Advantages of Using Rapid E-learning Authoring Tools

In today’s dynamic world, business practices keep evolving as per the changing face of the industry. Consequently, organizations need to constantly train their workforce as per changing business demands. This makes e-learning course creation a highly necessary and continuous process. As with any ongoing process, the focus and challenge for e-learning creation is keeping costs down without compromising on the course quality.

If companies were to go with conventional tools, such as Flash HTML, and Dreamweaver to develop their e-learning programs, they may face several challenges. To create an e-learning course with these tools requires a high amount of technical knowledge along with considerable skill. Such tools are limited by their ability to create courses compatible with only one device or at best, a specific device class. These factors considerably increase the time and cost of the development endeavor.

This is where rapid authoring tools come into picture. As the name suggests, these tools help organizations develop courses with much more efficiency compared to traditional methods. Let’s explore why authoring tools have become the driving force for e-learning development:

Easier Development

As compared to code-heavy methods of course development, authoring tools are easy to use. These tools have user-friendly interfaces that allow developers to define or change any parameter of the course very conveniently. Unlike conventional methods that require specialized programming knowledge and training, authoring tools enable anyone to create high-quality e-learning courses with little or no training. You can also use the pre-built templates and all the other readymade functionalities to further reduce development time and effort.

One Course to Rule Them All

Authoring tools support responsive course design. This means that the days of creating different versions of the same course for different devices are behind us. A responsive design assures that your course adapts to the various screen sizes, operating systems, and browser software, to give learners the best possible learning experience.

This also makes updates and revisions to your e-learning course design very easy. You can simply access the existing course and make changes in one master template for it to seamlessly reflect across your entire learner base. 

Better Courses, Better learning

With authoring tools, developers don’t need to start course creation from scratch. Instead of wasting their energies on technical the know-how, they can focus on what is important – effective transfer of knowledge. They can come up with innovative instructional design strategies to best convey the subject matter. Authoring tools also have a lot of built-in interactivities, animations, assessments, and many more elements that developers can directly incorporate to give you a course that stands out from the rest. 

Customized E-learning

An e-learning program is not just a mode to transfer information, it is your organization’s asset. Every element of a custom e-learning course is designed keeping in mind your company’s brand image, values, and business practices. Custom courses create lasting impressions in the minds of employees and results in better learning.

As authoring tools come with in-built templates, creating custom courses becomes very convenient. With templates, you can define the basic framework for all your courses. More so, you can even use the readymade GUIs and customize them to meet your organization-specific branding needs. For future projects, all you need to do is add content, do some fine-tuning, and you are well on your way.

Cost Control

With authoring tools, you don’t need developers with extensive experience. The time taken for development reduces considerably – meaning, you create more courses in a given time. Even with the lesser development time, you can still uphold the high-quality of your training program.

Good e-learning means better skill development, which means increased productivity and profitability. All of the above factors can result in considerable reduction in e-learning development cost and increase your return on investment.

The benefits of using rapid authoring tools are undoubtedly many. However, many authoring tools are available today with different features. So, do your due diligence to pick the one most suited to your training needs. Below are some of the most powerful authoring tools available:

• Adobe Captive
• Lectora Inspire
• Articulate Storyline

Thoroughly go through the features by taking trails and demos of a tool before finalizing one for your organization. Authoring tools can make your e-learning development cycle more robust and efficient. Just ensure you evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the tool you are inclined on using.