eLearning with Dreamweaver MX

Rating:
Summary: Good Overview and Lots of Depth too
Review: ...eLearning with Dreamweaver MX is mainly focused on explaining two free extensions to Dreamweaver: CourseBuilder and LearningSite, which can be downloaded from the Macromedia website. If you want to learn how to use Dreamweaver with these extensions to create an eLearnig website, than this is the book for you. One caveat that you should be aware of is that LearnigSite works only with Microsoft's ASP. It does not work with Macromedia's ColdFusion. I didn't know this before purchasing the book, so as a ColdFusion developer, this certainly lessened the value of the book for me.

There is also a lot of useful information in the first section (Instructional Design 101) for the neophyte instructional designer - provided you're working in a corporate training department. The section explains the ADDIE model which is a commonly used framework for instuctional design. This section is less useful for those not working in a well-financed, well-staffed corporate environment.

Ms. Bruce clearly indicates that this book is not for those looking for an introduction to Dreamweaver. I found this to be true. When working through the tutorials, some steps are indicated but not explained. Sometimes it is taken for granted that you will know what to do next. Given the warning though, this is fair. Less fair is that the way the book is structured it sometimes assumes that you've skipped ahead and done the work in later chapters without clearly indicating that that's what you're supposed to do. Or was it?

All in all, I'd say this is a good book, for folks working in corporate training departments or universities with large IT staffs who want to build eLearing websites using Dreamweaver and ASP. Others should probably look elsewhere.

Rating:
Summary: All the information is there...
Review: ...eLearning with Dreamweaver MX is mainly focused on explaining two free extensions to Dreamweaver: CourseBuilder and LearningSite, which can be downloaded from the Macromedia website. If you want to learn how to use Dreamweaver with these extensions to create an eLearnig website, than this is the book for you. One caveat that you should be aware of is that LearnigSite works only with Microsoft's ASP. It does not work with Macromedia's ColdFusion. I didn't know this before purchasing the book, so as a ColdFusion developer, this certainly lessened the value of the book for me.

There is also a lot of useful information in the first section (Instructional Design 101) for the neophyte instructional designer - provided you're working in a corporate training department. The section explains the ADDIE model which is a commonly used framework for instuctional design. This section is less useful for those not working in a well-financed, well-staffed corporate environment.

Ms. Bruce clearly indicates that this book is not for those looking for an introduction to Dreamweaver. I found this to be true. When working through the tutorials, some steps are indicated but not explained. Sometimes it is taken for granted that you will know what to do next. Given the warning though, this is fair. Less fair is that the way the book is structured it sometimes assumes that you've skipped ahead and done the work in later chapters without clearly indicating that that's what you're supposed to do. Or was it?

All in all, I'd say this is a good book, for folks working in corporate training departments or universities with large IT staffs who want to build eLearing websites using Dreamweaver and ASP. Others should probably look elsewhere.

Rating:
Summary: Skims the surface ...
Review: eLearning with Dreamweaver MX suffers a fate similar to a lot of other books on the market right now - it tries to reach too broad of an audience and in doing so it misses all around. This book has content that could potentially overwhelm someone new to eLearning while simultaneously underwhelming anyone looking for a serious resource from which to really learn something.

"This book is not an introduction to Dreamweaver. There are numerous introductions to Dreamweaver, including my book Sams Teach Yourself Macromedia Dreamweaver MX in 24 Hours." These are the first two sentences in the section What This Book Doesn't Cover in the introduction. Is this just a shameless plug for another book? Maybe, but the real problem is that this makes the reader think that the book will really assume you know Dreamweaver and just want to learn how to do something more specialized with it. The reality though is quite different. Out of eighteen chapters, nine deal almost exclusively with how to do things in Dreamweaver like build tables, show and hide layers, and how to use the built-in collaboration tools.

To illustrate, here is how this book might be experienced by two typical, but different readers. The first is a developer who uses Dreamweaver everyday to develop web applications and has a need to learn about building serious online learning applications. The second user uses Word occasionally and is intimately familiar with Solitaire but has never used Dreamweaver and has been told by his supervisor that he needs to develop a "simple" online learning application.

Reader #1: Reads the introduction and decides this might be a book that will cover what he needs to know. Chapters one through three are great, they cover conceptual and practical topics about developing learning applications and teams. He is only one developer and does not have a major budget to afford the six individuals the chapter talks about but aside from a snicker over the title "Assets Specialist" he moves on to chapter four. About half way through this chapter, he begins to feel restless and takes another peak back at the table of contents to see when any juicy eLearning material might arrive. Chapter ten?!? Oh well, back to the book. He finishes chapter four and begins chapter fivzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...... Our developer awakens to find he has finally arrived at chapter ten. Finally, some more material covering things he does not work with every day. He is looking forward to learning new material for the next several chapters. CourseBuilder is cool, but not terribly complicated - and what is with all those annoying little buttons it puts wherever it chooses? He breezes through these chapters' lengthy discussion of every checkbox and drop down list in the Insert CouseBuilder Interaction dialog box and finally has an interaction or three in his application but big deal - it is not incredibly impressive. He is frustrated by how little CourseBuilder is actually useful for building a real, powerful online learning application and he has spent all of this time reading this book that covers every detail of CourseBuilder's interface but offers very little real information about using something as powerful as a Learning Management System. In fact, he thinks, it very much resembles Macromedia's own built-in "help" in that way.

Reader #2: Gripes relentlessly how building "online learning applications" is not in his job description and that this is really going to cut down on his FreeCell time. The book gets covered up by papers from the rest of his workload he is ignoring and after a few weeks of oatmeal for breakfast everyday he decides to crack the spine on the book since he is going to be doing a lot of sitting around anyway. The first couple chapters are somewhat interesting. He begins to envision what it would be like to be able to work with an actual team of six individuals all performing their various specialties. "Wow!" he thinks. Wouldn't it be great to have a budget that would allow him to dub himself "Project Manager" and have five people under him do all of the work while he concentrates on picking the absolute best three cards to pass thereby improving his Hearts game dramatically. Eventually, reality returns from its cigarette break and lets our reader know that there is absolutely no way this is going to happen: he is on his own. Oh well, he allows himself a snicker over the title "Assets Specialist" and moves on to the rest of the book. Our reader is really enjoying these chapters on Dreamweaver and begins to feel confident that he may actually be able to pull this thing off. The book offers everything he needs to know to use Dreamweaver well enough to build his simple little online learning application. He thinks CourseBuilder is great and likes all of the cute little buttons that he can put wherever he chooses. He even goes so far as to install the free trial LMS recommended by the book. He does not understand it that well, and the book talks so little about it he figures it is not that important anyway. Finally, he finishes his little application and takes it to show off to his supervisor who finds it barely interesting. The supervisor then proceeds to apologize for not copying him on the latest memo. The company has changed the scope of the online learning application and has decided to outsource the whole thing to reader #1.

Well, that pretty much sums up eLearning with Dreamweaver MX . It makes a valiant effort to teach a lot about an immense subject, but ultimately is not very useful to serious developers. Chapter 15 - Using a Learning Management System is like an introduction to a book someone looking to really develop eLearning will want to read. An LMS is generally a quite powerful and expensive application and it gets discussed from page 420 through 445. Twenty-five pages out of over 500 to cover something that important to eLearning are simply not enough. There is however a whole paragraph each on such learning standards as SCORM and AICC.

So who is the audience for this book? Reader #2 in the above examples is probably the best candidate to derive anything from this book but where and when he will be able to actually apply his new knowledge in an industry where change happens while he is still turning pages remains to be seen. Serious web developers like reader #1 will be bored by this book and will want to look for something that offers far greater depth.

Rating:
Summary: Skims the surface ...
Review: eLearning with Dreamweaver MX suffers a fate similar to a lot of other books on the market right now - it tries to reach too broad of an audience and in doing so it misses all around. This book has content that could potentially overwhelm someone new to eLearning while simultaneously underwhelming anyone looking for a serious resource from which to really learn something.

"This book is not an introduction to Dreamweaver. There are numerous introductions to Dreamweaver, including my book Sams Teach Yourself Macromedia Dreamweaver MX in 24 Hours." These are the first two sentences in the section What This Book Doesn't Cover in the introduction. Is this just a shameless plug for another book? Maybe, but the real problem is that this makes the reader think that the book will really assume you know Dreamweaver and just want to learn how to do something more specialized with it. The reality though is quite different. Out of eighteen chapters, nine deal almost exclusively with how to do things in Dreamweaver like build tables, show and hide layers, and how to use the built-in collaboration tools.

To illustrate, here is how this book might be experienced by two typical, but different readers. The first is a developer who uses Dreamweaver everyday to develop web applications and has a need to learn about building serious online learning applications. The second user uses Word occasionally and is intimately familiar with Solitaire but has never used Dreamweaver and has been told by his supervisor that he needs to develop a "simple" online learning application.

Reader #1: Reads the introduction and decides this might be a book that will cover what he needs to know. Chapters one through three are great, they cover conceptual and practical topics about developing learning applications and teams. He is only one developer and does not have a major budget to afford the six individuals the chapter talks about but aside from a snicker over the title "Assets Specialist" he moves on to chapter four. About half way through this chapter, he begins to feel restless and takes another peak back at the table of contents to see when any juicy eLearning material might arrive. Chapter ten?!? Oh well, back to the book. He finishes chapter four and begins chapter fivzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...... Our developer awakens to find he has finally arrived at chapter ten. Finally, some more material covering things he does not work with every day. He is looking forward to learning new material for the next several chapters. CourseBuilder is cool, but not terribly complicated - and what is with all those annoying little buttons it puts wherever it chooses? He breezes through these chapters' lengthy discussion of every checkbox and drop down list in the Insert CouseBuilder Interaction dialog box and finally has an interaction or three in his application but big deal - it is not incredibly impressive. He is frustrated by how little CourseBuilder is actually useful for building a real, powerful online learning application and he has spent all of this time reading this book that covers every detail of CourseBuilder's interface but offers very little real information about using something as powerful as a Learning Management System. In fact, he thinks, it very much resembles Macromedia's own built-in "help" in that way.

Reader #2: Gripes relentlessly how building "online learning applications" is not in his job description and that this is really going to cut down on his FreeCell time. The book gets covered up by papers from the rest of his workload he is ignoring and after a few weeks of oatmeal for breakfast everyday he decides to crack the spine on the book since he is going to be doing a lot of sitting around anyway. The first couple chapters are somewhat interesting. He begins to envision what it would be like to be able to work with an actual team of six individuals all performing their various specialties. "Wow!" he thinks. Wouldn't it be great to have a budget that would allow him to dub himself "Project Manager" and have five people under him do all of the work while he concentrates on picking the absolute best three cards to pass thereby improving his Hearts game dramatically. Eventually, reality returns from its cigarette break and lets our reader know that there is absolutely no way this is going to happen: he is on his own. Oh well, he allows himself a snicker over the title "Assets Specialist" and moves on to the rest of the book. Our reader is really enjoying these chapters on Dreamweaver and begins to feel confident that he may actually be able to pull this thing off. The book offers everything he needs to know to use Dreamweaver well enough to build his simple little online learning application. He thinks CourseBuilder is great and likes all of the cute little buttons that he can put wherever he chooses. He even goes so far as to install the free trial LMS recommended by the book. He does not understand it that well, and the book talks so little about it he figures it is not that important anyway. Finally, he finishes his little application and takes it to show off to his supervisor who finds it barely interesting. The supervisor then proceeds to apologize for not copying him on the latest memo. The company has changed the scope of the online learning application and has decided to outsource the whole thing to reader #1.

Well, that pretty much sums up eLearning with Dreamweaver MX . It makes a valiant effort to teach a lot about an immense subject, but ultimately is not very useful to serious developers. Chapter 15 - Using a Learning Management System is like an introduction to a book someone looking to really develop eLearning will want to read. An LMS is generally a quite powerful and expensive application and it gets discussed from page 420 through 445. Twenty-five pages out of over 500 to cover something that important to eLearning are simply not enough. There is however a whole paragraph each on such learning standards as SCORM and AICC.

So who is the audience for this book? Reader #2 in the above examples is probably the best candidate to derive anything from this book but where and when he will be able to actually apply his new knowledge in an industry where change happens while he is still turning pages remains to be seen. Serious web developers like reader #1 will be bored by this book and will want to look for something that offers far greater depth.

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing. A few sparks of light.
Review: I had expected great things of this book when I settled down to reading it. In particular I expected to hand it to one of my postgrads and say 'Now, get on with it'. Unfortunately, I'll have to pass him a few more supplementary texts before I can say that. The book has a very broad coverage, as indicated by the table of contents, but the actual content only intermittently rises to the challenge of quality. For a start, there is a lack of print space balance between the various sections. For instance, the sections on Flash are very short - too short and really of very little value. In a elearning book of 556 odd pages approximately 14 are devoted to Flash.

The sections on Dreamweaver are reasonable and will get most users started. The chaper on Cascading Style Sheets was good but long winded and I have read better in Frontpage texts. The section (and it barely merits the name) on cookies was deplorably brief and vague. Interestingly Javascript is also introduced here (here is a piece of Javascript that does X) which will be about as helpful to the average reader as inserting a piece of Chinese.

The section on Coursebuilder, which I haven't used, I found useful but vague. I would not be confident that I could assemble a course based solely on what's in the book. Again there was a digression on how Coursebuilder works with 3.0 and 4.0+ browsers. What year was this wriitten in I asked myself? The main server options (ASP, JSP, Cold Fusion, etc.) are coverd in six pages, which allowing for the big window graphics is actually three pages of text, maximum. There is no mention of ASP.NET.

The chapters on user and site tracking really could do with large technical dollops of content as much of what is there is vague, wishy-washy, and you'll say to yourself after reading this far I expected better. You'll kick yourself when you read that the tracking system uses proprietary software that you can download on a demo basis. Bizarrely one the last chapters deals with commands and macro recording - why isn't this a very early chapter (not that it would make a huge difference).

There are a few useful tips and points in the book. The author is right to focus attention on the value of reusable software components. The sections on interfaces bring a few HCI principles together. However, overall I found the book a very great disappointment. It would clearly benefit from much more technical editing as it seems to tire and run out of steam in many places. There are neither downloadable files nor a CD accompanying this book which strongly suggests a vacuum somewhere.

Being candid, this book was not a worthwhile purchase by me and I regret buying it as firstly I had to read it, and secondly it will force me to read yet another elearning book for evaluation.

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing. A few sparks of light.
Review: I had expected great things of this book when I settled down to reading it. In particular I expected to hand it to one of my postgrads and say 'Now, get on with it'. Unfortunately, I'll have to pass him a few more supplementary texts before I can say that. The book has a very broad coverage, as indicated by the table of contents, but the actual content only intermittently rises to the challenge of quality. For a start, there is a lack of print space balance between the various sections. For instance, the sections on Flash are very short - too short and really of very little value. In a elearning book of 556 odd pages approximately 14 are devoted to Flash.

The sections on Dreamweaver are reasonable and will get most users started. The chaper on Cascading Style Sheets was good but long winded and I have read better in Frontpage texts. The section (and it barely merits the name) on cookies was deplorably brief and vague. Interestingly Javascript is also introduced here (here is a piece of Javascript that does X) which will be about as helpful to the average reader as inserting a piece of Chinese.

The section on Coursebuilder, which I haven't used, I found useful but vague. I would not be confident that I could assemble a course based solely on what's in the book. Again there was a digression on how Coursebuilder works with 3.0 and 4.0+ browsers. What year was this wriitten in I asked myself? The main server options (ASP, JSP, Cold Fusion, etc.) are coverd in six pages, which allowing for the big window graphics is actually three pages of text, maximum. There is no mention of ASP.NET.

The chapters on user and site tracking really could do with large technical dollops of content as much of what is there is vague, wishy-washy, and you'll say to yourself after reading this far I expected better. You'll kick yourself when you read that the tracking system uses proprietary software that you can download on a demo basis. Bizarrely one the last chapters deals with commands and macro recording - why isn't this a very early chapter (not that it would make a huge difference).

There are a few useful tips and points in the book. The author is right to focus attention on the value of reusable software components. The sections on interfaces bring a few HCI principles together. However, overall I found the book a very great disappointment. It would clearly benefit from much more technical editing as it seems to tire and run out of steam in many places. There are neither downloadable files nor a CD accompanying this book which strongly suggests a vacuum somewhere.

Being candid, this book was not a worthwhile purchase by me and I regret buying it as firstly I had to read it, and secondly it will force me to read yet another elearning book for evaluation.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Handbook
Review: If you need to know exactly how to create WBT with Dreamweaver, this is the book for you. Although I've programmed in other tools (Authorware) I needed to understand Dreamweaver...fast. While this isn't exactly a Dreamweaver beginners book, it covers the steps that are necessary to actually create eLearning. My entire department is buying this book.

Rating:
Summary: Dreamweaver MX and CourseBuilder Extensions explained
Review: If you're developing online training or elearning, Betsy Bruce's explanation of Dreamweaver MX should help you get more out of this powerful application. You can read this book cover to cover or dip into it and read those chapters that address your current problem.

Bruce uses the ADDIE approach to creating elearning. She doesn't spend a lot of time discussing instructional design, but refers her readers to some excellent resources. The bulk of this book is a step by step description of how to use Dreamweaver MX and CourseBuilder extensions to implement learning activities. Dreamweaver MX incorporates the dynamic Web page creation that was previously available in UltraDev. Bruce discusses how to create and track a dynamic Web site and describes how to use Learning Site to track and administer your elearning application.

The book concludes with several chapters on collaboration and optimization. Dreamweaver MX provides reports that will help you manage your elearning application. These reports are invaluable when assessing the quality of the application or making plans for updating or revising the site.

This book won't tell you how to teach what needs to be taught, but will help you implement an instructional designer's vision for an elearning application. The downloadable files should help the novice developer explore the power of Dreamweaver MX.

Rating:
Summary: Dreamweaver MX and CourseBuilder Extensions explained
Review: If you're developing online training or elearning, Betsy Bruce's explanation of Dreamweaver MX should help you get more out of this powerful application. You can read this book cover to cover or dip into it and read those chapters that address your current problem.

Bruce uses the ADDIE approach to creating elearning. She doesn't spend a lot of time discussing instructional design, but refers her readers to some excellent resources. The bulk of this book is a step by step description of how to use Dreamweaver MX and CourseBuilder extensions to implement learning activities. Dreamweaver MX incorporates the dynamic Web page creation that was previously available in UltraDev. Bruce discusses how to create and track a dynamic Web site and describes how to use Learning Site to track and administer your elearning application.

The book concludes with several chapters on collaboration and optimization. Dreamweaver MX provides reports that will help you manage your elearning application. These reports are invaluable when assessing the quality of the application or making plans for updating or revising the site.

This book won't tell you how to teach what needs to be taught, but will help you implement an instructional designer's vision for an elearning application. The downloadable files should help the novice developer explore the power of Dreamweaver MX.

Rating:
Summary: Good Overview and Lots of Depth too
Review: In the fast-paced world of high-tech, it's hard to keep up. I've found this book very useful in helping me get started as an ID who wants to also create training. Recommended.