In the first post of this two-part blog series, “Putting the Pieces Together for eLearning Content: Part 1,” we examined some of the overarching pieces for creating eLearning content. The takeaway is that when you need to build eLearning courses, a suitable eLearning authoring tool is necessary for creating content. With so many tools available, which one do you choose to solve your eLearning puzzle?

A Vast Range of Options

An authoring tool helps you to create digital content, while the eLearning authoring tool enables you to create digital assets for eLearning purposes. Some eLearning authoring tools are a cinch and provide many templates for the purpose of quickly building a course. They can be limiting because you can only work with features the template offers. Other eLearning authoring tools, although easy to use, may allow for more project scalability or creative control by letting you customize eLearning features.

No one knows the capabilities of your learning program (such as your capabilities, timeline, and budget) like you do. Take a moment to look at the big picture. Think about a tool that will fit your needs.

Consider whether:

• Out-of-the-box interactions suffice or if you want to create and design your own interactions

• You need features that reuse content from within one project or across multiple projects

• You have one or multiple authors that could use collaboration and source control features

• The output should be responsive for different user devices or be translation ready

• The content will get to the learning management system (LMS) for course distribution

A Cutting-Edge Solution

MadCap Flare is a stand-alone software application for creating digital assets with advanced content authoring capabilities. Flare can help solve your eLearning puzzle because it offers rapid eLearning authoring efficiencies plus some. It lets you build exactly what you want with features that allow for reusing content, custom-made interacting, and multichannel publishing.

Flare acts as the interlocking piece that connects technical communications and learning and development (L&D) together. Both disciplines share the common goal of helping people learn about something. It is a viable solution for producing eLearning courses, online help, knowledge bases, or learning centers all from a single source of content and using a single solution. Trainers, writers, or instructional designers can use Flare to develop, manage, and publish content as well as produce innovative quizzes and knowledge checks as part of any project.

A Game Changer

The ability to reuse content and customize eLearning courses are two game-changing features for cracking your eLearning puzzle wide-open.

Single-sourcing lets you reuse content and produce multiple outputs from the same set of source files. Flare uses this feature to help you leverage content for different purposes. Content for repurposing can be anything from text, images, videos, and audio files to topic or project files. Reusing content can reduce costs, improve collaboration, enhance workflows, and increase productivity. Supporting features are topic-based or micro content authoring, snippets, variables, conditions, source control, and global project linking.

Customization gives you the freedom to create and design what you want without being restricted to a proprietary system. Building a course with Flare is simple, like connecting a large jigsaw puzzle. Flare provides out-of-the-box eLearning templates for quickly building a course. However, Flare can be quite advanced; for example, it can assemble a 2,000-piece stereogram in different shades of blue. With Flare’s open architecture, you can change the look and feel of eLearning blocks, course output, and branding or customize eLearning features (at no additional cost).

You can add multiple-choice or multiple-response questions, feedback for answers, and scoring. You can randomize answers, limit test attempts, and customize test result pages. For LMS tracking, you can select to generate SCORM 1.2, 2004, or xAPI (Tin Can) eLearning packages.

In Summary

Flare is on the table for helping to create, design, and share content for modern eLearning courses. As you build quizzes and knowledge checks, you can leverage Flare’s well-established authoring capabilities that tend to unite teams, streamline processes, and deliver the right online experiences for learners.

The eLearning authoring solution you choose for your L&D program can make all the difference in the world, and MadCap Flare is a game changer for creating eLearning content.