As an instructional designer I’m constantly evaluating e-learning tools to incorporate in my online course build projects. Each course and instructor has unique needs so it’s important to stay current so I can apply the best tool for the situation. I’ve been building courses for the past 5 years during which I’ve evaluated hundreds of tools. From these evaluations the following 8 tools have risen to the top. These are my core tools, the hammer, screwdriver, drill and measuring tape equivalents. I’ve drifted towards these 8 for various reasons including stability in the market, university support, ease of use and features.
Blackboard is the learning management system (LMS) of choice the University’s I’ve worked for, and is central to online course delivery. While the content is typically designed to be LMS agnostic, other key components including quizzes, student enrollment, assignments, grade center and discussion boards are typically housed in Blackboard. Plone, Moodle, Sakai, Drupal and Google Sites are free alternatives.
Most instructors come to the plate with some sort of slide materials as a starting point. This often serves as a content outline for lecture delivery. The biggest challenges are 1) addressing overall look and feel 2) redesigning text and layout for online delivery and 3) making presentations more relevant and interesting to todays students who growing up in a digital nation. To do this we are defaulting to trying to incorporate other multimedia components like web videos, flash, stock images and custom animations. PowerPoint is also the starting point for Articulate and Adobe Presenter listed below. Free Alternatives.
Photoshop is a tool I use nearly every day. Whether I need to create a course banner, video wrapper, background, a logo like the ones on the left or simply resize a photo Photoshop serves as my default . I use Photoshop as part of the Adobe e-Learning suite. Free Alternatives.
Filezilla is a FTP client. Most of the content we create is published, hosted on a server and linked through a Learning Management system like Blackboard. Filezilla is my tool of choice for transfering files between my CPU and our servers. Free Alternatives.
As an instructional designer I am often asked to play the role of various disciplines, including multimedia specialist. When asked to do basic video production I default to Apple iMovie 09. This tool is simple and powerful at the same time. It allows me to work in with HD codecs and integrate seamlessly with video sharing sites like Vimeo and Youtube. I sometimes use Final Cut Studio if I need advaced graphics and editing capabilities. Free Alternatives.
Respondus is my go to tool for creating and uploading quizzes, surveys and exams to Blackboard. This is mostly a time saving tool as the built in Blackboard tool for quiz creation is a nightmare! Respondus takes most of the hard work out of it allowing you to easily go from .doc or .txt to Blackboard without wasting a year of your life.
Articulate is a relatively new tool I’ve been incorporating into some of our more custom development projects. It serves as a PPT ribbon that packages slides, audio, interactions and quizzes into a more aesthetically pleasing flash package for delivery. This product is expensive and sometimes buggy, but the output looks great. Here are some examples from the Articulate website. They also offer a free 30 day trial which is nice.
Adobe Presenter is a PowerPoint is also a PPT plugin that allows users to record Audio and Video to their slide presentations. This tool is pretty easy to use and setup so it’s often times a default for instructors who want to create audio narrated slide presentation on their own time.
Obviously these aren’t the only or best tools available, they are just what I use “today”. ASU Online also has some great Top Tools for Teaching Online if your still not satisfied. What tools are you using? Add your favorites to the comments area.
great idea.