Do We Need Authoring Systems? A Commercial Perspective
Wellesley R. Foshay and Frank Preese
The basic cost of development for the various types of e-Learning has not changed much in a generation. Authoring systems for e-Learning in all its forms has not progressed as quickly as general-purpose software engineering tools. As a result, most e-Learning today is created using general-purpose tools, the types of e-Learning products created are limited by the costs of development, and productivity gains have been largely limited to creation of media assets. To provide productivity gains, authoring systems need to address all phases of development and maintenance, they need to be designed for use by large, matrix-managed teams, and they need to meet the needs of large-scale production coding environments. Each of the major strategies for tool development has tradeoffs in terms of these requirements.