Lectora Inspire

Lectora Inspire is a educational course authoring software which has a free trial download available when you sign up with no credit card required. I was happy that even the download was 1.1 GB it was much quicker than other large files I've downloaded recently. I'm in the exact same position myself so it says that have a fast infrastructure for their company, I believe. The installation was also quick and seamless. My first impression of the software was that it busy in terms of features but this notion was immediately dispelled when I realized that I recognized almost all of the functionality because it uses standards icons which are used in rich text editors, so within a minute of using this software I was able to know that is would be able to facilitate my creativity which is my favorite asset when surveying a new software as to whether the features and the use of those features add up to an experience that allows you to focus on the story at hand and the quality of the education rather than the technical hassle of coding or other such things. Lectora Inspire brings all of the functionality you would ever need to put together a great story for educational purposes. The ability to utilize just about any form of multimedia and embed it in your slides If you're a particularly creative person you will enjoy this a lot more than PowerPoint. PowerPoint is fine but the dynamic abilities in Lectora Inspire are easier overall to use and facilities creativity more intuitively. The story based structure built in is nice too. So you don't have to worry about presets or creating sub-folders for anything instead you just create a new chapter with a click. I like the course progress bar which makes it easy to note it and create a sense of focus and purpose. There is a grouping feature in Lectora which is easy to use and makes it possible to place multiple objects and actions together in a set in order to perform a single action across all items your group or make transitions on a group one time. You can also unlock, lock and move several items at the same time. This feature allows for greater flow and consistency in your course overall.

The single canvas feature was introduced to me recently and it's not a requirement in order to produce great educational stories but it's provides an interesting way to see the big picture and deduce all of it's parts visually as part of a whole. The linear based functionality of not only this software but PowerPoint and nearly every other as it has been the conventional presentation method since overtaking the overhead acetate used when I was in school is due for greater inclusion of various educational methodologies and typologies and the holistic perspective used in other canvas based e-learning tools is pretty cool.

The software is very quick and comes with everything you need to create high quality, dynamic content based courses. It's super easy to use and makes the process enjoyable rather than a drag because of the technical inefficiencies of other solutions which are simply not practical when time is such an asset. It may become a bit cumbersome to use if you have a really long course as their is not a way to see your entire course at once other than the actual presentation. Referring the holistic perspective possible in other ecourse authoring tools and lack of a time line like feature. There is a nice set of resources available for Lectora and a forum community as well so you can always get help here. The pricing is quite high but it's worth it for the lifetime license. I would like to see an instance from the cloud making it available for a small monthly subscription. Otherwise, I like what it does making it easy to create cool stories quicker than most any other way.