An Interactive E-Learning Authoring Tool for Online Course Creation: Utility, Challenges and Opportunities

eLearning has been widely adopted as a mode of transaction for curriculum developers for a wide range of educational purposes.It allows for flexibility and scalability and can be incorporated into any engineering program's curriculum.This modality was a global necessity during a difficult time in human history and with it came significant challenges for faculty who were forced to determine the best approach for course instruction to overcome technological and social issues within the classroom.With the mandate for e-learning being of the past, the tools explored for e-learning still have significant utility for online (even if temporarily for class cancellations), hybrid, and even face-to-face class instruction.Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to provide insight into the authors' approach to creating interactive online courseware by using Articulate Storyline 360® for the enhancement of online course engagement.Storyline 360® is aimed at providing tools that have a primary goal of making interactive activities rather than one-way presentations.It has a plethora of design tools and activities such as embedded quizzes, surveys, and other interactive features.The authors found a variety of benefits of Storyline 360® such as a user interface reflective of other slideshow products, the ability to set up quizzes, activities, and certificates of completion within the course, the text-to-speech functionality, and other benefits.It also allows for easy publishing into an institution's current LMS using the Shareable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM) format.There were a few undesirable features and challenges with the software such as the proprietary file types for low interoperability, robotic text-to-speech, the cost, and a few other logic-oriented issues.A review of the completed course by education and industry professionals revealed satisfaction with the course, appreciating the engagement of the course with commentary limited to course content.In general, the authors found great utility with the use of Storyline 360® where the benefits outweigh the undesirable features and challenges and suggest engineering educators consider the use of Storyline 360® for online instruction, hybrid classes, flipped-classroom environments, or other useful curricular applications.