Author’s cuisine, auteur cinema, and now authoring tools, coming soon to a screen near you! The massive boom in e-learning means that authoring tools are now all the rage.
An authoring tool is a must for any instructional designer or trainer who wants to optimize the results of their training. Sound like you? If you’ve been searching for authoring tools for creating interactive educational content, look no further! I’m going to tell you everything you need to know about authoring tools and what Genially can offer you in this regard.
What is an authoring tool?
An authoring tool is software for creating visual and interactive online content with no need for coding skills. More specifically, the term is often used in connection with the creation of educational content in educational organizations of all kinds and also for corporate training.
More and more companies and institutions are using an authoring tool to create interactive learning content, which is often then consumed in an LMS (Learning Management System). And not only for training, but also for onboarding, communication, marketing, and more.
Why is an authoring tool like Genially a must for teachers, trainers, and instructional designers? Because it’s a very versatile no-code tool that allows you to create amazing resources that you never imagined possible.
An escape room, a manual, a guide, or a quiz becomes an incredible interactive experience. With no more effort than you would need to create a simple presentation, you get spectacular results and your creations look like the work of a professional design team.
What’s more, using Genially as an authoring tool improves your productivity, by enabling you to generate high quality content in less time. And as you know: less time equals lower production cost. You can also reuse the content as many times as you want. You can make thousands of courses with them; it’s impossible to wear them out! And the best part is that any changes you make are updated instantly.
Anyone with any professional profile can very easily learn how to use Genially, which will mean they no longer depend on a design team or need to worry about knowing how to code. If you too are allergic to coding and can’t stand the sight of HTML, this is the place to be!
Authoring tools, like any software (and also like me on Mondays), can be in the cloud or desktop based. Genially, for example, is cloud based.
Which system do you prefer? In my opinion, the cloud has lots of advantages. In addition to how easy it is to share content, the cloud is extremely practical. All you need is a browser with an internet connection, and off you go! You don’t need to depend on the IT team to authorize you to install an application, and you don’t need to download app updates. Open the browser, log in, and create! Oh, and there’s no need to worry if you lose or change your computer, it’s all in the cloud.
What are the features of an authoring tool?
These are the requirements of a good authoring tool:
- It enables people to create interactive multimedia content for training purposes.
- It provides a system for structuring and controlling content delivery.
- It allows people to publish content in an LMS and other similar tools.
- It offers the option to monitor the interactions between content and learners to assess the learning outcome.
- It is usually compatible with SCORM format, the training content standard that enables content to be compatible with and ‘communicate’ with multiple e-learning platforms, i.e. to collect information on learner progress.
Genially meets all these requirements and more. In case you didn’t know, Genially is much more than a tool for creating educational presentations; it is an extremely comprehensive authoring tool with a lot to offer to corporate training professionals. Apart from the features we just mentioned, Genially also:
- offers thousands of templates for creating all kinds of training content: tutorials and courses, quizzes and breakouts, mind and concept maps, infographics, interactive images, videos, and more. Even for making certificates and diplomas for your courses!
- is an all-in-one tool that includes a library full of resources, its own analytics tool, collaborative options, and more types of interactivity than any other tool.
- has an inspiration section with reusable content created by members of the community that can help get you out of a jam.
- allows you to import PPTX and edit them in the Genially Editor, which is great for turning your old content into cool interactive experiences. Give your content a new life!
- Our team is also working hard to ensure the tool meets the ATAG guidelines (Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines) in order to make the content created with Genially more and more accessible.
And, it offers you infinite space for creating. All the courses and resources you could ever create will fit in your Genially account. Pretty great, right?
How to use Genially as an authoring tool
Want to know the best features of Genially as an authoring tool? In addition to simplifying the creation of visual content and the thousands of resources it offers you, there are many other features you can take advantage of. For example:
- Did you know that you can choose between 3 different navigation modes between pages? This is great for controlling content delivery. If you want to set the order in which your audience will move through your creation, use the Microsite navigation option. You can also password-protect any pages or creations you want.
- Genially is compatible with the most popular LMS, such as Moodle, Canvas, 360 learning, EduFlow, and other environments such as Google Classroom and Microsoft Teams. In Classroom and Teams, you can share your creations with one simple click. You can also download your geniallys as SCORM packages to track the progress of your learners from your LMS.
- Want more options for monitoring interactions with your content? Coming right up? There’s also Analytics, which provides useful metrics on visits and interactions. And, if you activate user tracking you’ll get detailed information about the progress of each person who visits your content, and you can download the data in CSV format to manage it more comfortably.
And I could go on, because there are many, many more great features… but I’m dying for a coffee. You too? If you’ve read this far, I’m sure we’re in the same boat. Let’s go get that coffee, but just remember this the next time you’re creating training content: Genially really is an awesome authoring tool.
