Instructor Role with Frontend Dashboard vs LearnDash Dashboard: Which has a better LearnDash Frontend Course Builder?

Looking for a frontend course builder for your LearnDash website?

Then you’re at the right place!

In LearnDash, creating a course is easy. But when you’re offloading this responsibility to multiple instructors, you have to give them access to the backend. Not only does it require instructors to spend additional time getting familiar with the old WordPress interface, but can also put your website at risk. Not to mention endless hours of training your instructors on how to use WordPress in conjunction with LearnDash.

Sounds like a lot of work? 

Well don’t fret, you can easily overcome these challenges by limiting instructor access to the front end to create a course. In LearnDash, you can leverage third-party tools like — Instructor Role for LearnDash and LearnDash Dashboard for frontend course creation.

Since these plugins come with tons of features, we’ll only focus on the frontend course-building functionality for the sake of this article. By the end of this post, you’ll be able to decide which front-end course builder is best for you.

There’s a lot of ground to cover, so let’s dig in!

Nowadays, a front-end course builder is a must-have if you want to speed up course creation on your eLearning platform. The reason is — it’s easy to use, more intuitive, and less distracting than the backend builder. As a result, your instructors end up creating in less time.

But every eLearning platform is unique and therefore has different needs. Here are some things to consider before you choose one:-

Ease of use

Any course-creating/editing software should have an intuitive user interface and simplicity of use. For instance, a Drag and Drop Course Builder lets you organize your course into sections, lessons, and topics. As a course creator, it will not only help you add course content quickly but also control the visualization of your course for students. Because of its graphical nature, a layman will find it easier to make changes – like adding a new lesson, a multimedia file, or even updating the entire course content on the go.

Quizzing options

Quizzes are important. They help you test the knowledge of your learners. How would you even gauge what someone has learned unless you ask them questions and gauge their performance? So, it makes perfect sense to look for a course builder that can help you add interactive quizzes with different formats of questions. Single choice answers, multiple-choice answers, descriptive answers, media-based options, and so on.

Complete control over course material

Besides adding course content, a course-building interface on the front end should also help you manage the course material. This includes setting course prices, deciding how learners will access the course, course expiration, course navigation, and so on.

Drip Content

Delivering a course is like narrating a story. Each lesson and chapter adds up to build a storyline, which eventually leads to a final outcome or takeaway for the learner. Drip-feeding lessons help in telling the story in a structured way – making the learning process fun.

In simple terms, dripping content means, your learners get access to the course material in a timely fashion rather than all at once (on demand). It’s a more dynamic form of making course content available to your students, as they get access to relevant course material at relevant stages of their study.

Tried playing Candy Crush? Just like your progress in a game by unlocking one level after another, in a similar way, you can allow your learners to progress in a course and access the next lesson, only after they’ve finished the previous one.

Hence, it’s a cool way to gamify your courses.

Flexible Prerequisites

Prerequisites refer to the fundamental courses that a user has to complete before taking a particular course. For example, one can’t move to an advanced course in Quantum Physics directly, without having the basic knowledge of integrations and differentiations. They are the stepping stones on which a detailed study is built. 

Thus, setting prerequisites to help you control and create a better learning experience – so that learners don’t feel at sea in the midst of a course.

Course sharing with multiple Instructors

Creating a course in LearnDash is easy. But if a course is quite large for a single instructor to work on, then you can share the responsibility with multiple instructors and collaborate with them. It’s also a great way to incorporate feedback from other course creators. 

Hence, having the functionality to share your course with multiple course authors can speed up course creation as well as improve the quality of the course.

Pro Tip:  Shared courses show up on the profiles of all the instructors that have collaborated on the course. Not only will it help you give them credits but will also boost the credibility of your course.

Now, with these features in mind, let’s take a look at the available options.

LearnDash plugins to help with Frontend Course Creation

The Instructor Role for LearnDash and LearnDash Dashboard are two plugins that essentially provide you with all features to create and manage a multi-instructor LearnDash site. But they also go a step further to simplify course creation with the help of a front-end course builder.

Let’s take a close look at both of them.

Instructor Role with Frontend dashboard for LearnDash: Overview

Instructor Role for LearnDash by WISDMlabs is a multi-instructor plugin for LearnDash. Simply put, it helps you easily add multiple instructors, course authors, teachers, and SMEs to create and manage courses, as well as students on your LearnDash site, just as you would do in a course marketplace.

The updated frontend dashboard is designed as a block within the Gutenberg framework, offering a robust dashboard builder block for complete customization and extension capabilities. Even if you’ve opted to disable the Gutenberg Editor, our global settings allow for seamless customization of the frontend dashboard.

Enhance your e-learning platform with the Frontend Dashboard, a feature of the Instructor Role plugin. It offers Instructors and Admins direct access to LearnDash and plugin features from the website’s frontend, bypassing the backend. This dashboard is not only visually appealing and user-friendly but also customizable to fit your specific business needs. It elevates security and improves instructor productivity, leading to a more efficient course management experience.

Key Features in Instructor Role for LearnDash:

• Frontend Course Creator (FCC) to build courses on the front end of your site.
• A secure, dedicated dashboard for instructors and admins to take control of the eLearning experience.
• Seamless communication between instructors and students directly from within the LMS
• Revenue sharing and automatic payouts for instructors
• Tracking and managing student progress
• Dedicated profile pages for instructors
• Approving and managing assignments from the dashboard

Now that we have an overview of all the features in the Instructor role for LearnDash, let’s zero in on the prime agenda – frontend course creation functionality and how it helps.

Frontend Course Creator in Instructor Role

The instructor Role for LearnDash comes with a new built-in Frontend Course Creator. Using the Frontend Course Creator, you can create courses, lessons, topics, and quizzes with a drag-and-drop course builder. It helps you visualize the entire course structure and preview it before publishing in a seamless way.

The Frontend Course Creator includes all the attributes of the LearnDash course builder. So, in addition to organizing course content into courses, lessons, and quizzes, you also get access to a ton of other functionalities and Frontend Course Creator is Elementor compatible.

Here’s what you can do with the Frontend Course Creator:-

• Create drip content
• Set course prerequisites
• Select course purchasing options
• Set course expiration date
• Add additional course material on the course page
• Enable challenge exams
• Assign certificates
• Share course with multiple instructors
• Enroll selected users
• Control the look, feel, and navigational experience of the course, among other things

How to access the Frontend Course Creator

Once instructors are logged in, they can access the frontend course builder by navigating to the ‘Instructor Dashboard’  >> ‘Courses’ >> ‘Add New/Edit‘. 

To understand how exactly these features work, you can create a course using the demo and also give us feedback!

Demo

Here’s where you can check out the demo.

Pricing

• Instructor Role Annual – $80
• Instructor Role Lifetime license – $240

Also Read: Instructor Role for LearnDash: The ultimate instructor dashboard for frontend course creation

Now moving on to the next candidate.

LearnDash Dashboard: Overview

LearnDash Dashboard by WBcomdesigns is a plugin that adds a personalized frontend dashboard for students, instructors, and group leaders to monitor and manage anything related to their LearnDash accounts. The dedicated dashboard on the front end helps instructors to create and manage courses from a single place.

Key Features in LearnDash Dashboard

• Adding multiple instructors to create and manage courses on your LearnDah site
• Frontend dashboard for admins, instructors, group leaders, and students to manage their LearnDash account
• Frontend course builder for instructors to create courses on the frontend
• Tracking student progress and activity
• Quiz tracking and assignment management
• Instructor commissions and withdrawal
• Private messaging and email to communicate with students and resolve queries

Hence, the LearnDash dashboard helps instructors create, manage and conduct their courses efficiently. But for the sake of this article, we will stick to how the front-end course-building functionality helps LearnDash instructors.

Frontend Course Builder in LearnDash Dashboard

The Frontend Course Builder is a unique feature in Learndash Dashboard that allows instructors to create and manage their courses without having to go to the WordPress backend. Instructors can create courses, assign quizzes, and provide certifications to learners. This feature helps the instructor manage everything – without diving into the complex WordPress backend panel.

In a nutshell, here’s all that you can do with a Frontend Course Builder

• Create, edit, and update courses
• Create lessons, topics, and quiz questions
• Assign certificates to the corresponding course module
• Manage lessons, quizzes, and assignments
• Share courses with multiple instructors
• Get all attributes of the LearnDash course builder
• Tooltips are also available to guide you

How to access the frontend course builder

After login into their account, Instructors can access the frontend course builder by navigating to their ‘Dashboard>’> ‘My Courses’ >> ‘Edit’.

Demo

To see it in action, you can check out the demo.

Pricing

• LearnDash Dashboard Basic Plan – $99
• LearnDash Dashboard Lifetime Plan – $249

Instructor Role for LearnDash Vs LearnDash Dashboard: Comparing the Frontend Course Builder

Final Verdict: Which is the best Frontend Course Builder for LearnDash?

Creating an online course is one of the most important tasks involved in running an e-Learning platform. Even though LearnDash offers a built-in drag-and-drop course builder, instructors need backend access to use it – a power that is generally limited to admins. Hence, they have to navigate through complex WordPress settings to create a course, which is a really cumbersome activity.

To mitigate this, Instructor Role for LearnDash and LearnDash Dashboard with a frontend course builder are two popular third-party addons that help instructors create a course using the frontend only.

Both plugins bring out all the attributes of the LearnDash Course builder on the front end to simplify course creation.

The main differentiator is that — the UI/UX of the Frontend Course Builder in LearnDash Dashboard is not so intuitive. Even though the interface looks clean,  it is difficult to drag and drop lessons, topics, or quizzes.

On the other hand, the latest Frontend Course Creator in Instructor Role for LearnDash is more intuitive, well-organized, looks fresh, and makes creating a course a smooth sailing ride. It’s much easier for instructors to add course content and visualize the entire course structure.

But don’t just take my word for it, check out what our users have to say —

Thanks for the update! I have been working on simplifying the admin side for couple of days and this is like a dream come true to put everything on the frontend with really good design! Good job!  – Niko Vittaniemi (www.verkkokurssille.fi)

So, what do you think? Which one will you choose? The buck stops with you. What we hope is that this article helped you have a clear understanding of both with respect to frontend course creation.

If you have any more queries or would like to suggest something we can cover in the next article, feel free to reach out to us.

Also Read:
Introducing Frontend Dashboard in Instructor Role for LearnDash: It’s Finally Here!
Instructor Role for LearnDash is the missing piece you need to expand your LearnDash business