Transition from Flash-based online training to.....?
September 8, 2020 11:46 PM Subscribe
Help, I’m in charge of a procurement contract and I don’t know what to procure. My agency uses two legacy Flash-based online courses. The end of Flash is nigh. Can and should the courses be salvaged? Searching for some insight from folks with Flash conversion or LMS experience before I start drafting a request for proposals.
I’ll try to provide sufficient details, maybe too many details. I'm not even sure if I know the right questions to ask. This type of thing is not in my wheelhouse and I’ve been tasked with spending this money wisely….or else.
I work for a state regulatory agency and I’ve been placed in charge of a small procurement contract. Years ago, our program hired a contractor to develop two Flash training courses for individuals who need to obtain certain certifications from our agency. Until recently, these courses were administered online by our state’s university system. They used Blackboard as their LMS, but I believe the courses were still all Flash-based on the backend. It seems our program was hoping that the university would eventually update these courses from Flash along with some of their other offerings. Instead, recent budget cuts forced the university to cut a huge swath of their online learning, including our courses, and all associated university staff were laid off, without any time for us to transition the courses in any way.
So, we have 61 SWF files for these two Flash courses. They total 11.5 MB if that helps give any sense of the scale. And that’s probably all we’re going to be able to get. If there were more granular pieces they’ve been lost long ago. The course presentation is fairly straightforward. It’s a slide-show type format and the longest course has approximately 552 slides split into 61 subchapters within seven larger chapters, with multiple-choice quizzes at the end of each chapter. The shorter course is actually just a subset of the longer course. About a quarter of the slides have short animations. A small number of slides have simple interactive animations. Many slides have hypertext style pop-ups with additional information.
Even though the courses were created years ago, the content is still relevant. The state of the industry for these particular simple certifications has not changed significantly and is not likely to very much for the foreseeable future. Compared to other online LMS-based training I’ve seen, the graphics and style seem generally up-to-par (if recognizably “Flashy”). In fact, the simplicity of the design makes them look better to my eyes than some newer content that uses distracting transitions etc. Also of value, all of the illustrations and images used are either public domain or created by my agency, so there are no copyright issues. A few pieces of text need to be updated but mostly the content is fine, so there isn’t necessarily a need for a big re-scoping of the courses.
So, to my questions. Does it seem feasible and reasonable to have a contractor directly convert from the SWF files into an updated format? If so, what format would be best? It seems like HTML5 is generally considered one of the current standards and allows flexibility with where we could host these trainings? Yes? No? Some other format? If we did go the conversion route, any thoughts on a ballpark for a reasonable cost and timeline to have this done? Having no experience with this type of project, I don’t have any sense of the effort required.
If you don’t think directly converting the old content would be feasible and/or cost effective, what other route could a contractor take? Building from scratch (using the existing course as a model) in another format? If so, what format? Do you think this would have a significantly different cost/timeline than the first option?
A few final questions for anyone who is still here. Once we have courses in an updated format, I’m thinking the contract could also include having the contractor publish the courses to an online LMS hosting service that my agency would pay a yearly subscription fee to host the courses going forward and our agency staff could administer the courses as necessary. Does that sound like a reasonable way to administer a few small, one-off type of courses? I’m thinking we will otherwise have trouble finding a content provider willing to host them, as the low volume means there is little profit involved.
Thanks for any insight, my agency is very short on institutional knowledge for this circumstance. If I’m overlooking any other big questions we would need to answer before being able to proceed please let me know.
I’ll try to provide sufficient details, maybe too many details. I'm not even sure if I know the right questions to ask. This type of thing is not in my wheelhouse and I’ve been tasked with spending this money wisely….or else.
I work for a state regulatory agency and I’ve been placed in charge of a small procurement contract. Years ago, our program hired a contractor to develop two Flash training courses for individuals who need to obtain certain certifications from our agency. Until recently, these courses were administered online by our state’s university system. They used Blackboard as their LMS, but I believe the courses were still all Flash-based on the backend. It seems our program was hoping that the university would eventually update these courses from Flash along with some of their other offerings. Instead, recent budget cuts forced the university to cut a huge swath of their online learning, including our courses, and all associated university staff were laid off, without any time for us to transition the courses in any way.
So, we have 61 SWF files for these two Flash courses. They total 11.5 MB if that helps give any sense of the scale. And that’s probably all we’re going to be able to get. If there were more granular pieces they’ve been lost long ago. The course presentation is fairly straightforward. It’s a slide-show type format and the longest course has approximately 552 slides split into 61 subchapters within seven larger chapters, with multiple-choice quizzes at the end of each chapter. The shorter course is actually just a subset of the longer course. About a quarter of the slides have short animations. A small number of slides have simple interactive animations. Many slides have hypertext style pop-ups with additional information.
Even though the courses were created years ago, the content is still relevant. The state of the industry for these particular simple certifications has not changed significantly and is not likely to very much for the foreseeable future. Compared to other online LMS-based training I’ve seen, the graphics and style seem generally up-to-par (if recognizably “Flashy”). In fact, the simplicity of the design makes them look better to my eyes than some newer content that uses distracting transitions etc. Also of value, all of the illustrations and images used are either public domain or created by my agency, so there are no copyright issues. A few pieces of text need to be updated but mostly the content is fine, so there isn’t necessarily a need for a big re-scoping of the courses.
So, to my questions. Does it seem feasible and reasonable to have a contractor directly convert from the SWF files into an updated format? If so, what format would be best? It seems like HTML5 is generally considered one of the current standards and allows flexibility with where we could host these trainings? Yes? No? Some other format? If we did go the conversion route, any thoughts on a ballpark for a reasonable cost and timeline to have this done? Having no experience with this type of project, I don’t have any sense of the effort required.
If you don’t think directly converting the old content would be feasible and/or cost effective, what other route could a contractor take? Building from scratch (using the existing course as a model) in another format? If so, what format? Do you think this would have a significantly different cost/timeline than the first option?
A few final questions for anyone who is still here. Once we have courses in an updated format, I’m thinking the contract could also include having the contractor publish the courses to an online LMS hosting service that my agency would pay a yearly subscription fee to host the courses going forward and our agency staff could administer the courses as necessary. Does that sound like a reasonable way to administer a few small, one-off type of courses? I’m thinking we will otherwise have trouble finding a content provider willing to host them, as the low volume means there is little profit involved.
Thanks for any insight, my agency is very short on institutional knowledge for this circumstance. If I’m overlooking any other big questions we would need to answer before being able to proceed please let me know.
Does it seem feasible and reasonable to have a contractor directly convert from the SWF files into an updated format?
You can't just convert SWF files unfortunately. You can turn it into a video but you'll lose all of the interactivity and it may become non-ADA compliant because the text is no longer available to screen readers. And you won't be able to smoothly do things like update the text.
If you don’t think directly converting the old content would be feasible and/or cost effective, what other route could a contractor take?
It's been a while since I've dealt with SWFs. It may be possible to at least extract the text from the files so the whole thing doesn't have to be retyped, at least. But unless you're snagging parts of the original as videos, all the interactive parts are going to have to be redone. I'm afraid I can't recommend a platform to do so in, but definitely make sure that if it's a commercial authoring product tool that you get all of the associated files beyond the final product in case you need to make updates.
I’m thinking we will otherwise have trouble finding a content provider willing to host them, as the low volume means there is little profit involved.
I have no idea what the costs involved with this are, but you might look into companies that host HR type training videos for small businesses rather than a general purpose LMS. They may also have staff that can recreate the video for you, but there's risk of vendor lock-in.
posted by Candleman at 5:40 AM on September 9, 2020
You can't just convert SWF files unfortunately. You can turn it into a video but you'll lose all of the interactivity and it may become non-ADA compliant because the text is no longer available to screen readers. And you won't be able to smoothly do things like update the text.
If you don’t think directly converting the old content would be feasible and/or cost effective, what other route could a contractor take?
It's been a while since I've dealt with SWFs. It may be possible to at least extract the text from the files so the whole thing doesn't have to be retyped, at least. But unless you're snagging parts of the original as videos, all the interactive parts are going to have to be redone. I'm afraid I can't recommend a platform to do so in, but definitely make sure that if it's a commercial authoring product tool that you get all of the associated files beyond the final product in case you need to make updates.
I’m thinking we will otherwise have trouble finding a content provider willing to host them, as the low volume means there is little profit involved.
I have no idea what the costs involved with this are, but you might look into companies that host HR type training videos for small businesses rather than a general purpose LMS. They may also have staff that can recreate the video for you, but there's risk of vendor lock-in.
posted by Candleman at 5:40 AM on September 9, 2020
I used to do this, waaaayyyy back in the day, for textbook publishers who needed to put their swf and other files directly into Blackboard. It is time-consuming work but not difficult, and you should be able to find any number of people (either faculty, adjunct faculty, edtech gig workers, etc) or small vendors to do this for you if you know which LMS you want to use.
I hate to say it, but rather than wrangling SCORM or HTML5, if it were me, I'd advocate to build the lessons in Powerpoint (except the quizzes) which has a low barrier to tech entry would be easy to edit and maintain - including imagery, animations - and move from platform to platform if needed. Also there are good best practices for making Powerpoint files ADA-accessible. Then code the quizzes directly into the LMS of the Moment (easy peasy) and you're good to go.
Regardless, I suggest you build in specific requirements that detail QA and procedures for edits/changes, as these can pile up.
Most LMS companies have a branch that can host small course sets like this, if you want to administer them yourself, but that's a big production as you will have to handle logins, passwords, transactions, etc. I'm assuming the state university handled this aspect for you in the past.
posted by nkknkk at 5:51 AM on September 9, 2020 [1 favorite]
I hate to say it, but rather than wrangling SCORM or HTML5, if it were me, I'd advocate to build the lessons in Powerpoint (except the quizzes) which has a low barrier to tech entry would be easy to edit and maintain - including imagery, animations - and move from platform to platform if needed. Also there are good best practices for making Powerpoint files ADA-accessible. Then code the quizzes directly into the LMS of the Moment (easy peasy) and you're good to go.
Regardless, I suggest you build in specific requirements that detail QA and procedures for edits/changes, as these can pile up.
Most LMS companies have a branch that can host small course sets like this, if you want to administer them yourself, but that's a big production as you will have to handle logins, passwords, transactions, etc. I'm assuming the state university handled this aspect for you in the past.
posted by nkknkk at 5:51 AM on September 9, 2020 [1 favorite]
You might look at tools like Rise 360. My colleagues are using it for some tutorials we (library) are creating.
posted by kbuxton at 12:42 PM on September 14, 2020
posted by kbuxton at 12:42 PM on September 14, 2020
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by oceanjesse at 5:08 AM on September 9, 2020