Say goodbye to Flash

You might work in a company that still have Flash-based e-learning courses. At the end of 2020, Adobe Flash will be removed from browsers. It became urgent to convert them to HTML5, a modern format for all devices.

Different strategies exist to convert your e-learning content from Flash to HTML5. First, make an inventory of all Flash-based courses with their duration, the availability of their source files and the authoring tool they were created with.

With the source files, republish

If your company have the courses’ source files, you are lucky. The courses were probably created with an authoring tool such as Articulate Storyline / Studio, iSpring or Adobe Captivate. Using a recent version of the same authoring tool, it is possible to republish the course to HTML5. Republishing is the easiest solution even if it might require fixing some issues after the conversion.

You can ask a freelance e-learning developer to convert some of the courses for you, especially if you do not wish to upgrade the authoring tool.

If your company have the source files but the courses were created with a tool that no longer exists, we can consider that the source files are not useful. This situation is similar to not having the source files. In that case, keep reading.

Without the source files, record or rebuild

If your company does not have the courses’ source files, it is not convenient. The most affordable solution consists of making a video by recording the screen.

The most ambitious solution consists of rebuilding courses from scratch with an authoring tool. This type of conversion might take a lot of time (finding new images, rebuilding animations or interactive activities).

To sum up

Sometimes, it is also a good time to redesign the courses a little bit. If they are still Flash-based, it probably means they were created more than 8 years ago. It is likely that their appearance or pedagogy could be refreshed.

Depending on the type of courses your company needs to convert, you might choose between different strategies:

• republishing (the easiest with source files)

• recording (the fastest without source files)

• rebuilding (the most painful without source files)

• redesign (the most elegant)

What strategy did you adopt in your organisation? Feel free to leave a comment to share your experience or contact me if you could use some help to decide what is the most suitable.