A major trend seems to be the move to cloud-based subscription services.
Adobe’s Creative Cloud announcement is one example (thanks Michael!). I’m seeing the beginnings of the same thing with Microsoft’s Office.
This trend has a pretty significant impact on how we advise and support our burgeoning community of staff eLearning developers.
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In our current approach – we have told folks who want to create eLearning to purchase a copy of Captivate or Articulate Storyline. The version they use will pretty much stay the same until they feel they absolutely, positively need to upgrade. Many members of the community only do eLearning development once every year or two – so there really is no reason to upgrade.
One challenge I see with the cloud-based subscription model – the end user has no or very limited control of the upgrade. (Please see GMail….)
Make a major change to the user interface, particularly unannounced, and watch the phone calls and angry emails come in.
Do this in an application they are not comfortable using in the first place, and usually at a time when they are tight on deadline (because it never happens during slow periods), and really watch the fun begin.
What all this tells me is that I need to somehow figure out a way to encourage my users to be more self-sufficient. More comfortable with the pace of change in their tools.
I need to figure out a better support model.
There is no way I will be able to keep up if I try to use the traditional training toolkit.
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