The first thing you’ll notice about Essential Articulate Studio ‘09 by Patti Shank and Jennifer Bircher is the sheer magnitude of the book: over 1,000 pages … on a rapid e-Learning tool. Really? Is all that necessary? The answer is clearly “No, it’s not necessary, but rather it’s highly desirable.”
Essential Articulate Studio ‘09 goes far beyond the essential and delves into some of the deeper aspects as well as unique and pointed uses of Articulate Studio. It doesn’t detail every esoteric use of Articulate Studio – the strong and vibrant Articulate user community frequently uncovers new applications of the tool (one user even created an entire Website with the product). However, the book comes close to covering it all. And while Essential Articulate Studio ‘09 will help a novice become familiar with the basic uses and capabilities of Articulate Studio, the book’s real value is for someone seeking to master the suite – from any level of expertise.
Why Articulate users need this book
The authors expose features and capabilities through an extremely well written, logical flow. Novices will be well advised to use the book sequentially through the first six chapters or so, but more experienced Articulate professionals will find it a rich, well-indexed, and well-organized reference book.
The book wastes no time in pointing out the versatility of Articulate Studio and its utility for more than simple, rapid e-Learning solutions because you can use it quite successfully to create more robust e-Learning solutions. The authors demystify that application of the suite.
As a long-time user and occasional instructor for Articulate products, I wondered whether Patti and Jennifer were going to be able to teach me anything new. While I’ve really only participated as a lurker in the Articulate user community, virtually all my questions on the product had ready answers in the forums or through the online help. However, Patti and Jennifer presented new questions and circumstances I had not previously considered. By walking through each of the chapters, I was able to capture some simple, powerful ideas that helped me think of new design approaches for my courses. In the section on quizzes, for example, I was reminded of:
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adding a hyperlink to question feedback that allowed learners to dig deeper into a topic; this can be a good alternative or supplement to branching;
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using hyperlinks in questions to support performance (for example, a link to an online information source or specialized calculator);
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adding animations to questions;
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designing quiz graphics to match the Quizmaker slide area; and
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leveraging the timeline in slide view to sequentially reveal question elements.
Other ideas reminded me of ways to improve my workflow and productivity, including batch-converting videos to the FLV format, using quiz templates to manage the look and feel of questions, and creating custom color schemes for Engage.
I was already employing many of the best practices detailed in this book, but a couple of them had made it past my radar. My point is this: I’m an active rapid e-Learning professional, using Articulate tools almost daily, but by investing a few hours in this book, I found some important ideas and techniques that will either save me considerable time, or make my learning designs more engaging, or both.
What’s in the book?
Essential Articulate Studio ’09 begins with several chapters covering the basics: an introduction to Articulate Studio, a great chapter on rapid e-Learning design and development in general, and foundational chapters on Articulate Presenter and PowerPoint. From there, the book has discrete sections covering Presenter, Quizmaker, Engage, and the Video Encoder. Patti and Jennifer also devoted an entire section to Publishing, providing some excellent tips and insights that are bound to save time and frustration. Throughout the book, the authors summarize each chapter succinctly and provide relevant lists of tips where appropriate.
The Presenter section starts at the beginning, covering some key considerations for designing content presentations and the types of interactions you can create with Presenter. Even if you are an old hand at e-Learning, the Introduction to Presenter chapter serves as a good refresher. Subsequently, this section includes a truly remarkable chapter on crafting impactful messages with PowerPoint, the basic tool that generates most Presenter content. This chapter offers some of the most salient PowerPoint design tips you need to be successful in e-Learning. It is must reading for training designers.
Most of the mechanics of using Presenter are in a succinct fifth chapter. Chapter 6, “Pumping Up Your Presenter Projects,” explains how to integrate media from other solutions in the Articulate Studio suite, as well as attachments, hyperlinks, annotations, and Flash video. The section rounds out with a chapter called “Customizing Presenter Player Templates,” in which the authors explain how to leverage player templates to create custom branding and interfaces that can set your e-Learning solutions apart from others created with Articulate.
In the Quizmaker section, the authors detail virtually all of the features and finer points of Quizmaker, as well as best practices for designing quizzes and assessments. The full potential of quizzes is easy to overlook, so this chapter has a lot to offer intermediate and experienced designers, including the use of quiz templates, the powerful features of the Slide view in the Quizmaker, and detailed insight into each question type.
Similarly, the Engage section covers the basic use and best practices for Engage, as well as details for each type of Engage interaction. If the authors had considered only the technical aspects of constructing Engage interactions, they could have easily compressed this section to under 100 pages instead of the nearly 300 devoted to the topic. Rather, their approach is contextual and includes design and planning considerations as well as best practices for each type of engage interaction. Because Engage follows generally common paradigms across the many interactions, some of the information is redundant from one section to another. However, when using the book as a reference manual, the redundancy is a welcome luxury that helps you maximize the benefits of each interaction type.
In the Publishing section, one of the real gems is a testing matrix. This proposes the key elements that you should test prior to publication, as well as identifying those stakeholders best suited for testing these elements. This section details all of the various publishing options across the Articulate Studio products, as well as considerations for each publishing option. It includes information on tracking, publishing to a LMS, publishing to Articulate Online, and much, much more.
The accompanying CD is the only real disappointment for Essential Articulate Studio ‘09. It includes an excerpt from Tom Kuhlmann’s wildly popular e-book The Insider’s Guide to Becoming a Rapid e-Learning Pro, product documentation for Articulate Studio in PDF form, a trial version of Articulate Studio, and a list of helpful links for Articulate Studio, all of which, except the list of links, are available online. I would have preferred to see some additional template and sample files, or other content that was not so readily available.
Summary
Articulate Studio is a well-designed suite of tools. The user interfaces are intuitive and, for many users, most features will be easy to figure out and not difficult to master. In short, you don’t need a book to become competent with the tools. But if you want to take a shortcut to full mastery of Articulate Studio, Essential Articulate Studio ‘09 by Patti Shank and Jennifer Bircher is absolutely the way to go. At a retail price of under $40.00, and an online price of under $30, it’s a no-brainer purchase that’s bound to save you time, improve the outcomes of your Articulate courses, and if heeded, make you a more effective designer and developer.
Bibliographic information
Shank, Patti & Bircher, Jennifer. (2009) Essential Articulate Studio ’09. Sudbury, MA: Jones and Bartlett Publishers, Inc. 1024 pages.
