Adobe Captivate is a commonly used tool, but a surprising number of its features are just a bit hidden and not well known. The layers of sophistication these features add can enable you to save a lot of time, deliver more engaging and personalized learning, and tap into resources more easily. It’s just a matter of knowing where these features are and how to use them effectively.

A recent survey by Donald H. Taylor, chairman of the Learning and Performance Institute, revealed that L&D is falling out of love with enterprise collaboration and Forrester Research has shown that roughly 80 percent of enterprise social platform implementations fail. In recent years, social technology has fractured into social intranets, enterprise social networks, and chat platforms. What are we to make of this? Has social lost its way? Have expectations been over-inflated? Should L&D let go … or do more?

Infographics are great tools to convey complex information in an elegant way. They can be the basis of engaging classroom training, interactive eLearning, or intuitive resources. And you can repurpose them for sales, marketing, HR, and conferences. But, creating a good infographic can be hard. You don't want it to just be nicely designed bullet points. To be effective, it must tell a story.

Every day you interact with various websites and mobile apps. Each is designed to deliver a certain experience, set the stage for what’s to come, engage you as a user, and keep you returning. They’re also created to surprise you with their flashy colors, interaction, and ease of use. If you want to go beyond simple next/back buttons in your course designs, finding inspiration within these cleverly created user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) interactions is a great place to start.

Quarter after quarter, year after year, designers and developers are challenged with creating new and exciting courses. Too often, though, courses are outsourced or made into dull, linear experiences where content is clicked through and glossed over. Imagine creating a memorable course that submerges your learners into a personalized, engaging experience—but how?

Don’t be daunted by the white screen when you’re getting started making your own video content. While it can be hard knowing how to get started, creating video content quickly is easier than it might seem.

Course accessibility is a common task for developers and creates many questions. What makes a course “accessible”? How can you use Articulate Storyline to make courses accessible to a variety of audiences? How can you easily create closed captions and alternate text for your courses? What are some best practices when planning and developing WCAG or 508-compliant courses? How can you test courses to ensure accessibility?

With the wide range of tools, apps, and online resources being launched all the time, it’s not always easy to stay on top of what might help you out in your day-to-day work. It’s also easy with this stream of new options to miss out on great new updates or techniques that can allow you to use old favorites in new ways.