Instructions for Authors
Becoming an author or course provider on the Columbus Portal couldn’t be easier. Whether you already have a course you want to upload, are planning to create it using another tool, or want to make use of our fantastic authoring tools, you can get your courses online fast.To create a course, you will need to make sure you have prepared some materials first, such as images, a quiz, text, and maybe some royalty free images. Please note, that we cannot be responsible for any copyrighted materials used in courses. As an author it is your responsibility to get permission to use any materials.
The materials can be on any subject, and enable you to pass on training within your field of interest or hobby in an educational, playful, and intuitive course. You can then publish this training on the Columbus Portal and provide it to the community.
There are four methods for becoming an author and providing your knowledge to the Columbus community. These steps are:
1. Use the offline tool eXeLearning
eXe Learning is an easy-to-use open source tool, giving you the ability to create professional looking courses in a short time. You can download it at http://exelearning.org/Download and find tutorials at http://www.wikieducator.org/Online_manual. After creating a course with the tool, you need to register as a “supplier” and upload your course to Columbus Portal.
2. Use the advanced online authoring tool ColumbusExpert
You can use the built in authoring tool, ColumbusExpert, to create your own e-learning course. You can very quickly take existing materials such as text, pictures and videos and create an interactive course complete with a quiz.
To get access to ColumbusExpert during the Pilot Runs, you will need to purchase ColumbusExpert as you would a course (for free during the pilot runs). Choose the category "Authorung", add the course "Columbus Authoring Environment" to your shopping cart, and click "check out". After you have bought the tool, a Link “Authoring tool” is available in “My Columbus”. After clicking this link, ColumbusExpert opens in a new window. For further assistance, you can use the manual that you will find after accessing the tool, as an option before launching the course.
3. Use any other authoring tool
You can create an e-learning course using any other authoring tool, and provide this course on the Columbus Portal for the whole community to benefit from. To do this, you need to register as a “supplier” and upload your course to Columbus Portal.
For more information as to the type of courses that you can upload, and to make sure your course is compatible, you can contact us at: info@columbus-portal.eu.
4. Upload your professional courses via Columbus Portal
Providers of professionally produced content from commercial organisations, or private individuals who would like to sell their courses for commercial gains can upload their content to Columbus Portal, and have it appear in the webshop.
For more information about uploading commercial courses to Columbus, and the associated costs in doing this, please contact us at: info@ilt-solutions.co.uk.
