ABSTRACT

Today’s instructional designers can choose from a wide variety of authoring and online learning development tools. With the evolution of learning technology, expectations from outside the learning and training discipline are looking to the technology to provide instructional design guidance and allow novice developers to create instructionally sound online learning. This chapter explores the tools that instructional designers and novice developers use most often to create online learning from both a design and development perspective, the types of instructional design support that can be found in different types of development tools, and how these tools may (or may not) impact the ability to meet instructional needs. A classification system is used to 672analyze tools as (1) standard authoring tools, (2) front-end design and automated instructional design (AID) tools, (3) simulation and gaming tools, or (4) team development or publishing tools such as learning content management systems (LCMSs) and groupware authoring. Although instructional design guidance, in some form or another, is now embedded inside several classifications of development tools, considerable innovation and research are still required to create holistic systems that negate or minimize the need for instructional design expertise, allowing nontrained designers to create online learning courseware without assistance.