IJRRAS 10 (2) ● February 2012 www.arpapress.com/Volumes/Vol10Issue2/IJRRAS_10_2_08.pdf 259 E-LEARNING AND AUTHORING TOOLS : At a Glance Maryam Haghshenas 1 , Maryam Khademi 2,* & Hoda Kabir 3 1 Islamic Azad University, Science and Research Branch, Tehran, Iran 2 Islamic Azad University South Tehran Branch, No. 209, North Iran Shahr St., Tehran 11365-4435, Iran 3 Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran ABSTRACT Recently, a growing number of Institutions and business organizations have embraced the concept of E-learning. They use web based learning systems to fulfill their educational needs. E-learning authoring tools (or AT for short) enable trainers to integrate an array of media to create professional, engaging, interactive training content, and some make it possible to repurpose digitized elements or learning objects from an existing course for reuse in a new one. The choice of the best authoring tools for the right user is very important for the development of contents for E- learning. In This paper we are going to review on various authoring tools available in the market of E-learning and the need and importance of creating contents in E-learning, finally, we will classify the authoring tools. Keywords: E-learning, Authoring tools, Classification, Specialized AT, Unspecialized AT 1. INTRODUCTION E-learning is becoming an essential part in teaching and teachers are searching for the best method to represent their courses. Since 1 LO becomes the small course unit that can be designed to be reusable, customizable and flexible; teachers prefer to find the authoring tools for creating interactive LO quickly and easily. Custom content is the new frontier of E-learning. Trainers are trying to identify ways to create and publish custom digital content for use on the Internet, intranets, or CD-ROMs. Some trainers seek high-speed deployment of critical information throughout an organization, while others want control of courseware and independence from programmers. [1] Many organizations are attempting to reduce their training costs by developing E-learning materials in-house. Whatever the reason, more trainers are finding themselves researching the features, benefits, and cost of authoring tools. Through this paper, will be described the reason of the using authoring tools and How to find the best tool In Section 2, In section 3 the categories of tools will be presented. In Section 4 we will focused on the classification of authoring tools, the most tools. Finally, the paper will be ended by conclusions. [11] 2. AUTHORING TOOLS To create a proper course for E-learning, you need an authoring tool to facilitate this work. The definition of authoring tool is “a program that helps you write using hypertext or multimedia applications and enable you to create a final application merely by linking together objects, such as a paragraph of text, an illustration, or a song. By defining the objects' relationships to each other, and by sequencing them in an appropriate order, authors (those who use authoring tools) can produce attractive and useful graphics applications. [9] Most authoring systems also support a scripting language for more sophisticated applications. Thus, these tools provide many facilities helping the author to create a good E-content for courses. In fact, E-content has very important features that make the work easier than paper-content which are storing, modification, reusability and sharing of information .[4] 2.1. Criteria for Choosing the Best Authoring Tool Although selecting the best authoring tool requires close attention to detail, the process should be painless. Currently available tools offer a variety of features. If you have special needs, you'll certainly find a tool that meets them. However, most tools are designed to create basic E-learning courses for desktop or laptop computers. The software programs support a variety of media and file types, such as text, graphics, video, and audio. Most include assessment and test creation features. To find the authoring tool that works best for you, conduct a needs assessment. Regardless of how much (or how little) you know about authoring tools, determine the functionality that's most important to your organization and create a shopping checklist. The following points are intended to give you a basic understanding of authoring tools while provoking some analytic thinking to help you identify the capabilities and options that are most important to you. 1 Learning Object