history
Udutu is brought to you by the award winning research team that created the world's very first server based elearning authoring tool at Royal Roads University. The team that pioneered many of the elearning concepts in widespread use today.
In 1998 the Udutu team produced the very first web server based authoring system, enabling authors to collaboratively build dynamic web courses with learning styles, adaptive navigation, and reusable learning objects. The course development tool was the first to demonstrate an authoring system where subject matter experts as well as designers and technical experts could collaborate from beginning to end in real time and regardless of location, requiring no desktop client and only a browser. The tool relied on a library or repository of reusable learning objects, stored in an Oracle database and indexed with a unique (pre-XML) descriptive metatagging system. The courses it created were the first to demonstrate shareable and reusable content objects. They were also the first to demonstrate the redeployment of content to suit different navigation systems and learning styles. The tool was called the Cedarlearning authoring tool.
In 1999 and 2000 the elegant interface won awards from Macromedia twice in a row as the most innovative application in higher education. It was also showcased by Microsoft for the way it integrated Microsoft's web calendaring interface.
By 2000 the team had developed KoolTool , a simpler, easier to use version of the authoring tool to meet the demands of several corporate clients who enjoyed many of the featuresof the Cedarlearning tool, but were less interested in the learning styles adaptability. KoolTool was ported into ASP.NET in 2003 and continued to evolve until March 2005.
In 2002/2003 the team built LOGIC , an authoring tool built with Flash Actionscript technology that was the first case-study/simulation authoring tool, and once again they garnered awards and recognition for innovation just ahead of the curve. By 2005 everyone was interested in online simulations and reusable case studies, but in 2002 it was a hard sell. To read a white paper on the concepts and the findings of the LOGIC project, click here.
As Cedarlearning, the team developed a number of large Corporate and Government clients but felt a frustration that elearning was out of reach for smaller businesses and individuals who wanted to train their customers or their social Network. The business model of selling an enterprise solution precluded what the team foresaw as the natural evolution of elearning. So they left Royal Roads University in 2005 to create Udutu Learning Systems Inc. Udutu is a privately held company that was created in October 2005. The team set about to build the ultimate platform, based on the findings and experiences of the previous eight years of applied research at Cedar. In May 2006 the MyUdutu tool was released as a free authoring tool , and it has quickly gathered an extensive following from word of mouth.