I’m about to reach 34 years working in the eLearning industry!It’s hard to believe that time has passed so quickly. When I give presentationsand teach classes at conferences held by The eLearning Guild and others, Ioften like to poll the audience with the question, “When was the firsteLearning development tool created?” Many times, I hear attendees respond witha date in the 1990s or even way back in the 1980s. However, it was way back in1960 that the National Science Foundation funded the creation of PLATO and workbegan at the University of Illinois. That year was also when I was born.Coincidence? I think not!
PLATO incorporated the first use of email, group chats, andmore. A fascinating short overview can be found on YouTube. In 2010, theComputer History Museum hosted a six-session conference on the PLATO learningsystem, which you can find by searching for PLATO@50 on YouTube.
So I joined the industry way late, 23 years after itsinception, though very early by today’s standards. Much has changed, of course,since then. We are no longer tied down to terrestrial networks because we haveThe Cloud, which has brought us the ability to reach millions of people withour eLearning at little cost, both on desktop and mobile devices. Moreover, thecloud is where more eLearning development tools reside. In many cases now, weno longer download and install software, including authoring tools; instead, wego to the cloud to use the actual tool. Most of the new authoring tools are, infact, now cloud-based.
What’s happening today? A lot is happening and it can be confusing, as evidenced by the manypeople with whom I speak who don’t understand certain terms. So, let’s startthis year by getting all of us onto the same page. Here’s a guide to licensingan authoring tool.
Licensing an authoring tool
Subscription vs. fulllicense—Many see the word subscription as synonymous with online or cloud-based. However, subscriptionsimply refers to the way that you pay for a tool license. It is true that mostcloud-based tools are subscription-based, but lots of tools you install and useon your hard drive are, as well.
An example: Full-price license for an installed tool
Let’s take as an example a tool called PractSynth (not real). Itis now in Version 5. Perhaps you started using it back in 2012 with Version 1and paid $600 for a license. You downloaded the installer, you installed PractSynth,and PractSynth V1 is still there on your hard drive, ready to be used. Sincethen you’ve upgraded with each new version, though the price has gone up attimes. Let’s see how the pricing on these worked out:
PractSynth Version | Full License Price | Upgrade License Price |
Version 1 | $600 |
|
Version 2 | $600 | $300 |
Version 3 | $650 | $325 |
Version 4 | $650 | $325 |
Version 5 | $700 | $350 |
Table 1: Licensing costs for a fictional authoring tool
You paid full price for Version 1 and then the upgradeprices for subsequent versions. To date, you have spent $1,900. In each case, you’ve downloaded and installed the newversions. Each version is on your hard drive, and you can use each for as longas you want. You can save the installers as well, so that if you ever switchcomputers, you can transfer PractSynth to the new computer. In many cases,though, you’ll have to activate your license so that it’s tied to thecurrent computer. It usually does this by registering your computer’s hardwareaddress, meaning that even if you were to reformat your hard drive andreinstall PractSynth, you’d be fine.
However, before moving it to another computer, you’d need todeactivate it on the current one. If your computer were to die and you couldno longer boot it, you would need to call the PractSynth vendor and have themdeactivate it manually in their servers so that you could then install it onthe new computer.
An example: Subscription license for an installed tool
Let’s suppose instead that PractSynth has always offered asubscription price of $15 a month and you decided to go that route. After fiveyears, you will have spent about $900,saving almost 50 percent over the regular pricing (assuming one version upgradeper year). The drawback is that your version of PractSynth will work only aslong as you keep paying the monthly subscription price. How does it know if youstop? When you first license and download the installer, you will have set upan online account, and every time or every few times that you open PractSynth,it will check online whether your license is still valid.
Authoring tools are upgraded often, some more often thanothers. You can decide whether the subscription pricing makes sense to you.Full disclosure: I’ve been using the subscription pricing on a few products, asfor me it saves money.
Cloud-based tools
Unlike traditional authoring tools that offer you aninstaller to download, which you then use to install the product on your harddrive, cloud-based tools are those you use directly in the browser. You installnothing on your hard drive in most cases, though in a few cases you may installa small helper application. To use the authoring tool itself, you open yourbrowser, log in to your site account, and start building your learning there.Almost all new authoring tools are cloud-based.
Obviously, you’ll want to ensure you have a good, fastconnection to use cloud-based tools, especially if you are going to use videosand other media that you need to upload from your hard drive. The advantage ofcloud-based tools is that you can start to build a lesson in one location andthen continue building it somewhere else, so long as you have Internet access.If you don’t, you’re dead in the water. However, it’s becoming rarer in manyplaces to not have fast access, and while most of us have plenty of hard drivespace, we can rest assured that most tool vendors use multiple backuptechniques and rarely go down. Switching to a new laptop? No problem. Justaccess the site on your new laptop and you’re good to go. Note that youprobably won’t be able to log in from two different computers at the same time.
Whereas you may be able to pay for tools you install on yourhard drive using traditional pricing or on a subscription basis, you pay forcloud-based tool licenses almost always on a subscription basis.
Evaluating the features of an authoring tool
It can be difficult to compare tools based on theirfeatures. Two vendors, for instance, may both claim that you can createdrag-and-drop exercises with their tools. However, dig a little deeper and youmay find that Tool A has a simpler but much more limited drag-and-dropcapability, whereas Tool B lets you create much more free-form and complexinteractions, at the cost of a steeper learning curve.
No matter the tool, you’ll want to ensure that it will growwith your needs. In many cases, you might be tempted to license a tool that iseasy to use but that forces you to stay within many design constraints so thatsoon you have to make a choice to either simplify your instructional design,rendering it less effective, or abandon the tool for a more powerful one. AsI’ve mentioned before, you always want to focus on what instructional designfeatures, media, interactivity, and other factors will best help your learnerslearn the content that you need toprovide to them in the context inwhich they need it. In addition, you want to ensure that your learners will beable to access your learning, meaning you must ascertain the publishing optionsthat tools offer.
How do you make sure the tool you choose willserve you well? Look for online reviews (like mine) and communities of practice,and try to find those already using a tool you’re researching to find out whatthey like and don’t like about it. When you go to a Guild conference, look for experts like me, who will give you their honestappraisals. Just as when you buy a car, don’t buy the first one you see. Makesure it will be reliable and have all the features you need.
