Although my main focus on this blog is the world of corporate learning technologies, I'm always mindful that the academic sector has led the way in many areas for some time now. But it's been a while since I've discovered a product offering that's originated from this sector and from within the UK too.
Webducate offers e-learning developers a trio of products that can create effective online modules that could all play a role in corporate learning programmes. And what's more...they are inexpensive, so putting learning technologies into the hands of many more potential courseware developers.
Dragster is a tool for authoring drag-and-drop exercises. These are most useful for subjects where processes or identification of components is the main driving force behind the training. You can easily drop in your background image and complete the process of adding in the labels, the "zones" for the correct positions and feedback. There is also a wiki-feature, whereby each participant can, for instance, rearrange a series of post-it notes (aka labels), but preserving the previous selections of others.
Pollster, as its name suggests, is a tool for creating polling questions, with the ability to display the results automatically and invite comments that could be used to support each person's voting preference. It's possible to remove inappropriate comments should they arise and you can also set up an RSS feed, so you don't have to remember to keep checking for the latest poll results.
The final tool is known as the Accessible Multimedia Player. The name is derived from the fact that you can combine audio, with video, with PowerPoint slides and a written transcript. For me, this is my favourite tool of the set, as I've written before about software that enables trainers to take their slides, add in their script and synchronise all the elements, to create an archive of a previous live event. This is a great way to create an asynchronous e-learning module from a live synchronous session and benefits not only those that couldn't attend the original event, but also provide a valuable source of refresher training. Of course, you could also use the tool to create narrated pre-workshop modules too, or an asynchronous component before a live webinar.
The Webducate website provides detailed step-by-step instructions for each tool and it's worthwhile taking the time to study these, especially when you could be handling many different types of media, in the case of the Accessible Multimedia Player.
[As for the title of this posting, in Germany they say "Alle guten Dinge sind drei" which roughly translates into "all good things come in threes"]
Comments