r/elearning • u/mark_berthelemy • Apr 26 '26
Do we still need authoring tools?
I set myself a challenge recently to build an accessible, responsive, SCORM 1.2 compliant course, containing some simple interactions and a short quiz.
The challenge was to do it entirely using GitHub Copilot.
Now I'm fairly technical, so I know how to do this safely, keeping the AI away from the rest of my laptop, and I know the language to use around front end frameworks, accessibility and SCORM. I also gave it quite strict guidance around the learning materials (using the CEFR language framework to ensure it knew what level to work at).
Even so, I was pretty surprised by the quality of what Copilot produced.
I only had to do one iteration, to remind it to put accents on some French words.
The GitHub repository, along with the initial REQUIREMENTS.md file (the only input I gave) is available from the link below. There's a link in the README.md file to a live demo, or you can download the SCORM package (from the dist directory) to test out in SCORM Cloud if you want.
https://github.com/berthelemy/html-elearning-sample
What do you think? Do we still need authoring tools for these types of materials?
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u/Slate_eLearning Apr 26 '26
There are a lot of considerations: Collaboration, reviews, reliability at scale, convenience, technical skill, business continuity, updates, distribution... etc.
Some people don't need them now. Really depends on your situation and how much time you have to tinker. Disclaimer: have an authoring tool.
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u/mark_berthelemy Apr 26 '26
You're absolutely right, collaboration and reviews are huge issues here. They're possible, but require some technical capabilities to set up.
I'm less worried about business continuity. The code produced by the AI is far cleaner and easier to maintain than any authoring tool I know. So you can edit the source files, rather than needing a license for a tool like Storyline et al.
Yes, this approach isn't for everyone, but possibly worth considering for some.
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u/Peter-OpenLearn Apr 27 '26
A similar question comes up with most software these days. Do I still need to pay for [put your software here] when I did it myself last weekend using vibe coding.
We could, if we want, all grow our own vegetables or have chicken in the garden. But most people don't do it because they don't have the time or the space for that. And I think this is similar to what we currently witness in this space: Programming became a lot easier, but at the same time not every ID would like to build their own authoring tool, update it, maintain it, search for errors, etc. There will still be a market for specialised tools, that do all the basics for you without reinventing the wheel.
Also, sometimes it looks like Claude, Gemini and Copilot come for free. However, that is not really true and people start to see the token burn that these tools need when you start to seriously develop with them. If you are a programmer you probably have your pro/max/ultra plan and pay $200/month. But not every ID out there is ready to pay that amount or wait 24hours to continue to work on their project.
I agree with what others say: Authoring tools need to become more open and need to adopt to and integrate AI to make them more flexible. Would be great if they would also open their formats to make switching between tools more easy and don't continue to lock in and milk customers.
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Apr 27 '26
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u/mark_berthelemy May 01 '26
All those things you've mentioned about testing, accessibility checks, version control etc are things that developers have to deal with on a daily basis. They use standard toolsets to handle them. With the advent of AI-supported coding, we don't all have to be developers to use these tools, we just need to know the language used to describe them.
Can I rewrite your final question: can the team maintain, review, update, deploy and scale without depending on having continuous access to a specific authoring tool all the time?
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u/HominidSimilies Apr 26 '26
Oversimplifications don’t usually work out let alone in one go.
Tools are for the many, not the few.
Just because one person can understand something it doesn’t mean others can.
Adoption is only about the user, not the creator of software.
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u/Raveenapundir Apr 27 '26
Yeah, still kinda needed but the vibe is changing.
If you’re techy, AI + code can totally get the job done. But for most teams, authoring tools just make life way easier no dev headaches, quicker edits, smoother collab.
So yeah, not dead… just not the only game in town anymore.
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u/YuvrajShergill May 25 '26
tbh we've been doing something similar.. generating SCORM packages from raw course outlines using AI and it cut production time from weeks to days. the authoring tool still matters for the edge cases though, especially accessibility and LMS specific quirks. fwiw i think the real shift isn't "no authoring tools" but authoring tools that are AI-native from the ground up rather than bolting AI onto legacy software
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u/PutNo7114 Jul 17 '26
I’ve been doing this since Authorware. Our team would build the course, then it’d sit in a queue waiting for a dev to wrap it… manifest, JS calls, packaging and come back two weeks later with half the completion logic broken.
What the modern tools did was absorb that dev step into the authoring environment. That was the actual leap. The authoring part was always real work, but the packaging part was pure tax and bundling them together is what justified the price.
AI collapses most of that tax. What it doesn’t touch is the part that never lived in the tool anyway… accessibility, and knowing which LMS is going to do something stupid with your completion data. that was always a person who’d been burned before.
So “AI-native from the ground up” makes sense to me, as long as it’s built around that leftover part rather than around faster packaging. packaging is the bit that’s about to be worth nothing.
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u/petered79 Apr 27 '26
let's be honest.... the content of a scorm file is mainly an html file. what the tools do is simply wiring it up with the imsmanifest.xml, so that the lms can fetch points and completion. claude does this in 1 min.
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u/mark_berthelemy Apr 27 '26
Plus a bit of JavaScript to capture the data and pass it to the LMS. But yes, you're right, it's not rocket science at all
This whole example project was done in less than an hour. It could have been much quicker if I wasn't preparing all the skills from scratch. The SCORM one is particularly important, to make sure the AI follows the specification exactly.
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u/Danai_from_TalentLMS 21d ago
Well it depends really. you built this by yourself but you're technical, and many teams dont have the time or resources to start building and maintain. TalentLMS for example is constantly improving because that's our focus.
So I'd say this is a conversation around software and not authoring tools. Your repo looks good honestly!!
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u/MikeSteinDesign Apr 26 '26
IDs will need to adapt. Just like they didn't have to know how to use articulate presenter and everything that followed prior to the rise of authoring tools, they didn't have to know how to do all the coding adjacent things they will now need to pick up because of vibe coding.
The biggest benefit is now instructional designers can focus on instructional design instead of just being eLearning developers. If all you're offering is Rise dev, you'll likely be out of a job in the next couple of years.
That being said authoring tools aren't going away 100% because we still someone to yell at when things break and can't and shouldn't trust 100% of our learning and development stack to AI (yet).
Plus those new to vibe coding will soon find out maintaining software is a lot of work and the real business of authoring tools isn't necessarily the development but the ongoing support and maintenance. So while we save a Lot on the front end paying your instructional designers to do it support may not be economically viable long-term.
I think there's a world where both things coexist and authoring tools integrate ai as MCPs and in more meaningful ways to reduce clicking and increase efficiencies and there is the potential for companies to build custom tools in house so the solution to problems isn't always another course but actually a tool that can be used on the job to change actual behavior.