7 reasons why your LMS needs a better and collaborative WYSIWYG editor
We are taking CKEditor 5 Collaboration Features to the Future of Education Technology Conference in Miami on January 14-17, 2020. But before we meet there, we would like to talk about what makes a WYSIWYG rich text editor so important for learning management systems and education applications. If you are an education software creator, school’s in-house technology person, or a concerned educator who is not happy with the current writing experience in your education software, read on!
What is a WYSIWYG editor?
A WYSIWYG editor, to put it very simply, is Microsoft Word for the web. It helps you write and style your text without having to write in raw HTML — which is the language that the browser understands. The interface allows you to see the end result before publishing and creates the HTML code for you. An editor can be implemented in desktop or mobile applications and a good one can change the user experience drastically.
You most certainly used a WYSIWYG rich text editor before since it is the heart of online writing. Your LMS (Learning Management System), content publishing platform, digital learning environment, student information system and even chat application all have one.
Why does it matter for my LMS?
Whether your users are teachers, academics, K12, or university students, having a user-friendly editor that will not frustrate the members of learning communities is crucial. Their frustration may not go viral as the recent horror of the bad editor implementation that Slack went through. But writing is still one of the most fundamental aspects of learning, education, creativity, and online collaboration.
We all know most pupils today mingle with technology way earlier than before. Chances are also very high that they have already used a WYSIWYG editor before, considering they learn to code at a much earlier age, too. As for students in higher levels of education, like high school or university, writing, especially collaborative writing, is important to nurture creativity and prepare them for professional life.
But writing in education is not limited to students. Teachers at all levels of education who prepare classroom material, online training assignments, course guides, and emails also need a good writing experience. And collaboration is even more crucial for them since most of the materials are created together with colleagues or at least reviewed by department heads. In such cases, they also need a space to communicate changes in the content and perform document collaboration — in asynchronous or synchronous mode.
Considering all these different writing and collaboration needs of students, teachers, and academics, here are the top 7 reasons to implement a WYSIWYG editor like CKEditor 5 in your education software:
1) Enjoy the headache-free writing
CKEditor 5 is intuitive — you get used to it instantly with no extra effort needed. With a seamless user interface and features like auto-formatting and keyboard shortcuts, CKEditor 5 does what you want when you want it! With the help of our huge community, we constantly improve the editor to support any edge case possible.
2) Have Google Docs within your application
CKEditor 5 Collaboration Features allow you to have a Google Docs-like experience in your application. With features such as comments, track changes and real-time collaborative editing, users can write, create and review content together and easily communicate about it.
3) Rich set of features
CKEditor 5 has it all! Auto-formatting, drag & drop image upload, responsive images, media embeds, links, math equations, chemical formulas, code blocks, numbered, bulleted and to-do lists, tables, mentions, spell and grammar check, word count, pasting from Word and Google Docs, highlighters and markers, text styles and formats and many more are here to help you create rich content and engage students and every learner easily.
4) Do not waste time with the implementation
CKEditor 5 is easy to implement and customize with extensive documentation for developers. We have 16+ years of expertise in creating and implementing rich text editors worldwide. We are here to support you through the process of creating and customizing the perfect writing space within your collaboration platforms or learning management tools.
Customer Stories: How Tablo upgraded a university’s LMS with CKEditor 5
5) Increase engagement
Any piece of written content is rarely written by a single person nowadays. There is always an editor or a fellow who you share your content with, even for simple proofreading. And in the age of technology, online collaborative writing is the best way to achieve that. Thanks to collaboration features, students and teachers are encouraged to engage with one another while writing and to be creative together!
6) Productive writing environment
CKEditor 5 has both content creation and feedback processes covered. There is no need to leave the application, copy-paste, or send reviews back and forth via email. There is more time for new ideas and interaction between users.
7) Use cloud or on-premises backend solutions
For some, an affordable, hassle-free cloud option to support collaboration is the best. Others would like to use their own data centers to handle collaborative editing. CKEditor 5 Collaboration Features have both of these options available, so it is up to you to decide where to save your data!
You can read more on the topic of collaboration in our blog posts:
- CKEditor helps: Collaborative policy in government
- The keys for an optimal digital employee experience
- CKEditor 5 Collaboration Features v17.0.0 with new comments API
- 5 best collaborative writing strategies for 2022
- Collaboration journey of CKEditor 5 - What were we up to
- Bringing collaborative editing to any application
- Data compression in real-time collaboration
- Lessons learned from creating a rich-text editor with real-time collaboration
