Cross-platform Computer-Based Training?

TeachingMachines asks: "They say that if you can't do, you teach, and if you can't teach, you teach P.E. Well, what happens when P.E. teachers become interested in programming? Wimpy educators like myself need very high-level Rapid Application Development or similar authoring environments for Computer-Based Training (CBT) so that we can call ourselves '3133t HackerZ'. Throughout my graduate training students typically used one of the two most popular authoring environments: Macromedia's popular Authorware (for Mac and MS) and Click2Learn's infinitely more powerful ToolBook (for MS only, ugh). Are there any really good authoring environments for CBT that are truly cross-platform compatible (i.e. support Linux/Solaris/Mac9/MacOSX/MS)? I ask that because a new kid showed up on the block called Norpath Elements Studio that looks to be highly integrated with Java and deploys multimedia applications cross platform. Is anyone aware of similar tools, proprietary or not?"

Comments

REALBasic

[Fifster]

There's a program called REALBasic out for Mac (and maybe PC as well) that can develop multimediaish programs for Windows, MacOS 9.1 and less, and MacOS X+ with the same code. I've never used it, but as far as I know, it's quite good, graphical, pretty easy to learn/use, etc. Not sure if this solves what you are trying to solve, but good luck!

Coursebuilder?

[GregWebb]

Macromedia certainly used to produce an addon for Dreamweaver called Coursebuilder which, IIRC (only looked at it briefly, it's only of peripheral relevance to my job) was rather nice and a free add-on.

Toolbook produces strange HTML which doesn't translate that nicely to stuff other than Win/IE from what I recall. Authorware I've not noticed I've come across. Flash / Director require plugins (duh...), Director is a pain to integrate into a Learning Management System. Seminar4Web is another I've come across - again, only really works well with Win/IE and even then it's a little strange to put it tactfully. It's also rather expensive.

I'd look at what you're looking to do, though. For a lot of courses, thinking about how the content should work and it all fit together, it's not rocket science to do the HTML. Breaking the learning down properly into components is interesting, but you're trained educators, right?

My advice? Get the CS department to lay you out a template that you can drop content into and do simple, JavaScript testing. That's not complicated, it's all that's required and will make a nice project for a student.

This is assuming a reasonably small scope, though. If you're ultimately looking at moving this to a larger managed learning environment (which isn't necessarily appropriate) then you'll be better off pumping out stuff which is AICC (http://www.aicc.org/) and / or SCORM (http://www.adlnet.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=scorma bt&cfid=286743&cftoken=76681359) compliant. For this, you want to use pro tools. A managed learning environment working with non-standards based courses isn't a problem (I write such beasts day in day out) but it does complicate matters. I suppose a student could do this as a project again but, erm, I wouldn't recommend it, having read the standards :-)