User:Rmundell/MyUdutu

myUdutu is a free online course authoring tool. In the earliest days of elearning most applications were only available to large enterprises who could afford expensive licensed software, and therefore elearning was limited to corporate and government raining, and academic learning. The myUdutu authoring tool is intended to change that, and enable anyone to produce and publish online learning with rich media and interactivity.

It works as a web application. The author or subject matter expert works directly on the web server, and then either publishes the course to a hosting service or else exports the course from the authoring tool to host it on another server or computer.

Some of the advantages of using a web application are easy accessibity from anywhere and by anyone involved in the course development process. So collaboration and team buy-in are enhanced, as well as the relevance of the content. Because authors are not buying individual software licenses, the authoring tool is not limited to a few technical people, and all kinds of stakeholders can get involved in the authoring process.

The disadvantage of online course authoring versus using a desktop application will relate to bandwidth, as a web application can seem slower to respond if the connection is poor. However, lost connections don't mean lost work, as every change is instantaneous on the server side.

The free use, (as opposed to open source) model is interesting. It is aimed at opening the elearning opportunity to small businesses and individuals in large organizations who don't have ready access to the enterprise solutions which have dominated the elearning genre till now. Udutu, the company that produces and supports myUdutu is building an installed base, and gambling that the related revenue opportunities such as custom course development work, course hosting, training and support, etc will work for them.

The tool itself is very powerful, using templates to create all kinds of interactive content, and allows non-technical authors to create rich media, even flash animations. One nice feature is that it will optimise and anti-alias images for the web, and automatically converts any movie formats into flash .flv files for easy streaming, so users don't need to know or use external applications. The tool also supports imports from other tools, such as Microsoft's Powerpoint, Adobe's Captivate, or flash animations from other course authoring systems such as Raptivity.