Two situations recently have got me thinking about e-learning authoring tools. Firstly, I've been doing some more work on the script for The 30-minute masters which, if you remember, aims to teach the essentials of instructional design to subject matter experts in no more than 30 minutes. With the script now 1/3 complete and with a session agreed at the eLearning Guild's DevLearn 2007 in San Jose in November, my mind is turning to how I can convert this script into a half-decent piece of e-learning to show all those folks who come along to take a look.

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.

In case you're as confused as me, bear in mind that the information I have provided above is probably not completely accurate, mentions only a small sample of the products out there and is undoubtedly a gross oversimplification. I really can't imagine many learning and development professionals being able to select a suitable tool without the help of a consultant - a positive side-effect in my case, perhaps, but hardly an encouraging situation for all those millions of potential content creators that we'd like to think are waiting in the wings.

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'.