Schools ConsultingFlash software from Macromedia is a multifunctional tool that is used for a variety of purposes, including animations and web page development. Flash is used fairly extensively on web pages due to the relative simplicity and market penetration of the browser plug-in required to play Flash files. Graphics created within Flash itself are vector-based which means that small files can be created, and also the output can easily be scaled to different sizes without loss of resolution. Much more information is available about Flash in books and on the Internet; a good place to start is at www.adobe.com.
Flash is also one of many different authoring tools that can be used to develop learning programs. Like almost anything in life, Flash is not a "perfect" authoring tool - it has advantages and disadvantages when used for this application. Flash is used quite heavily in particular for the creation of "tutorial" learning programs. These can be found everywhere on the web. However, the extensive web sites, forums, and other areas dedicated to Flash programming tend to not have a lot of guidance for this specific application. The goal of this series of articles is to provide some examples of how Flash can be used to create tutorials following sound instructional design principles.
These articles are aimed mainly for learners who are instructional designers by trade or hobby. If you are reading this and you do not know what the term instructional design means, it will be worth your while to investigate it further. Instructional design is a broad term that covers a wide range of applications in the area of education and training development. Various principles of instructional design will be mentioned here but this is by no means a comprehensive substitute for some solid background study in this area. These articles also assume that the learner already has experience working with Flash, and probably has even created learning programs in Flash before. So the basic workings of Flash that can be learned from the tutorials that come with the program and other sources will not be covered.
Instructional designers are often tasked to create learning "tutorials". A tutorial is just one type of system that can be used in an educational setting, but it is a very common one. Quite a few of the interactive learning programs found on the Internet are in the form of tutorials. However, tutorials created in Flash do not have to be delivered via a web page; they can exist as standalone programs that can be delivered other ways such as over a network or via a CD-ROM.
It is considered fundamental instructional design practice to spend some time planning before jumping in and starting to build a tutorial or other learning program. Some of the things to consider are the scope of the project, learner descriptions, production/budget/technical constraint, goals, objective, learning theory, design styles, and testing to name a few. Some of these concepts will be covered here, mostly briefly. But the intent here is to focus on Flash as an authoring tool, so that is the major thrust of this article. But of course this article itself could be considered a tutorial, so these principles should apply here as well. In fact, you should see the scope, learner definition, and goals in this first section.
Any serious learning program will be developed over a period of time according to a well-planned development process, such as the commonly used ADDIE approach. This stands for analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation. These steps are part of a solid design process, but they don't need to occur in an exact linear order. Various pieces of of the development process will be mentioned as part of this article.