Articulate Studio is a PowerPoint plugin used to develop elearning course content. It includes assessment, on-screen recording, and interactions integrations.
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MadCap Xyleme
Score 7.0 out of 10
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Xyleme is a robust Component and Learning Content Management Solution dedicated to providing users with an easy and safe way to create and disseminate learning materials and other business-related content. It comes equipped with several features that focus on creating a central, single source of truth for an organization’s content.
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.
Building and keeping up to date modular content (blocks).
Maintaining and updating large content library where meaning team members might be working on the same content but using the content in different context (e.g. learning and internal comms).
Creating learning content by new/recently onboarded team members.
Create simple learning courses with some level of interactively, medium interactivity (tabs, image maps, slider reveal images), create different types of knowledge checks/assessments from multiple choice to drag and drop activities); embed videos and other HTML elements .
Integrate with LMS, apply SCORM rules etc
Better to use in combination with other media creation tools like Vyond, Storyline. Some things can get tricky (compatibility).
Less appropriate: 1. If you need to build highly interactive learning experience 2. When you don't have a team member you can dedicate specifically to customize templates in Xyleme for your organizational needs (looks, functionality etc.) or and to train team members on this software. You'd need someone on your team to collaborate with Xyleme closely to customize functions for your organization's needs. 3. When #2 and you want a modern/in trend looking output and not willing to compromise on what it looks and feels.
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!
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.
several features advertised as device agnostic or mobile friendly do not work properly on mobile
finicky in many ways, sometimes you need to tinker with details for to long to make things work properly
many UI solutions/elements that are not intuitive at all (even using the tool almost every day you need to make effort to remember how things are done)
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!
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
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.
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.
