The training department uses several resources to deliver training, both for the internal client and for our customers.
These are the resources that we are currently using.

Authoring tools: mentioned in the next point.

Wiki pages: used for corporative info and policies of the different departments. The information is text based with links to different pieces of information.
 In-class training: the information is delivered in meeting rooms with the help of Power Point slides. Agents are trained about 2 weeks before a new release is launched.

Camtasia: to create and edit videos, capture screen, add audio tracks, captions, effects, animations, zooming. It allows creating a SCORM file compliant with LMS.

Articulate Presenter: to convert a PowerPoint presentation into a course. It allows including
Engage and Quizmaker and creating a SCORM file compliant with LMS.
 Engage: to create interactions inside a course. It means that it allows the user to interact with content, navigating it thanks to click-and-reveal buttons.
 Quizmaker: to create evaluations or surveys for a course.

Having to learn how to use each tool.

Not having the possibility to build a unique complete course with all the available e-learning tools, and taking the risk of delivering what Tom Kuhlmann called a Frankencourse.
It is like a bunch of courses cobbled together. Each tool used also exists as a standalone product. That means it has its own player and distinct look. To unify all of them implies a time investment.

Not having the option to publish courses to HTML5, only Camtasia videos (which cannot really be called courses).

Having to give in-class training in many situations where a good e-learning course could fit or partially fit (blended-learning). Saving money by reducing the length of classes or meetings is where the best savings are to be made.

1.
Having to learn information from very different resources, mostly recorded meetings that make sense when people are attending them but not afterwards. o Videos longer than 5’ are not effective for learning: they get boring. o Recorded meetings are not interactive: the user has not the opportunity to interact with content, to try things or to practice with a software simulation. o They include long sections of silence or people asking questions that can’t be heard.
2.
Having the feeling that only in-class training is real training and the rest is just info. o When asked about what kind of courses they had attended, the Our students would comment that they had different training sessions together with monthly meetings – which is not training, but delivering info. o When asked about an online training, they would mention something about Skillport – but never considered that the knowledge portal or the wiki pages are training. o People are used to understand training as an event where someone talks and
explains new things and a group of people listens, occasionally take notes, eventually takes a test, and then leaves. Training has changed a lot and there are many other ways to train, and to use in-class sessions in a different way, for example, as a place to answer questions about a theory already studied in an e-learning course.
3.
“Suffer” from boring tests or long texts instead of enjoying good e-learning (learn more here ). o Good e-learning is engaging. Learners can really enjoy learning new things. o Texts are long and our students have little time. Whenever someone needs to know about a new feature, a dynamic e-learning explanation of 1-5 minutes is worth several long written articles with no images and with info very similar to many other articles. o Tests can be simple (or too difficult) and make people waste time –or they can be related to the day to day business, practical and helpful. It depends on the way they are designed. Giving meaningful feedback can help a learner understand why a decision is better than another.
4.
Having to lose more time in training: 1 hour of e-learning equals to about 5 hours of in-class training. Let’s say that in this class there are 20 agents and a facilitator. This turns out to be 105 hours of personnel costs during that training session -21 hours of e-learning. Let’s make training hours effective.
Feature
Interactive slides that are pre-built
Interactions that can be incorporated into videos
What is it?
This saves lots of time. When having to present information that includes several points, and then these points are developed, interactions are the best tool to use, and if they are pre-built, the trainer only has to add the respective content.
Videos are more engaging than text, and interactive videos are king. Why?
Because learners can find additional information to what they see.
Why makes training effective?
This makes training effective because it demands from the learner an action, and lets her discover different aspects of content with the click-and-reveal feature.
This makes training effective because instead of watching a video passively and eventually losing interest on it, the learner is challenged to search for further info.

Feature
Variables
Slide layers
Characters
Triggers
States
Interactive objects
What is it?
Variables are a tool that can be used to
incorporate operations and conditions inside a course. Not many e-learning tools allow designers to use variables; usually they need some programming.
Variables also allow designers to ask for the name of the learner and then have it used along the course: “Hello, Peter.
Welcome to this course”.
Slide layers allow designers to display additional content on a slide at certain points of the timeline or in response to the way learners interact with content.
The timeline shows the total duration of a slide or screen, usually measured by the duration of the audio.
Characters (both illustrated and photographic) give the designer the opportunity to use a virtual presenter that makes the user feel that someone accompanies and guides her.
Why makes training effective?
This makes training effective because it allows to train on subjects that require mathematical operations, the use of logic operators (AND, OR, EQUAL TO) and text entered by the user.
This makes training effective because slides are richer, delivering a better learning experience.
Triggers are incorporated in several interactive elements such as buttons, characters or any other object that the user will interact with
States, combined with triggers, make the appearance of an object to change given another condition. The easiest to understand is the change of the aspect of a button if it is hovered, clicked or already visited. But states can also be used to change the state of characters, so virtual presenters of a course can change their pose and expression when the learner does something.
Interactive objects, such as buttons, hotspots, markers, data entry fields, scrolling panels, mouse cursors are key for designers to create engaging courses.
This makes training effective because learners are more engaged when they feel more close to the content thanks to characters that represent people, instead of having just a cold list of bullet with no personalization.
This makes training effective because instead of having all the information at once on a screen, the user can clickand-reveal info by clicking different objects that can appear gradually along the duration of a slide.
This makes training effective because it gives a great sensation of interactivity.
The learner really can intervene in the course producing changes to objects and receiving immediate feedback from that. It is a highly engaging feature.
This makes training effective because it allows delivering a more engaging experience to the learner: it awakes the learners need for practice and for searching for information.

Having multiple authoring tools can lead us to run several risks:
 A greater need for time to deliver e-learning courses. Time has to be spent in: o Learning every tool, and then refreshing the knowledge about each of them when they are not often used. o Designing different slides without the training-effective tools described in the previous point. This makes this design more time-consuming and less effective. Faster, simpler creation saves time, and will deliver faster more effective benefits.
 Impaired results of the internal client: less engaging courses lead to less attention on them, less translation of what is learnt into work.

The loss of interest on training of the internal client: less engaging courses lead to get bored when a new course starts, as the learner expects to listen to an audio that is exactly the same as the text written in a certain Power Point slide, with few or none images to illustrate it.
This is clearly an option.
We can continue using the current tools, which are used by many companies, and still we will be delivering training. However, our training is not as good as it could be.
We could really take advantage of having a tool that delivers a better product in a shorter period.
This is a good option, as we can really take more advantage of the tools that we already have –especially from Articulate Studio’09.

Articulate Studio’09 already has some of the features mentioned above, like:
1.
Pre-built interactive slides are included in Engage. They are not so cool, but they work.
2.
Interactive elements can be designed: of course we can build buttons and hotspots, but it’s more time consuming and the results are worse, as there are no states in
Studio’09.

Camtasia Studio already can record videos. We could add those to Studio projects using the
Articulate Video Encoder.
This can be a good option too, because Studio’13 has much more features than Studio’09 and can skip the “Frankencourse” problem quite a lot:
1.
It includes Articulate Replay, which is similar to Camtasia.

2.
It has a unified Player.
3.
It includes Articulate characters.
4.
It allows publishing to Flash, HTML5 and Mobile.
5.
It includes drag-and-drop and free-form questions.
This can be the best option, allowing us to really create professional e-learning courses with a consistent graphic design and on top, in less time, and delivering better results.
 Articulate Storyline, as Studio’13 also includes:
1.
Articulate Replay, which is similar to Camtasia.
2.
Unified Player.
3.
Articulate characters.
4.
It allows publishing to Flash, HTML5 and Mobile.
5.
Drag-and-drop and free-form questions.

And in addition to this, Articulate Storyline is unique because it also includes:
1.
Interactive slides that are pre-built.
2.
Interactions that can be incorporated into videos.
3.
Variables.
4.
Slide layers.
5.
Triggers.
6.
States.
7.
Interactive objects, such as buttons, hotspots, markers, data entry fields, scrolling panels and mouse cursors.

There is always the option to install a 30 days free trial so the basic functionality can be explored.

The Articulate Storyline license costs $1398 (without discounts). This license gives us the following benefits:
1.
Install Articulate software on more than one computer: Articulate Storyline can be installed on two computers—such as a home computer and a work computer, or a desktop and a laptop—for your use only. There is no restriction on the number of people who view our published content. See the Articulate End-User License
Agreement (EULA) for additional details.
2.
We can start using it right away. Anyone who has used both PowerPoint and
Articulate Studio will not encounter any difficulties in using Storyline’s basic functionality. Even people that are new to them can learn to use it, because of the intuitive design.
3.
Get all the features in one tool: drag-and-drop interactions, quizzing, screen recording, software simulation and more.

4.
A really good translation feature, which is the most suitable for global solutions. As our company is global and most of the training content is translated, this feature becomes an important fact.
5.
Experience unparalleled support, with the industry’s largest, most active community, and with the free access to templates, tutorials, tips, downloads and best practices.
6.
Publish to HTML5, Flash and iOs, with a single click.
7.
Free versions.

The cost of updating the current tools is:
1.
Articulate Studio’13 license costs $1398. We cannot buy more Studio’09 licenses, as the Studio’13 version substitutes the previous one.
2.
Camtasia Studio license costs $299. We should remember here that:
 With the license of Articulate Storyline we get Articulate Replay, which has similar features to Camtasia.
 We have to pay for every new version.

Having me training you on any aspect that could arise:
1.
I have been successfully using this tool for more than a year now.
2.
I have already training several Training Departments on the tool.
3.
If I were not here, then the external training would cost $495 per attendee (more info here ).
We can contact Articulate support via phone, fax, email address, e-form.

Cost: phone call, fax call, time spent in sending emails or completing e-forms.

Community (e-Learning Heroes): we can contact Articulate community anytime, 24x7, as this community “never sleeps”: people from different countries and degrees of expertise can provide useful tips and even review and improve a certain project.
A certain amount of training will be needed to incorporate a new tool. I offer myself to create tutorials and live meetings on this.

Time estimated to have a good knowledge on the basic functionality of Storyline: a session of 2 hours.

Money spent: cost of man-hours per person.
The Articulate Community offers tutorials , forums , community blogs and downloads –all of them for free.


Tutorials: video tutorials with a duration of 3 to 5 minutes, one per feature. Benefit: training can be reachable anytime, anywhere.

Forums: two kind of questions can be asked here, design and problems. Benefit: a great probability of having questions answered and issues solved in a short time, normally with additional suggestions from the very active members of this community.

Community blogs: there are 3 blogs that are updated weekly: o The rapid e-learning blog: where the senior e-learning designer Tom Kuhlmann, shares lots of tips for designing better courses. o Word of the mouth: where a weekly recap of the best of the community can be found. o Community blog: were important issues and subjects are explained.
You can learn more here :
A.
Easy authoring
1.
Intuitive user interface.
2.
Slide templates.
3.
Characters. Illustrated characters are included, and one photographic character is also included.
B.
Interactivity. Only Articulate Storyline includes pre-built interactive objects, including buttons, hotspots, data entry fields, mouse objects, markers, and lightboxes.
1.
Slide layers.
2.
Triggers.
3.
States.
4.
Variables. Only Articulate Storyline has variables, so you can create conditional interactivity without any programming.
C.
Flexible assessment.
1.
Quizzing.
2.
Drag-and-drop interactions.
D.
Screen recording.
1.
Screen recording.
2.
Software simulation. Only Articulate Storyline lets you create software simulations.
Record your screen session once, and insert view, try, or test slides without rerecording.
3.
Action fine-tuning.
E.
Publishing.
1.
HTML5, Flash and Mobile devices.
2.
Section 508.
3.
Tracking and reporting.
4.
Right-to-left languages.
5.
Translation support.
F.
Extensibility.
1.
Articulate community.
2.
Template sharing.

3.
Character packs. To have the Volume 1 Bundle of characters, which have 145 posses, there is an additional cost of $999 (each character can be bought separately for $299).
4.
Storyline can be installed on a Mac. You can install Storyline on Parallels
Desktop , VMware Fusion , or Apple Boot Camp. Published content can be viewed on
Windows, Mac, or Linux platforms.
The total amount of licenses needed would be the total number of people in the training department.
Currently, there are X people in the department, which means $XXXX without discounts.
 Articulate offers volume discounts. [[information that should be requested Articulate Sales, for your particular case]]
 There is a Platinum Membership Plan with the following characteristics: o A one-year membership plan is priced at 40% of the full-product price and includes at least one major upgrade at no additional charge. o Adding 30% for the second year implies having at least two no-charge upgrades. o Adding 25% for the third year implies having at least three no-charge upgrades.

Voice over.

Images and video.

Script writing.

Translations.

We can try with a first license starting 2014.

This decision has to be made by Manager XXXXXXXX.
We can measure:

Time saved in each training course –time is money.


Improvement of results - using quizzing.

Improvement of results using our internal client criteria, which are: o XXXXXX. o XXXXXX.

Time needed from the training staff (per person) to get started in Articulate Storyline, just watching the tutorials about how to get started: about 115 minutes (which is less than 2 hours).

Time saved by the training department when building rapid, interactive courses in less time and with probable better results.
 Time saved from internal client (per person) learning with a course made with Storyline – instead of in-class training. Remember that 1 hour of e-learning equals to about 5 hours of inclass training. Let’s say that in this class there are 20 agents and a facilitator. This turns out to be 105 hours of personnel costs during that training session -21 hours of e-learning.