Captivate as a tool for LMS

Still a newbie will know more as i interact. However the features are what drew us to this software

Pros

presentation development and deployment as well as integration to adobeconnect

Cons

Instal was a handful and took very long.

Captivate Prime - getting better

It has been good for setting up the programme - but I cannot really fully commercialise the programme until document security is better. It is easy to use, a good interface for learners. It has been a good experience but a little way to go yet in some parts of the application.

Pros

The product is evolving and starting to become a lot easier to use - a simple PDF manual would also help to bring new administrators on. It does the job well and the licencing is flexible. It is so much improved from around 18 months ago. I have found the product easier to manage and the addition of some simple features like deletion of modules has made content easier to catalogue and manage.

Cons

The product still has not adopted to meet commercial training provider needs, there is no paywall for example. There are also some simple things that commercial training providers need - after much discussion with ADOBE ACROBAT PRO DC teams, the pdf security (no printing or copy/pasting settings) are undone by PRIME when content is loaded (users can simply highlight, copy and paste content). This means a student or anyone accessing the programme can easily copy/paste content. This simply creates the capacity for IP loss. Its a small change I suspect - but critical in protecting IP for commercial providers. In the end I have had to use a workaround with MP4s. Support on the PRIME side was contradictory - despite ACROBAT testing the feature.

Captivate - the reason we don't have a training department anymore. Endlessly buggy w/ rude support.

We no longer have a training division, because of Adobe Captivate & Adobe Captivate Prime. If you don't have an enterprise license, their support team has no interest in helping you. It takes a huge amount of evidence to convince the support team that your bug or complaint is valid, they insist on blaming you or the user. Everytime one bug was solved, another one appeared. When we realized that Captivate was more embarrassing than helpful, we had to close our training division. We didn't have the financial or time resources to re-build all of our training module on a new platform. While we used Captivate, it caused so many of our students to be angry at us. We had to give many refunds. Most importantly, it damaged our reputation.

Pros

The most basic level functionality is pretty simple to understand.

Cons

We built our entire curriculum on Adobe Captivate (100s of files). When we used Moodle as our LMS, we often had problems. For example, the user needing to enable pop-ups and unsafe scripts, the files freezing, and a student watching the entire lesson and then not having it register as completed. We assumed that Moodle was the problem. So, we moved our courses to Adobe Captivate Prime (which required considerable time and effort). To our dismay, the problems did not improve. If anything, they got worse. There are many things I could talk about, but the worst was the support. They were so unwilling to admit fault. A specific example of this is when they had a bug with the radio buttons in Captivate quizzes. The first several times I tried to contact support about the problem, they blamed the problem on the users. Only after I'd sent them several user complaints, screenshots, and videos did they start to listen. Even then, it took me being very assertive to get them to admit that the problem was on their end (& would take months to fix). Other issues: I couldn't manually mark buggy lessons as complete for students. Students had to enable "unsafe scripts." Many problems were unrepeatable - a students would send me a screenshot of a problem. I'd wouldn't be able to re-create. They they'd try again later and it would work. Because all of our lessons were built in Captivate & even Adobe's solution couldn't play them, we closed our training department.

Solid LMS that's in the process of improving.

The software meets our needs, and hosts all content we need. It takes a lot of learning to grasp the system, and you will be doing most of the learning on your own. Certainly a competitive service. Definitely worth your consideration.

Pros

This software has all the features that you may be looking for in an LMS. It has some CRM features, can host all standard e-learning file types, has a social learning function, and allows for a solid user experience.

Cons

I didn't like how there is no method to execute all functions on the LMS without swapping between user profiles. Admin has certain permissions, as does the author and learner roles. It's your responsibility to learn which profile type does what. Additionally, the customer service is quite slow. If you're looking for quick support on the service, you'd be better off troubleshooting on your own. I rarely get an appointment with my CapPrime rep within the same week I request it. Finally, the system is inexpensive, but requires a big upfront cost. They currently only offer a 3-year commitment plan to the service. If I would've known about the speed of customer service I would've reconsidered our choice.

Struggling Novice

[SENSITIVE CONTENT HIDDEN] has been great to work with, however, when items need to be escalated sometimes the issue is with Captivate and not Prime or somewhere in the upload. It would be very helpful to have someone who understands both software. Also, the people at the help desk are nice, but I lack confidence in their knowledge. There have been a couple of occasions where they think something can be done, but when testing it, realize it cannot be done. If this is my escalation point, I feel they should be experts. Something as simple as the non-optional playbar should be common knowledge with an expert.

Pros

Ease of updating courses. I appreciate the sandbox so that I can test and learn. The ability to add branding. Preview as learner.

Cons

Toggling between Author and Administrator when uploading a course and assigning learners. Non-optional playbar. Deciding on how many points are needed to complete a skill. When the system is new it is an unknown number. Some modules within a course receive a checkmark when complete, but some show complete, but a checkmark is not displayed. This is confusing for the learner. Set incidents for completion based on when the course was pushed. For example, if a course is pushed automatically and should be completed within 2 weeks. It appears that the software will all set an actual date due.