eLearning Guild Research: What Authoring Tool Do You Want to Buy?

What percentage of your job is authoring or developingeLearning? If you’re anything like the 1,055 respondents of our 2013 Authoring Tools research report, you spend from 10% to 50% of your timedeveloping (authoring) eLearning (Figure 1) and you have been developingeLearning for between a year (or less) and six years.

Figure 1: Percent of time authoring

Which tools are most used? Which are most important? Which are underconsideration or buying?

The recently released Authoring Tools research report revealswhat respondents called their most usedand their most important asynchronouseLearning authoring tool (two different questions). Captivate was most used with64.2% of respondents using it (respondents could select all the tools theyused). Captivate was also tagged as most important, at 28.5% (respondents couldselect one tool in this part of the survey). See the report itself for chartslisting which tools came in second, third, and so forth for both questions.

The next question asked respondents to select oneasynchronous eLearning authoring tool they’ve considered buying. We wanted to get a sense of future buying orperhaps what they would purchase on their own, as many tools are purchased bycompanies and may not be the first choice of their developers.

Figure 2 shows that the tool with the highest votes, at23.3%, is Storyline. Captivate is next at 11% and Camtasia Studio is third at9.6%. This is a shift away from what theychose as the most used asynchronouseLearning authoring tool and what respondents said was their most important asynchronous eLearningauthoring tool. And that’s kind of interesting.

Figure 2: One asynchronous eLearning authoring tool I’ve consideredbuying

Reasons for the choices

We didn’t haveopen responses to help us interpret the reason for the shift in answers fromthe previous two questions. It’s possible that the other questions showorganizational responses (what organizations are using) and this question maybe showing individual responses (what individuals may be considering on theirown). Another possibility is that the first two questions are retrospective(past usage) and this question is prospective (future usage). These are interpretations,but I believe they are plausible. If you’ve read the report, do you have anopinion on the change in response patterns between the first two questions andthis question?

When we askedrespondents the reason for selecting specific tools, the top answer was “It hasthe features I need.” The second half of the report does an exhaustive analysisof the features that respondents want in their asynchronous eLearning authoringtools and I’ll be reporting on the top features that emerged in that analysis next month.

We alsoanalyzed authoring tools budgets. When removing unemployed, independentcontractors, and self-employed, 29.6% of respondents were in the $1,001 – $4,000year range, 14.3% of respondents were in the $4,001 – $7,000 year range, 8.1%were in the $7,001 – $10,000 year range, and 9.7% were in the more than $10,000range.

Summary

There’sa great deal of important information in this report for practitioners,managers, and vendors; and with so many developers and authoring trainersresponding, this data is really quite valuable. Here’s a heartfelt thank you toall of the people in the Guild network who took the time to provide detaileddata for this complex survey.