Abstract The East-West Consortium is a unique partnership of universities, publishers, a computer software and hardware manufacturer, and the government. The partnership aim is to develop next generation authoring tools to empower non-programmers to develop interactive content, training, and educational software. Since there is no single learning architecture that is appropriate for all situations, the consortium will develop a suite of tools and make them accessible to content and design specialists who are non-programmers. The consortium will build tools that have been pioneered by the university partners and by Apple. These include: cognitive tutor authoring tool (Carnegie Mellow University), knowledge-based tutor authoring tool (University of Massachusetts at Amherst), media-rich CBT authoring tool (Stanford Medical School), simulation with critics authoring tool (University of Colorado at Boulder), and simulation-based learning authoring tools (Apple). These tools will all be cross -platform using Apple-IBM Kaleida s ScriptX standard and be composed of many parts that can be integrated to build new hybrid tools using Apple, IBM, etc. Open Doc and SOM/DSOM standard. Apple will drive the use of these standards, provide the core tools technology for creating the task specific authoring tools, and provide a commercialization path for these efforts. To ensure that the development effort is responsive to commercial tool needs, the publishers in the consortium, Houghton Mifflin Company and PWS Publishing Company) are building next generation interactive content in the areas of beginning algebra and simulations for real world problem solving. Partnerships with publishers focussed on medical application areas are also in place.
