Secondly, I've been doing some work for a client of mine that has an LMS with some authoring capabilities, trying to compare what they have to offer with what's available elsewhere. To achieve this while comparing apples with apples is nigh on impossible. Everybody's got an authoring tool. Have you? Why on earth not?
I do remember when the situation was a little simpler. First (back in the 60s I think) we had Plato and, to the best of my knowledge, that was it. In the 1980s came TenCore, Wicat, Microtext (in the UK, for the BBC Micro) and (modesty does not preclude me from mentioning) one that I created myself called ProCAL. Of course these all came and went as PCs gradually dominated the market for hardware and Windows took hold. The next generation of authoring tools included a handful of really serious players, notably Authorware (now with Adobe) and Toolbook (now with SumTotal), both still going although not so strongly.
Now, to arrive at a manageable number of alternatives, you have to sub-divide the market into categories:
- Rapid tools (Articulate, Captivate, Atlantic Link) as opposed to whatever the others are called (Authorware, Lectora, etc.). Of course, all authoring tools have always described themselves as quick and easy to use, with absolutely no programming required, but of course we know otherwise.
- Applications you install on you computer (all those mentioned above except Atlantic Link) as opposed to online services (Atlantic Link, Mohive, Alto).
- Tools which create media-rich components (Raptivity, Flash, PowerPoint, Acrobat, Captivate) which can then be inserted into other tools, as opposed to those tools which provide the wrapper and depend on you bringing in the really hot stuff from elsewhere (as with most built-in LMS/LCMS authoring modules).
- Tools for creating interactive tutorials (the bulk) as opposed to those that specialise in producing assessments (QuestionMark), 3D games (Caspian's Thinking Worlds), software simulations (Captivate, Qarbon ViewletBuilder, Camtasia) and scenarios (RapideL Discover, Captivate).
- Tools that generate content that can be viewed on multiple platforms as opposed to tools which are built-in to an LMS/LCMS (Moodle, Blackboard, Saba) and depend on those platforms for delivery of the content.
When confronted by too much choice, consumers choose familiar options. However frustrating it might seem to seasoned instructional designers, those options are unlikely to include many of the illustrious brands listed above. Think Word, PowerPoint, mass market audio and video editors, wikis and other simple content management tools - applications that we use every day and which can be applied with some success in learning contexts. Of course we'll need specialist tools for specialist tasks and perhaps that is the real future for authoring software - not for laying out multi-choice questions but for that category of e-learning that the eLearning Guild likes to call 'immersive learning simulations'.
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