Design Option

The Tool Of Content Experts

There have been several questions about the approach that ReadyGo has taken with the Web Course Builder - WCB - (an eLearning authoring tool designed for subject matter experts). ReadyGo believes that the reason that so few web courses are being produced is that the tools that are available are too difficult for the content expert. We use "content expert" to denote a trainer, product manager, project manager, or other employee who needs to transfer their experience and knowledge to other employees, but who does not have a background in computer programming or use of sophisticated computer software. Without tools designed for the content expert, ReadyGo believes, that eLearning will become a specialty niche, when it could become a core component of business.

Think back to what it was like to create presentations in the 1980s. Only those organizations that could afford to have professionally produced materials had presentations that were more than word-processed transparencies. When tools like PowerPoint became available, everyone had the ability to create presentations that looked professionally produced. The same need exists in today's business world with respect to distance training. Content experts need a tool that enables easy production of professional looking eLearning courses. When ReadyGo decided to create the Web Course Builder, we interviewed people from over 200 companies. Our goal was to clearly understand how content experts work and to identify corporate trends for training and web use. This information guides the architecture of WCB.

• Almost all content experts we interviewed told us that they do not create their own graphics. Rather, they rely on an artist. We decided not to include a graphic design tool within the WCB, and instead focused on providing easy methods to import and integrate any type of web-viewable graphics into courses.
  
  
• We found that if we gave content experts a blank screen and asked them to create a course (especially with something new like eLearning), they got stuck at the layout phase, and never progressed to the content creation phase. Therefore, we decided to base the tool on templates so that content experts can immediately start creating courses.
  
  
• We found that Power Point is the corporate education tool of choice for most companies. When PowerPoint is saved for web use each page is saved as a graphic, making it inappropriate for the web. Content experts want an easy way to migrate their existing Power Point slides into an eLearning course. Our tool provides a copy-paste mechanism to transfer titles and bullets from PowerPoint into a ReadyGo course. Course developers told us that they wanted to expand on PowerPoint to include features like FAQ, Glossary, Help, and Indexes. We provide straightforward templates to create these services and incorporate these functions. Additionally the ReadyGo Web Course Builder provides an easy way to rearranging chapters and pages within a course.
  
  
• Our current release includes copy-paste functions between courses; by course, chapter, page, sub-page, FAQ, help page, or Glossary. This means content experts can create reusable course modules and several developers can concurrently work on a single course. For example, it is possible to create standard glossaries or chapters and then share them between content experts in multiple courses.
  
  
• Another new feature is the ability to create a printable text version of an entire course, a chapter, FAQs, Glossary, etc. The main uses of this are for course handouts and editorial copies of the content. (Printing out an entire course using a browser is a slow and tedious process.)

Wysiwig or dialog box?

We had the choice to develop a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) interface or a dialog box interface. We decided to build a dialog box-based interface:
• With a WYSIWYG authoring tool there is an expectation that the layout the created by the author will be exactly how the student sees the content. This conflicts with one of the main benefits of web browsers: Each person can control the size, shape, and font the browser displays. Since students can modify their environment, it is probable that the environment a course designer uses during development is not the same as that on the student's desktop. For course creators to be able to control the student desktop they will either need to create a plug-in to display the course or they will need to capture the page as a single image (GIF, JPEG) like PowerPoint does. Use of a plug-in adds an additional level of technical complication in serving a course. Creating an image to capture the page means a slow downloads and negates many of the benefits of the web including the ability to search documents for Knowledge Management. Our decision was to implement dialog boxes instead of WYSIWYG. This provides the course creator with a structure into which their content can be placed. The ReadyGo Web Course Builder takes the content and produces standard HTML that which the student's browser can optimally display.
  
  
• An additional benefit of using a dialog box based authoring tool is that the advanced user can easily drop in any HTML/ XML/JavaScript into the template. This extends the ReadyGo WCB into an eLearning container. For advanced users, the tool automates tedious tasks such as linking pages, building indexes, moving pages, and making sure all the links work; while providing the flexibility to use anything that is web readable wherever the course creator sees fit.
  
  
• With a WYSIWYG tool, course developers must hunt through multiple pull down menus to access desired capabilities. Our research found that content experts who were not constantly using the WYSIWYG tool, quickly forgot which features were available and became confused by the naming structures found in the pull down menus. Our solution was to include function buttons on the input dialog boxes. This way content experts are always aware of which features are available (and appropriate) for the particular page/task because they have easy, intuitive access to those tools.
  
  
• There are a few limitations to the approach, however. ReadyGo's dialog box-based input screens are more constrained than WYSIWYG tools, but we feel that the ease of use and speed of development compensate for this. With a dialog box based solution course developers are given a standard, proven, structure to create eLearning courses. They lose the ability to move any feature to any location on the page, but this is a capability needed primarily by advanced graphics designers. We do give course developers the ability to move the layout of graphics, replace any of the stock navigation graphics, change color schemes, modify automatically generated text (e.g. score your test), and easily add any drill down features (e.g. articles, tests, quizzes, exercises, links). These capabilities satisfy most of the content experts.
  
  

The ReadyGo Web Course Builder is a tool focused on the content expert, enabling them to create web-ready tutorials and full eLearning courses. Because of the architectural decisions incorporated in the tool, most content experts are able to produce multi-chapter courses in less than one hour (from installation of the product.)