Today, fast e-learning is a fairly common way of organizing learning. It brings the benefits of less cash outlay and reduced time to create courses and organize classes.
This is very convenient in situations where a student or an employee of a business company needs to receive certain information in a short period of time. For example, if a new employee is hired or if the company begins to provide new services, information about which must be quickly provided to staff.
For this method of learning, special rapid elearning authoring tools are used. They allow people who do not understand programming in multimedia to create informative and visually beautiful courses for effective and interesting classes. All this is possible due to the functionality of these systems, which is as simple and intuitive as possible, and also allows you to quickly and easily design productive courses.
There is a wide variety of free elearning authoring tools on the market, each with its own advantages and disadvantages. However, the most effective of them have approximately the same basic functionality. This includes special media libraries, various templates and the ability to quickly create interactive.
Let’s take a look at the popular types of e-learning course authoring tools that exist on the distance education market today.
- PowerPoint add-ins
The meaning of this technology is that special modules are added to PowerPoint, which are displayed on the functional ribbon at the top of the program itself. These tools make it possible to create effective and interesting courses using PowerPoint addins. Their functionality is intuitive, so you can quickly figure out what works and how. This is very handy if you need to start creating a course as soon as possible. However, this technology has a certain disadvantage. This lack of power and functionality. Yes, such a system is great for designing a simple course for students, but it cannot be used to make a truly powerful interactive educational program. It is also a minus that such lessons usually cannot be viewed from a smartphone, it is recommended to do this from a computer. This moment creates certain inconveniences for many people.
- Course creation software that is installed on a computer
Such technologies have a huge potential and allow you to create really complex and effective educational programs with elements of interactive, animation and programming. With their help, you can edit videos and images, create tests and quizzes, as well as gamify your courses. This will make it possible to involve people in the learning process as best as possible and to interest them. However, these technologies also have disadvantages. For example, their functionality is difficult to understand, so it will take a lot of time to figure it out. This suggests that creating a course as quickly as possible will not work. It is also difficult to install such tools on a computer before proceeding to work with them. Plus, it’s worth mentioning that not all tools allow you to view created content on a smartphone or tablet.
- Cloud-based content development tools
This technology is very convenient, due to the fact that you do not need to install software on your computer. You just need to open any browser and access the program of your choice, which is very quick and easy. Such tools have wide functionality, which is constantly updated, offering more and more new features. Their other plus is that they support the ability to work on content for several people at the same time. This allows you to create a course faster and make it more efficient. Also, due to the fact that content is created in the cloud, it can be easily and quickly distributed using modern technologies. Such programs have the function of adaptive design, which allows you to easily view courses on any smartphone and tablet. Cloud-based tools are often referred to as the best e-learning software today because of their convenience and functionality.
If you’re creating your own eLearning content, think about what your goals are. This will help you determine which type of software is best for you. Each of them has its advantages and disadvantages, but they are all as effective and efficient for specific tasks.
