Articulate Studio vs. Edsby

Articulate Studio is constantly surprising in terms of what it can do. It is like a "Swiss Army Knife" of functionality. I've used it to build portfolios, whole interactive websites, authoring videos and I often discover novel ways to make it useful on a pretty regular basis. What would be a situation where you would not want to use Articulate Studio? Well, even though you can use it to author video and to publish websites, it's not a replacement for a video editing package or a web platform like WordPress, but there are times when it will do certain things in an astoundingly simple way superior to other tools.

Incentivized

Edsby is well-suited for day-to-day communication with students, either in the classroom, or at home. It makes planning course progression easier because of the built in day-by-day calendar for the semester. It is transferable, so the work one does in one semester can be copied over to the next, and modified as needed. Students can see the Lesson Plan which is projected onto the SmartBoard, but the font is quite small so they cannot read it from where they are sitting, so I use SmartNotes which has a larger font and then, if needed, attach that note to the Edsby day lesson planner.

• They made it very easy to understand how to add new content to the courses, including images, videos or audio, of course, you are still able to do text-based content as well.
• Creating quizzes has never been easier. The ability to add controls to each question and what actions each answer creates, whether an additional question or passing to the next section. Customizing these actions are very easy to learn and add to your course.
• Being able to use your own scoring mechanism is awesome! I like SCORM but there are many options to use including a custom one of your own. This ability allows you to pass your students over to a proprietary system that enrolls them in the next course, or use the built-in utilities to provide the next course or quiz, the choice is yours!

Incentivized

• Edsby is extremely easy to learn and use.
• Students love the "social media" feel to Edsby.

• The audio editor is awful. Sometimes when you cut a section, it actually takes a different section that you selected. Especially when in zoom mode. You have to then undo the action, and re-do. Also, scrubbing through the audio is difficult. If you're exporting audio, it can glitch during the process. I avoid using the audio editor whenever I can.
• After all these years, it's still a buggy program. You can be doing your recordings, and a sudden message appears saying that something went wrong and needs to close. I've done re-installs, contacted support, and I constantly clear the temp folder. Still happens. Also, it's a good idea to export your audio, and there have been times the program freezes up on me, and the audio file (in the .ppta file) gets corrupted and all audio is permanently lost.
• The program can get slow when publishing, previewing or opening the audio editor.
• The included Engage program is pretty good, but it needs more customization options. And I think they can add more modules that provide a little more engagement.

Incentivized

• Edsby shows the last time a user logged on. Unfortunately, if someone doesn't log out you have no way of knowing if someone has seen a recent post or is really using Edsby to its potential.

There is very little chance that this software wold not be renewed. It has become an integral part of our standard software for elearning development.

Incentivized

This is very useable software even for novice eLearning authoring users. People with some PowerPoint experience should be fine with this software and even Excel!

Incentivized

Everything is easy to use and well as being overly user-friendly to your average student.

I've never really had any major issues with the product (Other than the registration loop error)and my ten out of ten rating is based on the assistance I got when we initially set up the extension in Power Point. I found the support folks to be professional, helpful and friendly

Incentivized

Articulate Studio is very much a leader in the e-learning space. It stacks up well against other tools designed to quickly and easily build and update CBTs by managers and super-users versus needing to invest time and effort in dedicated e-learning developers. Process improvement initiatives and cross-functional departments are empowered to develop their trainings themselves and identify areas for future development.

Incentivized

EDSBY was piloted at the school last semester, and I found it made my job easier, which is a boon since time is fleeting and I could get more done with less effort with Edsby. After the pilot the entire school district was signed up to use Edsby. I like it very much. I did use a blog on First Class which was extremely difficult to learn, and a blog on WordPress which was easier to learn how to use but not interactive like Edsby is. To my mind, Edsby is far superior to the former.

• I only see positive impact since it is a very easy to use tool for rapid learning. The only point is to know what is possible to develop using this tool to avoid any kind of frustration afterwards.
• Another positive impact is that we don't need a diversified development team. There is no need of technical professionals, and a creative instructional designer is enough to develop effective learning content using Studio.
• The third positive impact is that Studio makes possible to realize short-term projects, mainly when there's already a PowerPoint presentation.

Incentivized

• For the most part, teachers, parents and students love the system. It provides easy access to the information that they need when they need it.