Speaker 1: Are you looking for a free authoring tool that will let you create e-learning courses? Have you almost given up on finding a decent solution with no hidden costs or time limits? Well, here's some good news. We've done deep research and tested 9 courseware that cost nothing. Watch to learn which free e-learning authoring tools are available, their strengths and weaknesses. Happy Learns Day, everyone. I'm Paulina, and today's another great day to learn something new. So, let's get started. What is an e-learning authoring tool? First of all, let's see what kind of software such a tool entails. An e-learning authoring tool is software that enables you to create digital education content to share with learners through a learning management system or on the web. E-learning content includes e-courses, video lectures, quizzes, simulations, and more. Some tools are focused only on building one type of training content, while others comprise a set of tools under one roof that cover a lot of tasks instructional designers or educators might need to deal with. But when speaking about free solutions, it should be noted that their functionality is quite limited compared to paid ones. Let's have a look at what they offer. The first authoring tool which we will talk about is iSpring Free. iSpring Free is a user-friendly authoring tool for creating site-based courses with quizzes. If you have ready-made presentations, you can turn them into interactive online courses in a few clicks as the tool builds right in PowerPoint. When converting, it maintains all PowerPoint animations, triggers, and transitions intact. Since the interface is familiar and intuitive, it's also easy to build courses from scratch. Just populate slides with text, images, YouTube videos, and web objects, a page from Wikipedia or your corporate website, for example. There are three types of quiz questions for assessing learners' knowledge. Multiple choice, multiple response, and short answer. To enhance your quizzes, you can set feedback, a number of attempts, and time limits. The content created with iSpring Free automatically adapts to all devices and looks great on any screen, including those of PCs, Macs, tablets, and smartphones. So the pros of this authoring tool are pretty clear. It's easy to use and doesn't require coding skills. iSpring Free always allows you to convert PowerPoint slides to HTML5 or Squirm. Also, it's Squirm-compliant and keeps intact all PowerPoint effects. That is why courses and quizzes look good and play well on any device. And with iSpring Free, you can publish courses without watermarks. Although it has cons, they are super minor. The main disadvantage is that iSpring Free doesn't work without installed PowerPoint. Also, you will be able to use only three quiz question types and 15 slides in your course. Now let's move on to the second authoring tool, and it is Udutu. Udutu is a free web-based tool for building courses. It comes with a variety of what-you-seize-what-you-get apps that let you create different kinds of activities, including assessments, interactive modules, and branching scenarios. Like iSpring Free, it allows you to convert your PowerPoint slides to online courses, but this option requires a subscription of $10 per month. Courses can be downloaded to your computer as Squirm packages. Now let's sum up all the advantages of this tool. Udutu doesn't require coding skills, and it's Squirm-compliant as well as iSpring-free. It has pre-designed templates, a large variety of assessment questions, and the ability to create interactive learning objects and branching scenarios. The disadvantage of Udutu is that it's not very steep but definitely has a learning curve. Besides that, without a subscription, you will be unable to preview a course without watermarks or convert it into Squirm and HTML5 format. Moving to the third tool, and it is EaseEasy. EaseEasy is another cloud-based authoring tool. It has a user-friendly interface. The free pricing plan, as well as the paid plans, allows you to build site-based courses by using ready-made templates that you can populate with text, images, videos, and audio. The tool also enables you to add and customize interactive elements, such as quizzes, timelines, catalogs, process interactions, and more. But the free version has significant limitations. The tool restricts its use to three learning projects and put a 0.3 GB limit on the space for courses. Besides that, courses will be published with a logo and a watermark. However, there are many pros. First, it's easy to use. Then, it has a variety of good-looking templates. It includes six quiz question types and has interactive elements and, of course, is Squirm-compliant. The fourth authoring tool that we tested is Adept. Adept is an open-source tool that is designed for rapid course authoring. It doesn't support branching scenarios and offers a very limited animation scope. So, it's suited only to those who want to create long-read courses with linear navigation. Overall, the course functionality is sufficient to make simple online courses. But you can enhance the learner experience by installing additional Adept plugins that will allow you to custom design your content. The pros of this tool are adaptive plugins, a variety of supported languages, and the ability to use it on different devices. However, there are some cons too. Adept supports a limited variety of animations and doesn't support branching scenarios at all. Also, it requires a techie mind to make some plugins work. The next guest of our tool meeting is CourseLab. CourseLab is another free authoring software for building interactive e-learning courses that can be published on the web or to an LMS. However, the interface looks a bit outdated and is not very intuitive. But for tech geeks, this tool can be a good solution since it provides quite an intensive feature set, images, videos, complex multi-object interactions, and quizzes. Let's sum up the advantages of this tool. CourseLab is SCORM and AICC compliant and has six quiz question types. You can make your job easier using a tree-like course structure and a built-in screen capture feature. But we cannot fail to mention the cons. CourseLab has a non-intuitive user interface and outdated design. Also, some media files require JavaScript, Chalkwave, and RealPlayer. The app is not compatible with mobile devices and many LMSes. Let's move on to the sixth authoring tool, GlowMaker. GlowMaker is a free open-source tool that enables you to create structured interactive learning materials. There are a variety of templates that can be customized according to your training needs. GlowMaker provides a great number of options, including quizzes with feedback, slideshow viewer, photo display with Zoom facility, video and audio players, and more. However, many novice course builders will find the tool unintuitive and complicated to use. Let's cover the pros of GlowMaker authoring tool. So, it is compliant with SCORM and AICC, has pedagogical guides, built-in patterns and templates, and creates sequences of online learning activities. But GlowMaker also has an outdated design, limited interactivity, only two quiz question types, and doesn't work without Adobe Air. The seventh tool of our list is H5P. H5P is an open-source cloud-based tool that allows you to create HTML5 e-learning content and publish it on popular platforms like WordPress, Moodle, or Drupal. The content can also be added to any LMS that supports LTI integration. H5P has interactive videos, HTML5 presentations, branching scenarios, quizzes, flashcards, and more. However, the tool is quite limited as far as creating complex and customized e-learning projects. The main pros of this tool are open API and that it's mobile-friendly. With that, tech-savvy developers can create new H5P content types. You can create a large variety of interactive e-learning activities. The disadvantages of this authoring tool are limited features for customization, no preview option, and the impossibility to make content private. Our penultimate guest is Movly. Movly is a cloud-based video editor that is a good fit for creating training videos. It allows you to create tutorials by using your photos, screenshots, footage, or voice recordings, or by leveraging the built-in media libraries. The tool comes with a huge library of images, sounds, and stock videos you can use to make new video content in any style. But if you want to record your webcam or screen for your training video, you need to get a paid account. With Movly, you can also start creating your video by uploading an existing PowerPoint presentation. So the pros of this authoring tool are pretty clear. Its intuitive drag-and-drop interface, possibility to publish to YouTube, Vimeo, and Movly Gallery, 1.3 million free images, sounds, and footage, and ready-to-go templates for fast authoring. However, with Movly, you can create only video content and publish it only with watermarks, with the best video quality SD480p. The maximum video length is only 2 minutes, and you will not be able to record the screen or webcam. Our final authoring tool is AdaptiveView. AdaptiveView is a cloud-based tool with a course creation capability. But it includes an LMS functionality, allowing you to invite learners and track their training statistics. It's also not free but does enable you to create two courses free of charge. With AdaptiveView, you can build responsive webpage-style courses. You can also create a variety of lessons and steps in a course to let your learners digest information in smaller chunks. The pros of this tool are ease of use, creation of interactive, well-organized content, quick knowledge checks that you can add, and the possibility to build courses that are responsive across devices. Regardless of all the pros, AdaptiveView doesn't allow users to share courses with learners outside the platform. They need to be registered learners. The free pricing plan provides access only to five users and two courses. It doesn't allow the creation of creative quizzes and design customization. I think that your main question is, which free e-learning authoring tool to choose? All of these free authoring tools are good if they serve your needs. For example, if you want to create beautiful slide-based courses with quizzes extremely fast, iSpring Free can be a perfect fit. If you need to build courses with customized interactions, and you are a tech-savvy person and willing to invest time in training, CourseLab may be a good pick for you. Or, if you aim to create versatile, interactive content and publish it on WordPress, you might be better off choosing H5P. However, if the basic features that free e-learning authoring tools provide are not enough for your ambitions, Test Drive, a full-featured authoring toolkit that will allow you to build professional online courses with quizzes, video tutorials, dialect simulations, and interactive modules, you can use it for free for 14 days, so it's up to you. If you liked this video, don't forget to give it a big thumbs up down below. Also, click the red subscribe button to come join the iSpring community. We'd love to have you on board. And finally, hit the bell notification icon so you get notified every time we upload a brand new video. We share more tips on our blog, so go ahead and explore it. Take care and good luck with choosing a perfect authoring tool for your needs. Bye.