Will Captivate 3 meet our needs?

Question

I work within a training and development department, and have
been asked to research Captivate 3. We do a variety of training
including soft skills (leadership, communication, presentation
skills, etc.) and some "harder" skills. We want to create online
supplements to our instructor led courses. We rarely train on
systems (e.g., how to use a learning management system, a
time-keeping system, etc). We're Adobe fans, and recently attended
a session on Captivate given by a trainer in a different division.
That individual was using an older version of Captivate, and it was
suggested that if we wanted to do training that focused on
non-system skills, perhaps another Adobe product would do a better
job.
I thought I present my question to the Captivate 3 pros (you
:-) and get your input. If we want to have supplemental training on
topics such as giving presentations, diversity, leadership, etc.,
will Captivate 3 best suit our needs? What specific experiences in
this arena have you had? Are there other Adobe products better
suited to our needs?
Thanks so much,
Ed

Answer 1

Hi Ed,
I'd certainly recommend considering Captivate if you are
developing e-learning materials in which you'd like to include
examples of applications, movies, audio instructions, etc.
However, I think Captivate is a little restrictive if you
want to use your developed materials like you'd use PowerPoint to
develop and show presentations. There are many reasons... The
materials in Captivate do not scale "full screen" (well) without
changing your resolution (PowerPoint tends to handle this nicely).
It is also rather expensive to develop using the tools vs.
something that presumably most people have on their computers
already (PowerPoint). There is a bit of a learning curve with
Captivate (as there is with PowerPoint with some of the more
advanced functions). Adobe does sell an plugin/addon for PowerPoint
(Presenter) that may be nice for you too, though I think it is now
packaged with other software. You can read about it
here.
Captivate presentations also do not work as well with
"remotes" you'd commonly use for presenting. There are some
workarounds with Captivate, but PowerPoint makes this very easy.
My recommendation would be to look at what you are going to
be creating and using the presentations for. It really depends on
what you'll be using them for.
Do a little research - try downloading the demo of Captivate
and see how it works for you...
Good luck,
David