You likely already know that eLearning is becoming a way of life for many schools and students. Educators can craft their own eLearning courses for students to enjoy and reference when doing their work, but they need a great authoring tool. With the perfect program, you can create a course that is easily accessible for all of your students. However, you need to know which features your authoring tool should have before you get started.

If the idea of selecting an authoring tool is stressing you out, here are the ten features that every great program needs.

1. Continuous Scrolling

Very few people will click on a link and wait for it to load before attempting to scroll down the page. This is a common practice among all students these days as a direct result of their time spent on social media and smartphones. Continuous scrolling provides an interface that they are more familiar with. It may also give you a great opportunity to incorporate more advanced features into your eLearning course, including parallax screens and scroll-activated animations.

2. Adaptive Technology

Everyone has a smartphone, tablet, or laptop but they all come in very different sizes. A great authoring tool should allow your eLearning course to adapt to the unique size of your students’ screens. This will prevent you from having to build multiple versions of the same course just to make it compatible with one specific device.

3. Consistency

When your students open up the lesson, they should immediately recognize it as yours. You want an authoring tool that allows for some degree of consistency in each lesson you create. This helps them to learn how to study your material and where to find the information they are struggling with. Whether you choose to find an authoring tool that allows you to create your own template or a program with premade options, consistency is going to be important.

4. Ability to Facilitate Teamwork

Your eLearning authoring tool should give your students an opportunity to communicate with one another. This should be able to work together, ask questions, or complete group projects. Even if your students don’t come to a physical classroom, this provides some connection to peers.

5. HTML5

If you want to create an eLearning course that is very engaging for your students, it is likely to have lots of media embedded within the lesson. HTML5 makes this much faster with better connectivity for students and easier use for educators. It also helps to improve the adaptability.

6. Instant Updates

Did you realize too late that you made a mistake on your eLearning course? You want an authoring tool that allows you to correct it and provides instant updates to your students. This gives them access to the latest version without the need for downloading it again. The authoring tool you use should make it easy for you to make these updates.

7. Multiple Distribution Options

Give your students access to your eLearning course no matter where they happen to be. An authoring tool that allows for multiple distribution options gives students no excuses to ignore the material. You can send it in an email, embed it in a class website, or post it on social media for them to see. This is definitely a must-have feature for eLearning authoring tools.

8. Cloud-Based Authoring

With a cloud-based authoring system, you don’t have to stay at the office in order to create a great eLearning course. You can store all of the information and materials you need for the course on the cloud. This allows you to access those materials and create the course from anywhere. Publishing from the cloud also makes it easier to update your courses and deliver them to students.

9. Branching and Navigation

Every eLearning authoring tool should allow students to navigate through the content with ease. Branching is a simple way to divide up the content to make this more user-friendly.

10. Ease of Use

You don’t want to use an eLearning authoring tool that is going to take hours for you to learn how to use it. Look for one of the many programs that are easy to use without background knowledge in coding. This allows you to spend more time focusing on your coursework and less time learning how to generate material your students can read on their devices.