Course Authoring Tools

Corporate learning and development teams are increasingly looking at eLearning solutions to train employees in an engaging yet cost-effective manner. However, developing custom content in-house can be complex, time-consuming, and resource-intensive without the right tools in place. This is where course authoring tools come in – to simplify and streamline the content creation process.

Create Effective eLearning with the Right Authoring Tool

The right authoring solution empowers L&D teams to rapidly develop interactive and impactful courses that can scale across the organization. Key benefits include:

  • Accelerated course creation through intuitive drag-and-drop interfaces.
  • Engaging interactivities like quizzes, simulations, and scenarios.
  • Responsive outputs optimized for any device.
  • Seamless integration with LMS platforms.
  • Real-time collaboration features.
  • Built-in analytics and tracking.

But with many solutions on the market, identifying the best fit can get overwhelming. This article will arm corporate learning teams with the knowledge and criteria to evaluate course authoring tools against their key needs and training delivery requirements. We’ll also take a closer look at one platform purpose-built for enterprise – Intellek Create.

The goal is to provide readers with a guide for identifying the most capable tools for developing custom eLearning that drives measurable business results. The criteria and solution explored will help learning teams deliver productivity and performance gains across their organization.

Let’s dive in!

Criteria for Evaluating Course Authoring Tools

With the wide range of course authoring platforms on the market, it’s essential to have a set of standard criteria to evaluate potential solutions. As corporate learning teams conduct their research, here are six key areas to examine:

  1. Intuitive Interfaces – The authoring tool should have a user-friendly interface that enables non-technical users to efficiently create courses. Drag-and-drop course builders, customizable templates, and responsive preview modes accelerate development. Look for intuitive navigation and editing functions.
  2. Interactive Course Capabilities – The ability to easily build interactivities like quizzes, simulations, branching scenarios, and more creates engaging, immersive learning experiences that drive retention. Assess the capability to deliver interactivities for memory reinforcement.
  3. Multi-device Publishing – A key requirement is being able to publish once and have courses work seamlessly across desktop, tablet, and mobile devices. Responsive course output is essential with automatic adjustments for smaller screens.
  4. LMS Integrations – Tight integration with your organization’s LMS or training platform allows seamless content delivery and a unified admin experience. Evaluate how easily courses can be uploaded and tracked.
  5. Analytics and Reporting – Robust analytics around course usage, completion rates, test scores, and participation provide visibility into learning program effectiveness. Data like SCORM tracking informs continuous content improvement efforts.
  6. IT Requirements – Evaluate complexity around hosting, maintenance, and compliance considerations. Cloud-based solutions with minimal IT infrastructure requirements provide the most rapid deployment.

Now that we have a clear picture of key decision drivers, let’s explore how leading tools in the market align against these criteria.

What is Intellek’s Content Authoring Tools?

With rapid course creation capabilities paired with an ecosystem purpose-built for scale, Intellek Create helps enterprise learning teams deliver productivity through modernized, measurable learning programs.

Intellek Create is an enterprise-ready course authoring platform built specifically to empower corporate learning teams to rapidly develop immersive digital learning. Key features include:

Drag-and-Drop Course Creator

The user-friendly course builder interface allows non-technical users to efficiently assemble courses by simply dragging in pages, then adding multimedia, simulations, and assessments.

Multi-Device Responsive Output

Courses are published for seamless consumption across desktop, tablet, and mobile devices. Formatting automatically adjusts for smaller screens to maintain engagement.

Branding Themes and Templates

Tailor courses to brand guidelines by applying corporate color schemes, fonts and logos across themes. Boost recognition and seamless integration into training ecosystems.

Resource Library

The centralized library hosts your reusable media assets like documents, videos, images, and more for simple addition to courses. Authors can also share elements between projects to maintain consistency.

Quizzes, Assessments, and Surveys

Interactive assessments reinforce retention with knowledge check quizzes, and surveys. Expertly designed templates aligned to methodologies like Kirkpatrick enable deep evaluation.

LMS Integrations

Courses can be published directly to the Intellek LMS allowing simplified learner assignment, grading, and tracking – or export to other formats like SCORM or HTML for broader ecosystem usage.

Intuitive Workflow Capture for Software Training

One standout capability that Intellek Create brings to the table is its intuitive workflow capture technology. Course authors can record clicks, selections, and other actions directly within any software application or web-based app to create step-by-step guided walkthroughs. These captures turn into interactive guides that show learners exactly how to complete tasks and processes in their actual systems and workflows.

No other course authoring tools provide this level of real environment embedding and visualization right from the user’s perspective, bridging the gap between training concepts and real-world skills application. Workflow simulations boost knowledge retention as employees learn directly in their working contexts, arming them with muscle memory to confidently apply skills. With Intellek Create’s rapid workflow capture integrated directly into the authoring interface, corporate training teams can create guided path learning at scale across the organization.

Our clients reported that they love the user interface and user experience. It makes delivering learning in the flow of work a breeze, and training no longer needs to be viewed as an interruption.

Intelligent Authoring with AI

Intellek Create also employs artificial intelligence to simplify and accelerate the authoring process. The Key Steps Outline feature allows course creators to simply input the overall task or process they are training learners to complete. Based on this, the underlying AI will then map out all of the required steps involved in the task flow.

These automatically outlined steps act as structural containers for content population within the course. Authors can easily turn them into elements, ready for instructional details. This eliminates the heavy lifting of formatting and structuring, enabling creators to have a complete content model laid out after entering just a task description.

By understanding task flows and leveraging AI to unload repetitive design work, Intellek’s course authoring tool Create provides a dynamic authoring canvas that adapts to any use case – getting enterprises training-ready faster.

Create Content that Floats Across Applications

Cory

“Intellek Create would be used by about half of our 1200 total users. We would use it to create content that could float across various applications. Being able to quickly capture controls, replicate an experience or a workflow, and create a quick microlearning module is going to be helpful.

Also, reducing the amount of development time is a plus! Among the features I like are the capture feature as well as the ‘hover’ feature.

Intellek Create Assessments will help users feel that they aren’t being penalized for doing things in a method they are familiar while exposing them to the most efficient way of doing things. Also, I like that it is a web application and there will be less of a need for IT to be involved.”

Cory Christmas – Training Manager

Help Users Walkthrough and Initialize Processes

Melodie

“Intellek Create would work well for our firm due to its easy interface and ability to work with Citrix. Since its web-based there would be no need to bring IT in to help.

Create is a 300% improvement on Live Content Studio since it doesn’t matter what environment it is in. We have other software in house that we need to build instruction for, which are complex, and Create will help users to walkthrough and initialize processes. Intellek has built a better “machine” for content creation overall.

We have 400 employees in total and at least 50% will get to benefit from it the most.”

Melodie Ford – Technology Innovation Manager

Creating Content for Company-Specific Software

Lacy

“Some of the features I like about Intellek Create are the templates, fonts, and how you can setup defaults. Some of the challenges that it will help with include creating content for company-specific software, as well as content targeted for our attorneys.

Our firm has a total of 450 people on staff. It will be helpful to share with attorneys and show how it could help them as well as their legal secretaries and other associates.

In addition, it will help to get non-legal, inexperienced associates up to speed with Learning Paths in the Intellek Learning Management System (LMS). I love that it is in a web-browser, so easy to use, navigate and very clear and concise.

Intellek does a great job of creating video content for clients to make our tools easy to use. In addition, you have a terrific support team!”

Lacy Wineberger – Technical Trainer

Experience Intellek Create for Yourself

If transforming your corporate training practices with modern course authoring tools sounds appealing, the best next step is to experience Intellek Create for yourself.

Sign up for a personalized free demo tailored to your use case and content needs. The Intellek team will showcase key functionalities like interactive course elements, workflow capture simulations, and built-in distribution, and the resource library.

Ready to hit the ground running? Start a free 30-day trial and begin creating your first course. The intuitive interface allows new users to have interactive courses up and running in no time.

With intelligent authoring assistance and an ecosystem purpose-built for enterprise scale, Intellek Create helps L&D teams embrace eLearning to drive organizational productivity and performance. The journey starts by taking your first step into next-gen course creation.

Request your demo or trial and unleash untapped upskilling potential today!