There is a huge demand for online learning in the wake of the global lockdown, and the use eLearning platforms either to facilitate or replace traditional learning models.
While several options are available when it comes to eLearning authoring tools, such as the needs of your audience, whether educational, or business sectors, often comes to play in choosing an effective tool.
So, we've taken the time to compile a comprehensive evaluation of the 3 best eLearning authoring tools, with their advantages and disadvantages, pricing, and the target audience, to make your choice of tools to create amazing courses for eLearning easier.
3 Best eLearning Authoring Tools
As choosing from the myriads of available tools out there can be quite a little overwhelming, we decided to narrow down the list to help you in making a guided decision after proper evaluations.
1. Articulate Storyline
Articulate Storyline is a web authoring software that's primarily used for corporate training and higher educational purposes. It offers an easy course creation tool for creating complex courses for pro eLearning.
It also supports the importation of existing content in form of PowerPoint slides, as well as from previous versions of Storyline, and comes with customizable and built-in templates to create fully interactive, and engaging courses.
The major advantages of Storyline is that courses can be published in HTML5, Flash, and for use with iOS and/or Android apps, and users can import or edit audio, video, and images to incorporate as multimedia objects into their courses. And the cons, the software requires extra training to use.
The pricing for Storyline comes in the forms of annual subscription at $999 for Articulate 360 and $1,299 for Articulate 360 Teams. Though there are discounts if you have Storyline 2 or Studio '13 with unredeemed Platinum Membership Plan (PMP) upgrades.
2. Adobe Captivate
Adobe Captivate is best suitable for corporate and business training purposes, but it is also applicable for education sector, with significant discount available for academics. As eLearning for students is enhanced by the support for collaborative learning, and branching for workflow.
It serves as eLearning toolkit for authoring interactive courses, allowing educators to update information storyboards containing eLearning elements and publish for viewing in the cloud, without the need for any app or additional software. Also, you can import PowerPoint presentations into your eLearning projects.
The major advantages of Adobe Captivate is that courses can be optimized to respond to a number of devices and monitor sizes automatically with relative smart positioning of objects and support for geo-location. And the cons, courses created in latest version, Captivate 9 can't be opened with older versions of the software.
The pricing comes in two subscription options, Adobe Captivate (2019 release) for Business is US$1,299, while for education is US$399, all billed per year.
3. iSpring Suite
This is ideal for authoring eLearning Courses for all educational purposes, and with iSpring Suite, whether you are experienced or a newbie in the world of online authoring, you will find it really resourceful for creating modules for eLearning with ease.
It is a PowerPoint-based authoring toolkit produced by iSpring Solutions that allows you to create slide-based courses, dialog simulations, screencasts, video lectures, and other interactive eLearning materials, with the output courses published mainly in HTML5.
The major advantage of iSpring Suite is the Extensive PowerPoint support, and built-in screen recorder and editor that allow users to create screencasts, which can be inserted into courses or exported as standalone explanatory videos. And the cons, you need to know how PowerPoint works to use the tool, and it is only available for Windows operating system.
And pricing for iSpring Suite varies with the number of licenses, with a single-user license starting at US$697.00 and there are a number of discounts for multi-seat licenses, like for educational and non-profit organizations.
In conclusion, all the above listed authoring tools are great for e-Learning tasks, but ideally, you'll need to further evaluate every one of them to pick up the most suitable tool that will help you to create your eLearning courses.
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