With the tempo of eLearning these days, companies and educators are constantly seeking ways to get more out of their content production without compromising its quality. Conventional eLearning design is time and cost-intensive, so most look into other options like rapid authoring tools. But is rapid authoring the solution to your eLearning needs? Let’s dive into the nitty-gritty details on benefits and limitations and how it can make your learning development a lot more manageable.
Rapid authoring uses special software tools for the creation of eLearning material wherein the users can create it quickly without using any technical information involving complex and detailed information. It’s mostly compatible with pre-designed templates, drag-and-drop features, and multimedia integration facilities to produce better courses in lesser time periods.
A few of the most preferred rapid authoring tools are Adobe Captivate, Articulate Storyline, and Lectora. Instructional designers and educators mostly prefer using this as a favorite platform in their business ventures.
Benefits of Using Rapid Authoring
Here are some usefulness:
Development Time
Even in the most customary eLearning, the content development time can range from weeks to months, especially if there is a necessity for custom programming, design, and/or video production. Rapid authoring tools lower the development time to a very great extent, providing pre-built templates, pre-built quizzes, and easy multimedia integration.
Cost Efficiency
The rapid authoring solutions do not require an entailed hiring of massive development teams or contracting professional eLearning developers. Most tools allow fast development of well-designed courses by in-house teams that hardly have any programming experience. Consequently, the net development costs are lower. Many of the tools also offer a cloud-based solution. Because of this, they afford scalable, subscription-based pricing models.
Easy-to-Use Interface
These sites are easy and user-friendly even for those without deep experience in design or technology. It has drag-drop capabilities, content libraries, and a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) interface. This is meant for people who care more about their content than the program.
Multi Device Compatibility
With the rapid authoring tools, most courses are automatically responsive, meaning they are optimized for multiple devices – tablets, smartphones, and desktops. That is important in today’s mobile-first learning environment where flexibility of access to content is expected by the learners.
Faster Updates and Iterations
When the authors need a refill of content, the rapid authoring solutions let them speedily update it without requiring a full-scale overhaul. It is particularly helpful in healthcare and compliance sectors or technology where changes in regulation and information are constantly updating.
Problems with Rapid Authoring
Lack of Flexibility
And while rapid authoring tools benefit through the functionality of many pre-built templates and features, they may not be up to task in highly customized or complex eLearning courses. If your content requires instruments of intricate branching scenarios, customization of interactivity, and unique design elements, rapid authoring tools do not allow the required flexibility.
Dangers of Generic Content
Because rapid authoring relies so heavily on templates and pre-built interactions, courses end up looking cookie-cutter rather than innovative. Rapid authoring may sometimes provide too much of the cookie-cutter experience if a well-branded, personally experienced learning environment is desired.
Skill Gaps in Complex Features
Rapid authoring tools: although the foundation skills to design basic courses are accessible to most, more sophisticated features continue to require specialized skills. Training teams to take full advantage of what all a tool can do may be in order.
Template Dependency
This sets authors up to be very dependent on default templates and design elements-which, while making their job much simpler, leads to courses that are often overly repetitive in design, a factor that once more tends to degrade learner engagement over time. The key is to find a balance between speed and creativity.
When to Use Rapid Authoring?
- Rapid authoring is not one of those items suited best for every situation. There are, though certain places where rapid authoring can be quite useful:
- Rapid authoring is a good way to speed up if you have very little time to deliver training.
- Rapid authoring is probably your best choice when developing compliance-type eLearning, onboarding, and other kinds of merely basic eLearning.
Final Words
Of course, rapid authoring isn’t the solution to all of your eLearning problems. It depends. If speed and efficiency are your primary concerns-so, too, is budget-then rapid authoring is the holy grail for your organization. However, if your eLearning programs are going to demand a high degree of custom work, or have unique design requirements that are going to be pretty intricate in terms of their interactivity, then rapid authoring might need to be supplemented by more advanced development methods.
