E Learning Content Creation Tools When it comes to creating a good E Learning, you still need some good tools. Yes, you could create your E Learning with just a plain text editor. This is often how people start out. But if you want to create high-quality content-rich e learning courses that look great, then there are some tools that can help make this easier for you in many different ways.
In this guide, I want to help you narrow down your options and choose the right e learning authoring tool for you.
Coassemble
Coassemble is a cloud-based authoring tool + LMS with capabilities of the former, similar to those of Articulate Rise. Pick one of 10 ready-made templates in the longread format and fill it with content bits like images, video, quizzes, and text. There’s a surprising variety of interactive elements that can be added onto the screens of your course: from simple slide sequences to timeline and label images. Finished content can then be assigned to students through the Coassemble LMS.
Learning curve
The user interface of Coassemble is not so well thought out as, say, iSpring’s or Articulate’s. However, it’s still pretty quick to get used to if you’ve ever tested a SaaS application. The usual dashboard and sidebar formula works well, only rarely leaving you to wonder where to click if you need to publish your course, for example.
Assessments
This authoring tool has 8 question types, including drag-and-drop, label image, spot the mistake, and a few others. Also, there are some additional features like the possibility of adding written tips and audio to questions.
Interactions
Coassemble offers 16 different interaction types or ‘interactive screens.’ as they call them. The selection includes ubiquitous accordion and tabs, as well as some new templates like the side-by-side slide template and word circle template. Overall, it supplies a solid collection of interactive content screens for a web-based authoring software.
Video and audio editor
There are no audio or video editing capabilities like those usually found in SaaS authoring services.
Conversation simulations
The software doesn’t have a built-in conversation simulator, but there’s a feature that allows you to upload SCORM packages to courses. Hence, you can create a dialogue simulation in a different tool, export it as SCORM, and then upload it to Coassemble.
Mobile learning
The content that can be produced with Coassemble is 100% mobile-ready and can be used on both iOS and Android. The company doesn’t offer a mobile app for their LMS yet, so the only option you have to use such content on a smartphone is the web browser.
Publishing options
- eLearning formats: SCORM
Pros
- User-friendly interface
- 8 question and 16 interaction types available
- Hosted in the cloud – you can author content from any platform or location
- Can import SCORM modules to add them to your online courses
- The product is also an LMS, so finished modules can be assigned to learners right away
Cons
- No dedicated mobile app for taking courses on smartphones
- Interface looks clunky and poorly designed on certain screens
- Just a few templates available when you start a new course – would like to see more in the future
- SCORM can only be exported as a link to Coassemble’s server
Best for
Coassemble will be an interesting product to try for small teams that need to start training their staff as soon as possible. The combined authoring tool + LMS functionality ensures that, as soon as a new course is ready, it can be put to good use and shared with learners. Of course, there are some limitations that stem from the web nature of the app, but the extended selection of interactions and question types will make up for it, making the training process engaging.
Price
Several plans, starting from $490/year
iSpring Suite Max
iSpring Suite Max is a full-featured eLearning solution focused on making rapid content development easy and intuitive. A major plus with iSpring is that the core authoring tool works as a PowerPoint add-in, which makes for a familiar interface that’s very easy to use. You can start with an existing PowerPoint presentation and enhance it with more sophisticated eLearning content.
iSpring Suite Max takes a modularized approach to the user interface, with special tabs for different types of training tasks. There’s a quiz maker for assessments, a video and audio editor for creating video lectures and screencasts, and a conversation simulation tool for building dialogue simulations with branching. Creating interactions is made simple with a whole set of ready-made templates for creating glossaries, catalogs, timelines, references, and FAQs.
The workflow puts the focus firmly on content development and dispenses with the manual configuration of complex interactive elements and coding variables. To make the process of building courses even faster, there’s a content library full of high-quality images of location backgrounds, icons, controls, and characters.
iSpring Suite Max also comes with iSpring Space, an online space for teamwork on eLearning projects. You can build your course, and other authors from your team will be able to review the content and leave comments or edit texts, add knowledge checks, and polish the course look and feel on their own.
There’s also a built-in authoring tool for making eLearning content right in a browser. You can create a course the same way you write a post on social media. Just type in (or copy) texts and add images and video. Then add quizzes to check how your learners understand the material. That’s it!
Learning curve
iSpring’s seamless integration with PowerPoint means that most people will be able to pick it up and immediately get authoring. The familiar interface and streamlined workflow make for a gentle learning curve that allows the user to explore other modules and features at their own pace.
Fortunately, ease of use doesn’t mean you can only create simple interactions and courses – there’s a lot of flexibility to add more complex scenarios and interactives.
Assessments
iSpring Suite Max lets you build graded quizzes, surveys, and quick knowledge checks that can be included between course slides. There over a dozen question types, from the ubiquitous multiple-choice to the engaging drag-and-drop.
Interactions
Separate from the quiz editor, iSpring Visuals is centered on building learning interactions. What’s best about this component of the tool is that you don’t need to start from scratch – just pick one of the interaction templates like Timeline or Accordion and fill it in with your data.
Video and audio editor
This features a fully functional video editor, enough to merge several videos with transitions and captions into one MP4 file and insert it into a course.
Conversation simulations
iSpring has a special tool that allows you to build realistic conversation simulations that will help your learners master their communication skills. This is a must have for sales and customer service training.
Mobile learning
With all its components supporting HTML5, iSpring-published content is 100% mobile ready. Unlike with some other course creation tools, you don’t need to build separate content versions for desktop and mobile. The software automatically adapts your content to all display sizes, saving you time and your nerves.
Publishing options
Pros
- Ability to use an existing PPT presentation as a starting point for a course
- Simple familiar interface for building courses quickly
- Built-in dialogue simulator with branching conversation scenarios
- Professional video studio for recording and editing screencasts and webcam footage
- Robust tool for creating interactive quizzes and surveys
- Perfect playback on all devices
- Text-to-speech function
- Ability to turn PPT presentations into SCORM courses
- Ability to convert Word and PDF documents into interactive SCORM flipbooks
- Professional grade content library with 68,000 assets, including templates, characters, backgrounds, and icons
- Cloud service for fast content sharing and collaboration
- XLIFF Translation support for fast course localization
Cons
- PowerPoint needs to be installed for iSpring Suite to work
- Doesn’t support closed captioning (CC) for video and audio narration
- No software simulation support
- Only works in Windows
Best for
iSpring Suite Max is a rapid eLearning development tools great pick for PowerPoint lovers looking to take the leap into a full-fledged content authoring tool.
It’s also a perfect choice for those who are searching for the easiest and fastest way to move existing instructions, manuals, and textbooks online. If you already have PPT presentations, you can turn them into e-courses in just a couple of clicks.
You can also quickly publish your Word and PDF documents to eLearning formats. The result will be interactive e-books with a realistic page flip effect. When you want to get more creative and add quizzes, dialogue simulations, and interactives, there’s plenty of power under the hood.
Pricing
$970 (Annual license)
Adobe Captivate
Adobe Captivate is a powerful authoring tool that’s well suited for general eLearning development such as creating slide presentations or quizzes and developing complex interactive courses. Also, it’s traditionally a preferred choice for developing software simulations with the help of effects, triggers, and slide settings. This allows for a lot of versatility in creating realistic simulations and presenting them to users in different modes, ex.: see it, try it, do it.
A standout feature of the latest 2019 Captivate release is the ability to create Virtual Reality projects and make interactive videos and studio-quality HD videos by simultaneously recording webcam and on-screen content and adding interactive elements. The wide range of interactions is another strong point of this toolkit. You can make eLearning fun with drag-and-drop, puzzles, games, and other interactive activities.
Learning curve
Captivate is known to have a fairly steep learning curve for new users, and in past releases, a rather confusing workflow that relies on a lot of separate windows to select variables and triggers, and perform other functions.
To create really great eLearning in Captivate, you need to spend a lot of time getting to know its functions, so it may not be the best choice as a first-time software for eLearning design. It’s perfect for creating more technical simulation-based training.
Assessments
Having fewer question templates than its competitors, Captivate offers a unique type of assessment in the form of software simulation. This feature might be indispensable if your training program is based on computer software.
Interactions
It has 19 learning interaction templates including games like “Jigsaw Puzzle” and “Who wants to be a millionaire?” They might look a bit sloppy and prove to be hard to configure, but the diversity here is truly impressive.
Video and audio editor
Adobe Captivate has a built-in editor that can help you put together a video tutorial with transitions and various effects like zoom and pan. The best part is that when you record yourself from a webcam, you can use the “green screen” feature to replace the background of your video on the fly.
Conversation simulations
There’s no special tool for building conversation simulations or character-driven dialogues in Adobe Captivate, so if these are a big part of your training design, it may not be the best pick.
Mobile learning
Captivate suggests an interesting workflow to those who consider mobile compatibility their top priority. The tool lets you break up your slide contents into the so-called “fluid boxes” that can change their size and positioning based on what device the course is being viewed on. This, in theory, gives you total control over the look and feel of your content on all possible devices – including smartphones.
Publishing options
- HTML5
- eLearning formats: SCORM, AICC, and xAPI.
- Flash (with an option for creating lessons in the EXE format)
Pros
- Extensive variables and branching that allow creative customization
- 360-degree (VR) capability to embed virtual reality into your eLearning
- True responsive screen display on all devices, viewable as you create the training
- Asset library including templates, people, headshots, and full-body shots
- Ability to generate text-to-speech (TTS) voiceovers automatically
- ‘Green screen’ feature where you can insert your own background
- Mobile-specific development tools such as geolocation tagging
- Complex software simulation recording options
- Has a version for Mac
Cons
- Unintuitive user interface
- Requires you to put in a lot of hours to learn how to use it
- Customers report that Captivate can get buggy and crash in Windows
- Designing responsive content is difficult, since you have to create separate versions for desktop, tablet, and smartphone
- Imported PowerPoint presentations don’t preserve all their animations after being converted with Captivate
- Technical support outsourced to a call center
Best for
Adobe Captivate is professional eLearning software, less easy and intuitive, but more powerful than its competitors. It’s best suited for experienced eLearning developers who are comfortable working with variables and some coding to make the magic happen.
In contrast to some vendors that offer an LMS or hosting solution as part of the package, if you want to host the courses that you author directly via Captivate, you’ll need to purchase the PRIME package, which is more expensive and probably not suitable for small organizations with less than 100 employees.
Pricing
$33.99/month or $1,299.00 (Perpetual License)
Articulate Storyline
Articulate Storyline is the flagship desktop authoring tool by Articulate. It comes bundled with a few other applications like Rise and Review when you purchase an Articulate 360 subscription.
Storyline is popular in the instructional design community since its advanced features like triggers and layers allow creators to go above and beyond in producing customized training content. However, for a newbie, it would pose a serious challenge to get to grips with Storyline – there aren’t many built-in interaction templates, so one would have to spend time learning how to create them from scratch.
With Storyline comes the Articulate Content Library – a collection of course templates, backgrounds, characters, buttons, and icons. It includes a rather small portion of visual assets created specifically for instructional design, at the same time providing access to a vast collection of stock images.
Learning curve
Storyline is right in the middle between iSpring and Adobe in terms of its learning curve: it’s not as easy to pick up and start as the former, although it’s not as complicated as the latter, and you can begin producing decent looking courses in a relatively short amount of time.
Assessments
Articulate QuizMaker offers users the standard multiple response, fill-in-the-blank, hotspot, and a few more question types that can be inserted into a quiz as well as into a survey.
Interactions
Articulate Studio, Storyline’s predecessor that comes bundled with it, has a selection of interaction templates that you can insert into your course. There you can find things like FAQ and Checklist. If you’d like to use one of them in Storyline, you need to import them from a Studio project. Otherwise, you’ll have to build your interaction from scratch or download one of the community-provided templates.
Video and audio editor
Storyline includes a simple video editor that lets you do transitions from one recorded take to another, add captions, and save the output to your course. However, it’s not half as advanced and useful as what Captivate and iSpring have to offer in terms of video editing.
Conversation simulations
The abovementioned Articulate Studio includes a “Conversation” interaction template that can be used to create dialogue simulations. However, it can only be used as an educational tool, not as a rated assessment.
Mobile learning
Courses published with Storyline are fully mobile-compatible. Also, Articulate has its own mobile app that can download and play published content offline.
Publishing options
- HTML5
- eLearning formats: SCORM, AICC, xAPI, and cmi5
Pros
- Similar to the PowerPoint interface of Storyline 360, but with greater opportunities for customizing the content
- Allows you to build complex interactions by utilizing features like object states, triggers, and layers
- Screen recorder for making screencast captures and simple editing
- Content library with access to stock images
- Outputs responsive mobile-ready courses
- Free mobile app for playing courses offline
Cons
- Not the most user-friendly interface
- Has a rather steep learning curve
- Interaction templates sometimes don’t work properly
- Screen recording functionality is basic compared to other solutions
- Can be heavy on computer resources
- No Mac version
Best for
Articulate Storyline is best suited for experienced instructional designers who need more leverage over the content they produce. This can be achieved by utilizing the advanced features like triggers and layers that Storyline provides.
Since Storyline comes with several desktop and web authoring tools aimed at making it easier for teams to collaborate on eLearning projects, it would be a good fit for collectives. The drawback is that most individual developers and small organizations won’t need all of these tools, but will still have to purchase the entire set just to get Storyline.
Price
$1,299/year (for teams) or $999 (for individuals)
Conclusion
The majority of these authoring tools are free and some are pretty affordable if you wish to upgrade. The free platforms have limited functionality and the paid ones offer more flexibility but with a higher price tag. If you don’t want to get too complicated with your elearning authoring, then Free courses creator will suit your needs just fine. If you didn’t find a tool that fits your needs, be sure to check out this list again in the future.