Choosing Authoring Tools Advanced Distributed Learning (adl) Initiative

4.4.Hosted solutions

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  Eliminates the cost of hardware and network infrastructure needed to support a local installation of the system.
  

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  Lowers staff costs for administration and maintenance.
  

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  Puts less bandwidth load on the corporate network.
  

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  Content and feature updates can be accomplished without intervention by staff.
  

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  Enables faster implementation.
  

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  Requires little or no internal technical support or development.
  

Vendors who offer hosted solutions commit themselves to a robust hosting and networking infrastructure with uninterrupted, 24/7 access from any location. The system that they host must be scalable and have redundant backup and security. These are items for due diligence verification during the acquisition process.

Most hosted solution vendors offer access to their tools on a subscription basis. And some of these, such as easygenerator^®, offer free accounts to produce a limited number of courses, as a gradient towards fee-based accounts.

4.5.Templates, themes, and skins

Skins usually comprise an interface wrapper or design that is applied dynamically to a basic content layout. The LMS usually provides the skin from a library of them and controls the skinning process. Skins are very common in cases where different organizations or user groups are sharing the same LMS, and they need to use different “storefronts” to reinforce/brand their identity, or at least in order to not confuse users as to the owner or source of the course. The LMS detects what organization, role, etc. the user belongs to, and dynamically skins the content. Skins enable local variations on parent content objects, providing each organization or learner community with its own visual interface or style for the same base content, managed on the level of a single master copy.

Themes are generally style sheets that globally control the appearance and format of screens, but are static and configured in the content during the process of authoring, via the authoring tool. Unlike skins, themes provide formatting for items appearing within the interface (often in addition to the interface itself). They are not applied dynamically by the LMS. Themes generally control elements at a more fine-grained level, controlling color themes, look and feel of interactive widgets, etc.

Templates are of two types. One supplies a convenient starting point for developing a screen (often including the interface); you simply replace placeholder text, graphics, etc. Templates can include not just visual elements but a large proportion of the functionality of the screen, often based on instructional activities or kinds of interactions. Some authoring tools force you to use templates as starting points for building screens; you cannot design an individual page without specifying a template first.

Templates can also be a whole structure for a course. For example, you may have a pre-test with a certain number of questions, followed by instruction, followed by a post test. In this kind of template, the standardized sequence of activities of the course rather than the appearance is controlled. This kind of template can also be provided by the LMS, though in this case, the elements have to be created in the authoring tool as separate learning objects.

An authoring paradigm that relies heavily on templates, sometimes termed “form-based authoring,” is popular for rapid eLearning development (see 4.1. Rapid eLearning authoring tools). Under this paradigm, the course author populates forms with content data and objects. There is a form (i.e., template) for each type of screen, built to accomplish a specific design, function, and/or interaction. The form is limited to the functions and designs included in that template. This is contrasted with “freeform authoring,” where authors start with a blank screen, and have unlimited access to all of the functionality provided by the tool itself. Form-based authoring takes little or no programming skill and enables authoring by non-technical SMEs, while freeform authoring takes some programming skills. In form-based authoring, instructional designers or SMEs simply choose the template or theme that applies to a screen they wish to build and populate the content. This saves huge amounts of time, reduces the requirement for technical expertise, and simplifies the authoring process, since authors are just populating a template rather than engineering the whole screen.

During the design phase of a project, authors may either develop their own themes and templates or choose them from a library (usually packaged with the authoring tool). Skins are usually controlled and customized via a function within the LMS. Managers can mandate the use of templates and themes to enforce uniform standards for eLearning across an organization.

Tools vary in the features they provide for building your own templates. In general, the process is:

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   Create a skeleton for the template that specifies the types of media objects that will be included on the page.
   
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   Create or specify the user interface within which the content will appear (often in terms of a pre-built skin).
   
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   Create the layout for the template that includes sizes and positions of media objects.
   

Screen templates are critical for authoring mobile learning, since screen real estate is so restricted and particular to each platform. Some authoring and graphic design tools include a catalog of templates for particular devices.