I've been listening to the talk about moving to Power Point templates as e-learning scripts which sent me down the following path of "What ifs..." that led me wonder why we don't just script in Captivate.

Please bear in mind I come at this with just less than six weeks of actual instructional design experience, so there are likely big flaws in my logic.  PLEASE point them out.  For me it is the best way to learn.

Much of the eleraning that I've been exposed to is little more than print-based learning delivered via a computer.  There's good reasons for that, but to move past that and really capitalize on the potential of elearning, the visual component of scripting is essential.

BUT, I've also done a (very) little bit of editing and know that to make sure the words are right it is helpful to be able to concentrate on just the words.

So that got me thinking...

What if....  the captions could be exported for the CQA process.  It turns out that feature in not available in Power Point. hmm....

What if.... we used Captivate to script making static pages?  Is creating static slides in Captivate any harder than in Power Point.  Wouldn't it be easier to learn and use one program rather than two?  Wouldn't it maybe save some time if the development team could just cut and copy bits from scripts already in Power Point?  hmmmm....

What if... we scripted using the acutal elearning templates that the development team used in Captivate?We could put the stuff where it needs to be and the development team would then be responsible to make sure it actually works.  We'd probably muck around with things we shuoldn't touch and don't understand and cause more problems.  hmmmm....

What if..... we could have actual elearning templates with specific development related features locked? Like the Power Point templates, we could pull them out of a library, put our stuff (content)in, and then send them off to development where they could do the fine tuning and care for the more technical side of things.  We could also export our captions for CQA. It might also facilitate some great dialog betweeen the ID team and the development team around what is possible, what is desirable and why we do the things we do.

I'm not sure it this is practical or possible, but I thought I'd throw it out there.