Adobe PRESENTER -- the Name Says It All!
Pros
- This tool is great for allowing anyone already familiar with PowerPoint to convey reasonably simple and short content asynchronously. It's quick and easy to learn how to use it and even allows for some basic types of quiz questions.
- You can publish it to your company's Adobe server (if you have one) or as a SCORM package to upload to a traditional LMS.
- It gives you the choice of recording audio within its own PowerPoint ribbon (not my method of choice) or to import and sync audio created outside of Presenter (which I prefer, because it's easier to edit and maintain.)
- I also love that it comes with Adobe Presenter Video Express, which can be used within the Presenter ribbon or as a stand-alone application. It's a very easy way to create short system demos with narration, and allows for zooming and panning, as well as allowing you to intersperse, or even simultaneously show, webcam video.
Cons
- I don't know if this qualifies as a "con," per se, but it's important not to try and use this as a full-fledged e-learning authoring tool, as the opportunities it affords for effective practice and feedback is minimal. It's a well-named product, since "Presenter" really is best used for "presentations," rather than bona fide training.
- There's no real "programming" ability (like being able to use custom actions and variables).
- I also wish that, when syncing animations to audio narration, if you make a mistake mid-way through a slide, you could re-do just from where you made the mistake on forward, rather than having to resync the whole slide.
- Better audio editing capabilities within the product would make it feel less "necessary" to me to use an external audio editing product.
- It's also not the cheapest of the tools that does this kind of thing. For example, SNAP, by Trivantis, does many of the same things at about a tenth the cost.
Return on Investment
- We don't really measure the ROI of this tool directly or in any kind of "hard numbers" way.
- However, I will say that its ease and speed of use (compared to some of our more full-featured e-learning authoring tools) does allow us to create more deliverables more quickly, which has a (non-quantified) positive ROI in terms of L&D staffing and throughput.
- Also, the fact that it's PowerPoint-based means that we can have subject-matter experts create the initial draft of the underlying content, saving L&D "specialist" time for just doing stuff that may require greater expertise, like tweaking the content for better instructional design, creating the quiz questions (if any), recording the narration, and doing the other more "technical" Adobe-Presenter-specific things.
- It also saves the company money in that we don't have to provide the subject-matter expert with Adobe Presenter licences for them to be able to substantially contribute to the creation of the module.
Alternatives Considered
Brainshark and Snap
Other Software Used
Adobe Captivate
