Steps To Choose The Right eLearning Authoring Tool

Whether you are an independent trainer, a training administrator at a business, or even a business owner looking to train your employees, you must already know the importance of having the right tools at your disposal.

These tools help you develop better training material, in shorter time frames, and deliver it to your learners in a format that they love.

However, choosing the wrong tool can turn out to be a disaster. For instance, in the case of an authoring tool, ideally, your course development time should be cut short. However, if you end up choosing a complex authoring tool, you may end up wasting a lot of time learning how it works. This beats the whole purpose of a tool that is supposed to speed up the development process.

In this case, the best elearning authoring tools are those that offer the features you need to require the kind of training content suited for your organisation.

With that said, the elearning industry has seen the emergence of a number of great new brands in the recent years and as a result, there are more elearning tools in the market than ever before.

While having a choice is a great thing, too many choices can easily confuse anyone.

To make things easier for you, in this article, we will discuss how you can choose the ideal authoring tool for your needs:

User Interface

Drawing from the example mentioned in the previous section of this article, having an authoring tool that offers an easy-to-understand, intuitive user interface should be your top most priority.

After all, the authoring tool will not help you cut down development time if you spend time learning how to use it. Moreover, a complex interface may also mean that you may not be able to access certain features of the tool.

While you can talk to the support team behind the authoring tool to find out how to access said features, it will just mean more delays in your course development process.

Collaboration Abilities

The practice of online collaboration is more in the limelight that it has ever been before. Like many other tools, collaboration features hold great significance when it comes to elearning authoring tools.

These can range from the simple ability to save all the progress on the cloud and enabling specified team members to access the content, to having the ability to add comments or leave feedback on certain elements.

Another collaboration feature to look out for is scalability. As your organisation and subsequently, your team grows, does your new authoring tool allow you to scale up easily? Does it let you add new collaborators without any hassle?

Compatibility With Other Tools

This is a commonly overlooked feature that causes a lot of hassle down the road. If your authoring tool is not compatible with other elearning tools like the learning management system, it can turn out to be disastrous.

For instance, if your authoring tool supports mobile-friendly content, and your LMS doesn't, it can be a big problem. Similarly, many authoring tools offer a "rapid publishing" feature that allows you to instantly publish finalised training material on a compatible LMS.

Conclusion

Choosing the right authoring tool can turn out to be a tricky decision. However, choosing the right one can literally make or break your training content.

The good news is, there are several authoring tools that offer a free trial on their product. Trying out a few before you make a purchase can help you make an informed and positive decision.