e-Learning Archives

9 Must-Have Features for Your e-Learning Mobile App

February 5, 2019 by Shreya Reddy Leave a Comment

We’re living in a day and age where it’s never been easier to learn new things. As time passes, the last of the barriers to learning are being taken care of. We’ve gone from the traditional classroom setting to eLearning and now a step further to mLearning. As a majority of the content on the internet is accessed through mobiles, it isn’t surprising that eLearning mobile apps have created quite a buzz in the industry. These mobile apps come bundled with a set of advantages for both – the users and eLearning entrepreneurs. Now, although the decision to have a mobile app developed is a ‘much-needed’ one on your part, it’s not entirely a straightforward affair. Once you’re through with your research, you’ll end up with a huge list of features that could be incorporated into your eLearning app. The real trick here is to sort out the ‘must-haves’ from the ‘nice-to-haves’ and prioritize. So, let me break it down for you with a list of some quintessential features that should definitely be a part of your eLearning mobile app:

Features that your App ‘Absolutely Can’t Do Without’

Scalability: As your business grows, there’ll be a perpetual increment in the number of users as well. Goes without saying, your app needs to adapt to new scenarios, new versions of the operating systems (iOS/ Android) and support the addition of new features to the app.
Learner-Focused Design: The mobile app you’re building, has a specific purpose; which is, to facilitate learning. The User Experience of your learning app is paramount when it comes to ensuring the effective delivery of content. A learner-centric layout helps your students to focus on the course content, that is optimally laid out across mobile devices with varying dimensions.
Push Notifications: Unlike emails and messages that have been rendered ineffective or spammy over the years, push notifications are subtly pushed on to the notification bars on your learner’s phone. These notifications are a great way to directly connect with your learners and keep them engaged.

Ideally, you should be able to set different triggers for sending out push notifications. In simple words, a certain activity carried out by your learner should set off or ‘trigger’ the corresponding push notification. For example,

Activity	Push Notification
The Learner Completes a Course	Recommend a related or similar course
The Learner Completes a Lesson or Topic	Remind the user to take a Test
The Learner Passes a Quiz	Send a Congratulatory Message
The Learner hasn’t logged in for ‘X’ days	Send reminders at regular intervals

The Content Management, and Delivery System

Different Content Formats: If your learners are to retain the information that your courses offer, the traditional plain and boring written lessons just won’t suffice. Your course content could span from written information to podcasts to high definition videos that help create a more immersive experience. And in order to implement these modern-day teaching techniques, you need your app to support multiple different course formats.
Micro-Learning: As an educator, you can’t overlook that fact that today’s learners have a shorter span of attention. Smaller chunks of data ensure higher receptivity and information retention. With content that’s designed for micro-learning and an app that’s built to deliver this content in the most effective way possible, you can dominate the micro-learning scene like a pro!
Support for Offline Content: A definite ‘must-have’ for your e-learning app. This feature allows your users to download the course content and access it at their convenience. The best part is, they won’t have to worry about connectivity issues, slow loading speeds or excessive battery consumption, which in turn helps them focus on what really matters – learning.
Drip Feeding Content: This functionality is generally used by eLearning websites for delivering larger amounts of content in the form of manageable chunks. You can drip feed content in order to:

track a students progress
ensure the learner has gone through the pre-requisite classes/content before he can start advancing into the course
schedule the content delivery on a weekly or monthly basis to constantly keep your students engaged; etc

If this is something you’ve already implemented on your website, your app needs to support the functionality too. On the other hand, if you aren’t already drip feeding content, it’s a great time to consider upgrading your website along with your mobile app!

The Tests and Quizzes

Multiple Quizzing Options: There are a lot of ways to play around with your quizzing techniques. You can implement leaderboards, set time limits for tests, randomize questions, and provide hints when necessary. You need to ensure your mobile app can accommodate all of these different traits and do them justice.
Optimized Quiz Layouts: Your quizzes could include various formats ranging from multiple choice questions to fill-in-the-blanks, sorting and matching to essays and surveys. Ensuring all of these various quiz types are optimally laid out on the mobile screen is again a crucial step towards building a great learner-centric app.

Over To You

When it comes to eLearning apps, you need the right blend of technology and strategy in order to create a superior learning experience for your users. While the above list of features contains all of the basic features that your app would need, it’s important to keep an eye out for the latest trends in mobile learning.

Do you agree with our list of ‘Must-Haves’? What challenges, in your opinion, can an eLearning app solve for you?

Let’s get talking in the comments section below!

How to Create Paid Lessons or Modules on your WordPress LMS

November 21, 2018 by Shreya Reddy 1 Comment

The spurt of users over the years in favor of online learning has resulted in a relative increase in the number of learning management systems available in the market. In the WordPress domain, there are themes like eLumine, EducationWP, WPLMS and then there are plugins like LearnDash, LifterLMS, WP Courseware and Sensei that are dedicated to the concept of eLearning and are constantly innovating. With the ever-growing competition in the industry, businesses are readily investing in high-tech features ranging from the implementation of AI and VR to e-learning mobile apps and all the other latest eLearning trends. But let’s face it, it’s not always feasible to offer a certain feature or functionality in your LMS because it’s trending. However, this doesn’t have to affect the growth of your business. Your LMS may not necessarily need a complete overhaul. A couple of ingenious minor tweaks in your system could have a significant effect on your sales. One such tweak that definitely deserves to be talked about is lowering the barrier to enrollment and creating micro-learning programs by offering paid lessons or topics, instead of solely offering paid courses. Let’s discuss this in detail.

What is it?

Very often, the courses that are provided in an Online Learning Management System are extensive and have many lessons associated with them. What we’re suggesting here is that instead of having your students pay for the entire course, you could charge for certain lessons, topics or modules within the course.

Why Would You Need to Offer Paid Lessons?

Well, there are quite a few reasons:

#1 Create More Value for You and Your Customers

A user who needs access to only a single lesson from the course would not be in favor of buying the entire course as it would be an unnecessary outlay. This usually results as a loss for both – the course provider and the course taker. One loses a potential customer while the other doesn’t get access to the specific lesson in question. Bridging this gap helps you convert it into a win-win situation for both the content provider as well as the student. All you need to do is add a feature in your LMS which allows you to create paid lessons that can be sold individually while keeping the current format of selling an entire course intact.

#2 Market your Course

Have you been able to focus on marketing courses individually on your LMS? Not very practical, is it? Especially once your LMS exceeds a certain number of courses. Your website may have the best of courses and your content may be far better than what your competitors are offering, but what’s to stop your users from purchasing their course over yours? You need to showcase your offering well. A great way to market your courses is to introduce their first few lessons for free. Your course takers can check out the initial lessons and then make a more informed decision about enrolling. Now, your prospects may not always convert, but they could prove to be great influencers and reel in users who would.

#3 Monetize your Free Online Course Website

If you’re running a free online course website, and advertisements are your primary source of income, here’s a great way to add to your revenue generation. You could lay out your course content for free while you charge your users for the quizzes and certification. You can maintain your existing business model and add to your monetizing strategies.

#4 Acquire Better User Insights

It’s always good to get to know your users. The more you know about them, the better your remarketing and recommendations get. When you let your users explicitly purchase the lessons they’re interested in, you know exactly what they’re looking for. This gives you an immense opportunity in terms of recommending relevant courses to your users and consequently improves their chances of enrolling.

A Work Around

As there is no LMS plugin that offers the feature to create paid lessons at this point in time, users can create individual lessons as courses in order to be able to sell them individually. However, this is not an ideal solution as there would be a need to connect all the lessons of a single course to each other. Also, the number of courses created would be needlessly resulting in overhead for website administrators.

How to Create Paid Lessons for your LMS?

So, if not the workaround, how do we incorporate the paid lessons functionality into an online learning management system? Well, to enjoy this functionality at its best, your WordPress LMS needs some tinkering. We had the opportunity of customizing LearnDash and Sensei to make lessons paid. The customization mainly involved associating the lessons with products. This is how it went. Once you figure out an e-commerce platform to use, we customize the related course options to add lessons, so that you could select the specific lessons within a course and convert them into paid lessons. Your page settings page would then look somewhat like this:

Product Page in Dashboard

To create a paid lesson, you would have to:

Check the ‘Create Paid Lessons’ checkbox as shown in the above image.
Next, select a course from a list provided on the product page. The list of lessons that belong to this particular course is fetched and populated in a separate list meant for lessons.
Then, select a lesson from this list which will be displayed as a product on the shop page. Other attributes such as price, course description, product image etc can be added as usual.

One thing to note here is that if you want to sell an entire course in some cases instead of individual lessons, you would have to keep the ‘Create Paid Lessons’ option unchecked and sell courses as usual.

User View on Course Page

As shown above, on the course page a purchase button would be provided to the users against every paid lesson in the course that has not been purchased by the user.
Now, a user can buy a particular lesson from any course by clicking on the button provided against the lesson. The user will then be taken to the product page that has been created for the lesson. Once the user buys a lesson the user’s information for that course will be updated, he’ll be able to take the lesson that has been purchased.

So, the users of your LMS will be able to buy individual paid lessons while the option to buy the course as a whole remains intact. This feature not only saves the web admin from creating numerous courses – which are lessons in reality – in the LMS but also provides students with an option to buy only the sections in the course which they require.

Wrapping Up

Simple customizations could take you a long way ahead in meeting the needs of your students and acquiring a wider set of audience. Offering paid lessons on your WordPress LMS might not seem like a big deal, but the advantages are multi-fold. Are you considering adding this feature to LearnDash or Sensei? What are your reasons to do so? How have you thought about going through with it? Let’s get the conversation started!

Do You Need a Mobile App for your LearnDash LMS? Yes.

October 9, 2018 by Shreya Reddy 1 Comment

Ever heard the phrase “there’s an app for that”? (There’s a ‘Guess that Phrase’ app too). This phrase – coined by Apple’s ingenious advertising agency, and used as a smart a$$ response to a problem – is true. With mobile phones becoming ubiquitous, it’s no surprise that they are the most preferred way we consume content today. While a lot of eLearning websites are doing great for themselves, having a strong mobile presence may not be a matter of choice anymore. Let me just back that statement up with a couple of Stats and Facts.

So, yes. Establishing a mobile presence is imperative. Especially if you want to get ahead of your competition and offer a stellar learning experience to your course takers. But we all know it’s not a low hanging fruit. There’s a ton of factors that come into play and a lot of concerns you probably have as a business owner. So, I’m going to go ahead and try to address a few of them for you.

Do I need an app? Won’t a mobile-friendly Website do?

Your “mobile-friendly” website could be a responsive or an adaptive one. A Responsive Website is designed to fit its content into any screen. Whether it’s a 17-inch Laptop or a 3-inch Mobile Phone, the content can self-adapt to the size of your user’s screen. Adaptive Websites, on the other hand, are built bearing in mind a few and specific screen sizes. While these mobile-friendly sites save you a great deal of time, effort and money, they may not be suitable for your eLearning Business. That’s because it’s about the purpose they serve. A responsive site works just fine if you have a website that your prospects are meant to just ‘read and go’. But when it comes to eLearning, your audience is meant to access your content on a regular basis. You want to keep them engaged and help them learn and retain your content. Since the eLearning Business genuinely warrants the need for a student-centric layout, the answer is, Yes. You need a Mobile app. You need to go from mobile-friendly to mobile-first.

Why would someone download the App when they can access the same content from my Website?

A Mobile App is convenient. It’s as simple as that. Your students don’t need to remember a website name, type it in, search for it, or log in every single time they visit. An app opens your e-learning portal in one step. It saves your users a great deal of time and effort, and who doesn’t like handiness?! According to surveys conducted by Akamai and Gomez.com, 40% users abandon a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load. I mean, if page load speeds can have such a great deal of impact on bounce rates, image how much good the sheer, ‘user-friendliness’ of your App can do for you! And that’s not it! A Mobile App allows you to create a personalized experience for your students, customize your course structure and offer micro-learning content. Is it really that hard to imagine why anyone would pick a Mobile App over its Website?!

Is it the right time for me?

Honestly speaking, now’s as good a time as any. Mobile apps are one of the hottest mobile learning trends driving the market today and a lot of businesses are readily pumping money into app development. If you don’t have a good Mobile App or haven’t considered building one yet, chances are, your competition is already a few paces ahead of you. The world has gone Mobile and you can’t afford to stay behind. But it only makes sense if you take the right approach towards this. You need to figure out, what does and doesn’t work for you. Understand how your website is currently performing, what kind of traffic you’re dealing with and chart-out your key performance indicators. Once you know exactly where your LearnDash Website stands, you’ll be able to pin down the purpose of your Mobile App and understand what you expect from it. You may want your App to help you reel in more users, boost course completion rates, get ahead of your competition or you probably want to explore an untapped business opportunity. Depending on whatever it is you’re looking for, you can pick an option that suits you best. Which brings us to the next question…..

What are my options?

Before we deep-dive into what’s best for your LearnDash Website, you should probably get acquainted with the different Types Of Mobile Applications. Each of the 3 types of Apps – Web Apps, Native Apps, and Hybrid Apps – come with their own set of pros and cons. Strictly speaking about LearnDash, you can pick from these 3 possible options. You could choose: An App Builder Platform- An app builder is an online mobile development tool that lets you bypass the generic mobile app development process. You can get your app up and running within a short period of time and with minimal or no coding knowledge. The downside here is that you can’t really expect much from it. It’s going to be a pretty ordinary app with generic design elements. It’s not necessarily geared towards student-engagement, you can barely customize it and there’s probably a hundred other apps out there that’ll look like yours. A Custom Solution– You can have your app built to suit your specific business requirements. A well-designed custom app can offer an unbeatable user-experience and get you the kind of results you’re looking for. But then again, like all custom software, an app like this comes with a hefty price tag. It’ll easily be a couple of months before your app sees the light of day, and that is if you hire the right and experienced technical partner. A Midway Option– A hybrid app that covers the best of both worlds. Both of the above options are on the extreme ends of the spectrum. So, we’ve come up with something in-between – A one-of-kind Mobile app for LearnDash, that completely redefines traditional layouts with it’s clean, unique and modern design. You don’t have to worry about getting your hands dirty with the ideation, wireframing, interface designing and user-experience analysis. Each element of this app is thoughtfully crafted to help you offer an unparalleled learning experience to your users. And to top it all, it’s extremely customization friendly! Whether it’s customizing your logo and splash screen or adding a custom functionality that is specific to your business, this app can deliver. The best part is, your app will be ready a lot quicker than a traditional custom application and is cost effective too! If you think this App’s the one for you, you can get to know it better.

Will I be able to afford it?

Costs for developing a custom mobile application may range anywhere between $10,000 and $200,000. Also, you can’t overlook the recurring post development expenses – for maintenance and updates. Good mobile apps are expensive, but that doesn’t mean you can’t afford one. You may not have thousands of dollars to shell out on an app just yet, and that’s perfectly alright. You have quite a few options to choose from. And besides, you don’t have to begin with an extravagant tailor-made application with an expectation to hit it big right from Day 1. A more sensible approach would be to look for a scalable solution. A solution that helps you effectively explore the mobile market, let’s you figure out what works for you and then allows you to scale accordingly if need be. It’s difficult to slap a price on online development tools, but most of them may cost you about $500 to $2000 to start with, and there’s an added monthly or yearly charge for maintenance. Some of them charge on a ‘per-user’ basis. However, such apps aren’t always future-ready. And by future-ready I mean, your app may require certain changes due to new features introduced in the Mobile OS, you may have to accommodate more and more users as your business grows or you might want to get your UI/UX improved as per the latest trends. We strongly recommend thorough research before you pick a solution just because it seems more ‘pocket-friendly’.

What about support for my App?

No matter what kind of an app you choose to work with, you’re bound to invest in support. Support usually includes – maintaining control over the app’s day-to-day functions, operational level support, security patches, improvement in the application interfaces or upgrades to support upcoming OS and device releases. Generally, a technical partner that builds the app for you, supports it as well. They usually charge a recurring fee. If your initial development cost is about $40,000, you can easily expect the maintenance costs to range anywhere between $6000 and $10,000. Another option you have is to hire an agency that specializes in Mobile Application Maintenance and Support.

Wrapping Up

Having your LearnDash App developed is a significant milestone and a decision that can be game-changing for you. Your Mobile App can significantly boost student engagement and allow your users to learn on the go. With the increasing adoption of BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) Policy, a lot of businesses and corporate training companies are investing in mobile technology. The best way to make your investment worth it would be to figure out the purpose of your app, the functionality you want to see in it, and then pick the best option that fits your budget. As I’ve mentioned earlier, there are a lot of cost-effective options out there for you to pick from, and they can perform just fine. I hope this article helps you make an informed decision about going mobile. And if you’re still unsure about it, you could always get in touch!

7 Must-Have Qualities of an LMS to Consider for Your Company

January 8, 2018 by WisdmLabs Leave a Comment

This is a guest post by Erika Taylor. If you’d like to contribute to our blog, feel free to get in touch with us.

Thomas J. Watson, who served as IBM’s chairman and CEO and oversaw the company’s growth as an international behemoth from 1914 to 1954, was the source for this gem on employee development: “Recently, I was asked if I was going to fire an employee who made a mistake that cost the company $600,000. No, I replied. I just spent $600,000 training him. Why would I want somebody to hire his experience?” Fortunately, companies don’t need to lose more than half a million dollars just so a hired hand will learn a literally valuable lesson. With proper training, employees should be able to become more efficient than ever and further develop their skills, knowledge, and, ultimately their careers. Of course, training people will still need budget allocation, but done right, it is money well spent. After all, a company is only as good as its employees. Akio Morita, the co-founder of Sony Corporation, put this fact succinctly when he said, “No matter how good or successful you are or how clever or crafty, your business and its future are in the hands of the people you hire.” While there may be several ways to help employees improve on their craft, one of the most popular and effective is via eLearning courses that employees can choose themselves and take at their own time and pace, which avoids disruption of their productivity during office hours. Online learning, for its part, depends entirely on an effective learning management system, the essential tool that helps eLearning professionals create, deploy, and maintain online courses. And with so many LMSs available on the eLearning market nowadays, it becomes a task just choosing the best one to use to train employees. Do you go for the most popular, the least expensive, or the one that fits your company’s needs like a glove? The first step to effectively answer the question is to set learning objectives and goals. What is it that you want to achieve through eLearning? Once you have a clear view of the direction you want to take, compare the top learning management software, and then see to it that you get the following vital information from your shortlisted vendors (at least three to four). This will ensure that you will be buying the LMS best suited for your employees’ training needs, and the one that can grow alongside your company.

Vendor’s Longevity

Successful vendors tend to be those who have been in operation for some time. It is also a great gauge of the quality of their products and services. They wouldn’t be able to stay long in the business if they can’t offer a reliable product.

A List of Their Customers

If this is not possible since vendors might be compelled to keep their customer information to themselves because of legal or privacy reasons, what you need to be sure of is that the vendor has dealt with similar needs that you have in the past. If no customer information can be given, you can ask instead for some successful use cases and for what industry the vendor’s LMS is to be used.

Ability to Adapt

Does the vendor update its product as frequently as possible? If the answer is yes, that means they value feedback from the customers and are open to market changes. This is a good insurance that the LMS you will use is not apt to become obsolete and useless in just a few years.

Payment Method

Generally, LMS vendors cater to any of these four price structures: pay per learner, pay per user, pay per course, and pay per licensing. You also need to know if there are separate costs for setup, training, support, and services, as well as for additional software. There might also be long-term fees or even discounts.

Implementation Process

Knowing beforehand how the LMS will be implemented is important for it to succeed for your company. This is why it’s important to make sure you ask for detailed information for you to review thoroughly. This way, you can see if there are gaps that need to be addressed before the system goes live. This will also allow you to set a timetable for its setup and learn what things are needed to get it going, as well as determine if the existing applications you already have will be compatible or not so you can make the necessary adjustments.

Included Training

As is usually the case, the vendor will provide training for your learning and development team so they can get a good understanding of the LMS and effectively answer questions once the online training starts for employees. It is important then to confirm what learning materials will be provided, and for how long you can have access to them. Additionally, you should also have an idea of how many people are allowed to participate in the training sessions.

Support Services

Finally, you must have a clear understanding of what the vendor’s responsibility is when it comes to issues that may crop up during use of the LMS. Will there also be additional costs if you would need customer and tech support? This will also be the best time to ask the vendor if the data collected and stored in the LMS can be retrieved in a format that can be read and digested by other systems. This will ensure that the information will be still usable even if in the future you decide to use another LMS. Getting the right and complete information on prospective LMSs will help you decide on the best system to use that will create the ideal eLearning experience for your employees and help them become even more effective as key contributors to your organization’s success.

About the Author

Erika is a marketing specialist for Betterbuys.com. Better Buys has become a trusted authority for delivering unbiased, expert insights on the software and technology that businesses rely on. You can follow the company at @Better_Buys

Setting up a Timer in WooCommerce Sensei

December 15, 2017 by Akshaya Rane 2 Comments

WooCommerce Sensei has been climbing up the LMS ladder for quite a while now. A lot of users are now switching to Sensei due to its intuitive features. However, once in a while we encounter some smart customization request which takes our development experience to a whole new level. One such request was to add a timer during a student quiz in WooCommerce Sensei.

Client Requirement

Our client wanted to set up an optional Timer for Quizzes of his choice. If a Quiz timer was set, it had to be displayed whenever a student started the Quiz. This was a crucial requirement as a timer would be very helpful to students to keep a track of their performance as well as Time-Management in a subject. Before starting with the solution, let us get familiar with some terms that we would be using in our customization. Admin: Client and the owner of the LMS. User: Student taking the course. Module / Project: Our customization project. Let us take a look at our approach towards the customization.

Our Solution

We provided a setting on the “Edit Lesson” page. Here, Administrator can activate the timer for a Quiz and set the timer accordingly. We used PHP, JavaScript for the customization and worked on WooCommerce and WooCommerce Sensei.

This would allow an optional timer for a quiz to be enabled and the admin could set the time in hours, minutes and seconds. We also provided a setting to make the quiz accessible only after certain day(s) of user registration. This is how the quiz page looked like:

As shown above, the time remaining would be shown & regularly updated. The admin could also enable it to be a floating timer for the user’s convenience. If the admin wanted to set some minimum days to restrict the quiz access, it would be checked against the user’s registration date and an appropriate message like ‘Quiz will be accessible only after <N days> after registration. You can access the Quiz on <date>’, would be displayed.

Features for the Admin

Enable a quiz timer and set its duration.
Enable a quiz reset button.
Enable a floating timer.
Set the minimum number of days to restrict quiz access.
Set a minimum number of days after registration to take the quiz.

Features for the User

The user could pause the timer and Save the Quiz. He/She could then resume back from the remaining time later.
If a user accidentally closed the window, then the time spent would be saved and the user would get only the remaining amount of time when he/she took the quiz again.
After the timer ran out, the Quiz would be submitted automatically.
We also added a validation in which a message would be displayed if the user tried to open the quiz in a new window.

And the End Result is?

We were able to complete the customization swiftly. This timer can be used in all Sensei instances, such as training courses, universities, e-learning platforms and other places where a timer for an examination is required. Want help with similar customization or functionality? Drop a comment below!

Setting up an Offline Learning Management System

December 14, 2017 by Prachi Vidhate 3 Comments

A cyber Learning Management System is a great way to reach out to students across the globe. But what if we want to set up an offline LMS, say, for a University? We encountered one such request from one of our clients and it got us all spruced up!

Client requirement

Our client wanted students to attend classes scheduled via an offline LMS. Students who would enroll from a list of courses would get a course schedule and weekly timings of classes. Upon completion of a particular course, they would be assessed and an Instructor would enter a key on their system. The key would generate a certificate with a unique code which can be verified anytime by future scrutineers.

Our Solution

We decided to use WordPress and Gravity forms as the prerequisites for this customization. A student would enroll in a particular course using gravity forms, on the basis of a schedule for upcoming courses. He would then make payment using the forms. Once he was successfully enrolled, he could proceed to course. The Student would also get notifications for the course, such as the time and date of the next lesson, quiz etc. Once a student completes a course, his trainer would come and generate his certificate after evaluation, as mentioned above. One offline LMS served with a smile. 🙂

The Customization in Brief

We used PHP to create the modules including WordPress and Gravity Forms. For Courses and Schedules, we created a custom post type called Courses. There were Schedules associated with each course. One such schedule had the following details:

Dates (start date – end date)
Location
Price
Method: Virtual/Classroom
Total seats
Remaining seats

One could edit, delete or create a schedule for any course. For every training, there would be an associated trainer and a salesperson. While creating a training schedule, the admin had to select the trainer from a drop-down menu, where only available trainers were shown. After selecting the dates, available trainers would be fetched dynamically. Details of the Course: For every course, we had the following options:

Description
Objectives
Attendee
Prerequisites
Course Outline
Career Path
About the Trainer
Other Details
Testimonials
Enroll Now

Features for the User

Enrollment in the Course: We included gravity forms for enrolling the user in the course.The form had the following fields:

First name and Last name.
Email Id.
Schedule of the course (Available schedules were shown dynamically for the course, according to availability. Availability was decided on two criteria: 1. Previous dates. 2. Vacancies in the Batch.)

Certificate: The certificate was a custom post type. When a user completed the course, he would get the certificate associated with the course. The Certificate would always be shareable via a link, or downloadable as a PDF. Get a Friend Along: This was a feature which allowed a registered user to get a friend with him, like a referral system. The Admin could keep a track of these students. Calendar: A calendar was added to a submenu page. A filter was also provided to show the schedules assigned to the selected trainer.

Features for the Admin

Specialization: Specializations are basically a group of courses. We created a custom post type for them. On the “edit specialization” page, we provided a multi-selection box using which the admin could group courses under the name of specialization. Recommended Courses: The Admin could recommend courses to the user. The user would get a notification when a recommended course was sent to him. Roster: The Admin could select a course and schedule of the course from a drop-down menu which had a list of users who were registered for the course as well as their friends.

And the Conclusion is..?

This module can be applied to Universities, Schools, Training Centers, and all other centers where offline learning is essential. Currently, we have many E-learning plugins and websites, but there is no system which handles the case offline courses. We hope that with our customization, we can bridge the gap between these systems. How did you like our glitzy customization? We would love to hear your comments!

Gear Up: Your Learning Experience Amplifier is in the Works

November 21, 2017 by Harsh Shah 15 Comments

Knock, knock! Who’s there? A new product! ‘A new product’ who? The ultimate learning experience amplifier that’s perfect for you! We’ve got something BIG that’s coming up. We’re working on an e-learning product that’s built to improve the learning experience for students and teachers alike. This breakthrough product will be packaged to you as a quintessential e-learning theme – eLumine!

eLumine- A Sneak Peek

As a learning administrator or an instructor, we know your biggest challenge is creating top-notch course content. And that should be your focus. Our focus is to make sure it’s presented at its best to your students, for optimal interaction and understanding. With eLumine, we’ve tried to get your e-learning classroom in order by organizing the chairs and tables- that is to say- by creating unique templates and advanced functionality to facilitate the consumption of learning content.

Here’s a quick look at highlighted features the theme offers:-

LearnDash Compatibility

With LearnDash being the top plugin in WordPress LMS, the eLumine theme has been built to completely support LearnDash, with experiences tailored purely for the plugin. Our team of LearnDash experts, who’ve been working consistently with the plugin- building extensions and working with e-learning clients- have shared their insights to help the design team build an ideal theme for LearnDash. Here’s an example. We’ve introduced infinite scroll to help students sift through courses offered without any speed-breakers. So, if you’re using LearnDash, this is the theme you need to take your website to the next-level.

Optimized Page Layouts

Owing to the extensive work we’ve done in user experience development, the layouts have been designed primarily to improve readability, keeping in mind the needs of the learner and the tutor. For example, we’ve completely reinvented the LearnDash Course page and WooCommerce Shop page to make content comprehensible and improve interaction. We’ve used the latest Bootstrap 4 framework to create a contemporary and clean look. And do we need to mention that all layouts are responsive?! Perfect for learning on-the-go! What’s even better, is that the theme includes a drag & drop page builder to help you design your own pages.

Advanced Quiz Module

If you were to ask us the USP of this theme, it would have to be the advanced quiz module that comes packaged with the theme. This quiz module transforms LearnDash quizzes entirely to bring about a befitting interface, laced with Gamification.

Support for Wholesome Learning

An e-learning website is no longer limited to an LMS. The need of the hour is to have supporting functionality integrated such as e-commerce, social networking, forums, gamification, to create an active learning environment and monetize training services offered. eLumine addresses this need by supporting major WordPress plugins such as WooCommerce, BuddyPress, bbPress and BadgeOS.

Are You Ready?

If you’re as excited as we are about this theme, we want you to know that the theme’s undergoing the last phase of development- rigorous testing and quality check- before it can be made available to you. A tentative launch date has been set for a couple of weeks from now! Stay ahead of the Game! Get an exclusive notification once the theme is ready!

So watch this space for more updates for us, and get set. When we hit go, you’d want to be on board!

A Simple Guide to Choosing an Online Teaching Technology

November 6, 2017 by WisdmLabs 1 Comment

This is a guest post by Shivani. If you’d like to contribute to our blog, feel free to get in touch with us.

The investment in education technology ticks up in 2017 despite an all-time low in 2016, making it evident that eLearning is the way forward. The opportunities that are available for educators and students in the online environment continue to expand. Today’s educators (and students) are now faced with a decision – what is the best online teaching technology to use? Here we will go over some of the most important criteria that you should consider before fully committing to a platform.

#1 Compatibility

No matter how inspiring a new technology may be on its own, it will always rely on the technology that is around it. Put it another way, a technology puts its pants on one leg at a time just like the rest of us, and those pants need to match the rest of the outfit. The best ed-tech platforms are always compatible with the systems that are currently the industry standard. It must be all-inclusive and should allow you to fully integrate the best visual, audio and data streaming services into an education platform. Students and teachers will be able to connect using platforms that they are already used to. The video is especially important to consider in this environment, as many educational programs are contingent upon high-quality video streams. Students need to be able to read the blackboard! Additionally, a high degree of compatibility keeps you from having to install new plugins alongside the installation of your ed-tech platform.

#2 Accessibility

WebRTC wins here, as the core tech here works across devices and browsers and leverages the built-in capacities of a browser, ensuring a native video experience. WebRTC operates through the commercial online environment, so there is no new background technology for an educator or an administrator to learn. Many software development kits that are built on the WebRTC infrastructure have been praised for allowing teachers, administrators, and students to communicate more clearly. The servers used to communicate are physically dedicated and strategically placed all over the world, so there are very few problems associated with lag or a lost data stream. Servers that are fully dedicated also allow students and teachers to utilize wi-fi, 3G and 4G networks in a seamless way, ensuring the best possible audio and visual experience for every student regardless of the bandwidth they have. Bandwidths do not have to match, and a student with a slower bandwidth will not weigh on the rest of the network. The ability to blend technologies means that the overall platform is more accessible to everyone. For people who are looking to learn a particular skill instead of spending all day tweaking hardware options, this is an aspect of technology that must be considered.

#3 Scale

The best teachers around the world will obviously be the most popular. Does an educational platform allow students to access the teachers who already have a huge student base? If not, there is no difference between a physical classroom and a virtual one. Ideally, the constraints that limit a physical classroom to 20 or 30 students per teacher is completely lifted in the virtual world. The scale is exponentially larger. Virtual learning solutions allow for the scale mentioned above regardless of how popular a teacher may be. Also, students have a choice of the best teachers and tutors from anywhere in the world. These teachers come to students through applications they are already familiar with. Virtual classrooms can easily accommodate hundreds of students, all with the same opportunity to access the knowledge of the best minds on Earth. The result is a much lower cost, higher quality education.

#4 Classroom Format

Online teaching technology allows for completely new classroom formats, the most interesting of which is known as the “flipped classroom.” Instead of going over a lesson in class and doing homework at home, the flipped class allows students to watch a lecture before class begins and complete “homework,” or practice exercises, during the time with the professor. However, the format can only be properly implemented when there is a good video system integrated into the education technology. With a platform that can replicate traditional classroom in a virtual world, students can easily watch the lecture beforehand in high quality. They will come into the classroom/homework session best prepared for the exercises that will truly drive home the concepts.

#5 Specific needs

Not only does a good technology allow for better teachers overall, but it also allows for more specialization. Home-schooled students, for example, were limited to the tutors who were within the physical proximity of the student’s home. Within the virtual environment, a student can now access specialists for different subjects. Administrators can bring in specialists when there is a subject that is especially difficult or simply to highlight a point during a lecture. Virtual classrooms can increase the viability of homeschooling. With more parents and students looking into the homeschooling option, choosing the right educational platform can make all of the difference in the decision making process. Although you have many choices when it comes to your educational technology, the above tips should help you find the technology that is perfect for you. Consider the schedule of your program, the current benefits of the platform and the compatibility of the structure to ensure best results.

Author Bio:

Shivani is Content Manager at WizIQ – an EdTech company that offers online learning delivery platform to businesses and educators. She writes about eLearning, education technology and the role of cloud in education. Follow WizIQ on Twitter and LinkedIn.

6 Leading WordPress LMS Plugins for your Corporate e-Learning System

August 28, 2017 by Radhika Gogate Leave a Comment

Implementing a Corporate e-Learning System is a challenge. Whether you’re setting it up yourself or have hired a specialist, you know all too well that the challenge begins at the very first step – the selection of the appropriate LMS platform! The reason, of course, is the abundance of options in the market. In this wide space, WordPress is soon gaining popularity owing to its simplicity and flexibility; and is a popular choice to set up your corporate e-learning system. So, to make your job a bit easier, in this article, we’ll unfold 6 WordPress plugins that are dominating the corporate LMS market. We hope this article brings in more clarity and vision in choosing your corporate e-learning system platform. So let’s begin.

Leading Course Management Features to Consider for a corporate e-learning system

When choosing an LMS platform it’s important to list down the features that you would want on your corporate e-learning system. Popular features include tiered courses, advanced quizzes, detailed reporting, and more. Keeping this in mind, let’s evaluate our options.

#1 Multi-tiered Courses

This is a basic feature of any learning system and is necessary to design a systematic and structured course that follows a Course – Lessons – Topics – Subtopics hierarchy.

The advantage of such modular content is the ease of navigation, understanding, and correlation of topics.

While all LMS Plugins have this feature, the difference lies in the level of hierarchies the plugins present. For example, LearnDash offers a three-level hierarchy, while Sensei, by default, offers only two levels.

#2 Drip-feed Content

This is a must-have feature to keep all course members working on the same schedule. With this feature, Admin has control over releasing the course content on a scheduled date/time or on completion of certain prerequisites.

#3 Advanced Quizzes

Quizzes are essential to examine learners and track their progress. And in the corporate e-learning world, quizzing might be the most important feature you need.

With varied questions types, like multiple-choice, single-word answers, drag-and-drop and essays, you can assure thorough assessment of your employees.

Quizzes are a part-and-parcel of all LMS solutions. However, the options available will need to be weighed against each other.

#4 User Profile

User Profiles give personal space to every user and display data associated with him/her. The primary user profiles you should be on the lookout for are:-

Admin: a primary user profile that has complete control over all of the courses and can manage various activities like user enrollment, group/course creation and more.
Student: this is your employee profile. A student takes courses and earns certificates on course completion.
Instructor: if you have multiple instructors for the different courses you offer, you need this role. An instructor can create/edit courses and manage students enrolled in that course.

#5 Payment Options

Multiple secure payment options are convenient when offering paid courses.

Most LMS platforms support payment through secured payment gateways like PayPal, WePay or Credit/ Debit Card or have extension plugins for this task.

While the above might cover primary features, other needed features might be present in the LMS platform or might be available as extension Plugins. Now, moving on to our LMS platforms of choice. Let’s have a look at the 6 leading WordPress LMS Plugins for a corporate e-learning system.

WordPress LMS Plugins for Corporate Course Management

#1 LearnDash ($199)

LearnDash is a premium LMS plugin packed with features to meet most of the corporate LMS requirements. In addition, it is responsive across all mobile devices; thus, learners can access courses from anywhere.

Recommended Extensions

Group Registration: This plugin will help you register multiple employees at once for a single course
Ratings, Reviews, and Feedback Plugin: With this plugin, you can get employees to rate your courses and review them to help you improve the training process
Instructor Role Plugin: LearnDash by default does not have an instructor role. This plugin helps you bridge the gap when you have multiple instructors managing your training

#2 WP Courseware ($99)

WP Courseware is yet another big name in the LMS sector that covers all basic features. It is easy to use and flexible to create large or small online courses. And with the latest version, you have the Instructor Role integrated as well.

It does not have inbuilt payment gateway options for selling courses online. However, it supports integration with eCommerce and membership plugins to achieve the same.

Recommended Add-ons

MemberMouse: This plugin by allows assigning WP Courseware courses to a group or membership level. Upon product purchase by the group leader, group members are automatically enrolled in related courses.
BuddyPress: With this plugin, you can transform individual learning into a socially interactive one. Course members have their private group to communicate and share information.
WP Courseware Notes: Taking quick notes while learning is possible with this valuable plugin. It lets a member take, share and print notes.

#3 LifterLMS (Free)

LifterLMS is an all-in-one LMS solution suitable for corporate learning with numerous basic and advanced functionalities.

LifteLMS provides ample inbuilt features, like employee profile, group membership, follow-up emails, device responsiveness, payment gateways, gamification and more.

With a paid membership, you get bonus benefits like Customer Support and add-ons like Exclusive Promotion options, Splendid Graphic Design.

Plugins you may like to install

LifterLms Private Areas: Enables collaborative learning, by allowing course instructors and members to have their private space for course related discussion and information sharing.
Gravity Forms: Indispensable Plugin to create customized forms for event registration or learner’s course feedback. It’s a great tool to add a point of action before the learner exits the final course page.

#4 LearnPress (Free)

LearnPress is a lightweight, high quality, free WordPress LMS plugin, that has innovative functionality and supports WordPress multisite. What’s more is that there are several free and premium add-ons that contribute to empowering LearnPress!

Recommended add-ons

LearnPress Course Review: Brings in review feature for your courses. Employees can rate and give feedback of the course.

GradeBook: To efficiently track learner progress
Co-Instructors: Lets multiple instructors take classes for the same group. Co-instructor can access and edit his/her own course content only.
Collections: Allows grouping of related courses into collections. It helps learners find and take related courses of their interest.

#5 Sensei ($129)

With Sensei LMS by Woothemes, course creation is super easy like creating a post or page. The plugin has a bundle of features sufficient to create neat, small-scale, online corporate courses.

The Course Analytics feature is inbuilt for tracking a learner’s course reports and grades.

It does not support payment gateways, however, courses can be sold easily with WooCommerce integration.

Sensei Recommended Extensions

Sensei Course Participants: An extension for sharing course feedback and reviews. A learner can view the number of people already taking the course and link to their profile to know more about their review for the course.
Sensei Media Attachment: With this, the course author can attach media files to course content for additional reading material.
Sensei Content Drip: Useful in regulating content flow and scheduling it in specified intervals to keep the group of learners on the same learning calendar.
Sensei Course Progress: Learner can track his/her current position on the course landscape. It creates a side widget with module/lesson completion indicator

#6 CoursePress

CoursePress is a trusted and comprehensive LMS platform that works on WordPress and WordPress multisite too! It’s available in two versions CoursePress (free) and CoursePress Pro (paid).

It is a professionally designed LMS platform to accommodate all the features a corporate e-learning system would possibly need. It includes:

Course preview ‘teasers’
Manual and Automated Assessment Facility
Detailed Reporting
Multiple-Instructor Role
Media Integration
Drip Release Content
Interactive Forum for Course Members
Quiz Upload and Download
Multiple Payment Gateways

Wrapping Up

On the scale of popularity, pricing, features, and ease-of-use, LearnDash leads the contingent of WordPress LMS plugins! LearnPress is another option equipped with inbuilt and add-on features. Being free, it’s a risk-free bet. WP Courseware cannot lag behind; its inbuilt versatile features and extensions add it as a strong contender in the LMS plugins race. All the corporate e-learning system plugins discussed here contribute their bit to enrich the corporate learning experience. Wise selection of a core LMS plugin along with extensions matching your requirements, and keeping your budget in check, will take your corporate training website to the next level! Feel like adding a plugin to our list? Let us know your suggestions and experiences through comments below!

The Advantages of Picking WPLMS over an e-Learning WordPress Plugin

April 17, 2017 by Anoop Sudhakaran 1 Comment

Choosing a platform for your e-Learning portal can be overwhelming, more so thanks to the abundance of options available.

Platforms range from WordPress extensions to full fledged e-learning solutions. But being the user-friendly platform it is, WordPress definitely seems the best option right?

Now, again with WordPress there are two main routes to take.

Choosing an e-Learning plugin.
Choosing an e-Learning theme.

While each has its own pros and cons, here, I will try to explain the situations where you should go with an e-Learning theme, specifically – WPLMS.

Picking WPLMS over any e-Learning WordPress plugin has some advantages, as you will learn in this article.

Compatible with Plenty of Plugins

WPLMS offers support for plenty of popular extensions. These integrations add tons of useful features to your e-Learning portal.

It offers support for many popular WordPress plugins like : LearnDash, BuddyPress, bbPress, and WooCommerce.

Low Maintenance

Being compatible with all these plugins means there is no need to install any other mediatory plugins (such as BuddyPress integration).

This in-turn reduces your need for constant updates and maintenance.

Plugins are just another chunk of code ready to be executed on call. This means every line of code that gets executed is putting a toll on your server and its performance.

Another important factor is from security point of view. Integration plugins may have several vulnerabilities which when not addressed properly can leave your entire WordPress installation vulnerable to attacks

Less plugins = less load on your website + lower security risk + less maintenance = Happy e-Learning.

It’s a Win-Win situation!

Comes Bundled with Premium Plugins

As you’ve seen, WPLMS is compatible with a variety of plugins.

Want more? The theme comes bundled with variety of premium plugins like:

Visual Composer – A page builder plugin with drag and drop interface.
LayerSlider – A responsive slider plugin for WordPress.
Revolution Slider – Another responsive slider plugin for WordPress.
EventOn – An Event Calendar plugin for WordPress.

All of these plugins are together worth over $129.

Choose from Ample Styles

Choosing a theme for your website is always a daunting task, hours of searching, comparing and testing only to find that the theme you like is not within your budget.

But with WPLMS, there is no need to look for another child theme. This theme comes with a myriad of design layouts to choose from.

To test out these layouts, you can even import the sample data that comes with it.

Uniform Styling

Since WPLMS has integrations for all major plugins, all these plugins will have a uniform styling. This means the entire theme wouldn’t need customization to suit different plugins.

When to Choose an e-Learning WordPress Plugin?

Although there are several advantages of using an e-learning theme, many people still prefer using an e-Learning plugin over the theme.

Here are a few reasons to opt for an e-Learning plugin:

When you don’t need the advanced functionalities of an e-Learning theme.
When you don’t want to be tied down to the style that a theme offers.
When you want a light-weight solution for your e-Learning needs.
When you want a low cost solution.

Wrapping Up

Now that you are clear about the differences between an e-Learning theme and a plugin, go ahead and choose the right option for your website.

Let us know what you chose and how it’s working out for you.

5 Best Membership Plugins for e-Learning Websites

April 5, 2017 by Anoop Sudhakaran 1 Comment

So you run an e-Learning website!

Most of your content must be accessible to anyone who register, right?

But what if you decide to offer premium content? The type you would want people to pay for before they can access it. I bet you don’t want that to be publicly available.

Hence you need to create some type of “gate”. Something that would restrict access to content based on different parameters.

This can be easily done through Membership plugins on WordPress. Yes, the same type of plugin that we are going to discuss today!! Coincidence? Woah!

So What Does a Membership Plugin do?

Simply put, it provides you full control over what part of content is accessible to your users. But that is just the gist of it, A membership plugin is a suite with plethora of options.

How Does it Help My e-Learning Portal?

As an e-Learning portal, your website has the ability to provide courses for your audience.

Now, you may already be selling courses on your website with the help of WooCommerce. You can even sell subscription courses.

But that doesn’t offer you the level of granularity into content management and user role assignment as much as a Membership plugin would do. You can create different membership levels, groups for users. Registered members can be updated about new courses that are published & more.

So in this article, we will discuss a few membership plugins that will help you setup your e-learning membership portal in no time.

Let’s being with the mammoths in Membership arena.

MemberPress

MemberPress is one of the most popular plugins in the membership category on WordPress. It’s fame is mostly attributed to its robust features and ease of use.

It offers unlimited membership levels and unlimited members. The Access Rules can be set such that only certain member roles can access the content. Armed with these rules, you can restrict access to almost every aspect of your site such as Posts, Pages, Tags, Categories etc.

Content dipping is a fairly regular feature in most membership sites, it allows you to slowly publish new content on the site and provide access to members.

The plugin gels well with several email marketing providers such as Aweber, Mailchimp etc.

Coming to the most important aspect of Membership sites – Payments. MemberPress offers support for most commonly used payment gateways like Paypal and Stripe. These two make up for most of the transactions on web, but unfortunately the only other payment gateway supported is Authorize.net.

MemberPress’ pricing options are a bit heavy on the wallet. Their Business edition rounds out to about $119 per year which is a single site license.

The multi-site license a.k.a Developer Edition comes down to around $239 per year. That being said, the price is worth what the plugin delivers.

Find out more : MemberPress

Members

Members is a WordPress membership plugin developed by Justin Tadlock.

This is a basic plugin that was developed with the core principle of membership sites in mind. The plugin provides the two basic concepts i.e Content Locking & User Role Definition.

The Role Manager part of this plugin lets you create, edit, delete roles and capabilities of various users on your site. What is interesting is a user can be assigned several roles, These roles will allow or deny them access to certain parts of the site. User roles can be cloned easily too in order to build new roles.

Content permissions give you control over which content can be access by which role. Which means if a content is specific to only users in the role “New Subscribers” then only users with that role can access the content.

As usual, shortcodes and widgets are shipped along with it to make your user experience easier.

Even though the plugin offer all these features, it doesn’t come pre-built with Payment integration. But this can be easily fixed by installing payment gateway plugins (Members is compatible with these).

Coming to the price of this plugin. The plugin costs nothing. Yes! NOTHING! It is available for FREE on WordPress repository, no wonder it is being used by over 100,000+ users worldwide.

Check it out: Members by Justin Tadlock

WooCommerce Memberships

WooCommerce Memberships plugin is developed by the renowned WooCommerce team, so you can trust the quality and compatibility it offers.

Rather than being just a plugin to restrict your site’s content, WooCommerce Memberships plugin is a site-wide solution for memberships. Being WooCommerce compatible means not just content, but products can also be part of your membership sites.

Here are a few striking features of Memberships plugin:

Memberships can be sold as a product on your store.
Memberships can be tied to products being sold, such that these memberships open up when a product is purchased.
Send invites to people in order for them to purchase a plan.
Drip feed content to members.
Provide discounts on memberships and products.
Import/Export members.
Add notes to memberships.

The pricing structure of this plugin is a bit different as in, it doesn’t offer unlimited site licenses. The single site license costs $149. 5 site license costs $199 and 25 site license costs $249.

Find out more : WooCommerce Memberships

Paid Membership Pro

Paid Membership Pro is another plugin which offers the Free, Pro and ProPlus Model.

The free version more or less gives you an idea of how the plugin works. Not being a WooCommerce Addon, it lacks in features such as Variable Pricing etc. But fret not, since PMP comes with support for Addons.

These addons can extend the functionality of PMP to add advanced features such as Link Tracking, Affiliate program. Apart from addons, it supports various integrations with third party tools like email marketing (Aweber, Mailchimp) and CRM softwares.

Compared to other plugins, this offers a bit more freedom by supporting many payment gateways like Paypal, Stripe, Braintree, 2Checkout, Cyber Source, Authorize.net etc.

Discount codes can be generated for users. This can be set to start on a particular date & configured to expire on a day. The coupon codes can even be limited to number of times it is used. The amount of granularity it offers is immense.

As I said before, the plugin has a basic free option. But the Pro Core plan costs $97 & Pro Plus plan for $197 (Unlimited sites licenses).

Checkout the plugin over at Paid Membership Pro

Digital Access Pass

DAP is one of the oldest membership plugins around.

This is the only plugin that I saw, which offers a hefty amount of Payment Gateway support. It offers support for around 20+ Payment Gateways.

It is a feature heavy plugin, but with hefty features comes steep learning curve. It might actually take some time to setup the plugin and get it working on your portal. To understand the level of customizability, let me just put this out there – there are over 70 settings to tinker with.

With DAP, you can easily link more membership levels and courses to a single user. Want more? You don’t have to manually remove each and every linked product when someone cancels their subscription.

It comes with a One-Time payment plan (but has a monthly plan too). Single site costs $167, Unlimited site around $297.

Find out more: Digital Access Pass

Over To You

That was all about Membership plugins and how they can benefit your e-Learning website. The plugins we discussed here are all popular ones being used by thousands of websites.

Which of these caught your eye? Let us know what more you are looking for in a membership plugin.

8 Reasons LifterLMS Might Be Perfect for Your e-Learning Needs

February 20, 2017 by Pranoti Panchwagh Leave a Comment

With the flexibility and ease of use provided by WordPress and the wide range of functional e-learning plugins available, several tutors, trainers and instructors are turning towards the WordPress + LMS plugin approach to setup their e-learning website. But choosing the right e-learning plugin, might be a tad-bit difficult- given all the WordPress e-learning plugins out there. Well, understanding the features each plugin has to offer can help you decide. Today we’re going to take a detailed look at LifterLMS – a fairly new LMS plugin on the block, that’s rapidly gaining popularity. In a nutshell, LifterLMS is a complete e-learning system built on WordPress and equipped with all the core functionalities you require to create and sell a course online. Let’s explore the primary features in detail, and understand what makes this LMS plugin suitable for your needs:

#1 Super-fast Course Creation

LifterLMS is designed with a clear, easy-to-understand interface, which you can get used to really quickly, and build a course in a very short time. The logical flow and step-by-step setup is useful to start the course in a jiffy, so long as your content is ready.

#2 Integrated Shopping Cart and Payment Options

The LifterLMS plugin has an in-built shopping cart option and a native payment gateway extension that lets you start selling courses without the need for an e-commerce plugin (though it is always good to have one!)

#3 Easy Course Customization for User Engagement

LifterLMS has plenty of gamification options which can be utilised to add achievement certificates, bonus points and badges to your course. Not only do these make the course more colourful and interactive, they have been proven to increase student engagement exponentially.

#4 Discounts and Coupons Support

Apart from user engagement, the plugin also supports course marketing and promotion by offering the discounts and coupons functionality. You can add these to product bundles for your recurring students, thereby creating a sense of belonging and increasing customer loyalty!

#5 Multiple Content Type Support

LifterLMS supports all types of content, to be added to your courses. Text, PDF’s, audios, videos, you name it. You can add various permutations and combinations of these while designing the lesson.

#6 Drip Content Enabled

Dripping content to your students implies adding the lessons one after the other, as opposed to adding them all in one go. This feature ensures that your students keep visiting your course regularly instead of petering out in the first couple of weeks.

#7 Native WooCommerce Integration

LifterLMS has a native integration with WooCommerce, which enables you to avail of all of its functionalities by simply installing the WooCommerce add-on. This opens up a host of new possibilities for course marketing, what with WooCommerce being one of the most popular ecommerce platforms.

#8 Social Network Integration

Similar to the WooCommerce integration, LifterLMS also has add-ons for integrating social networking functionalities through BuddyPress and bbPress. BuddyPress is used to create Student profiles (like the profiles on Facebook) which can be imported into the e-learning system, while bbPress is used to build student-teacher groups and communities for discussions and forums.

With these and more, LifterLMS makes for a formidable e-learning plugin, that’s one to watch out for. And the best part?! Well, it’s completely FREE! Are you looking to use the plugin? Or are a current user? Let us know your thoughts about it! Let the discussions begin!