7:00 PM, December 8, 2013

Transcription

1 onlearningpoint.com LMS selection guideline 7:00 PM, December 8, 2013 Hi Joe, This is a great question and looks like you have nailed down the major areas that are needed. The good news with that most LMS systems you might need to consider would have these features. The exception to this is that they are the wordpress LMS systems, which as you know mostly wordpress with courseware items added on. Background/Problem List of Requirements/Assumptions Commercial Site (not academic) Small Budget means less that 100 dollars per user per year.this also rules out most services that are only available as SAAS. You can do installation and customizations yourself. Yearly Recurring Courses Since you looking to grow with from 100 to 10,000+ users this LMS it should be highly configurable, with the maximum amount of plugins available.. Smaller Learning learning curve Wordpress/Based Reports

2 Recommendation Based on these assumptions I m going to suggest a highly configurable LMS that is highly customizable. And while it will not be the easiest system to set up it will have a good ability to grow with you. It will also have a small cost for 1 system and Free as in beer for the 2nd system. The lms s are ranked in my order of preference. Keep in mind every lms has strengths and weaknesses but when taken as a whole it becomes the best solution. There are 3 perspectives on the best lms depending on who you are. Developer(IT/server side), Learner, Course Manager/Creator. I take the perspective that the learner view is the most important see this article here on QA. Of course its important to be able to manage the courses in a reasonable fashion and be able to do upgrades without too much trouble. Recommended Systems 1st LMS systems to consider: 1. learndash This LMS system is based on wordpress and fits most of your criteria. Since it s wordpress based it will not have as strong audience management features and I am not sure about renewables. Because it is based on wordpress though it will be very easy to setup and operate with will look very nice to the student. For the reports it not very robust but it should meet your needs. 2. efront While I have not used this one I like their approach and would consider exploring this one more. This is more of robust system that while harder to configure will gives a lot more. For the reports it not very robust but it should meet your needs. Bonus LMS for you to consider, LatitudeLearning free up to 100 users so this could be an option while you get off the ground. While I ve not personally used them I ve had clients consider them before. Its also a SASS model which lets you not worry about any setup and would get you going with your initial base of users.

3 Systems not Recommended Joomdle while technically not an LMS it has components and integration from both moodle and Joomla make it an attractive LMS at any price point. Moodle what makes this LMS particularly good is because of assumption #3,very configurable as well as being the right price. Chamilo's LMS While I have not used this software it appears to have good potential. Wordpress with LMS add on while this is very new option it had huge potential to disrupt the LMS market, the functionality of wordpress with tracking of an LMS. This was excluded because you need more robust audience features. Joomlalms not free, additional complexity Sharepoint LMS Might be too expensive, not open source ATutor's Probably too academic BusinessLMS I ve not had experience with this one but it appears that there is no way to download their software. Canvas SAAS model, very academic Caucus It appears that while stable development stopped sometime in 2009 DoceboLMS not opensource Ganesha LMS seems to be a bare bones lms with little bells and whistles. ILIAS This is academic Metastudy don t know much about this one, they appear to focus on the academic market OLAT LMS academic rsmart Sakai academic Sakai CLE academic Sakai OAE academic Totara LMS non opensource non free spinoff of moodle. Costs are a subscription Model and start at 500 users. around 1500 per month Summary Thanks again, let me know if this answer works for you, if not there are LMS options that I didn t address please send them over and I would be happy to add them in. It was a very close call between efront and Moodle. While I do love moodle and do hosting for it, it doesn t fit every situation and you might get bogged down in the complexity. As far as the areas and I can help with can you be a bit more specific than that? I can

4 assist you with a large range of areas within learning. Including hosting/setup/reporting etc. tools Thanks Onlearningpoint.com

5 Original Problem Statement Question: Please read the attached text file for the situation on which I'd like your advice: Question: What is the first and second choice of LMS to consider and what are your reasons for these recommendations? In other words, explain why the first choice is better than the second choice. Thanks, and looking forward to working with you. Joe Fixed requirements: 1. Need an LMS to support multiple courses to multiple multiple groups. For instance, the way it was explained to me is to think of several boy scout troops, each at a different stage, with individuals all heading for the same certification(s), yet may be starting from a different point in terms of knowledge, experience, and accomplishments. 2. Each course will consist of multiple lessons. So the Campfire Cooking course will have lessons on Preparing the cooking area, Selecting meals, Delegation, and Cleanup, for instance. The lessons need to support text, audio, and video components to keep the learners engaged and interested. 3. Each lesson will have a short quiz to make sure people are comprehending the material with just true false or multiple choice questions. Each course will have an overall test of mostly multiple choice questions and short answer. 4. The different types of users who will interact with the course will be: Administrators (who set up the courses and have a dashboard for all groups, all courses, all instructors) Managers (the Troop leaders who will need to add their scouts, enroll them in courses, and check progress for their troop in a dashboard on the scores students got on lesson quizzes and course tests) Instructors (who will teach courses and respond to questions for students taking their courses, and may teach courses for different groups/troops; they need to see overviews of how many students have gone through each lesson) Students (who take the courses and who want to see their progress towards certification in certain programs, like water safety, survival, etc.) 5. It must run on a LAMPS stack server and be customizable as needs change. Reports needed:

6 1. Administrators All Courses with status (open/closed/completed), # enrolled, start/end, and % completed by lesson and by student All Users, for manager management, instructor management, and student management. 2. Managers Courses under their group Students under their group 3. Instructors Courses they are teaching Overview of progress for each course Preferences: When a user logs in, they will see what they have available. For instance, Managers, instructors, and students will see just their courses. If Managers have to go into the back end, that's ok. It would be best if students and instructors could do all of there things from the front end. It would be great for each role to have a summary page/dashboard that could be customized by an administrator. Worpress based would be nice, but not a requirement. A payment system is a nice to have, not a need to have. Similarly, discount codes are useful, but not necessary. "Five groups are ready for the training to begin, and each has 8 15 students, so 100 participants a good rough estimate. If this is a good system for this purpose, it should be able to grow without having to move to a new system until it exceeds 10K+ users. Moodle is a free LMS, yet has a steeper learning curve than WP. I don't know much about its audience management. It would be useful to learn about both the WP and non WP system that you have in mind. We have not set up an LMS system before. If one costs a few dollars but can do what we need it to do, it will be better than a free system that requires too many critical compromises. The tool we select needs to be able to report on the different groups (admin, manager, instructor, and student) and progress along courses. Once you've identified the top 2 picks, I will dig into them and see what they offer. Be sure to let me know which areas/tools are your specialty, too. Thanks!" Question: Hi vreten, I'm a newbie to the e learning world, but I have a strong background in IT, so I'm looking to the best platform to manage my future clients. I currently developing some courses using the articulate software family including storyline, so I can publish using scorm 1.2, 2004 and AICC. I'm looking for something to manage my courses, with very detailed reports and a really nice portal design. I've liked a lot the joomlalms, but the design has to be improved, I'm looking for something already clean and neat.

7 ( elearning resources/item/212 open source le arning management systems) I've searched all this platforms but it's hard to know the best of both world, cost vs functionality. So I need you help to a website portal to manage my courses and subscriptions. Thanks in advance for your help, My budget is really small, it still just a project. My area will be in finance and financial markets. I'm looking in something that can grow with time. I expect a pretty small audience (Under 100) in the first 6 months. As I told you in the first message I liked the I want to have a nice portal like the joomlalms (socialjoomla) But for sure you know some better answers. I like the idea of having a virtual class room as an option. Thanks Again,