While there are many tools, choosing the right one can be challenging. This guide helps you to choose the right e-learning authoring tool for your business that can elevate the experience of learning and scale learning production.
What is E-learning Authoring and Its Benefits?
An E-learning authoring software enables the users to create digital courses using text, graphics, and interactions. These tools offer ready-to-use pre-built templates, tools, and media that can be used to create digital content. This enables users with limited technical programming knowledge to utilize the software per their needs. The primary benefit of e-learning authoring tools is to enable any user to create customized learning content easily. However, there’s more to that. Let’s look at some advantages of using an e-learning authoring tool:
Enhanced Learning Outcomes
The main advantage of e-learning authoring tools is to make it easy for a user to create customized learning content. With the inbuilt media and design tools, anyone can create engaging content that profoundly impacts the overall learning experience.
Easy Collaboration
Managing your course content can be stressful when team members work from different locations. Authoring tools enable the creators to work in a collaborative environment. This allows the creators to share their different perspectives, which results in a better quality of content and engagement.
Lower Setup Cost
E-learning authoring tools can save you a lot of money. If you use this software, you don’t need a classroom or a teacher who conducts offline lectures. This saves the initial investment cost of an organization. Apart from that, it also provides flexibility to create multiple e-courses without adjusting the schedules of employees as compared to an offline setup.
Saves Time
Learning through online courses can save around 60% of an employee’s time when compared to the offline setup. This results in higher efficiency and overall growth of the employee and the organization.
Why Do You Need an E-Learning Authoring Tool?
While e-learning authoring tools enable stress-free content creation. Here are more reasons why should you have these tools in your kit:
Fulfills Training Needs
Training them online rather than in person is more accessible if you want to upskill your growing team. E-learning authoring tools enable you to keep up with the demand of creating quality content to cater to your training needs.
Collaborative Capability
It allows a seamless collaboration among stakeholders and your team, resulting in deeper engagement and high-quality content creation.
Freedom to Create
If you’re starting small and can’t hire a developer, authoring tools can be a savior. With limited coding knowledge, e-learning authoring tools help you create customized content.
Ease of Access
You would love to share your learnings across the world at one time. E-learning authoring tools enable an easy rollout of your courses across different locations, complying with new regulations.
Different Types of E-Learning Authoring Tools
There are several e-learning authoring tools, each with unique features to make your content creation process easy and hassle-free. Let’s look at some of them:
#1. Cloud-Based Tools
Cloud-based authoring tools are free from any desktop installations. These tools exist online, which users can access on the internet via a secure hosted system. It enhances cross-platform collaboration and provides an ideal solution for creators working remotely. However, its inability to work without the internet makes it inaccessible in an offline setup.
#2. Desktop or Traditional Tools
These tools require desktop installation before you can access them. It offers a wide variety of creative options for professional instructional designers who like to work in an offline setup. Despite many benefits, the complex UI and dependency on a single device can hamper the speed of content creation.
#3. Rapid Authoring Tools
Rapid authoring tools allow professionals to create high-quality web content courses with built-in Microsoft PowerPoint plugins. These plugins allow you to create interactive e-learning designs, such as making quizzes and lessons, with minimal coding pre-requisite. These tools, however, need a Microsoft account to work which can be a limiting factor. Articulate Studio and Adobe Presenter are some examples of rapid plugins.
Factors to Consider When Choosing an E-learning Authoring Tool
It’s necessary to keep some simple things in mind before choosing an e-learning authoring tool:
Intuitive UI
The primary purpose of technology is to save time and increase efficiency. A simple and intuitive UI immediately enables a stress-free creation of e-courses in a few steps.
Prebuilt Features
Choosing software with suitable inbuilt templates and creative functions can make learning smooth and engaging. This makes it essential to select an e-learning authoring tool for your needs.
Multimedia Add-ons
Rich multimedia and graphics can make learning more engaging and exciting for the learners. Thus you would always want to choose the tool that offers videos, games, audio, and many more add-ons to create an immersive learning environment.
Smart Assessment Tools
Online assessment tools are essential to designing a reciprocal learning experience. Features like swipe cards, quizzes, and response sheets make the evaluation process straightforward. This way, you can identify weak zones and incorporate specific features to improve them.
Pricing Models
Does the software offer a free trial? Does it include any additional charges? You need to ask the above two questions while considering an authoring tool. Due to a lack of research, you may pay more than you need. To avoid such things, you should decide what pricing plans suit you and your team.
Questions to Keep in Mind When Choosing an E-Learning Authoring Tool
#1. Do You Need LMS?
LMS – short for learning management system, is software that handles various aspects of the learning process like administration, automation, tracking content, etc. It supervises the learning process by tracking progress and analyzing organizational goals. You can enrich course content by streamlining the curriculum from any location using an LMS. But many LMS software comes with inbuilt tools, which may be a constraint for some authors who want more freedom in designing their courses. This poses an essential concern regarding whether you need an LMS or standalone software. Note: Standalone software gives more creative freedom to designers to create high-quality customized content.
#2. How to Share the Course with Customers?
You can share your e-learning via cloud and desktop-based software. However, you need to decide what works better for you. Both have their advantages and disadvantages which can influence your requirements. Using cloud-based software can let you access the course remotely, but it won’t work in an offline setup. On the other hand, traditional desktop software comes with various creative features and can be accessed offline.
#3. What is Your Preference – Subscription or License?
After finalizing the software, ask yourself – what suits you best, subscription or license. The license model allows forever use of the software after one-time payment. However, the software gets outdated in no time, and you won’t be able to access the new features. The subscription model allows you to use the tool for a definite period. You will no longer have access to the software once the subscription ends. Now that you know everything about e-learning, let’s look at some software that can help you set things up quickly.
Adobe Captivate
Adobe Captivate enables you to create beautifully designed courses in minutes. With its ready-to-use slides and imaginative interactions, it’s one of the widely used software for designing courses.
Features
Provides real-life learning scenarios by using VR headsetsAsset Store allows you to download from 75,000+ resources for your learning projectsTransforms PowerPoint slides into video lessons that work seamlessly on all devicesCreate multi-module branched courses without programming by using sample templates
Adobe Captivate is a leading authoring tool that offers a variety of services. You can subscribe to it for a year and enjoy the fun of creating excellent learning content.
Teachable
Teachable provides you with all the necessary tools to grow your coaching business. It makes it simple to create and sell a well-designed course that can be monetized.
Features
Intuitive drag and drop creator enables you to create courses quicklyUses features like quizzes and comments to optimize student engagementAdvanced data reporting lets you make proactive business decisionsLeading encryption and backup facilities lets you remain in control of your dataA dedicated customer success team provides personalized guidance at every step
Teachable offers world-class features which let you monetize your teaching in various pricing models. You can start free and go on to upgrade as per your needs.
Elucidat
Elucidat empowers anyone with minimal coding knowledge to deliver high-quality learning content. Trusted by experts worldwide makes it one of the most reliable authoring tools in the industry.
Features
Provides a people-centric approach by creating personalized contentLearning accelerator ensures high-quality contentReady-to-use templates ensure the best practice in learning designCloud-based deployment enables remote access to the contentRobust data protection policies maintain total confidentiality
You can book a free demo with Elucidat and, if you like it, enquire about the pricing per your course requirements.
Ispring
Ispring is an authoring tool for Powerpoint that lets you design beautiful and interactive courses in a short time.
Features
Offers more than 2300 ready-to-use templates to create customized coursesThe collaborative feature allows cross-platform accessibility of your contentLets you design interactive quizzes and assessment for easy evaluation of the learner’s progressThe Video Studio feature enables you to create a video tutorial with a screencast quicklyLets you create interactive role-play simulations for effective communication among employees
Ispring offers tons of authoring tools to design your course seamlessly. However, it can turn out expensive when compared to other solutions.
Easy Generator
Easy Generator provides an all-in-one tool to create and share interactive content without previous knowledge of learning systems. Features
Jumpstarts your creation with pre-built templates the software offersThe drag and drop feature makes it easy to add your content to the right placeAWS-powered translation lets you auto-translate your course into 75 different languagesProvides behavioral metrics to optimize your course according to the learner’s needLets you control your course setting depending on the learner’s goals and needs
Easy Generator accelerates your learning development with simple authoring tools. You can try it for free for 14 days. However, its auto-translation feature is still in the beta phase.
Wrapping Up
The purpose of an e-learning authoring tool is to empower everyone, be it a subject matter expert or a novice author, to design and produce engaging learning content. The above list gives you the features of the best e-learning tools available and will help you choose the most suitable one for you and your team. You may also look at the best moodle hosting for your learning platform.
