{"id":347,"date":"2019-03-15T20:23:37","date_gmt":"2019-03-15T14:53:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/esleave.com\/?p=347"},"modified":"2019-03-15T20:24:36","modified_gmt":"2019-03-15T14:54:36","slug":"e-learning-development-productivity-your-authoring-tool-can-make-a-huge-difference","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/esleave.com\/web\/e-learning-development-productivity-your-authoring-tool-can-make-a-huge-difference\/","title":{"rendered":"E-Learning Development Productivity \u2013  Your Authoring Tool Can Make All the Difference"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>If you are managing a large E-Learning development\nteam,&nbsp; chances are that Productivity is one\nof your top of mind challenges&nbsp; <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Productivity translates to dollars and every content head is\nconstantly looking for ways to improve productivity and cycle time. While\nproductivity is a multi dimensional issue and involves factors such as training\nand processes, &nbsp;your development platform\nis easily the single most important determinant of your team\u2019s\nproductivity.&nbsp; <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Broadly speaking there are four major ways in which your\nAuthoring platform can help improve productivity.&nbsp; When used in tandem, &nbsp;these can help to dramatically improve the productivity\nof your team.&nbsp; The four major areas are:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Templates<\/li><li>Collaboration<\/li><li>Global Options and <\/li><li>Time Savers<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h1 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Templates and&nbsp; Custom Templates<\/h1>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;The use of templates\ncan considerably enhance the productivity of your development team. Templates\nhelp improve productivity in multiple ways. Templates minimize the effort\nrequired for layout design programming and testing . Templates also help jump\nstart development by allowing Non Technical&nbsp;\ndevelopers like Subject Matter Experts and Instructional Designers &nbsp;to directly work with your Authoring System\ninstead of using Word or Power Point. This immediately eliminates one\nstage&nbsp; of the development process&nbsp; speeds up development considerably.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>However,&nbsp; a word of\ncaution \u2013 It is simply not sufficient for &nbsp;your development platform to provide you a set\nof templates.&nbsp; As a developer &nbsp;you will constantly have needs that available\ntemplates&nbsp; don\u2019t meet.&nbsp; Therefore while selecting a platform it is\nessential &nbsp;to check whether the platform\nenables you to create your own custom templates &nbsp;to add to the default &nbsp;template library.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You&nbsp; also need to assess\n&nbsp;the programming support that the platform\nprovides.&nbsp; &nbsp;This is essential for Template creation.&nbsp; Platforms that provide full programming\nsupport will provide you all the flexibility you need to create the templates\nthat you want.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h1 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Collaboration<\/h1>\n\n\n\n<p>Another feature that can dramatically improve the productivity\nof&nbsp; your team is collaboration. Collaboration\nmeans that multiple users can work on the same project at the same time.&nbsp; Collaboration allows&nbsp; you to do parallel development that can\ndrastically bring down your cycle time.&nbsp;&nbsp;\nHowever, this is not the only way that collaboration helps.\nCollaboration also provides a host of other benefits . Some of these are:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>No integration required<\/li><li>No more back and forth transfer of files leading\nto multiple versions and errors<\/li><li>Reduced testing effort as&nbsp;&nbsp; the project has not been broken up into\nseparate modules&nbsp; eliminating module\nlevel testing<\/li><li>Easy to implement standards &nbsp;leading to consistency across developers<\/li><li>Easy to implement Global Options<\/li><li>Reduced&nbsp;\nreview cycle time<\/li><li>Enhanced Content Security through Rights\nManagement<\/li><li>Great for Multi&nbsp;\nLocation teams<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h1 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Global&nbsp; Options<\/h1>\n\n\n\n<p>Simply speaking Global Options that allow you to make or\nimplement changes to a course globally instead of having make the changes\nrepeatedly at the module or page level. Some examples of Global options are\nThemes, Buttons, Window Height, Module Names etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>However,&nbsp; it is of\ncrucial importance that the Global options be flexible. That is that while\nthe&nbsp; options are implemented globally one\nshould have the flexibility to change them at module and page level if\nrequired.&nbsp;&nbsp; Very often you need specific\nfunctionality or behavior at a page level and if you cannot override the global\noptions it can be a major constraint.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h1 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Time Savers<\/h1>\n\n\n\n<p>Time savers are features that seem minor but in reality can\nsave you enormous&nbsp; amount of development\ntime.&nbsp; One such example of this is the\nPreview . The ability to preview while developing&nbsp; without publishing the course can be an\nenormous time saver.&nbsp;&nbsp; If you need to\npublish a course in order to view it&nbsp; can\nadd significantly to your development time.&nbsp;\nImagine for instance that &nbsp;you that\nyou want to view and test &nbsp;the 20<sup>th<\/sup>\npage of your course. Without a preview&nbsp;\nyou will need to publish the course,&nbsp;\nnavigate through 20 pages,&nbsp; view\nthe page, &nbsp;return to development mode ,\nmake the required change, &nbsp;and then\npublish again,&nbsp; and navigate through 20\npages. to make sure that the changes you made show up correctly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There are many&nbsp; other\nsuch examples of Time Savers which can contribute significantly to improving\nproductivity.&nbsp; Some of the major ones\nare:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><strong>Time line\nbased development<\/strong> \u2013 Timelines can simplify development considerably<\/li><li><strong>Grouping\nbuttons<\/strong> to define their states automatically instead of defining each\nbutton individually<\/li><li><strong>Ease\nof&nbsp; synchronization<\/strong><\/li><li><strong>Parameters<\/strong>&nbsp; &#8211; In general, &nbsp;are two ways of&nbsp; defining the behavior of your e-learning&nbsp; course. Setting Parameters&nbsp; and Coding. Typically coding requires a great\ndeal more effort than setting parameters.&nbsp;\nSelect an authoring tool that allows you to meet most of your requirements\nby setting parameters. This can save you considerable development effort and\ncan significantly improve productivity.<\/li><\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you are managing a large E-Learning development team,&nbsp; chances are that Productivity is one of your top of mind challenges&nbsp; Productivity translates to dollars and every content head is constantly looking for ways to improve productivity and cycle time. While productivity is a multi dimensional issue and involves factors such as training and processes, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-elearning"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/esleave.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/esleave.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/esleave.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esleave.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esleave.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=347"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/esleave.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":349,"href":"https:\/\/esleave.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347\/revisions\/349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/esleave.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esleave.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esleave.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}