Authoring tools, or e-learning authoring tools are computer programs usually used to create and design e-learning applications. Authoring tool are special software used for creating and publishing the several kinds of interactive material, including serious games and web based courseware. A lot of elearning software have various capabilities for educational content creation, but the main aim is to make a highly customizable learning content that can be easily accessed over the internet. The concepts behind authoring tools have been in use for years and, despite the technological advancements that we have witnessed, the core ideas are still being applied in nearly every project.
Authoring tools (also known as elearning authoring or content authoring software) provide features that you can use to create and publish elearning content.
iSpring Suite Max
iSpring Suite Max is a fully loaded course authoring toolkit designed to allow the fast build of multi-device compatible courses as a PowerPoint add on. You can use slides, quizzes, video lectures, screencasts, and role-plays with a simple to use builder interface. With iSpring, you can also convert existing Word, PDF, and PPT materials into engaging interactive courses with a few clicks.
This is a great choice if you want to create online courses fast and easy, as well as collaborate on the content with your team. The toolkit incorporates an online space where several authors can cowork on the content and even build basic courses online with a built-in cloud-based authoring tool. It also includes Content Library, with over 68,000 e-learning assets.
Price: $970 per user annually
iSpring Presenter
iSpring Presenter is a reduced version of iSpring Suite that has the basic must-have authoring options. You can create interactive courses from scratch – the same way you create a PPT presentation. The tool also enables you to build beautiful interactive quizzes with 14 question types, including the ubiquitous multiple-choice and true/false questions, and engaging hotspots and drag-and-drops. You can also produce training videos with iSpring and sync slides with premade footage or record a presenter video with your webcam.
Price: $227 per user annually
Adobe Captivate
Adobe Captivate is a desktop e-learning authoring tool that supports mobile HTML5 content. Captivate includes some prebuilt assets, as well as customizable workflows that can be tweaked to suit developer preferences. Captivate is highly customizable and is often favored by developers who are creating complex software simulations, custom interactions, virtual reality (VR) learning experiences, and courses published as mobile apps.
Price: $33.99PM with annual commitment, $1,299 perpetual license
Articulate 360
Articulate 360 is an e-learning course development subscription package. It includes the Articulate Storyline desktop authoring tool, plus Rise, a web-based cloud app for creating responsive courses. The other seven apps include an online review app and a webcast video app.
Storyline is a highly regarded desktop authoring tool and is known to be more user friendly for beginners than some of its counterparts. Rise allows for the creation of very quick responsive courses by selecting from pre-made block types and using the built-in Articulate content library of photos and illustrations.
Price: $1,299 per user, annually
Gomo
Gomo is a cloud-based, responsive HTML5 e-learning authoring tool that offers a mobile first approach. It is designed to be used collaboratively to author and deliver digital learning content.
You can create, discover, track and deliver video and e-learning content in a single and unified experience that appears the same to learners and content creators alike.
Price: authoring only £690 per seat, authoring and delivery £1,960
Lectora Inspire and Lectora Online
Lectora Inspire and Online are e-learning authoring products featuring Responsive Course Design (RCD). Lectora Inspire desktop is designed to make online course development fast and simple. It is bundled with the leading screen capture and recording software and offers high levels of customization possibilities, including the use of slide layers and programmatic elements.
Lectora Online Authoring Tool aims to offer similar features with an intuitive, easy-to-use interface. Of course, it doesn’t offer the same depth as it’s bigger brother, but does a good job of building less complex courses fast and with an easier workflow.
Lectora has traditionally been popular with developers in Academia, and its feature set and templates are somewhat focused in this niche.
Price: Inspire, $2,595 Single payment; Online, $1,390 PA
Adapt
Adapt is a free e-learning authoring tool that lets you create fully responsive, multi-device compatible HTML5 content using the open-source Adapt developer framework. Similar to Articulate Rise, courses created with Adapt provide a web app style experience with vertical scroll and swipe functionality on touch devices.
Adapt does not support branching scenarios or complex animations, but its functionality can be extended via plugins. However, this may not be something the average user has the time or technical ability to explore.
Price: Free
DominKnow | ONE
DominKnow | ONE is a cloud-based authoring system that has three main authoring modules. There is a responsive course creator, a more traditional course builder that includes the ability to convert PowerPoint presentations, and a tool for capturing, generating, and editing system software simulations. This tool is designed to help you to build many different types of e-learning via templates, stock assets, a global library to share and reuse content across different projects, and real-time collaboration and review modules.
Price: Team $1,497
Easygenerator
Easygeneratror is an online authoring tool that focuses on knowledge sharing from subject matter experts by enabling SMEs with no previous e-learning experience to create courses easily. This mainly involves picking premade subject matter templates and customizing them to create generic but great looking courses in a fraction of the time that custom development would require.
Price: Team £4,950
Elucidat
Elucidat is another online authoring tool with a focus on simplicity, ease of use, and using templates – called blueprints in this ecosystem – with guided customizations to produce courses quickly with low overhead. It offers many of the basic features that you would expect from an HTML5 authoring tool, such as creating tests and quizzes, video and audio management, and building out courses with images and text.
Price: Only available upon request
Evolve
Evolve is one more authoring tool with all the usual features. Its main point of difference is the inclusion of corporate e-learning solutions to provide online compliance training to organizations across numerous industries. OSHA, HIPAA, and HR compliance and development courses are available to push out to your employees through your own learning management system (LMS) or the Evolve hosted LMS.
Price: Only available upon request
Camtasia
Camtasia from TechSmith is a tool for making screen and video recordings. You can record your screen, add video effects, transitions, hotspots, and more. Camtasia is popular with developers for creating software simulations quickly and easily that can optionally be made more interactive and exported as SCORM. It has a low learning curve compared to other video production software like Adobe Premier and can be used by SMEs with little or no training.
Price: $249.99 single license
Koantic
Koantic offers PowerPoint-like slides as an easy way to create visually stimulating content. It enables you to easily add background audio, synched interactions, and motion from a library of animations. You can choose from over 18 templates to start building content. It features a drag-and-drop branching tool to provide a simple way to incorporate scenarios into your content without any technical know-how.
Price: $79 monthly
Adeptly
Adeptly is a gamification focused online authoring tool. It allows you to build games that simulate and test your processes and boost learning outcomes with data-driven games. Adeptly offers an easy-to-use editor to create unique learning games. You can quickly add any content, create decision trees, and customize scoring metrics.
Price: Professional, £345 per month
thirst.io
thirst.io is a cloud-based authoring tool that helps you create dynamic, mobile-first, branded learning experiences, easily and efficiently. What you see in your thirst.io editor is what you get to facilitate easy course design. You add your content directly to the course, which means no separate editing panels, no waiting for previews to load, and instant feedback on how your course appears.
Price: Must apply for an account and be approved to get a price
PRODUCER
PRODUCER helps you quickly create professional interactive eLearning courses, consistently and at scale. PRODUCER supports you and your team throughout the entire learning design process – helping you scope, design and build engaging digital and blended learning that delivers results. It also encourages collaboration with project management and commenting/review tools.
PRODUCER has a suite of prebuilt learning modules that you can easily adapt for your own organisation. Screen templates and themes make it simple to create beautiful and consistent learning. You can use the inbuilt asset library, or add your own assets for use across one or multiple projects.
Pros:
- Simple to learn
- Inbuilt adaptive learning logic
- Truly mobile responsive
- Agile project management
- Scoping tools and collaborative design
- Thousands of templates and assets, including pre-built learning you can make your own
- Themes to keep learning on brand and consistent visually
- WYSIWYG editor
Cons:
- Limited ability to customise layouts
- No software simulation capability
- No inbuilt video capture/editing functionality
Suitable for:
- Scaling quickly
- Creating consistent, reusable learning assets
- Customising prebuilt learning for your organisation
Articulate Storyline
Storyline 360 is part of the Articulate 360 suite and is the company’s flagship authoring tool. In this article, we’ll also take a look at Rise 360. Articulate is the more traditional eLearning tool, whereas Rise is focused on quick, simple development.
Articulate uses a PowerPoint-style interface, with an advanced feature set that excites experienced eLearning authors but may overwhelm novices. It enables greater customisation than some competitors though this may slow down development.
Pros:
- Design is flexible and customisable
- Allows for PPT import
- Advanced feature set
Cons:
- Steep learning curve
- Requires complex, custom logic
- Not truly mobile responsive
- Not available on Mac (unless using an emulator)
- Desktop based, therefore collaboration is challenging
Suitable for:
- Experienced eLearning authors
- Complex learning or custom interactions
Conclusion
While there are many elearning authoring tools available on the market, there are certain criteria that should be fulfilled before you decide on the right tool for your project. The core characteristics of a good elearning authoring tool are: flexibility and scalability, royalty free or cheap license fee, dynamic content creation system, effective control over advanced features and last but not least a reasonable pricing strategy.