Preface

Articulate Studio '09 is a powerful authoring tool built to help both the expert trainer and the novice developer to quickly create useful learning experiences. While they can all work together, Articulate Studio '09 is a suite that contains four pieces of software that may be used individually or together. Therefore, this book will contain sections that may be used non-sequentially.

This book is meant to provide technical guidance for building a basic or complex course using the suite. While you are not limited in the creativity you can use in your course, this book will only provide a basic foundation for helping to develop a solid, polished course. You may find many additional and advanced techniques by visiting the Heroes forum on Articulate's website.

What this book covers

Chapter 1, Getting Started with Articulate Suite, covers the basics of the suite, what its capabilities are, and how to begin conceptualizing a basic course.

Chapter 2, Create Your Course with Presenter, covers the basics of creating a simple course using Presenter by itself. It teaches the basics of inserting media elements and assets, as well as preparing basic animations and finally publishing a simple course.

Chapter 3, Preparing Your Player, covers the features, setup, and capabilities of the Articulate Presenter course player. It provides guidance on how to edit color schemes, player elements, and functionality.

Chapter 4, Creating Assessments and Courses with Quizmaker, covers the core concepts behind the creation of basic assessment questions using Quizmaker. It covers the editing of the Quizmaker player and its functionality, and provides basic guidance on assessment creation using basic instructional design principles.

Chapter 5, Taking Your Quiz to the Next Level, shows the user how to use Quizmaker as more than just a basic quizzing tool. This chapter will include concepts on creating a more useful slide in the slide view, basic branching, and scenario concepts, as well as information on how to use Quizmaker to create a standalone course.

Chapter 6, Creating Interactive Content with Engage, discusses quick ways of adding interactive content to your course with Engage.

Chapter 7, Basic Video Editing with Video Encoder, guides the user through the process of basic video editing and file encoding using this tool. The user will learn how to perform basic tweaks as well as customize the video size and performance for your course.

Chapter 8, Combining All Three, shows the user how to finally combine all the three major applications from the suite into one cohesive course. They will also learn how to customize properties and course functionality.

What you need for this book

In order to get the maximum from this book, it is best to have the recommended software and hardware available, as well as an understanding of some basic concepts. It is recommended to have the following.

Software

Following are the software requirements:

• A PC running a current Windows operating system—Microsoft Windows 2000 SP4 or later (32 bit or 64 bit), Windows Vista (32 bit or 64 bit), or Windows 7 (32 bit or 64 bit), or a Mac computer running a Windows OS through Boot Camp, Parallels, or VMWare Fusion

• .NET 2.0 or later installed

• Microsoft PowerPoint 2003, 2007, or 2010 (32 bit)

• Microsoft Word 2000, 2003, 2007, or 2010

• Adobe Flash Player 6.0.79 or higher

Hardware

Following are the hardware requirements:

• At least a 1-GHz processor

• 1 GB of RAM (memory)

• A minimum disk space of 100 MB

• A working sound card and microphone (for recording narration), and optionally a webcam

Concepts

Following are the basic concepts required for this book:

• A basic understanding of PowerPoint and basic Word processing

• How to navigate to the ribbon in MS Office applications

Who this book is for

The typical readers of this book would be involved in the authoring of training or presentations, and would have a basic understanding of Microsoft Office tools such as PowerPoint and Word.

Conventions

In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.

Code words in text are shown as follows: "They must be recorded in either the .wav or .mp3 format."

New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: "To import these files, click on the Import Audio button in the Narration section of the Articulate ribbon."

Note

Warnings or important notes appear in a box like this.

Tip

Tips and tricks appear like this.

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Questions

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