICC, SCORM 1.2, or SCORM 2004)?

There are 3 LMS standards of significance these days, AICC, SCORM 1.2 and SCORM 2004.

A little history on the standards…

The AICC standard was developed by the aviation industry in 1993 and has evolved a bit over the years, but remains pretty similar to its roots.

The SCORM 1.2 standard was released in 2001 and is the most popular standard (in terms of usage) to date, and was actually developed by the department of defense.  It was at least in part designed based on some of the limitations of the AICC standard.  Although some consider to be an improvement over AICC, it still had many shortcomings.

SCORM 2004 was released in 2004 (shocker huh?) and in this specification they addressed some of the shortcommings and ambiguities of SCORM 1.2.

In the years that I have worked with Learning Management Systems issues have come up where the LMS expects one thing, but the content expects another.  A big reason this has happened is that the early standards like SCORM 1.2 have left a lot open to interpretation.  For example, certain versions of Saba will expressly ignore the status that the content sends to the LMS if the content exits with a “suspend” mode.  With our content we expressly exit with a “suspend” mode when a user exits a course, which will normally allow a user to relaunch the content.  So when you launch and complete content in Saba we expressly tell the content that the status is “completed”, but Saba ignores this because the status is set to “suspend”.  Both sides are technically doing what is right, but still we fail.  Find a solution to the Saba problem here.

There are other places where the earlier standards were just flat out missing something that should have been included.  In the SCORM 1.2 standard there is no option for the content to communicate with the Learning Management System what the question was.  It allows you to send an “interaction id”, but this is generally assumed to be an ID, and not question text.  So the standard allows the content to communicate what type of question it was (t/f, MC, MR, etc), what the correct response was, and what the learner response was, but no way for us to communicate what the question was.  In SCORM 2004 they improved this part of the standard by allowing us to pass the question “description” which allows us to communicate the question text.

Some of the older standards have some shortcommings based on the age of the standard.  Back when AICC and SCORM 1.2 were developed, we weren’t in the same place that we are today in terms of computer processing power, bandwidth, etc.  This caused the standards to be limited in what they allowed the content to send.  For example, the SCORM 1.2 standard only allows content to send 256 characters to the LMS for a learner response to a question.   So, if you have an essay question that you ask your users, any response they give over 256 characters would violate the SCORM 1.2 standard.  Again, this is something that has been improved in SCORM 2004, where they raised the limit to around 4000 characters.

So as the standards have evolved, generally they have been improved along the way, with each newer version  addressing shortcomings, ambiguities and limitations of the previous veresions.  So make sure you consider what standard or standards (many support more than one) the LMS supports before making your purchase decision.  If your LMS supports more than one, or all, GREAT!

Other things to note when thinking about standards:

• Most major content authoring tools support AICC, SCORM 1.2 and SCORM 2004
• If you often use custom developed content, make sure your content developer also can work with the standard of your LMS choice
• Beware of vendors that only partially implement a standard.  Both the ADL (who controls the SCORM standard) and the Aviation Industry for CBT Committee offer certification for LMS vendors.  If an LMS claims AICC, SCORM 1.2 and SCORM 2004 support, see if they have been certified as compliant.

2. What technologies are required by the LMS?

Ok, I admit it, I have had a love hate relationship with Java…the hate part stems for a Java class I took in college and 2 years I spent working at Sun Microsystems.  The love part is that Java can do some really cool things cross platform (i.e. Screenr).

Java definitely has its place, but LMS environments is not one of them.  See post and comments here for more info.

Every once in awhile I get a report that our content doesn’t work in some LMS running a specific version of Java (example 1, example 2).  Why it works in every browser, and non-Java based LMS, but has issues with specific Java versions is a serious pain in the ass to figure out.

I could rant for another 2 pages on everything I think is wrong with Java in a LMS environment, but that is not the point of the article.  The point is, look at what is required by the LMS to view content.  Does the LMS work without any additional plug-ins or odd system requirements?  Also check to make sure your LMS system requirements match the systems your users will be using.  Do they support Safari browser on a Mac, do they support Firefox?  Do they support IE6 and later?

Note: JavaScript is different from Java.  JavaScript is cool, Java is not.

3. How easy is it to get content up on the LMS?

One of the problems with many Learning Management Systems is that getting content up to the LMS takes a monumental effort.  I kid you not, in some Learning Management Versions it is a 15 step process of getting content up to the LMS.  Seeing that getting content up to an LMS was often a difficult task, the AICC board along with several eLearning experts developed the PENS standard (Packet Exchange Notification System).  The idea was that the content authoring tool like Articulate Presenter or Captivate would notify the LMS that some content was available, and the LMS would then go pick up the content from the authoring tool.  This sounds great, and is great, but the problem is that most content vendors and Learning Management Systems are slow to adopt new standards.   It is kinda like the problem with clean fuels for cars, gas stations won’t get green fuel until cars start using them.  PENS is an improvement, but it hasn’t been adopted by most LMS vendors or content vendors, so it is important to see how easy it is to upload content to the LMS.

Use Scripted Demos

Map out common things that you are going to need to do with the LMS, and ask your LMS Sales Representative to walk you through those tasks.

Some ideas for scripted demos:

• Upload content to the LMS
• Enroll a student
• Run reports on tracked content

These are day to day tasks that you are going to want to do, so you should know how easy or how difficult this will be before purchasing.

As a bonus, ask your sales rep to take content you have and upload it to the LMS and prove that it works.

4. Focus on ease of use of the features you need, not on the number of features the LMS offers.

We use to have a bugbase that we used at Articulate that was truely aweful.  It was slow to load, took forever to log a bug, had poor text handling and would always throw exceptions, it was just a terrible bugbase for actually logging and tracking bugs, and those should be the core features.  Every year the bugbase would release a new version and they would keep piling on new features that I didn’t care about (CRM Management, Case Management, external bug reporting system), without making the core features work.  The company that made the bugbase was about competing on the number of features, not on making the core features work.  On the complete opposite side of the spectrum look at the iPhone.  A phone that has really high customer satisfaction year after year.  The iPhone doesn’t win all feature comparisons with other phones, yet the iPhone continues to sell really well.     The iPhone sells well not because it has more features than any other cell phone, but because the features they did build they built well.

5. Beware of the “home grown” LMS.

Too many support cases and forum posts begin with “Our in house developed LMS…”.  As I mentioned above, the SCORM standard leaves a lot open for interpretation.  It is naive to think that because there is a documented standard creating a SCORM based LMS will be easy.  There are many companies that (like Rustici Software) have made an entire business out of doing SCORM implementation, and if building an LMS and doing the SCORM implementation was easy, they wouldn’t be in business.

6. Hosted or Licensed?

Do you need to license the LMS and host it on your own servers, or is it alright for it to be hosted by the LMS company?

There are benefits and drawbacks to both approaches.

Benefits of licensed

• You own the software, and likely won’t have to pay re-occurring fees for anything but maintenance (if you choose to get it).
• You control the security - if security is a big issue for you, licensing the software might be better than a hosted solution because you can control access to the LMS (through a corporate firewall, etc).

Benefits of hosted

• Usually less expensive - If you outright buy the software you will likely be faced with a bigger upfront cost.
• Don’t have to manage the servers  - We for example host Articulate Online and Screenr at Rackspace.  Why do we do this instead of owning our own servers?  Well, Rackspace is the premier hosting provider in the world.  They are better at setting up servers, better at dealing with security, better at managing load balancing, fire walling, etc. than we are.  We handle the software part, which is a core competency of ours, and let Rackspace host the servers, which is a core competency of theirs.
• Updates are usually included for free – If you own your own server you may or may not be entitled to free upgrades.  We have many customers that are stuck using AICC because they licensed their server years ago, and no longer get free updates.  If you are on a hosted solution you most likely are always on the most up to date version of the software.

8. Is Open Source a possible solution?

I am not advocating this solution as the most painless, easiest option.  There are going to be a lot of implementation costs, time cost, hardware cost associated with an Open Source solution to your LMS needs, but Open Source should definitetly be considered.  The benefit of Open Source is the software is free.  The downside is that most Open Source Learning Managment Systems that I have used can be buggy, and hard to deploy.  I have only personally used Moodle and Dokeos (have used Moodle for about 4 years), and they have gotten better over time, but they still have some issues.

In addition to Moodle and Dokeos there are at least 10 other open source LMS options.

On another note, just because it isn’t open source, doesn’t mean they will have good support.  I will refrain by calling out any vendors by name.

Also there are some vendors that do open source hosting and support for the fraction of the cost of a traditional licensed LMS vendor.  Some names in this field are:

• Moodlerooms
• Kineo

9. What kind of reports are available?

Rustici Software (SCORM.COM) points out in SCORM for RFPs for LMSs that:

SCORM can provide a wealth of data about what a learner does in a course, but it’s up to the LMS to keep the data and use it. You’ll want to know what kind of reports there are, how data is tracked and what the learner sees at a minimum.

Really good point here.  Some Learning Management Systems do a really good job with capturing all the data, but don’t do the greatest job on reporting the data.  For example, Moodle does a good job at capturing all the SCORM data, and will do a great job of reporting status and score, but gets lazy with the reporting of the interaction data (how people answered each question).  If you want to see this in action, check out this post I did on uploading and tracking in Moodle.

A big part of the success of Articulate Online has been the richness of our reports (see this Articulate Online report presentation for more info).  With SCORM 2004 reporting, the LMS should be able to generate reports that are just as rich as what Articulate Online offers, but few LMS actually provide such elegant reports.

A good idea is to list out what type of information you will need to gather in your LMS, and then ask the LMS sales representative how to get that data.

For example, you might need to:

• Know who has taken a quiz
• How that person scored
• What questions are people missing consistently
• What is your most popular contet

Make sure your LMS is capable of generating the data you need.

10. How well do they work with content vendors?

During our beta cycles I occasionally reach out to LMS vendors to ask if I can test our content in their LMS just to make sure that everything works ok.  Most LMS vendors a really cool about this, and allow us to test in a trial or sandbox account.  But occasionally some of the bigger vendors ask for a substantial amount of money ($2000-$5000) just for us to test content in their LMS.  Seriously, and then they claim the charge is “nominal”.  Anyway, ask your LMS vendor if they partner with any content vendors, or if the authoring tool you use has been tested in their environment.

More information

SCORM.COM has a really good post on What to ask about SCORM in an RFP that has 7 questions anyone should ask of the LMS when getting a request for proposal and (at least) 27 questions to ask about your LMS vendor about SCORM.  Highly recommend checking it out.

Do you have any suggestions that you think should be added to the list?  Do you hate your LMS vendor?  Tell me about it in the comments.

Note: Someone pointed out this list only contains 9 items (I skipped 7).  Going to keep it titled a list of 10 though, because 10 reads better than 9  Sorry to short change you by 1.

We (at Articulate) are working on developing some Screenr screencasts that show you how you can upload and track Articulate content in various Learning Management Systems.  I got a head start on the project by doing a screencast on tracking Quizmaker in Moodle a couple of weeks back.  In this screencast I am going to show you how you can upload and track Quizmaker ‘09 content in Dokeos.

Dokeos is a Free Open Source LMS like Moodle.  Doesn’t contain nearly the feature set of Moodle, but it is a little simpler to use.  Enjoy the demo!

Got a question yesterday from Colin asking about the Moodle theme I was using in a couple of the blog posts I have done showing how to use Articulate content in Moodle.  I created this short screencast that shows you how you can change, find, and install new themes for Moodle.

Another good location for finding Moodle themes is just googling for “Moodle themes”.  There are a ton of free, and paid versions of Moodle themes on the market, and many people willing to fully customize Moodle for a price.

3 1/2 years ago I blogged about uploading an Articulate Quizmaker to Moodle.  It has been one of my most popular and heavily commented on posts.  In this post I wanted to revist that demo.  I used Captivate at the time to create the demo, so I wanted to redo the demo using Screenr, and add some narration.