Nuggethead Studioz

The intersections between creativity and play

  • Home
  • About
  • Services
    • Elearning
    • Illustration
    • Training
  • Portfolio
  • Blog
  • Contact
You are here: Home / Elearning / Articulate vs. Lectora

Articulate vs. Lectora

August 12, 2009 By Kevin Thorn 6 Comments

When it comes to software development tools, I’m fortunate to work in an environment that understands no two tools are the same and each provide advantages and disadvantages.  The fun part of my job is having a plethora of tools in my ‘elearning development’ toolbox: Adobe Creative Suite, Captivate, Visio, Lectora, and now Articulate.  There are many others, but these are the most popular and most widely used.

As many do, we storyboard projects in Word and PowerPoint.  Over the past couple years using Lectora Enterprise Edition I developed templates that would ease the elearning development process for instructional designers. However, there is still a steep learning curve understanding all of Lectora’s power and control.

Recently, Lectora launched a new tool that integrates PowerPoint slides directly into a Lectora project.  At the same time, we picked up Articulate Studio ’09. In my world that’s like Christmas morning!

In order to fully appreciate both of these tools and to assist our team in choosing the right tool when developing their courses, I thought I’d run a little test…

I made a small PowerPoint presentation to demonstrate the differences between Lectora and Articulate.  The entire project took less than two hours, which included collecting graphics, layout, writing the content, linking navigation, and publishing to a basic web page (html) in both tools.  I’m not boasting, but I’ve been around development tools for awhile and can pick them up fairly quickly.  This is not to say a true novice beginning in the industry would have the same completion rate.  I would honestly double that time for anyone not familiar with working in these type tools.

Collecting graphics was easy.  I used Tom Kuhlmann’s template from a recent blog post on the Rapid Elearning Blog. This package had all the assets I needed (Thanks Tom!). The layout of my test took about half an hour setting up the Master slide and linking the subsequent slides (pages; screens).  Writing the content was just fluff to fill the pages, and publishing took a bit longer in Articulate only because it was a brief learning curve for me using a new tool.

There are major differences working with these two tools.  Mainly, Lectora’s tool is an integrator meaning the work is done first in PowerPoint and then ‘imported’ into a Lectora project.    Aritculate works as a plugin and all development is done within PowerPoint to include publishing.

Advantages/Disadvantages:

Lectora: Power comes with the ability to use JavaScript and XML for some really unique experiences.  However, whatever is not done in PowerPoint will have to be manually constructed in the Lectora project.  Also, Lectora publishes the slide position at x=0 and y=0. In order to center the content on the screen, you’ll need to make additional configurations within the published files. This example was published with all hyperlinks added first in PowerPoint then imported into Lectora.

Articulate: Power comes with the ease of use and minimal learning curve of its tools.  Plus, everything is done within PowerPoint. The downside (as far a I know with minimal use) is the ability to customize by diving into the code.

Summary:

Lectora: No additional publishing configurations necessary.  It is what it is – PowerPoint slides.  Any additional navigation, interactions, or animations must be added once in the Lectora project.  If you want to simply import and publish, all navigation must be linked in PowerPoint first.  Lectora carried all linking and navigation from PowerPoint and there was zero editing to do.  The only odd thing was it published an unknown and unused variable(?)

Published size and folders: 1 folder, 30 files = 420k

Articulate: A very intuitive product over Lectora. Both have a plethora of publishing and user control options.  Since Articulate is integrated, it is obvious that all navigation, interactions, and animations are added or edited within PowerPoint.  Articulate’s default Player template has all the bells & whistles and it took me a few minutes to learn how to simply publish simple slides with user control on screen rather than the player control bar.

Published size and folders: 3 folders, 47 files = 1.14Mb

NOTE: Knowing Lectora well enough I know all those files are used.  Not knowing Articulate well enough I am not sure how many of those files are published by default whether they are used or not.

In my humble opinion Articulate is clearly a smoother experience as it is based on the flash platform whereas Lectora publishes as html and JavaScript.  At first study, Articulate publishes .swf holders and content is moved in an out.  Lectora publishes each page as an .html file and every click of a button rewrites the page on screen. View both examples here:

ppt_lectora
ppt_lectora
ex_articulate
ppt_articulate

Download the slide template from Tom

Download the slide template I used for this example

As mentioned, my experience with Articulate is less than 30 days while I’ve been using Lectora for about two years. Who else has used both products? What other comparrisons have you noticed?

Filed Under: Elearning Tagged With: Add new tag, development

Want more like this? Sign up for updates!

About Kevin Thorn

Chief NuggetHead, Kevin Thorn is an award-winning eLearning designer with over 30 years’ experience in the training industry. Kevin earned a Technology Management degree in pursuit of an IT career. With a pencil in his pocket, his interest in technology mashed with his passion for visual design, he founded NuggetHead Studioz, LLC. The Studioz is a custom design & development company providing services in instructional design, storyboarding, eLearning development, Articulate Storyline training, illustration, graphic design, storytelling, cartooning and comics.

Comments

  1. Barbara Orisich says

    March 30, 2010 at 10:39 am

    Kevin,
    I want to present a review of these products to some e-learning developers I work with but am mostly concerned about 508 compliance. Do you know whether Articulate creates 508 compliant e-learning?

    Reply
    • Kevin says

      March 30, 2010 at 11:01 am

      Hi Barbara,

      If I understand your question, Articulate supports the development of 508 compliant eLearning. A quick search of their online community and I found several resources both in the Forums and on the Word of Mouth Blog. You can find it here.

      As for if Articulate as a company will create 508 compliant courses for your company, I’m not exactly sure but I believe they develop courses for companies as well. If you’re on Twiter, reach out to both David Anderson @elearning and Tom Kuhlmann @tomkuhlmann. They will certainly be able to answer your question in more detail.

      Reply
  2. Bill says

    August 25, 2011 at 9:48 am

    Great blog. Thanks for taking the time to explain. I am in the market for some software and this helps.,

    Reply
    • Chief NuggetHead says

      August 25, 2011 at 9:55 am

      You’re welcome. Hope to have more reviews and comparisons in the future.

      Reply
  3. EduTechDiva says

    January 6, 2016 at 6:04 pm

    Will you be updating this comparison with info on Storyline 2, Cap 9, and Lectora 16 Beta, perhaps anytime soon?

    Reply
    • Kevin Thorn says

      January 18, 2016 at 10:15 pm

      Hi, this post was 6 1/2 years ago and a lot has changed since then. I haven’t used Captivate in 5 years and Lectora since I wrote this. I’d recommend Joe Ganci’s site as he has does thorough reviews and comparisons on all the latest authoring tools. You can find him here: http://www.elearningjoe.com/reviews.html

      Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Connect With Nuggethead

  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter

Copyright Nuggethead Studioz © 2023 · Powered by WordPress · Log in