December 1st, 1999

[4:45 PM] Macromedia's CourseBuilder Makes Building Online Courses Easier
by Staff

Macromedia announced a new product designed to make designing online courses easy. The new product is called CourseBuilder and works with Dreamweaver 3. Dreamweaver is Macromedia's popular HTML layout editor. According to Macromedia:

Macromedia, Inc. (Nasdaq: MACR) today announced Macromedia(R) CourseBuilder for Dreamweaver(TM), a powerful extension application to Dreamweaver 3 for creating interactive Web-based learning applications. CourseBuilder enables professional Web developers and subject matter experts to quickly and cost-effectively author engaging training content in a visual environment, without requiring programming knowledge.

Dreamweaver is Macromedia's market-leading professional Web authoring environment. CourseBuilder, formerly Attain Objects for Dreamweaver, extends the functionality of Dreamweaver with more than 40 pre-built learning interactions including easily editable multiple choice, true or false and fill-in-the-blank questions and answers. As an extension application, CourseBuilder benefits from Dreamweaver 3's visual programming interface, open architecture, and support for Web standards. The CourseBuilder interactions, built using HTML and JavaScript, create Web-native content which allows courses to be delivered in most browsers on both Windows and Macintosh platforms.

CourseBuilder empowers non-technical subject matter experts to focus on their area of expertise, rather than programming. Web developers can also use CourseBuilder to quickly add various types of surveys and user interaction to their Web sites. In addition to the pre-built interactions, CourseBuilder also includes Action Manager and Knowledge Track features. The Action Manager provides a visual interface for adding interactivity and sophisticated logic to learning content. Knowledge Track enables a variety of information, including student progress and test scores, to be sent directly to an instructional management system, such as the Lotus Pathware learning management system. For developers designing distance learning courses, building in tracking of students' interactions provides a critical link between students' activities and their instructors.

Lotus Development Corp. purchased the Pathware system from Macromedia in July and both companies are jointly developing, marketing and distributing technologies for Web-based learning. As part of the agreement, Lotus distributes Macromedia's industry-leading Authorware, Director, CourseBuilder for Dreamweaver, Fireworks, and Flash authoring products. In addition, Lotus licensed Macromedia's Shockwave, Flash, and Authorware Web Player technology for use with Lotus and IBM products. Lotus will make CourseBuilder available as part of Lotus' Professional Authoring and Web Authoring Suites.

You can find more information on the product at Macromedia's web site. CourseBuilder is priced at US$199 and the company is offering a bundle with DreamWeaver for US$499.

Macromedia