An authoring system is a program that has pre-programmed elements for the development of interactive multimedia software titles. Authoring systems can be defined as software that allows its user to create multimedia applications for manipulating multimedia objects. Wikipedia
- Articulate Storyline - Create online courses easily
- Adobe Captivate - Useful for those with the full Adobe Suite
Teachers and "instructional designers" use these authoring tools. Don't know what an instructional designer is? Here's an excerpt from a great post on Quora:
What does a typical workday (or week) for an instructional designer look like?
It's 8:10. My tea is hot and my e-mail is open. I read through a few messages and move a few things to my to-do list. I see an e-mail with an attachment. The graphic artist has sent some images. Great news!
Scanning my calendar, I see my first meeting isn't until 9:30. Plenty of time to dive into my current project. I copy the images to my desktop and open the eLearning design software my company uses. This is my favourite activity—design and development. At some places I’ve worked these two phases of the instructional design process are separated, but I prefer an agile and iterative approach. Being able to move between the two phases gives me more flexibility and adaptability.
I integrate the images. I make a few tweaks. I proofread the text I wrote yesterday. I run the training and note what is working well, and where I still need content. I’m pleased with the progress. My tea is gone and I realize it’s time for my first meeting of the day.
My design manager has assigned me a new project, and I’m holding a kickoff meeting with the business partner as part of the analysis phase. The business partner tells me about their training need. As it happens, it is a training need. Sometimes my department gets requests that aren’t training, and we have to show our partners that their employees know how to do something, but for some other reason, they choose not to do it. But in this case, we’re looking at new functionality in this department’s software. I need to train their people on how to use it.
I have a lot of questions. How many people will be trained? What is their current knowledge? When is the software being rolled out, and what do we need to train? How will we know when they have mastered the content? The hour is spent doing a target-audience analysis, and a deeper dive into the content. The business partner is able to answer some of my questions but must find out many more. By the end of the call, I have a couple of ideas for the appropriate instructional intervention, but I won’t make a decision until I get the additional information.
Back to my current project. I work until my stomach growls and realize it’s past noon. I’m not making as much progress as I’d like. I check my project schedule and realize I’m slipping behind. I’m trying to achieve perfection when what I need is training that is both effective and efficient. I have three active projects, and I can’t slip behind. Project management is a vital part of my job.
I eat at my desk, and by the time my next meeting pops up, I’m pleased with my progress. As it happens, my next meeting is with the stakeholders of the project I’ve spent the day working on. I hold these meetings every few days. They are “stand-up” meetings, and only take 15 minutes. I show the progress I’ve made on the training, and they give feedback. This allows me to make small adjustments during the project, and there are no surprises when I’m done. The business will be with me every step of the way, and they feel invested in the training.
I get some tactical feedback on how my simulation functions from the subject-matter expert and a few strategic questions about the overall project from the business partner. We agree that everything is on track, and looking good. They trust my instructional design skills. When I first worked with them ten months ago, they were wary because I knew nothing about their business or their department. How could I design training when I wasn’t an expert? I had to use all of my client management skills to convince them that I was an http://expert.An expert in learning. And if you paired me with a subject matter expert, I could train anything.
Again, I dive back into the project. I’m feeling good about my progress. At 4:00 I have my next meeting. I slip into the back of a training room and watch the trainer wrap up the day’s training for a group of new hires. When she is done, I talk to her about how the training went. I like to stay close to the implementation of the training I’ve worked on. I get feedback from the trainer, and it helps me make changes or updates so the next class is even more effective.
It’s 4:45. Not enough time to open up the project again. I check my e-mail and see that I’ve received the level one evaluations from a training project I rolled out last month. This gives me a good idea of how the learners felt about the training, but I’ll need to dive deeper into the company’s quarterly metrics to do a proper evaluation. Without evaluation, I won’t be able to show that what we’re doing is really making a difference.
5:15. The day is done. Time to head home and surf Quora.
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