San Diego, CA, Aug. 04, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Technical communications and instructional design teams play central roles in enabling knowledge transfer across employees, customers and partners. But, too often, their efforts are siloed by the need to rely on different software tools. MadCap Software, Inc., the leader in multi-channel content authoring, breaks down these barriers with today’s announcement of the MadCap Flare 2021 r2 release, featuring major new capabilities for authoring modern, interactive eLearning courses and learning and development programs.
Worldwide, MadCap Flare is the software of choice among technical writers and documentation professionals for delivering professionally designed modern documentation websites, print brochures, online Help, knowledge bases, support sites, training and development content, and more. The 2021 r2 release significantly extends MadCap Flare to support instructional design and courseware development, enabling the delivery of course content as a responsive HTML5 website for interactive course materials and PDFs for printed student and teacher guides—all from a single source.
Key new features in the 2021 r2 release of MadCap Flare include the ability to:
- Publish SCORM 2004, SCORM 1.2, and xAPI-compliant content to a learning management system (LMS) or learning record store (LRS).
- Create eLearning content, and customize the look.
- Quickly turn existing content into a quiz or knowledge check.
- Insert any web-based or multimedia content into eLearning deliverables using an Inline Frame (IFrame) element.
- Easily automate the publishing of content with passing credentials.
With the latest MadCap Flare release, technical authors can add greater value to the content they create by incorporating interactive, eLearning features. Meanwhile, instructional designers can take advantage of popular MadCap Flare capabilities, including content reuse of text, images, videos and audio from one source location; multi-channel publishing; and advanced conditioning of content for different audiences. Notably, reusable content with MadCap Flare means instructional designers, technical writers, and subject matter experts (SMEs) all can take cross-department collaboration to a new level in creating, reviewing, and publishing informational and educational content.
“The roles of technical communicators and instructional designers in educating customers, partners, employees, and others have long been intertwined. However, the need to use different software tools to deliver best-in-class documentation and courses have created hurdles to collaboration and led to unnecessary duplications of efforts and content, often while trying to reach the same audiences,” said Anthony Olivier, MadCap Software founder and CEO. “With our 2021 r2 release of MadCap Flare, technical authors and instructional designers have state-of-the art capabilities for delivering all documentation and eLearning content from a single product. In doing so, we’re empowering these users with a new level of ease in collaborating and reusing content to deliver a consistent, modern, interactive experience.”
New eLearning Features in MadCap Flare
MadCap Flare lets authors organize content into scalable and reusable pieces, so material can be easily arranged according to course, topic, product, table of contents, deliverables, and more. The 2021 r2 release adds several new functions specifically designed to support the development, management and delivery of eLearning content.
Support for LMS and LRS Standards. MadCap Flare now enables authors to generate content that complies with the leading standards for eLearning: Shareable Content Object Reference Model, including SCORM 2004 and SCORM 1.2, and the Experience API, also known as xAPI or Tin Can API. This content can then be uploaded to any external LMS or LRS in order to track courses based on either test score or course completion.
eLearning Content Creation and Customization. Updates to the MadCap Flare user interface (UI) include a new eLearning ribbon with controls for creating multiple choice or multiple response questions, tests, feedback and more. Additionally, training writers can completely control and edit the look and feeling of the eLearning content using several design controls. These include the eLearning Toolbar skin for navigation controls, a project stylesheet for how questions appear in different types of output, and a new Test Results skin to customize the design of your test results page.
Quizzes and Knowledge Checks. MadCap Flare now offers functionality for leveraging existing content to quickly create quiz and knowledge check course material. Now technical authors can also create interactive courses with multiple choice or multiple response questions, assign a passing score, randomize answers, limit the number of test attempts, customize pass and fail test results pages, and include questions with an option to mark correct answers in PDF output all from existing content.
Web and Multimedia Support via IFrame. With the new MadCap Flare release, authors can embed special content, such as videos, full web pages, or documents into course materials using an IFrame element.
Pre-built Templates for Easily Creating eLearning Deliverables. Modern easy-to-use eLearning templates allow authors to create deliverables immediately without the need for programming knowledge or multimedia tool expertise. A Start New Project Wizard allows users to quickly create linear course workflows.
Customers Cite Benefits of Added eLearning Functionality
“For almost twenty years, technical communicators have had access to powerful content reuse, single-source authoring, and multi-channel publishing features with MadCap Flare,” said Neil Perlin, president of Hyper/Word Services. “Now the training and eLearning community has access to those features in Flare as well, and new features designed specifically for them. This new release of Flare is a game changer for training and eLearning."
“The addition of the new eLearning functionality in MadCap Flare is a game changer for us. We can now leverage Flare’s inherent single source capabilities to create presentations with assessments,” said Stephen J. Sauriol, CPLP technical communications manager at Saab, Inc. “In conjunction with MadCap Central, Flare now gives us the capability to produce instructor-led, web-based and virtual training using a single solution. The ability to do all training development in Flare without the need to copy content to PowerPoint will cut costs and improve the quality and consistency of our training products.”
"MadCap Flare's support for learning and development teams opens up so many more possibilities for collaboration between our Learning Center, Digital Adoption Platform, and Learning Experience Design teams,” said Homer Christensen, Flare designer and developer at the Nestlé Information Technology Learning Center. “We cannot wait to use the new features."
“The new MadCap Flare release has many features our team cannot wait to use,” said Jenni Christensen, training and technical documentation manager at PLEXSYS. “The quizzing and scoring functionality will meet what we'd need to build solid baseline training content in Flare while maximizing reuse in our existing documentation. It's unquestionably a win-win for our training and documentation teams.”
“MadCap Software's support for the learning and development space provides a lot of value to us, said Victoria Clarke, an instructional designer in the oil and gas industry. “The ease of adding quizzes and knowledge checks directly into our online sites, and the ability to export portions of our portal into actual SCORM courses, will help us take our content reuse efforts to a new level. We can already identify multiple ways we'll leverage it."
“The time-saving capabilities of content reuse, combined with the ability to create SCORM and xAPI-compliant content opens up so many possibilities for anyone creating eLearning and training content,” said Andrea Maliska, founder of Rebel Learn LLC.
Availability
MadCap Flare is available today. Visit https://www.madcapsoftware.com/products/flare to learn more about pricing and licensing options.
About MadCap Software
MadCap Software, Inc. is a trusted resource for thousands of companies around the globe for single-source, multi-channel authoring and publishing solutions designed to streamline the process of developing and delivering training content, learning and development programs, technical documentation, online Help, knowledge bases, and more. MadCap Software’s services include product training, consulting services, translation and localization, and an advanced developer certification program. Headquartered in San Diego, California, with offices in Austin, Texas, MadCap Software is home to some of the most experienced software architects and product experts in the content development industry. Learn more about MadCap Software at www.madcapsoftware.com.
MadCap Software, the MadCap Software logo, MadCap Authoring and Management System, MadCap Central, MadCap Flare, MadCap Mimic, MadCap Capture, MadCap Lingo, and MadCap Connect are trademarks or registered trademarks of MadCap Software, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. Other marks are the properties of their respective owners.