I’ve been exploring the options for an online delivery tool to enable me to better serve my clients. It may be called many things; a content management delivery tool, an online learning platform, e-learning, e-teaching.
I want to be able to offer economical online training solution that is automated, can be started at any point in time, and the student can run through the course at their own pace.
Rather than just do the research and keep it to myself, I decided to compile what products I have looked at, and repurpose what I have unearthed into a hap hazard blog post. Most of the information is cut and paste from the respective businesses website, in a summarised fashion. Some of these products are aimed at university size educational facility with a larger budget than I have. Therefore they may be extremely good, however not suited to my wallet.
The criteria I am using are that of a small business owner with limited funds, limited time and that is user friendly both for me and the student. I want to be up and running quickly and I also want something that has the ability to automate as many processes as possible.
Further criteria that you may want to consider;
- Analytics
- Sequential content delivery
- Branding
- Shopping Cart – most accepted PayPal
I invite any feedback you may have.
Wishlist
– Easily Create A Membership Site With this WordPress Plugin Feature from the website
Unlimited Membership Levels
Create “Silver”, “Gold”, “Platinum”, or any other “levels” you want! Charge more for higher levels of access – all within the same blog.
Integrates With Your WordPress Site
Whether you’re building a new site or integrating with an existing WordPress site, installing WishList Member is a breeze. Just unzip the file, upload to your plugins folder and activate!
- Flexible Membership Options
Create Free, Trial, or Paid membership levels — or any combination of the three.
Easy Member Management
View your members, their registration status, membership level, and much more. Easily upgrade members, move them to different levels, pause their membership, or delete them entirely.
Sequential Content Delivery
Graduate your members from one level to the next. For example, after 30 days, you can automatically upgrade members from a Free Trial to the “Silver” level.
Control Viewed Content
Just click the “Hide” button to protect exclusive content for members of a particular level. Create “modular” memberships and hide content from other levels.
Shopping Cart Integration
Seamlessly integrates with the most popular shopping cart systems, including PayPal, ClickBank, and many more. Plus, WishList Member now integrates with Cydec and Infusion.
Multi-Level Access
Give your members access to multiple levels within your membership. For example, create a central download location with access granted to members of all levels.
Litmos
Described as the world’s most user-friendly Learning Management System.
Litmos is web-based training software that enables the easy delivery and tracking of online training courses, videos, assessments and surveys.
Odijoo
I like the fact that they use the infinity symbol in the logo.
Odijoo, the first ever online learning platform to give trainers their own secure space from which to create, deliver and monetize online courses, was released last week. Odijoo, which means “teacher” in Swahili, is a free to use web-based application that combines course creation, learning management, hosting, e-commerce and social networking tools.
Unlike other online learning solutions, Odijoo allows small to medium sized businesses (SMBs) to have their own private, personalized and secure “Odijoo campus”. A campus is an online storefront, where users can store, administer and promote their Odijoo courses. Campuses are designed for smaller businesses and organizations, that need to train their employees under a tight budget.
“Odijoo is designed to help companies get their training online in a matter of days without third party consultants,” says Shevy Levy, the visionary behind Odijoo. “SMBs can finally afford to reach their learners and with the campus feature, can do so from a single secure online place.”
Integrates the social network (twitter/ning)
At the moment this is the product I like the most for developing courses, because, without using it, it appears to be the easiest to get up and running with.
WizIq
WizIQ offers a rich set of intuitive tools for online teaching.
Teach courses live and online in our Virtual Classroom Join our vast network of teachers and learners for free Integrate the WizIQ Virtual Classroom with your website
I liked their blog – it was informative and they spent time providing useful articles.
JigSaw Box
I have had a go at this site and it looks good, visually it is slick. It is possible to download the pdf from inside the training area. The ongoing costs of $67 per month concern me. I would need to sell a lot of courses to cover this cost.
I have purchased an online course that is run through JigSaw Box, so I am likely to come back and update my thoughts on this product.
Update:
As a student I tried listening to the audio within the program. Initially the quality was poor – but this could be the recording – not the tool itself. The audio repeatedly stopped and would not take me back to where it had stopped wasting a lot of time. In the end I had to download the audio. When I went to download the audio, I lost all the notes I had been making in the note section of the module. Remember to save!
Claroline
Moodle
-complete course management
– Lots of clients use this including Australian Institute of Fitness
How much technical knowhow is required? I am not sure if I am technically able to do this?
Traindom
Looks good – but forum comments suggest not all there yet.
Edufire
This product looks interesting. Similar to Odijoo except you need to create a class and run it live at a certain time.