Blog : Course Creation Tools

Tool: Elucidat

Website: www.elucidat.com

Rating: 

Elucidat is an eLearning authoring tool that features a custom theme builder, pre-made templates, collaboration tools, and a user-friendly design interface. It focuses on HTML5 course creation, and gives eLearning professionals the opportunity to develop online learning materials that load quickly and run on any browser or mobile device.

Usage

This application offers such as Collaboration Tools which is software features with a built-in review and commenting platform that allows you to provide feedback and communicate with members of your learning team. It allows for quick Deployment by allowing educators to publish their eLearning course online or export it to existing LMS. Elucidat supports SCORM, MOOC, and Tin Can. They also feature built-in hosting, which gives you the ability to immediately share your courses online, thanks to their Elucidat Rapid Release system. It also offers analytic features, Elucidat offers built-in learner analytics that you can use to track learner progress, identify strengths and weaknesses, and gain insight into the effectiveness of the eLearning course design.  It has an extensive image library so educators gain access to over 25,000 e-learning Art images, which includes cut-outs, graphics, and a wide variety of other learning resources. You can even manage your own images within the program, in order to keep all of your eLearning design elements in one place. Finally, it offers gamification tools, like badges and points, and supports content that is non-linear. One of the best things about Elucidat is that it’s ideally suited for new and experienced eLearning professionals. If you’ve never worked with an eLearning authoring tool before or are relatively new to eLearning course design, you can use their premade themes and templates to design effective online courses. You simply input your data into the template and make minor adjustments to suit the needs of your learners.

Review

“The simple, yet powerful authoring interface, collaboration, analytics and Tin Can API features of Elucidat have been a great fit for PepsiCo and several others of our enterprise clients. We loved the authoring tool and platform so much we became a reseller partner!”
Scott Matthews, CEO, Learning Evolution

Tool Evaluation

Tool: UDUTU

Website: www.UDUTU.com

Rating: 

UDUTU allows educators to create/use courses as well as to deploy them and measure the learning experience. As content can be easily adapted from several media formats  (MP4, PDF, PPT, …), existing material can be used meaning that educators do not have to build their content form scratch.  An internet connection and an account are needed in order to use it. However, since it is a web application it does not require any installation.

Usage

UDUTU offers an easy-to-use tool that can be utilized by educators without having to involve IT specialists.  Using this tool, multimedia can be easily integrated into online courses making them more dynamic and engaging for students.
Anyone can create and manage effective online content with UDUTU. In fact, it is especially useful for creating quizzes and surveys directly. Furthermore, it provides various other Course Authoring and Learning Management System features such as hosted course tracking. For example, participants can host their own courses for a fee, or they can create the course for free using UDUTU Course Authoring Tool and then extract it to be hosted on UDUTU LMS. UDUTU offers different levels of membership each one with different price and features. There is the free version, GURU $19.00/mo, GURU PRO $39.00/mo and GURU MASTER $25K/one time fee.

Review

UDUTU offers a completely free online authoring tool and has its own LMS (as well as other services). Educators can use this tool in order to create and export their courses and later host them in their own server or LMS.
In order to represent different groups or topics, UDUTU uses several folders that allow its users to organize their information in a flexible way. Educators can also create assessments screens, which include multiple choice, order the steps, phrase matching and more. Overall, this tool allows educators to create engaging content for their students regardless of the size of their classes.

Tool Evaluation

Tool: Udemy

Website: www.udemy.com

Rating: 

Udemy is a platform or marketplace for online learning. It provides a platform for experts of any kind to create courses, which can be offered to the public, either at no charge or for a tuition fee. Therefore provides tools, which enable users to create a course, promote it and earn money from student tuition charges.

Usage

Using Udemy’s course development tools users can upload video, PowerPoint presentation, PDFs, audio, zip files and live classes to create courses. Instructors can also engage and interact with users via online discussion boards.
Courses are offered across a breadth of categories, including business and entrepreneurship, academics, the arts, health and fitness, language, music and technology. Also available is Udemy for Business, enabling businesses access to a targeted  suite of over 1 000 training courses on topics from digital marketing tactics to office productivity, design, management, programming, and more.

Review

Pros
– Creating courses is free
– Large number of courses, in many languages
– Relatively easy to use. Search course tool bar helps finding courses
Cons
– Price of courses is not necessarily related to their quality
– Reviews of courses not very trustworthy

Tool Evaluation

Tool: Shift Learning

Website: www.shift-learning.co.uk

Rating: 

SHIFT is a fully comprehensive, all-inclusive, and diverse authoring tool.  It’s simple, smart and flexible. Even if you know how to code SHIFT is easy to use and quick to learn.

Usage

SHIFT can be classified as a ‘disruptive learning tool’ because it combines all the high end, high quality graphics provided by a rich media authoring tool, with the quickness and ease of use of a rapid e-learning authoring tool. This tool can be bought for approx. 80+euros a month.
One of the best features about SHIFT learning is that learners aren’t chained to a PC, SHIFT allows you to create a course once, and automatically publish it on all devices (be it a desktop or a mobile device. Courses are specifically designed to work well on these devices despite not having an app). You don’t need redesign and adapt the course for each delivery option. This means SHIFT goes beyond just HTML5 output; it dynamically adapts content for any screen, resolution, or aspect ratio.

Review

The most important feature of shift learn is that it creates really engaging learning materials, it understands what is needed to capture the attention of learners and gives an el-learning tool that encapsulates innovative teaching methods. One of the main drawbacks about this tool is that it seems to be more suited to the technically minded teachers, it uses code and for those who are not tech savvy they might find this tool to be a challenge to get use to using.

Tool Evaluation

Tool: Adobe Captivate

Website: www.adobe.com/products/captivate.html

Rating: 

Adobe Captivate is a rapid responsive authoring tool that is used for creating eLearning content such as software demonstrations, software simulations, branched scenarios, and randomized quizzes in Small Web Formats (swf) and HTML5 formats. It can also convert Adobe Captivate generated files formats (swf) to digital MP4 (.mp4) formats which can be played with media players or uploaded to video hosting websites. It can also be used to create screencasts, and to convert Microsoft PowerPoint presentations to swf and HTML5 formats. They do offer a teacher and student price that can purchase the license for 412.50 euros.

Usage

This tool is valuable as it has a responsive design. This means that from a single project, users can create eLearning content that can be viewed across multiple devices such as tablets, phones, and laptops. Furthermore it allows for HTML5 publishing which fully supports publishing to HTML5 formats. It also creates a rapid eLearning authoring environment that allows users to create eLearning material without having any knowledge of coding. It has rich multimedia capability and includes an extensive range of assets that users can add to their courses. Moreover it provides an easy quizzing platform,  thereby providing interest and interactivity to an eLearning course. Scoring is also supported. All courses produced can be published to any SCORM-compliant LMS.

Review

The program is intuitive and allows for a strong layering of effects, graphics, and outputs well. It handles all media typically used for computer-based training, and the end result is high quality. It is an easy program to learn quickly (though not within an hour and probably not for a novice) and once the program is understood, is able to produce very complex interactions. “Overall the program is fantastic to work with.” –Trevor S.- Review G2Crowd

Tool Evaluation

Tool: Go Conqr

Website: www.goconqr.com

Rating: 

GoConqr is a personal learning environment that allows students & teachers to create and share learning resources. GoConqr includes tools to create Mind Maps, Flashcards, Notes and Quizzes. The tool facilitates study planning and monitoring of progress in real time it also including collaboration features, allowing one to connect with study partners to share knowledge. All of above should help make studying easier and more productive. This software is relatively easy to access and use. They offer three packages as well as an app that is downloadable to android and iOS devices. The three packages are; the basic package which allows you to create 3 subjects and a total of 20 resources, secondly the basic+ which allows you to create unlimited subjects and unlimited public resources by referring 3 friends to GoConqr and finally a premium package that gives you the ability to create private resources and go ad free for £9.99 per year. Overall, the software is user friendly and very interactive.

Usage

This is a powerful tool for both students and educators. There is a suite of creation tools on offer including; engaging Mind Maps, Flashcards, Slides and Quizzes. It succeeds in making study a more immersive and imaginative experience. There is a library of 4 million learning resources covering thousands of subject categories across multiple languages and exam levels. In addition, there are interactive collaboration option such as the ability to set up or join a community, invite friends and collaborate with peers. Either one can choose to share creations of one’s own, or those of other learners and publicly published resources are free to use, copy, edit and share.

Review

“It’s a very good app! I can use it for all my exam revision. But if you could create an update where we can create cards, mind maps etc. straight on our devices that would be awesome.” ITunes Review of app.

Tool Evaluation

Tool: TED Ed

Website: www.ed.ted.com

Rating: 

TED is a global community that aims to spread ideas. In order to do that it offers a set of freely available videos featuring talks by knowledgeable, interesting and respected figures covering almost all topics. Its newest initiative is TED’s education, which is intended to raise the voices and ideas of teachers and students.  All TED talks are available for free in the form of short and powerful videos (usually 18 minutes or less).

Usage

TED offers a highly responsive search facility to search its talks based on topics, languages and duration. It is convenient to use and allows the viewer to search and select the talk which best suits their needs or interests. In addition, its functionality “Surprise Me” allows the viewer to let TED select a talk of a previously specified kind.

Review

As TED is an online application, it needs internet connection. However, it allows you to download a talk in MP4 format, which let you see the videos even offline. You do not need to login in order to use TED but if you do it you will have a more personalized experience.

Tool Evaluation

Tool: Ed Puzzle

Website: www.edpuzzle.com

Rating: 

This is a web application that enables teachers and students to teach and learn through videos, voiceovers, audio notes and embbeded questions and quizzes.

Usage

Teachers will be able to build video-based courses using straighforward and intuitive easy to use video editor. Crop interesting parts of videos to explain the topic under teaching, insert audio tracks to explain the video in your own language and approach, embed audio notes for introductory comments, conclusions, remarks and add quizzes for formative assessment anytime during the video to check students understanding and to know whether they are watching your lessons.

Review

EdPuzzle is a great tool which is 100% free. It is Provided as web service and an internet connection is required which could make it difficult to use without broadband connection due to video-based technology (e.g. LAN, Wifi). The output of the tool is rich media learning resource, which can be crafted from public repositories (e.g. Youtube videos, Vimeo videos) or local files (which are stored and streamed from publisher hosts) Learning content can be adjusted by cropping interesting parts of videos. It also provides a platform for including interactive videos for teachers and students and teachers are able to enrich video content with audio tracks, notes and quizzes. Overall this is an effective learning tool with unlimited space quoted for videos, classes and students.

Tool Evaluation

Tool: WordPress

Website: www.wordpress.com

Rating: 

WordPress is a very valuable tool for a number of reasons. It is used by individuals and organizations for blogging, but also to create fully-functioning websites – due to the powerful range of 3rd party plugins.

Usage

WordPress has many uses that most of us are exceedingly familiar with. It can be a blog, business website, art portfolio, e-commerce store and so much more. Uses are Creating:
• School Website – Numerous schools host their entire school website on WordPress.
• Class Website – Here the teacher provides links to resources, assignments and information to help students with their school classes.
• Class Blog -Class blogs are used in a wide range of different ways. Some teachers use their class blogs to to post daily tasks, information on what was covered in class and when assignments are due.   Teachers do this to keep students and parents up-to-date,  provide information for students who are absent and provide resources students can use for revision.
• Class Blog with Student Blogs – Lots of teachers use class blogs for global collaboration, authentic learning, reflective blogging, collaboration and discussion.  When used for these purposes it’s common for their students’ to have their own individual student blogs.
• Group Collaboration and Projects – Group collaboration and project blogs can be as simple as students, or teachers, collaborating on a group blog,  and might involved collaborators from the same school or different schools, to large global projects.
• ePortfolios – An increasing numbers of educators use blogs for their own digital portfolio or for their student’s digital portfolios.  The student blogs are used to showcase their work and share their learning, throughout their school life while the educator’s personal eportfolios may be used to document their skills against professional standards.

Review

WordPress is a free open source platform, this means that their codes are open to everybody to use and modify. Any programmers / coders can use WordPress to create their own themes or plugins for others to download for free, or to be purchased for a fee. People often make the mistake of classifying WordPress as just a blogging platform. Although that used to be true in the past, WordPress has evolved throughout the years into a versatile educational tool.

Tool Evaluation