Features of the Best Web Authoring Tools

Whether your organization is investing in an e-learning initiative to more effectively onboard fresh hires or you’re a biology teacher looking to connect with remote learners, you need a great authoring tool to create dynamic courses and make the most of online learning. A quick authoring tool comparison might seem like the best option, but you have to know what features will really make a difference in your specific use case. 

 

EchoAuthor is an authoring tool for creating interactive, self-paced learning that can be published on any learning management system (LMS), embedded on a website, or self-hosted to ensure maximal accessibility. It is part of the broader Echosystem designed to empower inspired learning and represents a shining example of what a web authoring tool can be. Take a look at some of the features that make EchoAuthor so powerful:

 

Rapid Authoring

Nobody wants to use an authoring tool that makes course creation a chore, and it isn’t with EchoAuthor. You’ll have access to dozens of block types and interactive templates to make proven educational tools such as flashcards, matching exercises, and instructional videos. Real-time collaboration features make it easy to co-author courses, and editing courses is just as easy as creating them to keep all of your content up-to-date. If a competing web authoring tool cannot make these claims, why should you consider them?

Learner Progress Controls

An authoring tool has to offer more than just live classes. Self-paced assignments are fantastic because they give learners control over when and where they want to learn, but you have to be wary of students who rush through everything just to get it done. EchoAuthor supports gating, allowing course creators to hide elements of a course until a student demonstrates an understanding of previous material through assessment. These features remain accessible even if the course is exported to an LMS, ensuring that you’ll always have the evidence you need to help struggling learners and adjust course content.

Customizable Themes

One of the best ways to promote learner engagement with a web authoring tool is to make the content feel like an extension of your brand. For example, a social studies course might incorporate the school’s colors while a continuing education course prominently displays the sponsoring organization’s logos. EchoAuthor offers custom templates that will adjust the look of all of your courses with just a few clicks; no need to republish or manually edit them one by one. You can also use this feature to make tabs more accessible if your original design is confusing. 

Flexible Outputs

The best authoring tool in the world would offer no value if the resulting content couldn’t be distributed to learners, and EchoEngage gives you numerous options to choose from. EchoAuthor offers full integration with the rest of the Echosystem, allowing instructors to caption videos with EchoVideo or solicit real-time audience feedback through EchoEngage. You can also embed completed courses as an iFrame or download it in xAPI and SCORM-compatible formats to let nearly any LMS launch it. You can even distribute content to multiple places at once using our authoring tool.

Reusable Content

Your instructors shouldn’t need to waste time repeatedly recreating the same courses from scratch, and EchoAuthor ensures that they won’t need to. Elements of each course are saved as independent entities on our authoring tool, making it easy to drag and drop videos, infographics, and other multipurpose learning aids into any course they make sense in. You can also reuse existing courses if you frequently have to teach the same material to different groups of learners.

Find out more about our authoring tool and the rest of the Echosystem

EchoAuthor was designed to help instructors transform their experience and subject matter expertise into dynamic courses that capture attention and spark conversation with advanced analytics to measure the impact. If that sounds like the web authoring tool you’ve been looking for, reach out right now to discover what an authoring tool can be.

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Best-In-Class Learning Management Solution

Question Types

With over 14 different question types, you can match the assessment to the material at hand. Use traditional test question types such as true/false, multiple-choice, multiple response, numeric response, matching, completion, short answer and essay to review, re-teach and reinforce learning.

Reporting & Analytics

Ensuring that learners understand the information presented and how it can impact their success is key. Assess, track and analyze learner performance. Get results immediately and view valuable reports at the individual level, or for the class or group as a whole. Provide results in real-time, or at a later time as preferred.

Dynamic Bimodal Versioning

With dynamic content, generate multiple iterations of exam questions to test the same concept. Use bimodal to toggle between multiple-choice and short answer question types, immediately changing the item difficulty level.

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Create, capture, manage, store and search video with the most powerful platform anywhere.
From in-person to virtual to flipped classrooms, we have the tools to engage your learners.
Creating effective and engaging materials for your learners has never been easier -or more impactful.
Create multi-modal assessments and generate analytics within seconds.

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Echo360 is driven to enable inspired learning experiences for everyone, anywhere through the high quality of solutions, tools, and standards we set for our work and ourselves. 

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Unleashing the end-to-end learning potential of video, from creation to administration.  

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Designing and delivering effective engagement tools that produce results. 

Reporting & Analytics

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LMS Integration

Integrating seamlessly with the most widely used Learning Management Systems in education and business. 

Accessibility

Committing to meeting or exceeding standards that ensure learning equity. 

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Making Online Learning Interactive, Engaging, and Personal

University of Kentucky

Effective Online and Hybrid Instruction 

Northampton Community College

How Echo360 Became an Essential Teaching and Learning Tool at Northampton Community College

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