Adobe Presenter Review

Adobe Presenter is a tool that allows rapid development of e-learning and presentation materials. It can also be used to host online meetings. It is a plug-in to PowerPoint.

Once Presenter has been installed, it can be accessed from the tool bar in PowerPoint. The basic method of operation is to set up a presentation in PowerPoint and then add to it using the features contained in Presenter.

These features include:

* A variety of pre-designed skins & navigation buttons
* Record a voiceover track and key it into slide/slide animations
* Import sound files (must be .flv)
* Import video (must be .flv)
* Import Flash files
* Sync PowerPoint animations with video and audio
* Set MCQ, True/False, Cloze, Short Answer, Matching, Lickert
* Set up and deliver Surveys
* Track user responses and performance
* Manage student groups

So, it is fairly quick and easy to develop sophisticated looking e-learning. Of course, there is a trade off as you lose some of the finesse and control that you often get with products developed in a more programming reliant environment such as Flash.

Presenter - Some Advantages

* Based on the popular PowerPoint product - instantly familiar
* Rapid development with no requirement for coding
* No need to build a user interface as Presenter supplies its own
* Built in question templates and student reporting
* Can be run from a VLE or as a raw file
* Control of media elements (video, audio)
* Presenter outputs to SCORM/AICC/IMS standards

Presenter - Some Disadvantages

* Manual, rather than code based authoring - lots of mouse work - may bore programmers.
* What you see isn’t necessarily what you get. Breeze reserves some screen space for its interface, so you may need to re-format existing PPT presentations, particularly text objects. This may have been solved in later versions, but this has not been tried yet.
* Possible usability and accessibility issues - can’t re-size text on the fly, some Presenter controls are a little small as is the Notes feature.
* Presenter outputs lots of files when a presentation is published - you need to manage your files and folders, particularly if you hot desk.
* Syncing animations with voice or video is fiddly and hit and miss for complex build-ups. Needs finer controls.
* Formatting applied to quiz questions after they have been created can be lost when adding new question items. This also happens if you edit quiz settings. It’s better to format after authoring the whole quiz.
* Button that allows users to clear question answers if they change their mind doesn’t seem to work consistently.
* You can use .flv (Flash 8 movie) integrated using the Presenter editor, but you cannot load an .flv in PowerPoint. Therefore, you cannot use video full screen, only in the Presenter window. A workaround for this might be simple to write.

Nice to Have Improvements

* Global editing of question formatting.
* Safe area marking on PowerPoint slide to indicate what will show on a Breeze screen.
* A table to allow finer control when syncing animations/objects with video/audio.

Prerequisites for using Presenter Effectively

* Basic ability in authoring presentations in PowerPoint - you must be familiar with the PPT interface and the package’s basic features.
* The ability to set up and manage a PowerPoint Master Page is crucial.
* A Storyboard that describes what you want to do. If you don’t have a plan, things become confusing.
* Basic layout and design skills.

Would I Use It?

Definitely. But only for fairly simple types of e-learning, where information is presented and then understanding is checked. The package is great for re-purposing the outputs of presentations/lectures and chunking this up into modules.

Presenter would also great for prototyping/visualising a new project.

Rob Alton