Of late,
some vendors in the e-learning tools industry have started using the word
'interactivity' in a rather loose way. You hear of authoring tools that provide
interactivity building features. This leads some users to believe they are
getting course authoring and interactivity building in one package!
Of course,
we do welcome the efforts by authoring tool vendors to help their users build
engaging courses. What is important for course designers to understand is that the
state-of-the-art in interactivity is further along. With a tool like Raptivity,
which focuses only on interactivity, and works with other authoring tools, you
make an investment in interactivity building that goes a long way.
Why a
separate interactivity tool? There are many good reasons. One, it does not lock
you into one authoring tool or platform. You can use multiple authoring tools -
depending on what the content or client demands - and still use the same
interactions. Second, you get a large variety of interactions, and more get
added with time. Third, among all kinds of content, interactions are the
hardest to migrate across platforms and devices. A specialized interactivity
tool can anticipate the migration issues and make your work
future-proof. Finally, interactivity tools treat each interaction as a unit,
which can be re-used as it is, or with tweaks.
Interactivity
building is different from content authoring. Course developers use many
authoring tools. To make their courses engaging and interactive, they need one
interactivity builder.
