ooblick@eddie.MIT.EDU (Mikki Barry) (02/04/88)
While there are very few authoring systems that state they are exclusively for IVD, many can easily be used and have the necessary drivers and support. Off the top of my head, there is TenCORE, Authority, and IMSATT. I think also that GIST has a system that is easily used. We have used all of these and like TenCORE best for the applications we have been creating. However, I am sure that the other systems are equally good for different applications. If anyone would like information on any of the above systems (price, address to contact, etc.) e-mail me and I will provide it. Mikki Barry
ooblick@eddie.MIT.EDU (Mikki Barry) (02/09/88)
Since the response asking me about authoring systems was so great, I thought I would finally get off my duff and post something about the systems we are familiar with. TenCORE Not really an authoring system, but is a full-fledged programming language. Suppoorts IVD, graphics cards, touch screens, bit pads, etc. Tencore is about 6 years old and requires programming knowledge to get immediate use of all capabilities. It is our premier authoring tool Machine: PC or clones (supports PS/2) also Apple II Cost: $2,000 for language itself Contact: Computer Teaching Corporation (217-352-6363) Or Learning Tree (for sales/support) Imsatt 2000 System based on Forth. Simple lessons can be created quickly. Does not fully support all hardware, but they are working on it. Allows for some limited Expert System abilities and has very good voice i/o feature. Machine: PC and clones (not sure about PS/2) Cost: $4500 (may drop soon) Contact: Imsatt Corporation (703) 533-7500 Or Learning Tree (gee, our fingers are in everything) Maestro/PC Icon based easy to use system. Great for the non programmer. We haven't used it, but documentation looks good. Quick phone call confirmed that they are in the process of supporting visage, matrox and microkey boards. Machine: PC and clones Cost: $799 and $250 for phone support Contact: Aimtech Corporation (603) 883-0220 TEL Or Training and Education Language. We know many of the people who worked on this. The idea was excellent, however, we are not sure how it currently works. The demo version we received did not support the EGA card we had in our AT. We have been told that this has since been fixed. TEL is trying to be a pretty loaded authoring system, easy enough for non programmers, but flexible enough for complex programming. The best feature is the extensive student response mark-up, a feature it shares with TenCORE. Like the above mentioned systems, it also contains a student management system. Not sure about the completeness of the IVD interface. Machines: PC and clones Cost: $695 (but this is an old price) Contact: Regency Systems, Inc. (217) 398-8067 Course of Action We have been playing with this one and think it is quite well designed. It is great for anyone who needs courseware on both Mac's and PC's. It seems to be quite easy to use. You build the course outline and add the info that you want in each section. This completes the finished lesson. It allows animation, multiple touch points or mouse click areas, sound, and quite good graphics. Some IVD capabilities and seems to support video overlay boards. Mac overlay boards are unknown to us (if anyone knows of any, please let us know). Drawback is that it needs to allow for actual code writing to do some of the things you need for a complete authoring system. However, we haven't seen anything else for the Mac. If anyone else has, please post it. Machines: PC and Mac (support for Mac II) Cost: varies (there are several packages Contact: Authorware, Inc. (612) 921-8555 Note: They offer several training packages where you can go to the company and learn how to use the system (they are in Minneapolis) Since there are about 50 different authoring systems and languages, it is too difficult to talk about them all (especially when we haven't used them all :-) But these are the ones that stand out on the good side. The ones we don't like so well are Authority, Visage V:EXEC, and Sam. Anyone with any specific questions can feel free to call me at LTS Mikki Barry General Manager Learning Tree Software (703) 478-0010
solid@aucs.AcadiaU.ca (Tomasz Muldner) (02/18/91)
We would like to offer here, at Acadia a course on CBT and authoring systems and I've evaluated the following authoring tools: Tencore, IconAuthor, ASK.ME, ACTIII, Phoenix, Course Builder, Authorware, Hypercard. I'm trying to decide which of the above packages (or perhaps yet another one) would be the best, assuming that an authoring tool should run on a 386, and *possibly* on Mac -- Dr. Tomasz Muldner, Professor, Jodrey School of Computer Science Acadia University, Wolfville, NS, Canada B0P1X0 UUCP: {seismo|watmath|utai|garfield}!dalcs!aucs!solid BITNET: solid@Acadia