Evaluation of CBT Authoring Systems: Need a Data Base

Abstract

A computer-based training (CBT) authoring system is a special kind of software tool-kit for training developers with no programming skills and limited instructional design experience to use in developing CBT materials (i.e.,courseware). Many authoring systems have taken into account the needs of computer-naive users so that the learning requirements for using the systems is supposed to be minimal. However, the selection of the best authoring system for a given purpose requires a systematic evaluation because many systems have been developed to serve basically the same purpose with different procedural approaches, functional features and power. The purposes of this paper are: (a) to discuss evaluation methods for selecting an authoring system; (b) to examine important evaluation criteria; (c) to propose a set of evaluation procedures; (d) to discuss the need for developing a CBT authoring tool data base and provide initial inputs for the development of the data base.