Career Mantra’s Official Blog

Recall that in my pre­vi­ous arti­cle ‚I pointed out that there are hun­dreds of e-Learning author­ing tools in the mar­ket today. Select­ing the proper tool for devel­op­ing con­tent is not a triv­ial task.

In this arti­cle let us look at some dom­i­nant fac­tors that should influ­ence your deci­sion while choos­ing the best con­tent author­ing tool that is right for your Learn­ing Man­age­ment Sys­tems.

Here is a list of ques­tions you should ask dur­ing the eval­u­a­tion process of con­tent author­ing tool. This will save you time and money.

• What type of train­ing are you pro­vid­ing?
• Is it a blended learn­ing (partly online and partly class­room) expe­ri­ence?
• Will you pro­vide train­ing on CD/DVD or other media?
• Do you aim to get your learners cer­ti­fied on a prod­uct, ser­vice, or pro­ce­dure?
• Is a cer­tain soft­ware appli­ca­tion being taught?
• Do you have the resources to sup­port the type of online train­ing you wish to develop and con­duct?
• Do you have graphic design­ers?
• Do you have appro­pri­ate sub­ject mat­ter experts?
• Does the train­ing needs to be refreshed peri­od­i­cally? Say, any­where from 6 months to a year or beyond?
• Do you have resources for ren­di­tion of voice over?
• Do you have video pro­duc­ers?
• Do you have mod­els to ani­mate the con­tent that you want to develop?
• Do you have pro­duc­tion Design­ers?
• What hap­pens after the train­ing has been devel­oped?
• Will any tests be asso­ci­ated with the train­ing changes?
• Will you have the right resources and sup­port in place for any ongo­ing e-leaning con­tent devel­op­ment needs?
• Does the author­ing tool sup­port all mul­ti­me­dia file for­mats which are required by your e-Learning course con­tent?
• What level of inter­ac­tiv­ity is required for the train­ing?
• Sim­u­la­tions and other dynamic learn­ing activ­i­ties are great to have, but are they really appro­pri­ate or needed for the type of Com­puter Based Train­ing that you are devel­op­ing?

Flash has become the stan­dard tool used for many inter­ac­tive e-learning activ­i­ties. Do a rain check to see whether your tools are com­pat­i­ble with Flash.

• How much is bud­geted for the project?
• What things are spe­cific to the type of train­ing and may be com­pro­mised if out­sourced?
• How steep is the learn­ing curve asso­ci­ated with the tools you are think­ing of using for the project?
• What plat­forms will the train­ing be deliv­ered on?
• Does the online train­ing have to work across a com­bi­na­tion of plat­forms such as Win­dows, MAC, Linux or oth­ers?
• Does e-learning con­tent have to work across a vari­ety of browsers?

Total sys­tem cost

It is always best to eval­u­ate any soft­ware by look­ing at the total cost of own­er­ship (TCO). TCO is a finan­cial esti­mate. Its pur­pose is to help con­sumers and enter­prise man­agers deter­mine direct and indi­rect costs of a prod­uct or sys­tem.

The TCO would include the cost of the appli­ca­tion, train­ing, upgrades, main­te­nance, and any other costs asso­ci­ated with the own­er­ship of the prod­uct over its life­time.

Some Sit­u­a­tional Para­me­ters: Be mind­ful that not all tools are appro­pri­ate for a given train­ing deliv­ery method. It is impor­tant to con­sider the con­text in which con­tent author­ing tools will be used. As you gather infor­ma­tion, keep in mind that as long as your com­puter based train­ing (CBT) is founded on good instruc­tional design prin­ci­ples, the inter­ac­tiv­ity pro­duced by the author­ing tool you choose will strengthen the learner’s expe­ri­ence. So con­sider train­ing objec­tives while choos­ing the author­ing tool.

In next part of the series we will take a closer look at some of the pop­u­lar e-Learning Con­tent Author­ing Tools.

There is now compelling evidence that online learning has pipped face-to-face learning at the post. The nose is just ahead though. But this is significant since till now it was felt that the race between online learning and face-to-face learning was a dead heat at best.
A study conducted by U.S. Department of Education Office of Planning, Evaluation, and Policy Development Policy and Program Studies Service has concluded that online learning has surged ahead of face-to-face learning. The report is now in the public domain.

The motivation of this study was: Online learning—for students and for teachers—is one of the fastest growing trends in educational uses of technology. The National Center for Education Statistics (2008) estimated that the number of K-12 public school students enrolling in a technology-based distance education course grew by 65 percent in the two years from 2002-03 to 2004-05. On the basis of a more recent district survey, Picciano and Seaman (2009) estimated that more than a million K–12 students took online courses in school year 2007–08. (Page 12)

The genesis of online learning is distance learning. Distance learning has been around for over a century now. But the advantage of the World Wide Web has caused the online learning to explode.

The study focuses on the two main purposes of online learning:

(a) Learning conducted totally online as a substitute or alternative to face-to-face learning
(b) Online learning components that are combined or blended (sometimes called “hybrid”)
with face-to-face instruction to provide learning enhancement

Findings:
The overall finding of the meta-analysis is that classes with online learning (whether taught completely online or blended) on average produce stronger student learning outcomes than do classes with solely face-to-face instruction. (Page 38)

This is a significant tilt towards online learning. Earlier studies had concluded that online learning is only as effective as face-to-face learning. The second area of study also gave thumbs up to online learning. It said:

Blends of online and face-to-face instruction, on average, had stronger learning outcomes than did face-to-face instruction alone (Page 39)

Clearly, it makes sense for companies to move over to online learning and elearning, where possible. Not only will it cut costs but will also be a substantially better experience both for learners and teachers.

Over the last months we’ve been paying closer attention to e-Learing content creation techniques and content authoring tools and have tried to understand how each of these tools work and how they can benefit other learning content creators. Such techniques/tools are often hard to find much less the methodology to use them. It would worth exploring all these tools in detail. Career Mantra team will cover these in a series of posts.

In these series of articles will help you to understand  the top e-learning authoring tools that can be useful for your upcoming courses. There are many soft wares that can help you to weave learning content  faster and effectively.

First, let us look at the glossary of some e-learning terms; their definitions and descriptions.

Learning Management System(LMS)

Learning management system is an application used to plan, implement and assess learning processes related to online and offline training, administration and performance management.

LMS provides a teacher, trainer or instructor a means by which s/he can create content, deliver content, monitor learners’ participation, and assess student performance. LMS also provide learners with interactive features, such as internal messaging, video conferencing , event/calendar management , discussion forums, and other methods of communication.

In general LMS has its own online content authoring tool as part of the overall system. There are many content authoring tools in the market.Although they call themselves Learning Management System they are  really just front end authoring tools with little or almost no LMS functionalities.  So the bottom line here is that a good Learning Management System should be able to deliver the content created using any content  authoring tool.

Content Authoring Tool

A content authoring tool is a software application used to create a rich learning content typically for delivery on the World Wide Web. Content authoring tools may also create content in other file formats so that content can be delivered on a CD or in other formats for various uses.The package of content authoring tools include HTML, Flash, and other types of e-Learning authoring libraries.

Course Authoring Tool

A course authoring tool is similar to content authoring tool. The only difference in course authoring tool is that it can create a complete  course package while content authoring tools create subject specific online content. Subject specific online content  has less features and functionality than  online course. Of course this also depends on the software used to create the content.

SCORM/AICC compliant

SCORM is an acronym for Sharable Courseware Object Reference Model , which is a set of specifications , when applied to course content, produces small, reusable eLearning objects. A result of the US Department of Defense’s Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) initiative, SCORM-compliant courseware elements are easily merged with other compliant elements to produce a highly modular set of training courses.

AICC stands for the Aviation Industry CBT [Computer-Based Training] Committee, which is an international association of technology-based training professionals that develop training guidelines for the e-Learning industry. They are very few e-Learning content-authoring tools that are fully SCORM/AICC compliant.  The point to be noted is , as long as the content-authoring tool is SCORM/AICC compliant (creates SCORM/AICC compliant courses) and the Learning Management System is SCORM/AICC compliant (works with SCORM/AICC courses), they always  work together seamlessly.

In next part of the series we will take a closer look at the factors to be considered while choosing the content authoring tools.