Features to look for in an authoring tool before buying it

There are various rapid-learning authoring tools on the market, and each has its own set of capabilities. If you intend to invest in a tool like that, you may be unsure which one is best for your company. To discover what works best for you, your authoring tools must offer a few fundamental features that allow you to create material quickly and cost-effectively. 

Here are some important features of an authoring tool:

User-friendly interface

User-friendly interfaces are critical to the success of any product, tool, or system. An authoring tool’s users will not be able to get the most from it if the interface is difficult to use. A lack of familiarity with the instrument means that its use is restricted. To get the team up and running with the authoring tool, you must train them. Invest in an authoring tool with a user-friendly interface, such as Articulate 360, so that everyone can get up and running quickly. Thus, your company may fully utilise this platform and its staff to generate valuable course material.

Templates

Templates are a great way to standardise the look and feel of your course materials. Learners are less likely to focus on the design and more likely to concentrate on the course material if the design is consistent. Designing with your brand’s colours and language in mind will go a long way toward establishing a strong sense of identity. The consistent design language is very beneficial when building many courses for the same audience. It’s common for writing software to provide at least a few pre-designed courses. On the other hand, the greatest ones let designers and businesses construct their own bespoke templates. Some of the most requested tool-authoring capabilities include these and the option to import prebuilt themes from other programmes like PowerPoint. 

Multiple languages are translated almost automatically

It’s a waste of time and effort to translate a course’s material into many languages without the right tools. Each element’s text must be extracted, translated, and returned to a new version. This process can take days to complete. There is a pressing need for rapid, scalable solutions that make it easy for the entire team to develop online content, no matter what their native language might be. A decent content translation system can save you thousands of dollars a year.

Customizable assessments

The most entertaining ways to learn for the modern learner are through quizzes and other gamified materials. Because of this, creating these questions from scratch can take a long time. You don’t have to do the work with rapid eLearning authoring tools. When creating quizzes with these tools, you can access a library of relevant questions that may be incorporated into the quizzes. An effective writing tool will always be able to tailor assessments to the specific learning demands of your staff. Selecting a writing tool with templates and a library, as well as the ability to alter them, is a good starting point for finding the perfect tool.

Collaboration Capabilities

Many companies use e-learning to provide a consistent training experience for their distributed workforce. If the rest of your team is spread, even your instructional designers are likely working from multiple locations. This may not be true, but if your learners have the freedom to study from anywhere and at any time, it is only reasonable that your instructional designers are treated the same.

An authoring tool that facilitates communication and cooperation can help you achieve this goal. Regarding collaboration, the benefits go far beyond simply allowing your designers to work from their favourite coffee shop. You can hire the best instructional designers worldwide to work on your course content, or you can assist your present designers in connecting with subject matter experts in a different city using collaborative capabilities.

Conclusion

In the long run, eLearning authoring tools might be an excellent investment because they will meet or exceed your expectations and objectives. Buying a reliable authoring tool might be difficult if you don’t know what to search for in the first place. These five features can help you get started. However, more aspects can be examined as different organizations have distinct requirements to be met.