More and more organizations with eLearning programs in place are feeling the need to move towards mLearning, and we believe that Tablet Learning can be a smooth and easy way to initiate this shift. In many cases, though, Tablet Learning is considered a form of mLearning, and there is often a degree of hesitation to make the switch, perhaps brought on by typical myths associated with Mobile Learning. Tablet Learning, however, can be viewed as a separate category that serves as an effective stepping stone in the transition from eLearning to mLearning. Converting existing eLearning to Tablet Learning can be relatively easy, and with many tablets having display areas similar to desktop PCs, content repurposing is often minimal. We’ve presented some cost-effective options below to help you get started. These conversion solutions have been divided based on the tools in which the original eLearning was created.
1.Flash Course
For HTML output
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Text-heavy course:
In this case, redeveloping the course in HTML or using Lectora Inspire will work best. Basic interactivities are generally well supported in HTML/can be easily developed using this authoring tool.
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Animation-rich course:
Here again, one can use Lectora or HTML as a framework. Additionally, interactivities can be also developed within HTML/Lectora. Flash animations can be published as videos and imported in the HTML/Lectora framework. This method allows the previously developed Flash animations to be reutilized, leading to sizeable cost-savings.
Another option could be to use the Flash CS6 Toolkit for CreateJS, which allows output to be created in Flash and published for HTML. CreateJS targets the HTML5 Canvas element and supports most of the core illustration, animation, interactivity, and timeline capabilities of Flash Pro. We are in the process of exploring this option.
For Native Apps
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Courses Developed in ActionScript 3:
If you have projects developed in ActionScript 3, you can use Flash Professional CS5 and higher to publish them as native apps for Android and iOS platforms.
2.Captivate Course
Captivate Version 6 offers the option to publish output in HTML, thus providing good support for Tablet devices.
So if you have courses already developed in older versions of Captivate, the only things you need to do is import and publish them for HTML via Captivate 6. This tool has a very good feature (HTML5 tracker) for highlighting activities that are not supported on tablets. You can easily identify unsupported activities and replace them with functionality that is supported. For instance, if your current version of the course uses rollovers, the HTML5 tracker will flag this, since tablets do not support rollover functionality, and you can change that functionality to mouse clicks. Again, this is a good low-cost option for quick conversion of existing Captivate based projects for Tablets.
3.Articulate Course
If you have courses already developed in Articulate, then Articulate Storyline can be a cost-effective option for converting them for Tablet devices.
The steps are simple – the base PPT that you used for the Presenter slides needs to be republished using Articulate Storyline. The only things that remain are the Engage Interactivities and Quizzes. These need to be re-authored in the new version, along with audio syncing. But overall, this tool offers you great functionality and is another cost-saving option.
Apart from working with the above tools, we have been recently experimenting with Adobe Edge and results look quite promising. The current version does not support audio; however, we can add that manually. We guess the next release will have audio support, in which case it would be a very interesting tool to work with, as it seems capable of giving Flash-like output with smooth animations and transitions.
