Designing a Virtual Learning Environment Authoring Platform: Determining Educator Requirements

The expanding demand for virtual learning environments, particularly serious games and virtual simulations, emphasizes the need for tools that empower educators to easily customize learning experiences to suit their learners without reliance on game developers/programmers. Before such tools are developed, educator needs and requirements must be examined. In this work-in-progress paper, we outline the use of formal approaches in the development of a questionnaire that will be distributed to educators to gauge their technical skillset/knowledge and the features they seek in educational authoring tools. Results will be made freely available to guide developers of educator authoring platforms.