Even the best instructional designer in the world will be limited in their greatness if not supplied with proper tools. So let’s have a look at the 10 absolute must-have eLearning tools for instructional designers. These tools will help you create awesome content that will blow the socks off your learners. Before we begin, please remember that the best eLearning tool an instructional designer can have is his/her brain. Let’s go.

1. Camtasia

Most instructional designers already use this screen recording and editing software suite to capture things they do on-screen. Camtasia helps designers create SCORM courses, add animations, quizzes, add “hotspots” to the video that make any element on screen clickable and much more. Camtasia is a treasure trove of features and thus a great content creation tool to have.

2. Elucidat

I believe that instructional designers must have a host of eLearning authoring tools to choose from as they offer different features and no authoring tool can be called the “best”. Elucidat is a particularly great eLearning authoring tool because it lets instructional designers create responsive online and mobile course content that’s compatible with HTML5. Content created on Elucidat loads quickly and runs on most browsers. Elucidat also uses cloud technology, which makes it a great collaboration tool.

3. Articulate Storyline

If you’re new to eLearning and instructional design, this is the authoring tool you use. Articulate Storyline is surprisingly easy to use, particularly if you’ve already used Microsoft PowerPoint to create courses or presentations, as both their interfaces are quite similar. Storyline lets designers create interactive courses with a number of pre-loaded effects, triggers, variables and layers. What’s more, you can import PowerPoint presentations and improve on them.

4. Microsoft Office Suite

Well, of course! How could this list be complete without this absolute bare essential! There is no organization in the world that doesn’t utilize the amazing features offered by PowerPoint, Word, and Excel to create documents, presentations, and managing reporting processes. PowerPoint and Word form the basis of many training programs and integrate easily with many learning management systems, while Excel can be used to create training reports.

5. Adobe Captivate

This one’s an absolute beaut too. Captivate has a plethora of games, interactions, layouts, and cutouts included in the library that can contribute to highly engaging course content. What’s better, it offers you responsive design which is an absolute essential in the times we live in.

6. Google Docs

Like Microsoft Office Suite, this is something you just can’t do without, especially if you’re storing everything on the cloud (Google Drive). Spreadsheets, presentations and slides are created and stored online, making collaboration across teams a breeze, and feedbacks and edits can occur in real-time. Another advantage that Google Docs offers over Microsoft Office Suite is that it is absolutely free.

7. Wistia

Wistia is a great video hosting platform to host eLearning videos. It enables corporate organizations to create onboarding videos for new hires or product tutorials for customers. Another great feature Wistia has is its analytics which offer measurable data about the number of people watching your videos.

8. Canva

Canva is a god-send for instructional designers who’ve got to do everything by themselves. Canva can help IDs design amazing graphics like infographics, headers, or slides easily. The best thing about Canva perhaps is the fact that it’s got lots of templates for a wide variety of customizable content types that can be added to your eLearning content quickly and easily.

9. Grammarly

The importance of proper grammar in an eLearning course cannot be stressed enough. However, everyone makes mistakes sometimes. That’s where Grammarly comes in. Grammarly ensures your grammar is impeccable by pointing out any spelling or grammar mistakes there might be in your course. It makes your courses look professional, and helps learners understand the course content easily without any ambiguities.

10. Pexels

If you’re creating eLearning courses, you’ll need images, vectors and stock photos, a LOT. While buying a ShutterStock license is probably a good idea, why spend money when you can get equally good images for free? Pexels is a free repository for high quality, free images that are all tagged and easily searchable through their discover pages. There are various other free stock image websites you can use, but Pexels makes this list due to the sheer quality of its images and vectors.