Effective Design and Delivery of Learning Materials in Learning Management Systems - Web-Based Engineering Education: Critical Design and Effective Tools - page 181

• Viewing the overall progress of learners include multimedia. Using such tools, existing

learning objects can be adapted for use in different
courses or for different purposes. The provided
learning material can be used by various learners
with different skills. One of the important criteria
for selecting authoring tools is their ease for use
and creative freedom so that a powerful author-
ing tool can lead to a richer course content. In
general, authoring tools cause cost reduction and
help in investment return. Authoring tools can be
categorized in three generations: Template-based
Tools, General Authoring Tools, and High-end
Simulation Tools 3 . In the following, we briefly
describe these categories.

• Viewing the sequence progress of learners

(completed, current and new activities that
haven't been undertaken)

• Viewing the detailed status of the learners

in each sequence (according to the selected
learner)

• Editing permissions of the learners to se-

quences (or parts of them) created by the
authors (instructors)

• Exporting portfolios for a learner or a

group of learners in groupware activities.

Author (Instructor)

Each activity in a LAM system should be started
by or under supervision of the author. In fact,
creating multiple fascinating pathways for the
learners is not a troublesome task today, but having
a meaningful consistent set of controlled structures
with unified educational goals in such systems
makes it hard to be implemented, considering
the collaboration between different parts of the
system. In such a system, an author can control
the system in these ways:

• Template-Based Tools : Courses designed

by these tools may contain a sequence or a
combination of dialog boxes or similar ob-
jects. There is no need for any skill in order
for learners to use them. These tools work
well where ease of use has higher priority
than creative freedom and flexibility, since
these tools have low flexibility.

• General Authoring Tools : These tools are

more useful for creating general purpose
learning material and are widely used in
the market for current courses. There is a
need for more skills in order for users to
use them. They also have more flexibility
than the first generation as they give more
creative freedom. In general, these tools
are considered as general purpose tools.

• Creating, storing, modifying and reusing

the learner activity sequences

• Viewing a preview of their authored

sequences

• File operations (new, open, save, and save

as)

• Editing operations (copy-paste and

cut-paste)

• High-end Simulation Tools : They are ex-

tended tools of high-end multimedia simu-
lations. There is a need for high skills in or-
der to use them. They have high flexibility
and they give more creative freedom than
the previous generations. Better quality of
learning can be achieved by using these
tools compared to the previous ones.

• Sequencing tools (transition, optional ac-

tivity, flow, gate, grouping, branching, and
preview)

• Importing and exporting sequences to be

shared with colleagues

AutHorIng tooLS

Authoring tools 2 enable creating effective and
perhaps interactive learning material which may