Using Macromedia Flash MX 2004 as an E-Learning Authoring Environment

By Garin Hess and Steven Hancock

The recent upgrades to Macromedia Flash make it an excellent choice for an e-learning authoring environment.

With all the major browsers now packaging Macromedia Flash player as part of the default installation, Flash content on the Web has become almost as commonplace as HTML pages. A growing number of Websites mix Flash and HTML to add animation, sound, and video to what used to be static or only moderately interactive pages. Let’s take a look at some of the reasons Flash makes a great e-learning authoring tool.

Media and animation

Most e-learning practitioners are familiar with Flash’s animation capabilities. Who hasn’t visited a Website that has an animated introduction or received an animated Flash movie via email? Because Flash can support animation, video, and audio, it’s become a preferred environment for media-rich learning experiences. With broadband Internet connections becoming more common, instructional designers are beginning to design with confidence the kind of engaging learning experiences previously impractical over the Internet.

Flash has been able to convert video AVI files to Flash SWF files since the release of Flash MX. However, Macromedia’s most recent Flash release, Flash MX 2004, includes a new type of Flash file type called a Flash Video (the files have a .flv extension). FLV files allow more precision controls for synchronizing other media or animations with video, as well as enhanced control over streaming video content via the Internet.

Quick-start templates

For starters, Macromedia Flash provides several quiz templates that help developers get started with basic interactivity.

Using these templates you can create an online quiz that includes the following interaction types:

• drag-and-drop
• fill-in-the-blank
• true/false
• multiple choice
• multiple correct
• identification.

Each type of quiz interaction is a Flash component, which is a self-contained object in Flash that has customizable properties. An example of a customizable property is feedback text that appears when the learner answers correctly or incorrectly.

Because these interactions are stand-alone components, you can include them within a custom course that you’re creating. Each learning component comes with an interface that enables developers to customize the interaction. The following example is the interface for customizing a drag-and-drop interaction:

In addition, the quiz templates provide the sequential navigation necessary to move from question to question. At the end of the quiz, the template also provides some basic scoring information.

If you need to integrate your quizzes with an LMS, the templates have options for publish them as SCORM- or AICC-compliant courseware.

Data tracking

Of course, most e-learning includes some way to track learner data. At the most elementary level, Flash can easily keep track of basic data within the Flash movie, such as the score within the quiz template. For example, if you set up your course architecture to track the content in a master Flash movie, then tracking data within the movie is as simple as updating a variable in Flash’s ActionScript scripting language. If you’re already familiar with how to track scores across multiple pages in an HTML course using a JavaScript variable in hidden frames, you will certainly appreciate Flash’s capability to keep track of scores because the Flash movie is a self-contained object within one Webpage.

As mentioned earlier, you can package the learning interactions that come with Flash MX to send data to an AICC- or SCORM-compliant LMS. Flash’s online help explains some basics on how to do this, but you may want to consult a third-party book for more details.

Course architecture

A major challenge that most e-learning developers face is how to assemble an entire course using just Flash. Even developers familiar with creating individual interactions and animations, can stumble on how to package them together into a cohesive unit? Fortunately, Flash MX 2004 offers several approaches to course architecture. Here are a few architectural concepts.

Separate HTML pages to link multiple Flash content pieces together. In this scenario, your architecture is mostly HTML and JavaScript and your content is in Flash. This architecture is the simplest and easiest to implement if you’re just learning to use Flash. One disadvantage to this approach is that you must use JavaScript and a tracking frameset outside of Flash if you want to track a total score.

Use Flash’s built-in presentation templates. These templates come equipped with Next/Back buttons. Even though they’re meant for presentations similar to PowerPoint, there’s no reason to limit their use. These templates are fairly easy to set up, but you need to have a basic to intermediate knowledge of Flash to modify this architecture.

Create an overarching sequential navigation system inside of Flash, then pull in content movie clips on-the-fly into a presentation area. When the learner navigates to a new piece of content, an external flash movie is loaded and played at that moment. This lets developers display all of the content within one Flash movie while still being able to create and maintain the content pieces outside of Flash. Because the architecture is all contained within one Flash movie, data tracking is simplified as well.

Create an architecture based on an external text file, such as an XML file.  This is probably the most advanced approach to architecture, but offers the most payback in maintenance. Imagine adding content to the course by updating an external text file and not having to update it in Flash.

You may also choose to create an architecture that combines aspects of these different approaches. For example, you may want to create a course based on the presentation template, but incorporate a table of contents that is dynamically created based on an external XML file.

Scripting

Macromedia has continued to improve ActionScript, Flash’s scripting language. Flash’s latest version of ActionScript is a fully object-oriented language, which enables sophisticated Flash developers to create complicated e-learning applications.

An advantage of this object-oriented approach is reusability. As many developers discover, most e-learning applications have certain functions that are used over and over again. ActionScript enables developers to create classes of code that can be reused. By setting up this functionality as classes using ActionScript, it is easy to reuse functionality in multiple applications.

As expected, this capability decreases development time, which becomes even more powerful when coupled with components. Indeed, the capability to create your own components opens a lot of possibilities for e-learning developers. When working on a large project, you can create components to shorten the time required to complete repeatable development tasks.

For example, suppose that at the beginning of each lesson you have to create a list of objectives. You could easily create a “Learning Objectives” component that would allow you to enter the learning objectives in a component interface. The component would then assemble the actual content. Or, you might build a component that pulls in the objectives from an external XML file that you specify. Either way, the idea behind components is that you create a customizable tool that allows you to shorten development time.

To be sure, creating components is not for the novice Flash developer, but it can pay big dividends.

Bottom line

It’s easy for developers to see the advantages of using Flash to build e-learning modules: easy-to-use templates, advanced data tracking, and complex scripting that supports reusability.

However, let’s not forget the end-user. One of the most compelling reasons to use Flash as an authoring environment is its cross-browser compatibility. If you’ve ever developed an e-learning course that had to be delivered via multiple browsers you know how difficult it can be. Because Flash is interpreted the same across different browsers, you can easily maintain one source that should work on multiple platforms. The point: Every learner will have access to the same learning experience.