With the myriad of management layers and levels, large enterprises are not so similar in culture and functioning when compared with the ever-prevailing startups and SMBs.
These differences operate on an entirely different dimension for them. On hand where startups prioritize cutting costs and finding the middle ground when it comes to employee training for obvious reasons, Large Enterprises might hold employee training as paramount.
This is the reason why, when it comes to selecting comprehensive software for large enterprises, especially for employee training and management, there are a lot of factors to consider beforehand.
One such important systems are eLearning Authoring Tools. Here is a comparison of the best tools for you to make an informed decision before making a purchase.
Read on.
Crucial features to have in Authoring tools:
For an authoring tool to match the requirements of large enterprises, it must comprise of a number of special features that collectively decide how advanced and useful an authoring tool is. Here, we will establish an eLearning authoring tools comparison based on those features.
- Adobe Captivate:
- Ease of Use: This tool houses a huge number of features which makes a rather difficult interface which requires some getting used to. However, it also provides intuitive functionalities like drag-n-drop, multi-device preview and other objects that enable multitasking and easy scoring and testing features, that counter its complicated UI.
So, you might face some hurdles at the beginning of use but once you are used to the software, its intuitiveness makes it a breeze to use it.
- Collaboration: Large enterprises are often thorough in their training programs for which they may have more than one SMEs to contribute to the course. And Captivate provides ease of collaboration in eLearning course development.
- Ease of publishing and sharing: Captivate comes with HTML5 publishing functionality which makes it breeze for instructional designers to publish content. They can design their courses with “captivating” themes, actors and interactive elements and easily upload creations to YouTube in a split.
- Price: Unless you can provide a teacher’s or student’s ID, Adobe Captivate’s full license costs around $1099. For education sector members, a discounted price of $349 is applicable.
- Articulate Storyline
- Ease of use: By reason of its PowerPoint-style user interface, the ease of use for articulate is one of the smoothest. It also has a large selection of themes, characters pack and templates built-in that make course development all the more easier.
Articulate also provide Drag-n-drop feature which adds to its ease of use. It even has software simulations for developing advanced courses. It is perfect for beginners as well as experienced professionals.
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- Collaboration: On the collaboration front, which can be a crucial requirement for large enterprises, Articulate storyline might pose some limitations. For instance, if you and another course contributor are working on the same project at the same time from different locations, Articulate does not have a prompt for that. So if two or more people are working on a project simultaneously, they would require to be in constant communication on another channel for fully productive collaboration.
- Ease of publishing and sharing: Articulate storyline has the provision for creating cross-platform content which consists of HTML5, Flash and a number of other new technologies. It also provides complete support for mobile devices in terms of usability and adaptability. So it is smooth sailing in the context of publishing and sharing content online.
- Price: The cost of Articulate Storyline starts from $1398 for 1 year of license with $699 for version upgrades. It also offers a monthly subscription service which lands between $199 to $499 depending upon your choice of plan/features. Although, Articulate also provides a 50% discount for learning institutes, teachers, and students.
This price point may seem steep for some organizations but it is advisable to do your research comparing the pros and cons of all the features vs the price.
- Elucidat
- Ease of use: When it comes to ease of use, Elucidat is known to be one of the easiest solutions on the market. It requires none to minimal training and can even help in setting up a content theme for beginners.
In the area of customization, it poses no restrictions and also has features for producing gamification based courses.
Other crucial features that make Elucidat users’ lives easier are its image library and user restrictions.
- Collaboration: In terms of collaborative working, Elucidat provides absolute control over the project. Along with features like user roles and restrictions with which one can work in collaboration with multiple authors without any kind of confusion.
- Ease of publishing and sharing: Elucidat focuses mainly on HTML5 courses, with the help of which it can create attractive layouts for multiple devices. It also provides support for multiple browsers including Internet Explorer 7.
- Price: Even being relatively new in the eLearning Authoring Tools industry, Elucidat has become a favored choice among many large enterprises. This explains the slightly steep annual price for it which stands at $2400 per user.
To conclude,
This was a brief overview of the most preferred choices of authoring tools among large enterprises. If you have anything more to add or if you use and like another tool for creating eLearning course, please let us know in the comments.
We hope you found this helpful.
