eLearning authoring tools

eLearning Development tools

You’ll notice that, in those six steps, we identified a few key areas of development, namely:

• Graphics
• Animation
• Video
• Audio
• Interactions
• Assessments

For many topic experts, the scripting and gathering of materials comes naturally. You’re an expert in the process, workplace regulation, or software you’re getting ready to train your employees on.

Depicting that visually can be difficult, but there are free eLearning tools that can help you get started.

Free graphics programs and resources

Creating beautiful charts, infographics, or visuals online is easier to do every day, even for people who have no previous design experience. Some of the best free graphics tools include:

• Canva: Create collages, charts, marketing promotions, or infographics with their easy-to-use software. Canva is a graphic design platform, used to create social media graphics, presentations, posters, documents and other visual content. The app already includes templates for users to use. The platform is free to use and offers paid subscriptions like Canva Pro and Canva for Enterprise for additional functionality
• Easel.ly: Design and share visual infographics online. Some people use book length Word documents, others use PowerPoint decks that have thousands of slides and millions of bullet points! At Easelly we use infographics that are both fun to create and engaging to read!

• Gliffy: Create up to five public diagrams, flowcharts, or org charts a month for free. Make UML Diagrams, flowcharts, wireframes and more. Our free diagram software and online diagram tools improve collaboration and communication.
• Google Charts: Turn your data into powerful charts and graphs.Google Charts is an interactive Web service that creates graphical charts from user-supplied information. The user supplies data and a formatting specification expressed in JavaScript embedded in a Web page; in response the service sends an image of the chart.
• Piktochart: Use premade templates and design elements to create your own infographic
• Pixlr: Allows you to edit any photos or graphics for free
• Venngage: Present your data through infographics.Timeline – Process – Statistical – List – Fun Data – Geographic
• Wordle: Create word clouds to illustrate different themes or idea clusters
• Unsplash: Find beautiful freely useable images. Unsplash is a website dedicated to sharing stock photography under the Unsplash license. The website claims over 207,000 contributing photographers and generates more than 17 billion photo impressions per month on their growing library of over 2 million

Free audio software tools

Free audio tools allow you to record segments, and then edit, mix, and download them to use in your custom eLearning course. They include:

• Ardour: Record, edit, and mix your audio files on all Mac or PC devices
• Audacity: Fantastic open-source, cross-platform recording and editing software. Audacity is a free and open-source digital audio editor and recording application software, available for Windows, macOS, Linux, and other Unix-like operating systems
• Voki: Introduce speaking characters into your presentations, with customizable avatars. Voki is a fun tool that students can use for homework, classwork or projects. Customize their appearance and what they say, and share with others!
• vozMe: Turn written text into downloadable spoken mp3s

Free animation and video tools for eLearning

Whether you need to animate steps for using a new software or want to use animations to make your custom eLearning course more powerful, free animation and video software is available. Some of our favorites include:

• Camtasia: Use their drag-and-drop video editing software to finish your videos, or add in special effects, music, or motion graphics. Camtasia is a software suite, created and published by TechSmith, for creating video tutorials and presentations directly via screencast, or via a direct recording plug-in to Microsoft PowerPoint. Audio or other multimedia recordings may be recorded at the same time or added separately from another source
• Screencast-O-Matic: Allows you to record up to 15 minutes of on-screen activities for short tutorials or presentations
• Snagit: Create and edit screenshots or video, or turn them into animated GIFs. Snagit is a screenshot program that captures video display and audio output. Originally for the Microsoft Windows operating systems, recent versions have also been available for macOS, but with fewer features.

Tools to create eLearning interactions and assessments

Surveys, polls, quizzes, and other assessment tools can help you ensure student learning during your course. Great options for getting started include:

• Easy Test Maker: Create multiple-choice, fill-in-the-blank, true-or-false, or short answer test questions
• formsite: Over 100 customizable templates and 40 question types to create surveys, quizzes, and forms. Formsite is a service that enables non-technical users to build professional quality web forms and surveys with no HTML or coding experience.
• Google Forms: Allows you to create a survey with a simple online form with results directly organized into a spreadsheet. Google Forms is a survey administration software included as part of the free, web-based Google Docs Editors suite offered by Google. The service also includes Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Slides, Google Drawings, Google Sites, and Google Keep. Google Forms is only available as a web application
• SurveyMonkey: The world’s leading survey platform, with an easy-to-use interface

Free eLearning authoring tools

A few leading authoring tools provide free options for creating your own custom eLearning course. Many provide all the tools you need to create screens, add graphics or video, include interactions, and ultimately compile your course.

• iSpring: Take your current PowerPoint presentations, add quizzes, and publish directly to your LMS or other content management system. iSpring Suite is a PowerPoint-based authoring toolkit produced by iSpring Solutions that allows users to create slide-based courses, quizzes, dialog simulations, screencasts, video lectures, and other interactive learning materials. The output courses are published in HTML5
• Easygenerator: Their free option allows you to create up to ten courses, with pre-packaged interactions and cloud publishing
• SmartBuilder: Create Flash eLearning courses within their easy-to-use interface. SmartBuilder is the fastest elearning authoring tool for creating serious elearning including scenarios, gamification, branching, assessments and more.
• Udutu: Access templates, assessments, interactions, and SCORM conversion options on their free eLearning platform
• LCDS by Microsoft: Create high-quality, interactive, online courses and Microsoft Silverlight Learning Snacks

If you want to pay extra for more advanced features, Articulate 360 and Adobe Captivate are among the industry-leading authoring tools.

Get help with your employee training

For some, DIYing your own eLearning course won’t be worth the time or effort. Or, you may want an expert to jump on board to help you create a large-scale strategy or pick up certain development tasks. At eSource Technology, we know that creating effective and remarkable eLearning programs takes work. We offer a variety of options to help you with your development tasks, including:

• Full custom development: From instructional design to voice or video talent to final roll-out, we handle it all
• Co-development: We empower you to get much-needed learning solutions out to your workforce by having our staff work as an extension of your team, providing the skills or extra set of hands you need to complete projects faster
• Consulting: From designing one stand-alone module to a complete overhaul of your company’s approach to employee training, we can help
• Technology assistance: Whether you need training, performance support, or new technology to reach your employees, our technology partners can help you meet all of your training goals

If you need help with any part of your employee training, get in touch with our team.

Contact us:

eSource Technology, 17 01, Kapitan Square, Buckingham Street, 10200 George Town, Penang, Malaysia.

Call : (006) 012-4377440

Email : esourcetechnology@gmail.com

Website :  www.esource-malaysia.com

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