Lectora Inspire: The King of Rapid Authoring Software

Jim is an e-learning developer working with a large insurance company. Recently, he was asked to convert classroom training materials on regulatory affairs into learner-friendly, engaging e-learning courses. 

Robert is a technology-enabled learning developer at a large Canadian manufacturing company. A few months ago, the company entered the Asia-Pacific region, and he was instructed to create online courses materials in eight languages, for employees in the region.

Patricia is an online learning developer associated with a pharmaceutical giant. Three weeks from now, the drug manufacturer is about to release a new painkiller into the market. Patricia was assigned the task of developing responsive online courses on the product, which could be accessed on any device, in a hassle-free manner. 

Jim, Robert, and Patricia are not alone. Many e-learning developers have similar requirements. How can companies meet learning needs of this nature? Among the various aspects you need to consider, the choice of the right authoring tool is inarguably the most important.

One of the most popular e-learning course authoring tools is Lectora Inspire. Today, we will examine the features of the latest version of this rapid authoring software, Lectora Inspire 17, and see how it helps meet your online learning needs.

1. Facility to create effective branching scenarios

A branching scenario is an interactive learning element that presents the learner a problem, which can be tackled in multiple ways, and challenges him to choose one of the ways to resolve the problem. As the learner makes a decision, a new challenge is presented to him, and based on how he reacts to the challenge, further challenges are presented. These scenarios are ideal tools for imparting compliance training and selling skills as they help learners understand the consequences of their actions and new challenges that arise as a result of their actions.

Lectora Inspire 17 makes the development of branching scenario-based online courses easy. You can now import branching scenario-based exercises created in PowerPoint into Lectora Inspire and develop them into effective online learning content, with just a few clicks. It is also possible to track the path chosen by a learner when he attempts a question based on a branching scenario. The rapid authoring tool also enables you to make the best use of the score value to determine course behavior and undertake remediation.

2. Option to publish courses to the web (HTML format)

Online courses on certain subjects such as compliance and regulatory affairs contain large volumes of text, and learners can access these courses comfortably, if they can scroll the learning content.

Learners can scroll through courses developed using Lectora Inspire, easily, because the tool allows you to publish content to the HTML format. E-learning courses developed in the HTML format are similar to web pages that can be scrolled. Lectora Inspire was the first authoring tool to enable e-learning developers to publish courses to the HTML format, and to this day, remains the preferred choice of the developers to create courses for the web.

3. Ability to develop multilingual courses

Today, many companies are expanding their operations to new shores. This has resulted in the need to impart training to non-Anglophone learners, and several organizations are translating their web-based learning materials to meet this need.

You can develop courses in multiple languages using Lectora Inspire, in a seamless fashion. The web-based learning development tool allows you to export courses as documents in the rich text format (RTF). These documents can then be handed over to a translator, who renders the content in the desired target language(s). Once the content is translated, you need to import it into Lectora Inspire and publish it to create the e-learning course in the target languages. It is as simple as that. The rapid authoring tool provides good support to “right-to-left” languages such as Arabic and Hebrew. It also facilitates the easy development of courses in languages such as Chinese, Japanese, and Korean that use double-byte character sets (DBCS).

Lectora Inspire enables you to develop a multilingual interface for the course, which allows the learner to access the online course in the language of his choice and switch between languages, either from the Home page or in the middle of the course.

4. Development of responsive courses is made easy

We all know that the desktop no longer monopolizes the online world. Today, people access the Internet using a wide variety of devices such as smartphones and tablets, in addition to PCs. The growing trend of using multiple devices is compelling companies to develop responsive web-based courses that can be accessed effectively on any device, irrespective of the size of its screen.

You can use Lectora Inspire 17 to develop good responsive e-learning courses. The rapid authoring tool has a large library of responsive page layouts and themes which simplify the development of device-agnostic courses. Furthermore, any action performed on the desktop view of a course trickles down to the course in the tablet view, and changes made to the course in the tablet view are reflected in the Smartphone view. Lectora inspire 17 also allows you to preview courses in different (desktop, tablet, and smartphone) views.

We thus see that Lectora Inspire is a powerful e-learning development application that helps meet your online training needs. Would you like to expand this list of features? You’re most welcome.