The venerable suite of eLearning components for Dreamweaver, the Coursebuilder Extensions, is back in the recently released eLearning Suite 2. Adobe has updated the entire eLearning Suite to version 2 and with it, the group of extensions has been packaged once again with Dreamweaver, this time making it compatible with the CS5 version of the web design tool.
Overall, it’s a solid deployment and works as you have come to expect it. With Adobe’s recent focus on mobile, however, you may be longing to try out this software on your favorite smartphone in the hopes of deploying some mobile learning to your corporate users. In our rather extensive tests on mobile devices with the CourseBuilder output, we found a few things that may change how you will create that courseware using Dreamweaver. Let’s examine why.
For the most part, mobile web browsers on recent smartphones are JavaScript friendly, and really very capable at providing rich experiences. It stands to reason then, that you may want to extend your reach of your existing courseware and toolkit to target these learners on the go. Due to some differences between the devices and how they handle web content, though, some compatibility issues with the CourseBuilder Extensions do arise. Some differences in JavaScript parsers and touchscreen input methods account for most of the issues. Take a look at this comparison table to see how tests faired. (filled circles denote support, hollow circles signify the compatibility test failed)
| Interaction | Android 2.2 | iOS 4.x | Blackberry 4.x | Palm Web OS |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MultCh_TrueFalse: true/false question |  | | | |
| MultCh_Radios: multiple-choice question (radio buttons) | | | | |
| MultCh_ImageRadios: multiple-choice question (graphic buttons) | | |  | |
| MultCh_ImageButton: all-that-apply question (form check boxes) | | | | |
| MultCh_Checkboxes: all-that-apply question (graphic check boxes) | | | | |
| MultCh_ImageChkboxes: graphic multiple-choice question (images) | | | | |
| Drag_ManyToMany: one-to one matching | | | | |
| Drag_2wayManyToMany: one-to-one matching (either way) | | | | |
| Drag_1ToMany: one-to-many matching | | | | |
| NDrag_2way1ToMany: one-to-many matching (either way) | | | | |
| Drag_2way1To1 | | | | |
| Drag_2StepInOrder: two-step procedure | | | | |
| Drag_2Steps1ToMany: two-step procedure with distractor | | | | |
| Drag and Drop Type matching interaction | | | | |
| Combo Type matching interaction (*Didn’t seem to work at all) | | | | |
| Sequence interaction | | | | |
| Explore_Transparent: random exploration (transparent) | | | | |
| Explore_Random: random exploration | | | | |
| Explore_Areas: structured exploration | | | | |
| Text_Singleline: single-line text entry | | | | |
| Text_Multiline: multiple-line text entry | | | | |
| Likert interactions | | | | |
| Toggle switch: Button_Toggle | | | | |
| Push button: Button_Push | | | | |
| Timer: Timer_Forward1Trig | | | | |
| Timer with warning: Timer_Forward2Trigs | | | | |
| Range slider: Slider_2Ranges | | | | |
| Point slider: Slider_Correct Range | | | | |
If you want to try these out for yourself, fire up a mobile browser and take a look at this page.
So what does all this mean? First of all, it’s obvious that Mobile Webkit rules the roost in terms of capability. The BlackBerry device lacks the DOM supported needed to use many of these interactions. Once we get our hands on a BlackBerry Torch device with Webkit, we’ll give this post an update. Overall, given the origins and length of service that these interactions have endured, it’s great that they work at all on modern devices. (Some of these interactions are a decade old by now!) However, you can see by the lack of support for some of the pieces, there is much work to be done by Adobe if they are to bring these valuable and timesaving widgets to the mobile learner. Ideally, all interactions would be supported in all of the devices listed. Let’s hope that other Dreamweaver CourseBuilder users users feel the same way and demand an update that evens the playing field for all users, desktop or mobile.
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