The Lure of Authoring Tools

Over the last three years, the rush to adopt online training as a miracle cure for every learning need has finally matured into a more balanced perspective. Human capital leaders now recognize the limitations of online training unless it is deployed in a proper context. In a parallel trend, blended learning and instructor-led training have regained credibility because of their proven value in particular learning situations.

The key to maximizing online training, as with any learning tactic, lies in tying it to an overall workforce effectiveness strategy that aligns learning goals with business goals.

The Learning Experience
Central to an effective learning experience is learning content. The major vendors of quality off-the-shelf content provide a vast library of ready-to-use e-Learning courses and constantly improving libraries. In addition, providers who can custom build courseware are available to create content to customer specifications. These sources are leveraged by most learning organizations.

Given the capabilities of properly utilized online learning, what might be the strategic value of a company authoring its own courses or creating its own simulations?

Authoring Tools Offer Choice, Efficiency
Most organizations initiate their online learning programs by purchasing off-the-shelf or custom-built content. Off-the-shelf products provide the benefit of standardized learning content and swift implementation, but are not necessarily the best fit with a company's learning needs. Custom-built products provide the benefit of company-specific courseware, but may be costly to purchase and maintain.

After living with these trade-offs for a while, large learning organizations may begin to seek more complete solutions that combine speed of course creation with customized content at a reduced cost. Consider how remarkably easy it has become to create and publish exceptional online courses, thanks to authoring tools.

• Assembling multimedia-based courses no longer requires rare expertise. Learning organizations can now create engaging, interactive online courses by using text, graphics, audio, video, animation and application simulations
• While multimedia courses may look sophisticated from the learners' standpoint, authoring tools should not require page design or programming experience for course creators.
• A powerful authoring tool may take a course developer only a few days or less to master.
• E-learning content is customized by a company's internal subject matter experts, who can readily match specific learning technologies with IT requirements.
• Courses or course components are publishable for online use as well as in MS Word format or CDs, spreading the authoring cost over multiple environments while making the content more widely available.
• Updates of e-Learning courses usually occur faster, more frequently and with less expense if in-house authoring expertise is applied for version management and control.

Familiarity Breeds Success
An irony of authoring tools' popularity is that they have not generated new technologies so much as they have combined familiar, user-friendly features in unique ways. For example, on-screen wizards were introduced long ago as instructional guides for end-users, but authoring tools use them to steer course developers as they edit and publish e-Learning sessions. In other instances, authoring tools often provide numerous course templates with well-established toolbar icons, accelerating both the course creation process and learners' acclimation to the online training environment.

The most surprising element of authoring tools, however, may be their modest requirements for users. A specific browser and a minimal bandwidth can get most course developers on their way, while learners generally need only a limited number of plug-ins for audio and video. Learners' comfort zones are further enhanced when they can use either a computer keyboard or mouse clicks to navigate through an online course.

Nothing, however, has helped spread online learning like the standards and specifications associated with sharable content objects (SCOs), which are part of the SCORM initiative (sharable content object reference model). Because SCOs share a common technical framework, they can be reused in any conforming learning management system (LMS).

For learning organizations, SCOs help drive cumulative efficiencies in content development and distribution. They can be imported from external content or created in-house, and then applied in multiple ways such as online courses, help systems or email attachments. In fact, learning architects now play an important role in planning and managing SCOs for reuse. While SCORM requirements can give course developers headaches, they have succeeded in democratizing the online course creation process, which is a win for organizations of all sizes.

Tracking Online Learning
The broad capabilities of authoring tools and their ease of use can create such a stir among learning experts and course developers that they lose their strategic focus. Even the best authoring tools cannot be maximized unless learner progress can be tracked; otherwise the alignment of learning goals with business objectives cannot be confirmed. While many authoring tools can be purchased as stand-alone products, their effectiveness increases dramatically when used in conjunction with a superior learning management system that integrates learning data with competency and performance management functionalities. A solid LMS automates and sustains accountability for learning throughout an enterprise, which helps companies incorporate the discipline needed to achieve workforce effectiveness.

Given the advantages of authoring tools, can organizations justify use of off-the-shelf and custom-built online learning? Certainly. As recent events in human capital development demonstrate, the right choice is the strategically oriented one. And with the range of business strategies in play, organizations will continue to require multiple sources for learning content.

Joseph F. Ellis Jr. is the president and CEO of TEDS Inc.; (276) 783-6991; Internet: teds.com.