The State of Authoring Tools: Where We’ve Been, Where We’re Going

I just hit my five-year anniversary since I started writingmonthly reviews of authoring tools for LearningSolutions Magazine. I have appreciated you readers and your feedback verymuch. During this time, I’ve seen some patterns emerging, both good and not sogood, and it’s time for us to step back, take a breath, and discuss what hashappened, what is occurring now, and what the future may bring. Not all of thiswill be pretty, but bear with me to the end. After that, I hope that you willput your thoughts in the comments section below.

Where it started

Many don’t know that eLearning tools have been around forquite some time. In fact, the National Science Foundation funded two authoringtools way back in the 1960s. The first was Plato in 1960 and the second wasTICCIT in 1967 (Figure 1). I entered the eLearning world in 1983, while incollege, and used TICCIT to create a large Italian course for the university, aproject that spanned three years. By that time, both Plato and TICCIT were infull swing and they both had already spawned quite a few other authoring tools.

Figure 1: The first two authoring tools arrived 50 years ago

Remember that the personal computer revolution started inthe late 1970s and of course, over time, PCs have become extraordinarily morepowerful. That means that the early authoring tools did not run on personalcomputers. Rather, they required at least a minicomputer in an air-conditionedcomputer lab with washing-machine-sized free-standing hard drives that containeda tiny fraction of the memory that your cell phone does now. Learners needed touse dumb terminals, meaning that allof them were attached to the minicomputer back in the lab and that all thepower was coming from the minicomputer. Some specialized terminals, such asPLATO terminals, actually connected to mainframes.

The tools we used were not simple: they required someprogramming talent. Hence, eLearning, which was called computer-based training(CBT) or computer-based education (CBE) at the time, meant that we had teams of instructional designers (IDs), thosefolks who understood learning theory and principles and knew how to designlessons that learners could experience on a computer, and programmers, also called developers,who would take the storyboards created by the instructional designers, at firsttypically drawn by hand on paper and later in Word or PowerPoint, and programthem on the computer. I found it interesting that instructional designerstended to be more creative, while the programmers tended to be more logical.The two disciplines, when combined well, would result in excellent eLearning.

Yes, that’s right. Even back in the 1970s and 1980s, therewas some really good eLearning being created. There were also problems, ofcourse. Instructional designers (nonprogrammers) could not always understandwhy developers would balk at an interaction they designed. Developers(non-instructional designers) could not always see the importance of the designthey were given and would try to change interactions to something simpler forthem to program. Arguments ensued, blood was shed, feuds began, wars started.

What happened next

As personal computers became more powerful, eLearning couldbe created at one’s own desk. I started to notice a pattern at that point andspoke of it in a keynote speech I gave in 2000, both in the United States andin the Netherlands. I called it Two StepsForward, One Step Back and Idescribed the phenomenon that was occurring wherein each time we leapt aheadwith our technology, we had to make some sacrifices as well, at least at first.

For instance, we were happy when we could stop using floppydisks to store our eLearning because we were given voluminous five-megabytehard drives in our computers. Imagine, five million bytes! That was great, onlywe found that in those days before ubiquitous networks it became difficult tomove our files from one computer to another. Those were the days when you couldoften see me take my huge desktop computer and big CRT monitor, with keyboard,mouse, and cables, home from the office some Friday nights so I could continueworking over the weekend (Figure 2).

Figure 2: eLearning, circa 1986: PC and laser disc player

We also had great big laser disc players that gave usbeautiful full-screen video in our learning, but then the digital video files QuickTimeand AVI meant we could do away with those expensive disc players. However, inthose early days we were lucky if the digital videos could be larger than apostage stamp.

This progress will continue into the foreseeable future.Most recently, we have seen it in being able to deliver our learning to mobiledevices. Two steps forward means that we now can let learners access theirlearning almost anywhere at any time. One step back, though, because we have todeal with smaller screens.

Tools started to change

Tool vendors saw an opportunity to make their tools simplerto use and started to promote them as being so easy to use that aninstructional designer could use them. Developers were no longer needed. Manyof these tools were add-ins to PowerPoint, which made sense as by 1991 a lot ofstoryboarding was already being done in PowerPoint. How cool was it that suddenly,from within PowerPoint itself, you could generate eLearning without having totake that second, expensive step to have a programmer make it work? Only inthis case many instructional designers found themselves overwhelmed nonethelessand eLearning lessons started becoming more and more just warmed-overPowerPoint files. Many of those tools disappeared quickly, others stuck around.

When dedicated instructional designers started realizingthat they were not putting out the best work, they would work with programmersstill, at least to do the “hard parts” of the learning, and those programmersoften used Macromedia (later Adobe) Flash to create those parts.

Of course, some tools were still powerful enough to use tocreate great eLearning (based on an ID’s design). One very popular tool was Macromedia Authorware, the brainchild ofDr. Michael Allen, who wanted to develop a visual version of Plato. (Figure 3)It became the most popular eLearning tool in history, topping the charts from1988 until 2005 when Adobe shelved the product after it merged with Macromedia.There are still people using it today, 10 years after it stopped being updated,because nothing like it has emerged. Why? Authorware had become a tool thatinstructional designers could use to lay out their design and do a lot of theinitial work, which they did by dragging icons onto a flow line. Authorwarealso had its own programming language (and later JavaScript) that would allowprogrammers to create very efficient and powerful interactions. When Authorwarefolks got together, they would identify as either icon-draggers or code-heads—butby and large they were able to work well together.

Figure 3: Macromedia Authorware

What is occurring now

Remember that initially the tools were meant for programmers,and later on tool vendors simplified them to make them easy enough forinstructional designers to use. When that happened, eLearning standards took adive. We started seeing many more page-turners and PowerPoint lessons withquizzes attached to the end of those lessons. We started seeing eLearning get abad reputation. Many of us found ourselves hesitant to tell strangers what wedid for a living for fear that they would punch us because of the eLearningthey had to endure in their companies.

In the last 10 years, we have seen tool vendors change theirtools again, not just to meet changes in technology, such as the need todeliver to mobile devices and the impending death of the Flash web player, butalso because many have decided to change the audience for their tools onceagain. While at one time the tools were meant for programmers and later forinstructional designers, now tool vendors sought to convince organizations thatthey could save a lot of money in a different way.

Let me illustrate this by telling you about a recent meetingwith a vendor who wanted to introduce me to their new authoring tool. As I satin their offices, I said, “Before you start the demo, please know that I trulyhope that you are not going to say that it’s a tool so easy to use that anysubject-matter expert can use it to create great learning.” The personhesitated, took his hand off the mouse, and said, “In fact, that’s what I wasgoing to say.” What followed was a very good discussion about how they wantedto disrupt the market and offer something truly useful and I am now helpingthem with my suggestions and guidance as to what features they need to include.

So, yes, this is what is happening now. Very often we hearvendors say that we no longer need instructional designers because the toolsare so easy to use that Harry the Engineer can create the engineering coursehimself, or Susan the Physicist can build that physics lesson herself. Thebean-counters in those organizations buying those tools are psyched at all themoney they can save by not hiring or contracting instructional designers (andof course programmers) to fill their learning needs. They don’t know, ofcourse, that the resulting lessons are often at the very least anemic and atthe worst nothing more than boring text and images punctuated with a Jeopardygame and quizzes. Learners end up expecting their eLearning to be onerous andare resigned to getting through it as quickly as possible and in some casescheating if they can.

So what can be done?

We are seeing a backlash against bad eLearning emerging aspeople start to realize what has happened. One problem that has held us back isthat most of the work we do is performed under nondisclosure, meant to be seenonly by a specific audience within an organization. As such, the general publichas not seen some of the best eLearning.

But there is hope. As an example, The eLearning Guild holdsan event at all their major conferences where attendees can demonstrate theirbest eLearning examples and everyone votes on the ones that they find mostengaging in different categories. Yes, sometimes visuals sway votes more thangreat coding, but almost everyone recognizes great eLearning interactions whenthey see them. This leads them to want to improve their own eLearning. TheGuild goes so far as to show the winners online, as they will again in August, and each winner demonstrates his or her sample. Thisallows anyone with access to see great examples that can help improve their ownexpectations of what good eLearning is all about. If you haven’t seen these,check out the recordings.

There is also hope that some tool vendors are starting tosee the wisdom in providing back-end programming capabilities to their tools,so that once again, as in the days of Authorware, subject-matter experts canuse the tools to a level, instructional designers can use them at deeperlevels, and developers can get down to the deepest levels to make the learningthe best possible.

Tool vendors that are successful today do try to balancepower and ease-of-use and not just make their tools extremely easy to use.However, no tool today allows for the power that we used to have and that manyof us sorely miss. When we use the tools of today, we anguish over the slownessand the inefficiency by which we have to create lessons. The irony is that, inmany cases, this slowness means that it is taking longer to create much of thelearning today than it did at one time, so organizations are actually payingmore. A good programmer can quickly make lessons that work well but that alsoare easy to maintain and update in the future. However, in many cases thosewithout programming skills are doing the best they can to create lessons thatusually have to be thrown out when major updates are needed, leading to even moremoney being spent.

Last year the Serious eLearning Manifesto was released (see https://elearningmanifesto.org/).Based on the work of Michael Allen, Julie Dirksen, Clark Quinn, and WillThalheimer, it is a set of 22 principles that should guide any eLearningprofessional to create the best possible work. I was one of the originaltrustees, and to date over 800 eLearning professionals have signed the pledge. However,it is difficult to hold to the pledge to create the best eLearning possiblewhen you don’t have a tool that gives you the freedom to do so, when you haveto compromise your learning design so much that the end result doesn’t workwell. I believe that the principles in the Serious eLearning Manifesto arewonderful and it is a great opportunity for tool vendors to improve their toolsor create new tools that will help us meet those principles. I suspect thatthose who do will win over the market.

Are you happy with the state of tools today or do you findyourself wishing you could do more? Remember that the best learning possibletakes into account the learner audience, the content to be taught, and thecontext in which the content is to be taught. That means that eLearning isgoing to be different for accountants and for surgeons. That means theinteractions you build should be different. If you ask yourself, “What will mytool allow me to do for this audience and this content?” then you’re asking thewrong question. The real question should be, “What is the best approach to havethis audience learn and so what interactions should I build?” If you lookaround and realize that your tool can’t handle your needs, find a better one. Ifyou can’t find any tool that can truly deliver your vision of great learning,then urge tool vendors to improve their tools further.

What are your thoughts? I welcome them.

Editor’s Note:

This review reflects Joe’s view of matters, and is not a Guild position statement. If you see matters differently, please say so in the Comments.