You don’t have to allocate a huge budget to create effective and powerful content for your training. We made a list of five content authoring tools that will help you build interactive training materials at no cost.
iSpring Free - Create interactive courses with quizzes and videos
iSpring Free is an intuitive tool for creating courses with quizzes and videos. Since the tool works in PowerPoint, you can reuse your presentations and quickly turn them into interactive courses. iSpring Free offers a huge range of familiar PPT features and allows users to enhance slides with YouTube videos, webpages, and quizzes with media. There are three types of quiz questions: Multiple Choice, Multiple Response, and Short Answer.
You can publish a course to HTML5 to upload it to a website or blog, or save it in SCORM 1.2/SCORM 2004 format to upload it to any LMS. iSpring Free puts no limits on the number of courses and no watermarks on your content.
If you need your courses to be more interactive, for example, pepper them with dialog simulations, screencasts, and interactions. Have a look at iSpring Suite, a PowerPoint-based tool for creating interactive mobile-ready content.
2. Udutu - Build simple courses and scenarios
Udutu is an easy‑to‑use web-based tool for creating courses. Though the design looks a bit outdated, the tool has pre-built templates for creating simple courses, assessments, and scenarios. The tool supports multimedia. You can also upload your own PowerPoint presentation, but converting PowerPoints into courses is a feature available only for paid subscribers.
The course can be downloaded to a PC and then uploaded to an LMS as a SCORM package.You can even upload previously authored SCORMs and re-edit them. Don’t forget to save your projects since some users report that saves are not automatic.
3. isEazy - Create linear slide-based courses
isEazy is a cloud-based tool for creating elearning courses. It has a simple and friendly interface and lets you create slide-based courses using modern design templates. There’s an option to add voiceovers, videos, links, and cards. Courses consist of chapters, but sequential navigation is available only in a PRO plan. After a course, learners can be provided with a final quiz.
Courses can be shared via link or saved as SCORM 1.2 or SCORM 2004 packages for an LMS. The tool has a free plan for 1 author and 3 projects. In the free version, each course has a watermark and an Iseasy logo. Also, it puts a 0.3 GB limit on the space for courses, and limits the font choice to a single option.
4. Moovly - Create simple engaging videos
Moovly is an online tool for creating training or marketing videos. You can create a clip from scratch or use a customizable template. The tool allows users to upload their own media: videos, picture edits, text, and sounds. Also, it has built-in integration with stock libraries of photos and videos that can be combined with doodles, infographics, animations, and transitions. There’s also a mobile app to view videos and upload media from a mobile device.
With the free version, you can upload your videos to YouTube and Vimeo, publish them to the Moovly gallery, or embed them from the gallery on your site. The free plan, however, limits the number of personal uploads to 20 and doesn’t let users publish videos without a watermark.
5. AdaptiveU - Create training challenges and get simple reports
AdaptiveU is an easy online learning system. It lest you create simple challenges (lessons) and combine them into courses, and even invite people and track learning statistics. You can customize the start page to personalize your training. Courses are created in an easy-to-use editor and can contain videos, files, documents, and pop quizzes. Also, you can view reports to see how your learners perform.
The free plan allows you to create up to 10 challenges and invite 10 active users to take them. Your courses may take up to 1 GB of storage space. With the pro version, you can increase the number of users and courses, and create a virtual store where users can redeem completion points for actual prizes.
All of these tools will help you create simple training materials fast and easy, without extra expenses. If you give some of them a test drive and decide that you are ready to explore more advanced capabilities, the market offers professional authoring software for any business scenario.