Likelihood to Recommend Captivate is well suited for instruction designers who want to build attractive, personalized, interactive, energetic lessons. It's also a good choice for someone who wants to build something innovative because Captivate gives the developer so much control over so many aspects.
But if someone wanted something built quickly, generically and didn't care about holding the viewer's attention, then Captivate might be an expensive tool. That person might be more satisfied with a cheaper and easier to learn authoring tool.
Read full review A school with a well-established technology imprint with their students (for example, ours is a BYOB school where every student has their own laptop and must bring it to school every day and where over 99% of our families have reliable broadband at home) is a reasonable scenario for using The arrogance and intransigence of the sales force is quite disconcerting… They are no longer the only game in town and don't yet realize it. Less well-off schools/families may find it a challenge if students must be on campus or at a public library in order to use the technology. Obviously, during the pandemic, this became problematic for some districts.
Read full review Pros Quickly adding in graphics, text, and interactive buttons. Has extensive variables and branching for additional customization, beyond the competition. Has 360 degree capability which competitors don't offer (I have not used this feature). High degree of customization and personalization. True responsive screen display on all devices, viewable as you are creating the training. This is different than some competitors - some just shrink the screen, but Adobe Captivate allows actually removing or moving or changing items at different screen sizes. If you like Flash, it has Flash output, although it's going away in 2020. Personally, I think this is an outdated technology. Many advanced capabilities. I chose this product due to the capabilities. Comes with assets, templates, people, head shots, and full body—excellent. Adobe Captivate is the authoring tool. It integrates with Adobe Captivate Prime - which I highly recommend if you want to truly take advantage of all of its features in reporting, administration, compliance, and social learning. (I didn't use Prime because you essentially need 100+ students to affordably use Prime.) If you look at my chart of what Captivate is capable of, I can't say that Captivate has a lot of the reporting features because they are part of Prime/SCORM, although, with Captivate's customization, you might be able to do most of them if you are up to it, but I did not. Read full review Blackboard Learn makes submitting assignments electronically simple and provides a variety of built-in Web-based tools like e-portfolios, wikis, and blogs that our students use to create their own content. Blackboard Learn is intuitive and easy to navigate from a students perspective Blackboard Learn has many integrations available for connecting this LMS to other tools we use at our institution. Read full review Cons Clunky interface, it takes a lot of extra clicks to get places compared to other Adobe apps and competitor's eLearning software. Would be nice if it was part of creative cloud, or at least in the group of apps you can add through Creative Cloud. More regular and meaningful updates. Compared to flagship apps like Photoshop, Illustrator, etc. Captivate is like the read headed step child. Competitors excel at providing regular updates with clear change documentation. How are we still using Captivate 2019 in 2022? The interface feels like it is still stuck in the 90s, would be nice if it was more modern and better in-line with flagship adobe offerings. Variables and associated menus are a nuisance to work with vs some of the clever drop down and content-sensitive options in Articulate Storyline. Read full review Blackboard Learn has some limitations when it comes to submissions It is not that user friendly, I had to spend some time to get a hang of it in the beginning I have been struggling a bit with deletion of manually added courses Meena B Information Technology Project Manager
Read full review Likelihood to Renew We have hundreds of courses that were created in Adobe Captivate. It will take us a while to convert to
Articulate . We'll need a license for another year and/or until Adobe comes out with a true update to the software.
Read full review There are several aspects of
Desire2Learn that outweigh the benefits of using Blackboard. I find that the
Desire2Learn system is a bit more user friendly and looks more up-to-date. However, the decision to renew systems is not up to me because the entire University uses the same system. Regardless, I think I would choose
Desire2Learn over Blackboard because of its improved user interface.
Read full review Usability Adobe Captivate does take some getting used to. There are features that are much more convoluted than they need to be, but overall it is a great product with a some excellent features. Being in a pretty small market, Adobe Captivate and
Articulate Storyline dominate the space. They are not the same software, but allow for eLearning authoring. Each has their benefit and their downside, but, for me, Adobe Captivate edges out Storyline.
Read full review It is very usable for both faculty and students. The interface is pretty intuitive and most students can use it without a lot of additional training. Faculty do need some training to effectively use the interface, but they usually get it pretty quickly. We have had to create some additional programming to give faculty a way to delve deeper into the content.
Read full review Support Rating It is difficult to get in touch with Adobe Captivate support. With a seemingly limited number of resources, mostly outsourced, getting in contact with someone to help troubleshoot an issue is challenging. Typically wait times are long, and the desired path to resolution is to use an existing knowledge base or a self-help guide. It is certainly not a user-friendly experience.
Read full review My Blackboard support comes from the university I work with. They are responsive--eventually... but it takes them sometimes a week to respond to a reported issue. For example, I reported 2 issues last week and one was resolved and I was contacted about one still open option today. That is too long for a tech issue. I have not contacted any support offered directly by Blackboard, which may be a completely different experience altogether.
Read full review Implementation Rating I'm only aware of the problems Adobe Captivate had with SumTotal LMS and Upside LMS, requiring extensive contact with both internal and external support staff to fix the problems. We had no problems at all with
Articulate .
Read full review Blackboard's Managed Hosting was top-notch in getting us up and running quickly.
Read full review Alternatives Considered I think that Articulate360 is more user-friendly and has a cleaner, more updated look. If you can edit a PDF, then you can use
Articulate 360 . Adobe Captivate may be more challenging for the designer, but it has more features. We chose Adobe Captivate because we want the option to create interactive learning environments. Adobe Captivate plays well with the other Adobe design products including Photoshop, Illustrator, and Premier. Additionally, Adoe Captivate is highly compatible with Cornerstone, our preferred Learning Management Systems.
Read full review Coursera offers a variety of modules in which a team is able to work on then, but [Blackboard Learn] offers more options to understand how are the team members developing and which tasks have offered a harder challenger for them. [Blackboard Learn] also offers a variety of reports that can be generate by a team lead.
Read full review Return on Investment Adobe Captivate has allowed our instructors to engage students in ways we never have before. Instructors who have used Adobe Captivate in our organization have reported higher levels of engagement with their courses and their students, theoretically leading to improved assessment of student performance. Read full review At one of the institutions that I worked for, the ROI was excellent for the number of users we were serving; however, I could not speak to other instances as I was not aware of the overall cost of the contract. Read full review ScreenShots Blackboard Learn by Anthology Screenshots