What suggestions do you have for creating an online training system?
At the University of Dayton, we need to create an on-line training system that incorporates videos, slideshows, pdf's, images and interactive testing. The system would need to include a registration portal, a means to collect payment and manage subscriber permissions/access. Naturally, they don't want to spend much money and they want it up and running by the spring.
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Mar 14, 2015
We have a software development company in India. Currently, we have an employee strength of about 45 folks, in varied technologies - .NET, Java, PHP, HTML, UI design etc.
We did couple of projects from one of our Client Pen Groups. They outsourced 4 projects for us but, as everyone knows, if we have to grow and expand, we need find overseas clients.
Any advise? Any direction would be helpful.
Thanks
Ankith
Feb 9, 2015
Mendy,
Is this still something you need assistance in? My firm has a specialty in application development for knowledge management and training, along with having a core competency in the education sector. Let me know if you are interested in having a chat?
Thanks
SP
Dec 14, 2014
I recommend Moodle from personal experience. Moodle is a learning platform designed to provide educators, administrators and learners with a single robust, secure and integrated system to create personalized learning environments. It is an open, collaborative effort by one of the largest open-source teams in the world. It has the muscle to handle the complexity and being open source it is FREE. It is used by Universities worldwide. - The Pragmatic Web Designer
Nov 6, 2014
Paypal for the payments, email package the "modules" in zipped folders upon receipt of payment. (20 minutes with the right paypal setup)
Nov 5, 2014
Mendy, would any of the open source MOOC sites such as Udemy not work for your requirement?
Nov 5, 2014
I am not sure exactly what your budget is but I do this for a living and it is definitely attainable. I am in Deltona/Orlando and would be happy to meet with you to understand the details so I can explain what is entailed and price ranges, if you are interested..?
Nov 3, 2014
Obviously you have to consider scalability. I would suspect that you have numerous courses in which you would like to put up for online training. I built a website using wordpress and a plugin called Sensi by WooCommerce. (http://www.woothemes.com/products/sensei/) and then incorporated WooCommerce as a shopping cart.
With this, you can break up courses into separate sections and a person has to pass a quiz to reach the next section of the course. They only have access to courses they have paid for. You can also offer free courses to get people to signup and into a drip campaign. It was highly effective and easy to manage after it was built.
Money is always an issue, Wordpress is free, Sensi is $129 and WooCommerce is $80. Pretty cheap, the expensive part is development.
Nov 4, 2014
Adam ... That's the issue. It's OK to be cost-conscious, but an institution of higher learning should not be trying to cut corners when there are certain academic standards that have to be adhered to and with their reputation at stake. Just my two cents.
Nov 6, 2014
There seems to be a slight misunderstanding. At UD, they do incorporate on-line learning with their classes. What I am looking for is a course offering, that is non-accredited for continuing education for adults. It would need the ability to manage members, accept payment and show progress through the courses. For example, Client Joe has completed two on-line courses and based on how much he paid, he can also take x classes.
Nov 6, 2014
Mendy ... You're accredited course LMS should be able to handle exactly what you are looking related to non-accredited courses. Most universities use the same platform for serving both types of students. However, based on what you just wrote you will need to use Wordpress with a combination of membership plugins or an even more powerful LMS plugin than Sensi. LearnDash (http://www.learndash.com/) and WP Courseware (https://flyplugins.com/wp-courseware/) are powerful LMS for WordPress. There are others as well. They integrate with all of the major e-commerce platforms. If you wanted to use Sensi, check out this theme. http://themeforest.net/item/lms-responsive-learning-management-system/7867581 or this theme http://themeforest.net/item/wplms-learning-management-system/6780226
Dec 15, 2014
Jeff''s points about academic standards (including SCORM) and misplaced cost-conscious considerations are very important. I love WordPress but it shouldn't be under consideration for this type of project. I marketed Higher Education ERP solutions including LMS for 3 vendors over a career spanning 25 years and I know from expereince. Accordingly, it might be useful for you to see what the competition is doing. Go to: http://mfeldstein.com/state-us-higher-education-lms-market-2014-edition/
-The Pragmatic Web Designer
Nov 3, 2014
There are numerous cloud-based LMS (Learning Management Systems) platforms designed to do all the things you want to do. While you don't want to invest any money in the platform, you'll need to have an initial up front investment and then incorporate the cost of the system and seat into the students' tuition.
Here's a link (http://bit.ly/1s8el9b) to a Google search for LMS systems.
While this is an interesting alternative, Sensi is a rather simplistic LMS. It is missing a lot of key elements needed for a university course. I find it disconcerting that a university like U of D is attempting to be so cheap with their learning management, especially when blended learning is needed along with timed testing, threaded discussion, assignment upload, is SCORM compliant and capable of handling large class sizes.