Looking for e-learning software or e-learning authoring tools, can be a pretty time-consuming process. There are many tools out there, and nowadays most of them are pretty sophisticated. 

Apart from the obvious criteria of budget, it can be hard to know how to choose. As I noted in a previous post, focusing relentlessly on feature comparison of selected tools is not necessarily going to get you anything other than a headache!

Let’s be clear, understanding the features and capabilities of the authoring tool you ultimately choose is a very important part of the selection process; but it’s not the only part.

Here are some more tips for avoiding ‘feature-itis’. They apply to both businesses and individuals and are particularly pertinent to anyone looking at using e-learning software for the first time.

1. Consider who in the organisation will be using the software

I’ve already mentioned that most e-learning authoring tools are pretty sophisticated and many offer a very similar feature set. But not all are created equal when it comes to user interface and general ease-of-use.

I won’t name names but I can think of several tools which all more or less offer the same features. Yet the experience of  using them can be like the difference between night and day.

Why is this important? If your users are hard-core techies who work out how to use whatever you throw at them, this isn’t a particular issue (although in my experience even hard-core techies appreciate a good user interface).

But if you r users are less technically adept, a poorly designed piece of development software could dramatically slow development, de-motivate users and cost you a good deal of extra time and money in remedial coaching and training. 

2. Know your initial instructional design capabilities

Everyone in the e-learning and training world claims to be an expert in instructional design. Yet if this were true, we’d only ever attend fantastically useful training courses or take brilliantly developed e-learning modules.

The reality is very different.

We’ve all been on (or taken) far too many mediocre courses and e-learning modules. So honestly, how good are your instructional design skills? Are you truly original, creative and forward-thinking and, therefore, looking for software that will enable you to push the envelope?

Or are you a little unsure of what e-learning development requires from you and, therefore, need software that in the early stages of use might provide a bit of structure or support before you spread your instructional design wings and get more creative?

Looking for help using Articulate Storyline? Check out our available course options.

There are plenty of websites and articles providing advice about how to assess and choose an e-learning authoring tool that’s right for you, your team or your organisation.

I’ve looked at many of them. One thing I've noticed time and time again? They only focus on comparing the software features of selected tools. Understanding the features and capabilities of the authoring tool you ultimately choose is hugely important; but it’s not the only consideration.

It’s easy to lose sight of the bigger picture. What about the people? What about the content you want to write and publish? These are all important elements that play a pivotal role in the development of e-learning. Elements that are easily forgotten in the rush to understand the detail of what a piece of software can or can’t do.

Leaving aside feature comparison, there are 3 broad areas you might want to focus on when you assess and select authoring tools: people and costs; content, design and quality; publication and distribution. In this blog post, I’ll cover just the first of these three points.

People and costs

A good starting point, clearly. Authoring tools vary so greatly in cost, that you need to be clear about what your limits are from the outset. At the very bottom end of the scale, you could go free or spend under a £100 on a single copy of a desktop tool; at the high end you could pay as much as £100,000 a year for a collaborative system available to hundreds of people.

Whatever your starting budget, is there some flexibility in what you can spend? I ask this because as you assess your requirements you may find you need something more than your original budget can handle. Equally, you could start off thinking you’ll need something sophisticated and expensive, only to discover less is more.

Some authoring tools are available by annual subscription (as opposed to owning the software outright). As a rule of thumb, subscription models tend to be more attractive to teams with bigger budgets, while standalone desktop tools are more attractive to individuals and small teams. There are pros and cons to both models but both are valid ways of getting hold of what you need.

Who's involved? This is a critical question. You need to take a couple of things into account. First, what job roles will be included as part of your team. Will it just be just instructional designers or will you have a range of other roles, and therefore, skills? 

Will the people using the tool be adept at learning it or are they going to need quite a lot of training and coaching? Are they the kind of people who embrace change and new ways of working or will there be an uphill struggle to get them involved? Finally, will you have the resource and budget to provide technical support to your team if needed?

Will people developing the learning be experts in the subject matter or will they need to get this information from someone else? Do they have the right skills to do this? If they are the SMEs will you be in danger of getting a brain dump? In other words, do they understand the importance of audience analysis and shaping their content around the audience, rather than simply telling the audience everything they know?

Linked to this is the question of instructional design. Even if your SMEs are good at scoping content for their intended audience, do they understand the importance of good instructional design and the specific do’s and don’ts that apply to e-learning?

If you are new to e-learning, you may have people brilliant at developing classroom courses, but no real experience of instructional design for e-learning. Some of their existing instructional design skills will be transferable, but their existing knowledge alone probably won’t be enough.

Go round any learning technology-focused trade show or exhibition and you  won't be able to move for them. Who am I talking about? The sharp-suited sales people hanging around on those flashy, expensive stands, of course. 

These are the people promoting their latest rapid e-learning application. You know, the one that's going to help you build e-learning courses in no time at all, with no required programming. All your e-learning problems will be solved. All your Christmases will come at once.

When money's tight and everyone is finding it harder to make a buck, the promise of rapid e-learning is a deeply attractive one. Especially if you are the stressed L&D professional constantly trying to achieve more for less.

But what is rapid e-learning exactly? Is it an urban myth? And if it does exist, does it actually improve learning and performance? 

Put a bunch of e-learning practitioners together in a room and I'm not convinced they'd be able to come up with a definition of rapid e-learning they could all agree with. But let's live dangerously and see what we can come up with here.

For some people rapid e-learning is all about the software. In a software-driven paradigm, it's all about tools that allow just about anyone to create and publish e-learning courses with little or no programming knowledge. It's about the change from the early days of e-learning when you needed significant programming skills to achieve anything of worth.

For others, rapid e-learning is defined by the ease of the production process. In this view of rapid e-learning, just one or two people can wear many hats. Gone are the days of huge development teams and endless production cycles.

Whatever your definition, rapid e-learning needs an authoring tool of some description. And broadly speaking, development tools fall into two broad categories: free-form and form-based.

Free form: the name gives it away, really. Free form tools start with a blank screen which allows the e-learning author to create a structure s/he wants. Inevitably, this still requires some setting-up and choosing functionality.

Form-based: in a form-based authoring tool, the software does pretty much everything. All you have to do is add the content. The negative here, of course, is the forms. They only give you what they are designed to. If you want anything outside of this, you are back to needing programming skills.

But whatever tool you use (whether you consider it 'rapid' or not), there's no getting away from one central question: Just because you can create a course rapidly, should you? And one central problem: not everyone given an authoring tool (and the training to operate it) is going to develop a great course. In fact many will (and have) built truly awful ones.

The answer to the 'should you' question has to be answered by individual organisations. Only people in that organisation can best work out if e-learning is really the most suitable solution for them.

In answer to the second point, I'd say this. When the technology is new and exciting, all the focus is on the technology. This has been the problem with e-learning for too long now. 

In the software-driven paradigm I mentioned earlier, rapid e-learning was meant to democratise development. In many cases, all it did was empower lots of people to create online slideshows with little or no value or effectiveness. 

But now we seem to be moving into an era when technology is evolving again. It probably won't be that long before almost no programming skills are required to create sophisticated e-learning

For me, this moment can't come fast enough.  This could be the moment when we can finally shift from what I call 'point and click' thinking to instructional design thinking. Finally we can shift the focus to where it's needed to be all along:  not about how to programme, but about how to build better courses and more effective learning experiences.

If Articulate Storyline is your authoring tool and you need some training for yourself or your team, take a look at our in-house and publicly scheduled training options.

Not all e-learning is created equal, that's for sure. If you are a 'big guy' with a team of designers and developers and a fairly sizeable budget, the e-learning you produce will look markedly different from the courses produced by a team of two with an authoring tool and not much else.

If you're the team of two (and that's much more typical that you'd imagine), it might not feel ideal. But, in fact, with good instructional design approaches, the team of two are just as capable of producing really effective e-learning as the big guy.

(And let's not forget, the big guys get so distracted by all the clever things they can do, they frequently end up creating a flashy looking course that seems impressive, but is largely ineffective).

Regardless of your available resources or the size of your team, the most important question for everyone developing e-learning - what are you wanting to achieve with your course?

Once again, not all courses are created equal. If you need to make a big difference to some aspect of your organisation's performance, the kind of course you create will need to be different from the one that is just updating people on changes to their working conditions.

The former is about changing behaviour and thinking. The latter is about sharing information. Which brings us to that all-important distinction that many e-learning courses fail to make: inform or perform.

It seems like a simple enough distinction but it's one that, in my experience, is largely forgotten or side-stepped. And there's good reason for this. Because if your e-learning really, truly needs to focus on perform, it raises a whole host of difficulties. 

Creating perform e-learning is a real challenge. Thinking of ways to develop practice activities that move beyond predictable multiple-choice and true-false questions is hard. Especially hard with a basic authoring tool - but still problematic even with a high-end one

And if your development tool really is basic, your budget and resources really limited and your timelines ridiculously short, then the challenge you face is even greater still.

No surprise then that many people just throw in the towel at this point and go the conventional route - creating boring slides of content with a few tests and quizzes added along the way.

If you then throw into the mix, subject matter experts with no previous experience of developing e-learning, deathly dull, page-turners are almost inevitable.

A conventional approach might tick some boxes somewhere and satisfy the bean counters, but it's pretty much a disaster for the learners. Time and again, they are desperately in need of a course which helps them improve their performance, but they end up with something that just gives them lots of information. 

So when you know your focus needs to be on perform, but you are tempted to just inform, you really need some kind of instructional design framework to guide you through. 

A simple framework can shift you away from the default  present-then-test approach that most people take and that most authoring tools push you towards. It can focus you in a different, more task-focused direction. 

Even if you are stuck with a very basic authoring tool, an instructional design framework can help you think imaginatively about how to harness the capabilities of your authoring tool to create more authentic, job-realistic practice activities.

An instructional design framework isn't like a magic wand that you can wave at your content and your learners to miraculously solve all your e-learning problems. Applying a framework successfully requires some effort. You'll be finding ways to balance the needs of the learners against the limitations of your authoring tool, your own skills and available resources. 

You'll almost certainly pursue a few ideas that lead nowhere. And you'll probably experience a few false 'eureka' moments. But it's almost always worth it. Because in the end, the result is a more-effective, more learner-centred approach. 

If you'd like to find out more about a simple but highly effective instructional design framework you can apply to your e-learning, take a look at our Effective E-Learning Toolkit.

This Articulate Storyline training blog post, fouses on Storyline’s freeform interactions.

But you may not know that totally flexible versions of these interactions are also available – and only a mouse click away.

These flexible freeform interactions completely transform your ability to create really authentic, context sensitive activities that are a world away from their pre-formatted siblings.

And knowing about these freeform interactions is crucial if you want to produce more authentic, task-based e-learning. Why? Because, by definition, the pre-formatted variety can only ever be about an abstract style of practice activity.

By contrast, freeform interactions are only about the functionality. It’s entirely up to you how you apply that functionality. In other words, you have complete freedom in how your interaction looks and what skills or knowledge it gets your learners to practice.

Suddenly (provided you are prepared to think a bit differently about your e-learning) you can use the interactions’ functionality to make your practice activity seem authentic and meaningful to your learners.

And by the way, if you need some help in thinking differently about your e-learning, check out a free 12 page boredom-busting e-learning guide here.

Freeform interaction benefits

So what about other benefits of using freeform interactions? Crucially, they allow you start with the instructional idea.

What is it you ideally want to create to help your learners get authentic practice in the skills you are teaching?

You can sketch the idea out, share it with others, get their feedback and then refine it a bit. Only then do you need to think about which of the interaction type will best help you to achieve your goal.

This is in complete contrast to the pre-formatted variety of interaction, where you are simply having to fit your content into a pre-existing approach, format and layout. Little or no creativity, authenticity or context. Highly abstract for the learners. Very dry. Extremely predictable.

Using freeform interactions: in summary

Just to recap, you start with your idea. Sketch it out and (where possible) share this with your colleagues and some candidate learners to get feedback and refine the idea.

Create the idea either as a standard Storyline slide or in an external tool such as PowerPoint and then import the content into Storyline.

With your slide all ready to go, choose the Freeform Interactions button in the XX menu. From the list that of interactions available, choose the one suitable for your needs.

Set the interaction’s functionality as required for your activity. Remember you van toggle between the slide view and the interaction’s back end form view as much as you need.

Once all the settings are complete, test your interaction.

So in summary, freeform interactions give you all the kind of e-learning interactions you know and love already – they simply provide you with a powerful, new way to apply them to your learning

This article first appeared on the Training Zone website.

In the previous Articulate Storylline training blog post, I explained what Storyline variables are and why they are so important. I also wrote about the three types of variables available for you to use.

In this blog post, there's a video which takes a look at an example of creating one of these three types of variables – a text variable: 

In summary, then, variables give you the power and flexibility to start thinking about how you can link you design across an entire course and break free of the restrictions of just designing on a slide-by-slide basis.

This video was first published as part of an article on the Training Zone website.

In some ways, this is not surprising. They are invisible to the learners (so don’t make for very glossy website visuals). They are a little bit abstract (not an easy thing for light and fluffy marketing types to get their heads around). And learning to use them takes a bit of concentration and effort (not exactly a great sell if you’re trying to persuade prospective clients that creating e-learning is quick and easy).

Which is a pity. Because one of Storyline’s greatest assets barely gets a mention most of the time.

Why variables are so important

So what are these things called variables? Before I explain that it’s worth mentioning why they might be so spectacularly useful and important.

 Most of what people focus on when they are creating e-learning with Storyline happens at slide level.

 In other words, you are using tools and features to control elements on a specific, individual slide. Of course, this is really important. The more functionality and control you have over what happens on an individual slide (or one of its layers) the better.

But imagine if you want to control what happens between slides. What about if your instructional design thinking is moving beyond a slide-by-slide focus. What about if you want to design your course in such a way that what a learner does on slide 5 has an impact on what they can do or what they can see on slide 25, for example?

This is where variables come into their own. Because variables operate at a global level within your Storyline course. They are available to you at any point in your course from any slide. 

Variables explained

So what are they exactly? Well, first of all, there are three types: text; number and true/ false. Think of the first two as containers and the third as a switch you can flick on and off.

As the name suggests, text variables allow you to store and retrieve a piece of text the learners type into it. Number variables allow you to store and retrieve a number or changing numbers that are relevant to your course. True/False variables can be set to equal one of two different values. It will come as no great shock to discover that the values you can switch between are (you guessed it) true and false!

If this is all still a bit, too conceptual for you, let’s take a look at a simple example of how you might use each one. 

Text variables in action

Let’s start with text variables. We all love it when something is “all about us”. Making something about us – personalisation – always goes down well. This is just as true for a piece of learning as for anything.

So a text variable is a great way to personalise your piece of learning. First you create your text variable and give it a name. At the start of a course, you can ask learners to type their name into a special text field. This automatically stores whatever name they type in the field inside the text variable you created.

While the course is running, this piece of text (in this example, the learners’ name) is available to you at any time on any slide – you just need to retrieve it.

So, for example, instead of an instruction on a screen saying, “Please select the best response”, it could say “Debbie, please select the best response” (assuming Debbie was the learner’s name).

When you create the text box with this instruction in it, you would just make sure you insert the name of your text variable at the start of the sentence. This way, you are telling Storyline to retrieve what’s stored in that variable and display it at the start of the sentence. 

This means you could pepper your course with personalised references to the learner using the learner name stored in the variable. Note that once the course is finished, the name stored in the variable is lost, so if the learner returned to the course a second time, they would have to type their name again at the very beginning. 

Number variables in action

Similarly, number variables can store a number, retrieve it and display it at any point. You can also add, subtract, divide and multiply any numbers stored in your number variable.

So you might, for example, want to keep track of the number of times a learner clicks on a particular button on a slide and when they reach a pre-defined number of clicks either show them a specific piece of content on that slide or take them to another slide. 

True/false variables in action

Finally, as previously mentioned, true/false variables act as a kind of switch. You can choose to start the ‘switch’ at either true or false. When the learner does something (like click on a button) you could set their action to flick the ‘switch’ to the opposite of its starting point (i.e. from false to true or from true to false).

When the learner reaches a slide later in the course, you might decide to show one piece of content on the slide if the variable ‘switch’ is set to false and a different piece of content if the variable ‘switch’ has been flicked to true.

In conclusion

In summary, then, variables give you the power and flexibility to start thinking about how you can link you design across an entire course and break free of the restrictions of just designing on a slide-by-slide basis.

This article was first published on the Training Zone website.

In the previous post on this blog about Articulate Storyline training, I wrote about Storyline masters and layouts, their uses and how they are different from templates.

There's also a short video to help explain the concept.

Below you can watch another short video showing masters and layouts in action:

If you'd like to watch more short videos providing training on Articulate's Storyline application, go to our YouTube channel.

This video first appeared as part of an article on the Training Zone  website.

Many people are familiar with the idea of a software template. This is a great way of providing some pre-existing structure for the creation of documents, PowerPoint presentations or pieces of e-learning.

And like many authoring tools, Storyline has template functionality, allowing you to create a high degree of consistency in how your courses look and function. In short, templates get plenty of attention – for very good reasons. 

However, software features that get lots of attention aren’t necessarily the only (or the best) way to achieve your goals. Many people using templates might be better off using a Storyline feature which tends to be overshadowed by templates: namely masters and layouts. 

Spot the difference

So what’s the difference between the two features and why would you bother with masters and layouts when you’ve already got templates to help you.

The key thing to remember about a Storyline template? It’s a way to save and share ALL elements of a Storyline project. When you decide to save a project (large or small) as a template, absolutely every element of that project is saved within the template – not only content, but also things like triggers, navigation, variables etc.

So you would use a template when you want to save the exact structure and functionality of your project. When you want to lock-down design and restrict flexibility. When you want to provide a complete course blueprint that others can work from. In short, templates are an easy and robust way of sharing a complete project and all its elements.

But what about if you like the idea of being able to create some time-saving consistency, but still need a reasonable degree of flexibility in how you create and populate slides within your project.

If this sounds like your goal, then masters and layouts may well be a better option for you than a template.

Masters and layouts explained

You’ve probably heard of a master slide and may already be clear about it’s function. But its likely you’ll be less clear about layouts and their function. So before we go any further here’s a quick video for you to watch explaining exactly what masters and layouts are all about. 

As you will have gathered from the video above, a master slide and its associated layouts provide an easy way to consistently set the placement of slide content and then apply it to selected slides within your course.

Let’s just take a minute to review masters slides first, followed by layouts

All about master slides

Master slides are great for any global content that needs to appear on every slide in your course. A master slide can save you going through your course and manually putting the same pieces of content onto every slide. And because the content on a master slide is managed centrally, the placement of that content will be precise and consistent throughout your course.

So master slides are extremely useful, but a little bit limiting. The reason for this? There is probably not that much identical content that will need to appear on every single slide of your course.

However, it’s quite likely that you will have quite a bit of identical content that does need to appear on certain individual slides, say, or all the slides in a specific scene. 

All about layouts

That’s why you can add layouts below your master slide. The real power of the master slide comes with its associated layouts. Layouts give you targeted control over and flexibility with the content that needs to appear on a given individual slide or slides in a scene.

It should come as no surprise, then that planning is the key to success with both masters and layouts. To get their real benefit, you need to have your course well planned out in advance, so you are clear from the word go which pieces of content will consistently need to appear where.

Some extra points to remember

There are a couple of other important points to make here. The first is that masters and layouts are not just about the consistent placement of content. You can also add triggers to the content on your masters and layouts making this functionality available on selected slides as well.

The second point is about the flexibility I mentioned earlier. Even when you have applied a master or layout to a slide, you can still add more content, triggers or layers to that individual slide.

So you’ll often end up with individual slides which are a flexible combination of preformatted content and triggers drawn from a master and its layouts and content and triggers which are specific to just that individual slide.

In summary, if what you need is flexibility and creativity and not the locked-down, restrictive approach that templates are designed to achieve, then masters and layouts are likely to be for you.

This article first appeared on the Training Zone website.