ProProfs, a company that deals in providing online testing tools for certification courses, today announced the availability of Training Maker, a new tool designed to help companies build online learning programs quickly and easily using existing content and material. For organizations looking to modernize their certification procedures, but without having to start from scratch, Training Maker essentially provides a shortcut via existing text documents, presentations and training videos.
The types of content that can be used to create courses via Training Maker include Word, PowerPoint and PDF documents, which essentially make up the primary formats most legacy training materials at any given institution will be made up of. Videos are automatically converted for web viewing and made available to a variety of devices, and courses created through the tool can be accessed from iPhone, Android, notebooks and virtually any other gadget with web access. The tool is designed for ease of use on both the author and learner side of the equation, according to ProProfs founder and CEO Sameer Bhatia.
“There is no Flash. PowerPoints, Word documents, PDFs are rendered in web-viewing format right away so the learner does not need any additional software,” he said in an interview. “[Also,] we realized that people already know how to author content using tools like PowerPoint, docs, PDFs and also on the web using YouTube, blog articles, etc. Our courses allow you to embed external objects like YouTube videos and also bring into the course other existing content on the web by adding pages that show content from blogs, company/school websites, etc. using web links.”
While there are a number of other online learning and course creation tools out there, including Udemy, Coursera, MentorMob and Mindflash, the new tool from ProProfs differs in a number of ways that should appeal to its target enterprise market, according to Bhatia.
“We make it quick and easy to make a course and then send a link out or embed it,” he explained. “At the same time, for our advanced users, they have comprehensive settings that allow learner registration, online classroom and learner tracking systems that are not typically found in the simple web-based solutions.” Learners aren’t required to sign up with ProProfs.com at all, in fact, meaning that educators and instructors completely own their classes separate from the site itself. Training Maker also emphasizes formalized testing of knowledge, making it better-suited to things like ranked professional designations.
The new Training Maker tool will be available at a subscription cost starting at $19.97 per month, with higher-priced plans available depending on an organization’s needs. Especially for companies looking to make it easier to spot, foster and build in-house talent via defined, staged internal certification courses, while at the same time not reinventing their entire HR process, ProProfs’ latest looks to be a good solution.