The materials that created by CourseLab can, therefore, be used in e-learning platforms that incorporate the standard SCORM or LMS.

The author (a Moscow company) has made this tool to have a fairly intuitive interface and almost all objects that can be used in the learning environment are incorporated into the"scene" with a simple drag and drop the mouse. It could not be easier.

CourseLab brings you a power of creating web based training, software application simulations, computer based training, and interactive e-learning content. Some of the CourseLab features are listed below:

Layout and usability

• Familiar PowerPoint-like authoring environment;

• Course Structure Pane displays tree-like course structure;

• Module Structure Pane contains thumbnails of all slides in the module and slides hierarchy;

• Frame Strip contains thumbnails of all frames of current slide;

• Visual Frame Timeline;

• Multipurpose Object Pane;

• Frequently used options are accessible via toolbar buttons.

Editing

• WYSIWYG environment - no HTML or other programming skills required;

• Embedded Rich Text editor enables formatting text into a specific font, colour, font size, including hyperlinks, tables, lists and pictures;

• Drag-and-drop objects placing;

• Simple frame-based animation;

• Action-based object's animation.

Rich-media support

• Pictures in various formats;

• Simple inserting and synchronization of audio files in various formats;

• Adobe® Flash® movies;

• Adobe® Shockwave® applications;

• Java® applets;

• Video clips in various formats.

Rapid Development

• Large (and user-expandable) set of ready-to-use module templates;

• Inheritance - capability to re-use once inserted objects in entire module;

• Global default font settings applicable to all text-containing objects;

• Scenario feature enables building complex multi-object interactions with one mouse click;

• Import PowerPoint® presentations into the learning material **.

Testing and Assessment

• Built-in test creation capability;

• Supported types of questions: single choice, multiple select, ordered items, numerical fill-in-blank, text fill-in-blank and matching pairs;

• Tools for creating custom questions and interactive exercises of virtually any type.

• Objective-based scoring allows creating scaled tests.

Interactivity

• Any object can be active click (or mouseOver/mouseOut) area;

• Any part of text can be active click (or mouseOver/mouseOut) area;

• Hotspot areas can be defined on pictures;

• Current values of form elements (such as Text Input Fields, CheckBoxes, Radiobuttons etc.) can be used in actions;

• Simple intuitive action of description language;

• Event-Action mechanism enables utilizing virtually all functionality of CourseLab depending on user action;

• Launching applications and documents in new window (Power Point®, Excel®, Word® & PDFs).

Special effects in playing mode

• Programmable object's appearance and disappearance;

• Configurable transition effects applicable to any object;

• Rotation of objects;

• Capability to drag the objects by mouse;

• Programmable moving of objects.

Software simulations *

• Simple-to-use wizard-based screen capturing mechanism;

• Customizable recording window size;

• Freeze recording window capability for partial capture mode (for example, to capture drop-down menu etc.);

• Automatic recording of cursor movements;

• Recorded simulation can be edited in CourseLab to add comments and interactions.

Scoring and evaluation

• Objective-based scoring mechanism;

• Various conditions can be used to create Success and Completion statuses defining Rules for objective;

• Cascading Rules - objective's statuses can also be used in conditions.

Publication options and eLearning standards

• Simple wizard-based publishing;

• Publish to HTML package;

• Publish to CD-ROM;

• Publish to AICC package for import to any LMS supporting this standard;

• Publish to SCORM 1.2 package for import to any LMS supporting this standard;

• Publish to SCORM 2004 for import to any LMS supporting this standard.

Samoo has translated the tool into Spanish and it is the official distributor of CourseLab product.

 You can see a tutorial from the University of Cordoba on this link:  CourseLab