Online courses have become wildly popular, and there are valid reasons for this popularity. People from all walks of life now have access to the internet, and they look for e-learning courses to develop many different types of skills. People who want to build online courses do not necessarily have to buy expensive tools. If you are looking for a free online course builder, hopefully, you will find this post helpful.
Best Free Online Course Builder Tools
Before you start building an online course, you should identify the format of the course. The key areas include video, animation, graphics, audio, assessments, and interactions. For most experts, gathering materials is not a hard job if they have the right tools. Now we will see the tools that can help you build online courses.
Free Graphics Programs
Whether you need to create beautiful infographics, charts, or visuals, you need to use tools. Luckily, some amazing graphics programs are available for free. Here are some of the best ones:
Canva
This is an amazing graphic design tool for creating presentations, social media graphics, and many other types of visual content. The tool is available on both smartphones and the web, and it integrates numerous fonts, images, illustrations, and templates.
Canva is very easy to use; the interface is almost intuitive. It is a free tool but if you want to use Canva Pro, you will have to pay. The paid version has additional functionality. About 20 million people from 100 countries are using Canva.
Easel.ly
Easel.ly is another widely used tool for creating infographics. To make infographics, you have to use a mixture of text, graphs, and pictures. With Easel.ly, you can use an existing text and modify it to create sharp-looking infographics. You just have to use a suitable template that conveys your message.
In order to create visual interest, you can use charts, graphs, maps, flowcharts, and diagrams in your infographics. The whole point of making infographics is to depict your ideas visually.
Gliffy
Many course builders use Gliffy to create floor plans, UML diagrams, flowcharts, Venn diagrams, and many other types of diagrams. You can edit and share Gliffy diagrams in real-time. In San Francisco, the revenues of Gliffy are reported to be the highest per employee.
Launched in 2005, Gliffy is now one of the most popular tools for creating infographics. Gliffy easily integrates with Google Drive, Google Apps, Confluence, and JIRA. The tool is very easy to use. You will be able to make infographics even if you have no experience.
Google Charts
If you are looking for a tool for creating graphical charts, Google Charts will make you happy. Depending on the type of your course, you may need graphical charts. Google charts can help you make them very easily.
It is important to remember that HTTP request methods are not supported on Google Charts. However, All people who use free online course builder tools are familiar with Google Charts.
Free Audio Tools
If you are an online course builder, you may often have to record, edit, and mix audio files. There are some amazing free tools that are used to do these things. Here are some of them:
Ardour
This is a digital audio workstation and hard disk recorder and it runs on Microsoft Windows, FreeBSD, macOS, and Linux. The tool is used for recording, mixing, editing, and mastering audio files. Although Ardour is a free tool, it is intended for professional use.
One of the great things about Ardour is that its recording abilities are virtually boundless. The abilities depend on the hardware. It has some great monitoring options such as the use of external hardware, and self-monitoring.
Audacity
Audacity is a digital audio editor that is free and open-source, and available for macOS, Windows, and Linux. This is one of the most popular digital audio editors, according to FossHub. Since March 2015, the tool has been downloaded more than 93.2 million times.
Voki
Created by Oddcast, Voki is a tool used to create talking characters. You can customize Voki characters to look like animals, cartoons, and even historical characters. Whether you are a student, educator, or course builder, you can use basic Voki for free. Voki also has an assignment management system known as Voki Classroom.
Free Video and Animation Tools
Animations can make your e-learning course powerful. There are some video and animation tools that are available for free. Let’s take a look at these tools:
Camtasia
Camtasia is another free online course builder used to create presentations and video tutorials. It integrates with Microsoft PowerPoint and Screencast. You can freely choose the screen area that you would like to record. It allows you to record audio and other things at the same time.
Camtasia has 2 major components: editor and recorder. In Camtasia Recorder, you can use a hotkey combination to start or stop recording. Audio recording can be done simultaneously with screen capturing.
Screencast-O-Matic
Trusted by millions, Screencast-O-Matic is a hugely popular tool for creating screen recordings. You can launch it with one click from a Chrome Browser. With Screencast-O-Matic, videos and screencasts can be created very easily.
You can record, edit, and share audio files with this tool. The tool is used for education, for businesses, and for fun. In short, this is another great tool used to create online courses.
Tools for Creating E-learning Assessments and Interactions
During the course, there are some tools that can ensure student learning. These tools are used for assessment, quizzes, polls, and surveys. Here are some great options:
Formsite
Intended for non-technical users, Formsite is used to create surveys and web forms. It was launched in 1999, and over time it has processed more than 500 million submissions. In terms of daily unique visitors, Formsite is now a top-ranked website.
To be able to use Formsite, you do not need any knowledge of HTML markup language. These forms come with error-handling and built-in validation. They are also used to store and process form submissions.
Google Forms
Used by millions of people, Google Forms is another free online course builder tool. It collects information via a quiz or personalized survey and then connects to a spreadsheet. The sheet contains quiz and survey responses.
Over the years, the service has been updated several times. Shorter URLs, the shuffle of questions, custom themes, and menu search are some new features. It also has an upload feature but the feature is available only through G Suite.
SurveyMonkey
This is cloud-based software used for conducting online surveys. If you are looking for a tool to create professional surveys, you can rely on SurveyMonkey. A free version of the tool is available. However, the paid version offers more features. There are four pricing plans, and your choice of a plan determines the features available to you.
The tool is highly customizable. Depending on the type and scale of your survey, you can easily customize the options. In your survey, you can include numerical text boxes, essay boxes, multiple text boxes, and demographical details.
To create your custom online learning course, you can also use some authoring tools. Sooner or later you are going to need these tools. They are used to compile a course, include interactions, and add graphics.
iSpring Suite
Produced by iSpring Solutions, iSpring Suite is a popular authoring toolkit. With this tool, you can create dialogue simulations, quizzes, slide-based courses, video lectures, and screencasts. It publishes the output courses in HTML5. This is another great free online course builder.
The tool was first released in 2005, and since then it has been updated several times. iSpring Suite 9.0 is the current version. However, other versions such as iSpring Suite 7 and iSpring Suite 8 are also very popular.
Easygenerator
Easygenerator is popular e-learning software used by scale-ups, corporations, educational institutes, and startups. It allows you to create content without relying on a traditional process of course development. Now it has users in more than 100 countries.
One of the best things about this tool is that it allows you to create content immediately. The tool is incredibly user-friendly. You can use it even if you have never used a similar tool.
SmartBuilder
SmartBuilder is a clean-looking tool that promotes powerful e-learning in a short span of time. It requires fewer clicks and no popups. In a single action, it combines multiple conditions, triggers, and responses. As a result, this tool saves you valuable time.
With this tool, you can easily create your courses with unique interfaces. It also allows you to rearrange the page content the way you like. Panels can be unlocked and arranged in any way. If you are looking for a high-quality free online course builder tool, SmartBuilder will not disappoint you.
Udutu
Based in British Columbia, Udutu is another well-known online platform. The tool is used for customer training, employee training, compliance training, and channel training. With close to 100,000 registered users, Udutu has become one of the dominating platforms of its kind.
This authoring tool features SCORM compliant, pre-designed templates, and PowerPoints Upload. If you are looking for an easy-to-use authoring tool, Udutu can be a really good choice.
LCDS by Microsoft
LCDS stands for Learning Content Development System, and the tool from Microsoft is used to create interactive, high-quality online courses. With this tool, you can easily generate interactive activities, customized content, assessments, games, quizzes, demos, and animations. LCDS forms are very easy to use.
Conclusion
You do not always have to buy expensive tools for online courses. No matter what type of free online course builder you want, chances are that you will find it very easily. We have tried to discuss some useful free tools, and hopefully, this information will help you make informed decisions.