With my head up in the clouds: E-Learning Authoring Tools
Cloud hosting has been a game changer for the maintenance and management of IT infrastructure. Companies such as Acquia and Pantheon allow professional web hosting with less personnel resources and easy scalability. Video streaming platforms such as Warpwire and Panopto are a must-have for most campuses to deliver audiovisual material. Many learning management systems come with cloud hosting contracts. The cloud application package Office 365 offers the perfect bundled infrastructure for the remote office staff. Why not apply the same principles to e-learning authoring? This post reviews two cloud hosted authoring tools.
Dominknow
Pricing: $997 /year for one author license
URL: https://www.dominknow.com/
You can test dominknow in a full-featured two week free trial. Dominknow has two options for creating an e-learning module: (1) from scratch which is the responsive flow design or by importing a PowerPoint to classic, slide based player, which is the claro option. The claro design option is very similar to working in PowerPoint. The player has a fixed layout, but is viewable on mobile devices. In contrast, the flow design dimensions are fully responsive and will change based on the width of the screen you are opening it on. You can create longer pages within the viewer. Since flow is grid based it is both more complicated and more flexible than claro.
To help the designer get started, flow offers multiple templates to choose from. Once you pick your template, you are able to start creating your content The editor allows to add slides with multiple kinds of layouts to choose from, as well as interactive elements such as questions to engage the audience. You are able to export your work towards a learning management system as a SCORM package or through web links.
IsEazy
Pricing: $844 /year for one author license
URL: https://iseazy.com/
isEazy offers a free license with limited features that can be used it for up to 3 projects. The tool has two options for creating content: (1) a course template that is for content with more than 20 slides and an ‘express course’, which has a maximum of 20 slides. Furthermore, the authoring environment offers different templates that can be further customized by adjusting the color scheme. The isEazy workplace provides several functions such as editing, distribution, configuration and analytics.
About our tester:
Pooja Patel is a senior at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is pursuing a degree is B.A. Economics and minor is Statistics and Analytics. Pooja enjoys dancing and traveling in her free time.
