If you’re going to be offering a course online you’ll need Learning Management Software (LMS) for your online educational environment. Learning Management Software is more formally known as a Learning Management System but you’ll hear the phrases thrown around  interchangeably. There are important differences between the terms, however, generally when people mention that they’re looking for Learning Management Software they are more often than not stating that they are looking for a platform which will allow them to offer their course(s) online. So if you’re in this group of educators where do you start? Well you should start at the end. At the very end. Let me explain. WORK BACKWARDS AND START AT THE END Learning Management Software can be as complex or as simple as you want. It’s easy to get excited about the many interesting features of an LMS without thinking about how useful they will be for your online course users. You need to ask yourself questions like "do my online students need this feature to help them achieve their educational goal"? Or "do my online teachers need this feature to be better able to teach or administer their online course(s)?". If the answer is "no" then you might want to consider doing away with the feature. As we mention in this podcast, sometimes all you need your Learning Management System Software to do is provide the digital equivalent of two chairs and a table for the teacher and student to interact. If you don’t need more… why complicate things? Start with your students’ educational objectives in mind and go forward from there. LMS features need to be "must have" tools for the sake of educational advancement not "nice to have" tools for the sake of technological coolness. ASYNCHRONOUS VS SYNCHRONOUS FEATURES Next you need to decide how you’re going to teach your online course. Will you use asynchronous technologies, synchronous  technologies or a combination of both? Asynchronous technologies break the time space barrier and don’t require that teacher and student be online at the exact same time. However, communication can still take place through discussion forums, emails, video tutorials, wikis, lecture notes and blogs (to name only a few asynchronous technologies). Or you might decide to teach using synchronous technologies that require student and teacher to be at the same digital place at the same time. For example, an audio / video conversation through Skype would be considered a synchronous technology. Knowing which of these two methods you’ll use will help you start to define a list of features you would like your Learning Management Software to have. GRADING AND TRACKING FEATURES For a lot of adult learners and lifelong learners grades are generally not considered as important as having some tangible new skill to take away from their learning experience at the end of their journey. After all, at some point your students will likely know if they have learnt what it is you set out to teach them. Finding a way to incorporate progress measurement tools into your LMS is hugely important and will likely become more important as learner outcomes is becoming increasingly important as education becomes a more competitive field. This could mean the inclusion of features like grade-books, progress bars, progress reports and so on. TEACHER CONVENIENCE Learning Management System Software not only needs to meet the educational needs and students, but it also needs to meet the teaching needs of educators. For instance, how will teachers be notified when a student submits an assignment? How do they communicate with students? How do they access the class’s grades? How do they send out bulk communication to their students? How are their online classes organized? An LMS needs to be equally concerned with teachers’ needs as well. A PLATFORM THAT UNDERSTANDS STUDENT NEEDS The technology used within an LMS is pretty fascinating… but it can also get pretty complex and daunting pretty quickly. Don’t’ forget, you’ll be the one working with the LMS all of the time. You’ll know it inside and out. Your students on the other hand may not "get it" as quickly as you do. An LMS needs to be designed in a way that is intuitive and inspires the student to stay involved and engaged in their online course experience. An LMS which is overwhelming or complex will just add to the feeling of isolation for the student. You don’t want students focused on the technology. Instead, you want them focused on the content and their unique educational journey. For this reason, no matter how simple you want your LMS to be, it’s always nice to include a short video or tutorial in their first section of their course that walks them through the LMS software they will be learning on. This tutorial should teach them how to send emails, contribute to conversations, submit assignments and so on. That way, once they are done educating themselves on the technology, 100% of their energy can be put into their course work. SOCIAL FEATURES In a recent blog post on online course development we chatted with Rosemary M. Lehman, Ph.D. whose book "Motivating and Retaining Online Students: Research-Based Strategies That Work" points out that some studies show that as many as 50%-70% of students drop out of their online courses! one of the main reasons that students give for dropping out of their online classes is the "feeling of isolation". For this reason, it’s almost always beneficial to find a way to incorporate some type of social platform that allows your students and teachers to interact using both proactive and reactive communication strategies. IT’S NOT JUST POWER… IT’S BEAUTY TOO Lastly, don’t underestimate the importance of educational beauty. What is educational beauty you ask? Well I’m not entirely sure… but it’s just something you know when you see it. For example, when your standing in the hallway of your university and you feel proud to be there. In another interview we conducted on the topic of classroom management strategies, author and teacher Michael Linsin points out that traditional school classrooms should be designed in a way that matches their call for excellence. Why should it be any different for an online school or classroom? Design your educational website in a way that makes your students proud to be enrolled in your eCourse. Good luck!  

Deciding on a Learning Management System can be difficult. With so many features to consider which option is the best for you? We’ve included a Learning Management System Comparison chart below for you to look over. Under the LMS comparison chart you can read more about the companies in the list (as well as others). However, it should also be mentioned that each LMS option suits end-users needs differently. For example, larger learning institutions like universities and colleges will probably opt for a service is Blackboard or WebCT. Sure they are expensive, but they are also really powerful programs that do everything these larger schools need them to do. Options like WebCT and Blackboard don’t really cater to the individual course seller or subject matter expert. Options like Udemy are great for teachers who want to teach online but who aren’t entrepreneurial or technologically inclined and don’t mind sharing up to 50% of their course enrolment income with a company that handles the business and tech side of things. Options like Moodle and ATutor are great for teachers, entrepreneurs or subject matter experts who have knowledge of coding and design. These open source options don’t necessarily work the way you want them to "out of the box". They offer great LMS skeletons… but you need to put the meat on. They need to be configured to meet your design adn technological requirements. It should also be mentioned that open source options aren’t necessarily "free". For example, incorporating video chat into Moodle might cost you an additional $600 / year. These "add-ons" can add up quickly. Not only that but the software is fairly complex so, depending on the features you install and activate, you might need a fairly expensive hosting platform to host your "free" LMS. Lastly, these free open source options generally require a massive amount of "tweaking" to get them looking professionally designed. In our opinion, they tend to look a little bit outdated out of the box. And there is us. We offer an option which is catered to entrepreneurial minded teachers and subject matter experts. We give you all of the enrolment and sales tools you need to sell your online course as well as powerful Learning Management System software. At the end of the day it really depends on who you are and what your teaching goals are. We’ve included the URL’s to each of the sites in the comparison chart below. Take a look around their sites, and visit their LMS demos if they have one. Good luck!   Your LMS CostWebsiteWebsiteInstalled / Setup For YouInstalled / Setup For YouEnrollment OptimizationEnrollment OptimizationKeyword TrackingKeyword TrackingSEO Page EvalutationsSEO Page EvalutationsTake a % of Sales?Take a % of Sales?Hosting & Domain Registration IncludedHosting & Domain Registration IncludedYour Own Domain URLYour Own Domain URLBuilt in Affiliate ProgramBuilt in Affiliate ProgrameCommerce EnabledeCommerce EnabledPrivate SSL Certificate Private SSL Certificate Ability to Sell SubscriptionsAbility to Sell SubscriptionsCustomer Relationship Manager (CRM)Customer Relationship Manager (CRM)Built in Newsletter SoftwareBuilt in Newsletter SoftwareDesign & ThemesDesign & ThemesLMSLMSStudent Profile PagesStudent Profile PagesPrivate Student EmailPrivate Student EmailLive Group ChatLive Group ChatAudio / Video ChatAudio / Video ChatWhiteboarding / ScreensharingWhiteboarding / ScreensharingCollaborative DocsCollaborative DocsPrivate Video EmbeddingPrivate Video EmbeddingFriends / Groups FeaturesFriends / Groups FeaturesGrading CenterGrading CenterGrade TrackingGrade TrackingProgress BarsProgress BarsAllows Multiple Courses?Allows Multiple Courses?Moodle$0Open SourceWebsitemoodle.comInstalled / Setup For YouEnrollment Optimization10 accounts under one domainKeyword TrackingSEO Page EvalutationsTake a % of Sales?Hosting & Domain Registration IncludedYour Own Domain URLBuilt in Affiliate ProgrameCommerce EnabledPrivate SSL Certificate Ability to Sell SubscriptionsCustomer Relationship Manager (CRM)Built in Newsletter SoftwareDesign & ThemesLMSStudent Profile PagesPrivate Student EmailLive Group ChatAudio / Video ChatWhiteboarding / ScreensharingCollaborative DocsPrivate Video EmbeddingFriends / Groups FeaturesGrading CenterGrade TrackingProgress BarsAllows Multiple Courses?ATutor$0Open SourceWebsiteATutor.caInstalled / Setup For YouEnrollment OptimizationKeyword TrackingSEO Page EvalutationsTake a % of Sales?Hight priority support!Hosting & Domain Registration IncludedYour Own Domain URLBuilt in Affiliate ProgrameCommerce EnabledPrivate SSL Certificate Ability to Sell SubscriptionsCustomer Relationship Manager (CRM)Built in Newsletter SoftwareDesign & ThemesLMSStudent Profile PagesPrivate Student EmailLive Group ChatAudio / Video ChatWhiteboarding / ScreensharingCollaborative DocsPrivate Video EmbeddingFriends / Groups FeaturesGrading CenterGrade TrackingProgress BarsAllows Multiple Courses?Academy Of Mine$199per monthWebsiteacademyofmine.comInstalled / Setup For YouEnrollment OptimizationKeyword TrackingSEO Page EvalutationsTake a % of Sales?testHosting & Domain Registration IncludedYour Own Domain URLBuilt in Affiliate ProgrameCommerce EnabledPrivate SSL Certificate Ability to Sell SubscriptionsCustomer Relationship Manager (CRM)Built in Newsletter SoftwareDesign & ThemesLMSStudent Profile PagesPrivate Student EmailLive Group ChatAudio / Video ChatWhiteboarding / ScreensharingCollaborative DocsPrivate Video EmbeddingFriends / Groups FeaturesGrading CenterGrade TrackingProgress BarsAllows Multiple Courses?Blackboard$5000 +per yearWebsiteblackboard.comInstalled / Setup For YouEnrollment OptimizationKeyword TrackingSEO Page EvalutationsTake a % of Sales?Hosting & Domain Registration IncludedYour Own Domain URLBuilt in Affiliate ProgrameCommerce EnabledPrivate SSL Certificate Ability to Sell SubscriptionsCustomer Relationship Manager (CRM)Built in Newsletter SoftwareDesign & ThemesLMSStudent Profile PagesPrivate Student EmailLive Group ChatAudio / Video ChatWhiteboarding / ScreensharingCollaborative DocsPrivate Video EmbeddingFriends / Groups FeaturesGrading CenterGrade TrackingProgress BarsAllows Multiple Courses?Udemy%50 up to 50% / enrollmentWebsiteUdemy.comInstalled / Setup For YouEnrollment OptimizationKeyword TrackingSEO Page EvalutationsTake a % of Sales?Hosting & Domain Registration IncludedYour Own Domain URLBuilt in Affiliate ProgrameCommerce EnabledPrivate SSL Certificate Ability to Sell SubscriptionsCustomer Relationship Manager (CRM)Built in Newsletter SoftwareDesign & ThemesLMSStudent Profile PagesPrivate Student EmailLive Group ChatAudio / Video ChatWhiteboarding / ScreensharingCollaborative DocsPrivate Video EmbeddingFriends / Groups FeaturesGrading CenterGrade TrackingProgress BarsAllows Multiple Courses?   BEST FREE LMS: LEARNING MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS FOR ONLINE COURSES 1. Academy Of Mine: While not technically a free option we offer services many of the free options don’t. First of all, many of the fee options don’t let you sell your course. So you can offer your course, but you can’t make money from it. With us, you can sell and make money from your online course. Secondly, a lot of the free options leave a lot to be desired from a design standpoint. You can check out our live demo to see how our learning platform looks. And thirdly and most importantly, we believe we’re better than free… because we actually make course vendors money. Our services pay for your small monthly fee many times over. We help our clients make thousands of more dollars on a month to month basis. The way we see it, if we cost you $200 but we make you $3000, we’re not really costing you money. And you keep 100% of your enrollment sales. So in a way… we’re kind of better than free! But if you’re interested in truly free, 100% free… then check out the options below. There are a lot of great options available for those of you who don’t want to monetize your course or want to try to do it on your own. 2. MOODLE: Moodle is a free web application for educators and probably one of the most popular free LMS’s on the market today. It’s open source software so it’s constantly being upgraded and developed. However, you might find that you need to hire third parties to help you customize the platform to help you achieve your educational needs. Just because it’s free, it doesn’t mean it’s not going to cost you money. However, you should test it out. It might work for your needs right out of the box. 3. .LRN: This LMS (pronounced "dot learn") was originally developed at MIT, .LRN is used worldwide by over half a million users in higher education, government, non-profit, and K-12. It comes out of the box with a lot of great teaching tools (forums, assessment, calendar, grading, evaluation, surveys, syllabus, file storage and a lot more). 4. eFront: Offers a "freemium" LMS where the core of their software is open source but their hosted solutions cost between $85 - $1990 / month. 5. Dokeos: Is another open source learning platform. It has pre-built quiz templates and course authoring tools. If you’re on their website you can go to their "videos" page to see a list of their tutorials on using their PHP based platform. This will give you a glimpse into how the course admin back-end looks as well. 6. Sakai: Another open source option is Sakai. As is stated on Sakai’s website "Each day community members share thousands of interactions - building and improving the software, requesting help, collaborating on projects, and enjoying the relationships that result from this work". 7. ATutor: It’s great when LMS websites allow you to see a functioning demo of their Learning Management System (like we do). ATutor does this well. At Atutor you can click on "try the demo" to test drive this LMS. It has plenty of great features and a lot of functionality. and it’s also open source so it’s constantly being improved and updated. 8. Blackboard CourseSites: Blackboard is a big name in online education. Many really big universities, corporate organizations and governmental agencies use their main educational LMS called "Blackboard Learn". However, they’ve released CourseSites to the community of individual teachers and academics. It’s a great free option, but of course, since it caters to individual instructors there are limitations imposed (for example only 500mb is allowed uploaded, only 5 courses can be added). 9. Latitude Learning: This is another really feature rich "freemium" LMS. You can use their Learning Management System for up to 100 users. This is a great option for individual teachers teaching really small classes. If you want to go beyond 100 users it will costs you around $2 - $4 / active user. The LMS ad-ons (such as the virtual classroom which costs $600) will also add to the costs of the LMS if you’ll need these ad-ons for your online program. 10. Schoology: Another "freemium" option with a lot of great features for both individual teachers and enterprises. Their LMS comes with many interesting and visually impressive features. For example, an online grade-book, attendance sheets and a student usage tracker. 11. ILIAS: A SCORM certified open source Learning Management System. ILIAS is a multipurpose tool that can be used as a flexible course player, as an authoring tool, but also as a communication and collaboration platform. 12: Udemy: Is an interesting option for those looking to sell their courses online. Of course, with us you keep 100% of profits but you pay a small monthly fee but with Udemy because they handle the marketing of your online course, customer support, hosting and those details they take 50% of your course sales but there is no monthly fee so you can teach your course for free from their website. We hope you found this list helpful. We actually have a really great 40 minute podcast on the topic of creating an LMS for your online course. It’s packed with great information and it’s free to listen to of course.

You know those annoying pop ups that you install software to block or immediately close once you see them popup on your screen? One might have even popped up when you visited our site today. Well guess what? They work! We were testing one of our member’s eCourse site recently who, at the time, wasn’t using popup advertising to capture email addresses. They had a great email newsletter campaign in place and their email signup conversion rate was great. But no popup. In a recent case study we conducted on this client’s site we found that an email newsletter subscriber was worth $4.99 (compared to $1.20 for a regular website visitor). The value of a newsletter subscriber was therefore 315% more valuable than a regular visitor. This of course is due to many reasons, but namely that newsletter subscribers were able to learn to trust this particular eCourse company because they were sent high quality educational content on a weekly basis. After receiving this free educational content and being reassured of course quality they decided sign up and pay for access to this eCourse seller’s flagship online course. Knowing that newsletter subscribers are so much more valuable than a regular website visitor naturally leads people selling courses online to want more email subscribers right? There are many things you can do to get more opt-in email subscribers. You can play around with the sales copy of your newsletter sign up form, change the placement of the form, change the colors of the form, or you can even change the email bait itself (i.e. an ebook, white-paper, free class, free tutorial etc). You’ll get to a point in the optimization process where your tweaks start having smaller and smaller impacts on your conversion rate (CR). It’s at this point where you should be asking yourself if there are any other macro tweaks you can be making to push your opt-in rate even higher. This is generally when the option of incorporating popup advertising comes up in conversation. Some Academy Of Mine members use popups, others don’t. It really boils down to personal preferences. However, to date, we’ve never installed popup software on a member’s site which has had a negative impact on their newsletter sign up rates. It always leads to increases in sign ups. THE CASE STUDY Here’s an example from this month. One of our members was getting about 73 opt in newsletter subscribers / week on their online course website. We then ran a test (keeping all other sales elements and behavior the same) where we incorporated a popup advertisement which promoted access to free course material in exchange for the site visitor’s email address. After running the test for a month this particular Academy Of Mine member was able to average 131 opt-in newsletter subscribers / week (up from 73 / week). This is an 80% jump in subscribers! A huge jump to say the least. And if you remember from our previous case study, each newsletter subscriber was worth, on average, $4.99 to this eCourse seller. The difference between 73 to 131 newsletter subscribers is an additional 58 subscribers / week (232 / month). And since each newsletter subscriber is worth $4.99 this increase in email opt-ins has lead to roughly $1157 in additional enrolment income each month. Doing no additional advertising, other than having the popup software work for you while you sleep. SO WHY ARE ALL ECOURSE SELLERS NOT USING POPUPS? IT’S "THE LINE" The trouble for most online course sellers when it comes to incorporating popup software into their site is that they feel it will have a negative impact on their image. Or maybe they personally have a dislike for this type of advertising so they refuse to explore it as an option. Popup ads are, after all, more obnoxious than most website advertisements. Even if your site visitors are not interested in the ad they still need to engage in it to close it. Other forms of advertising are much more passive and much easier for your site visitors to ignore. However, passivity isn’t necessarily a good thing when it comes to marketing your online course. Being overly passive can hurt enrolment sales as much as being overly aggressive. In the former case you’re not doing enough, in the later case you’re doing too much. It can be a fine balance but essential you need to establish your advertising "comfort line" which balances passivity with aggressiveness. For example, if you found out that using a call center would boost enrolments would you hire telemarketers to promote your educational company through unsolicited calls? I personally wouldn’t do it even if I knew the financial results would be favorable. The telemarketing method simply crosses my "comfort line". Five years ago I might have said the same for popup advertisements. However, I don’t’ feel the same about them today. And it’s not just because popups work… it’s because popup technology now gives us greater control over how our ads are served. Let me explain. POPUP CONTROL Popup advertising can be served in many different ways and the possibilities are growing every day. You can serve a popup ad only after a visitor has visited a certain number of pages or been on your site for a certain amount of time. Alternatively a popup ad can be displayed only when a visitor is on a particular page. Best of all, if a site visitor says "no thanks" and closes the popup you can set most popup software programs not to open again for that site visitor for a set amount of time. For instance, you could tell the software program not to open again for that site visitor for another 30 days. That way your visitor can visit your site anytime between now and then and not have the repeatedly hit "no thanks". However, maybe in 30 days from now you have a new offer, or they are more familiar with your site so they want the content you’re offering for your opt-in subscribers. HIGH QUALITY POPUP "BAIT" Which leads me to my next point. And that’s that your newsletter "bait" is generally some of the highest quality content on your site. So from your site visitors standpoint there is generally good reason for them to give you their email address. As a course seller you’re saying "I’m willing to part with some free content if you give me a chance by parting with your email address". It’s a low risk win-win. So if you’re selling courses online but not using popup software… maybe you should be? Or maybe it’s crossing your line. Either way… it’s worth thinking about.

If you’re looking for online course and learning software you’re essentially looking for two parts of the same puzzle. The first part of the puzzle is the course selling front-end where you can promote and sell your online course. The second part is the student back-end where you (or your teachers) will teach the students who have enrolled in your online course. Each of these puzzle pieces require totally different software to be installed. For instance, your online course selling front-end doesn’t require a Learning Management System (LMS), grading features or student profile pages. Similarly, your student back-end doesn’t require e-commerce software or content marketing analysis (as the pages will be hidden, so only students can see them). So let’s start putting together the puzzle. THINGS YOU NEED YOUR ONLINE COURSE FRONT-END TO DO Your online course selling front-end isn’t unlike many other commercial websites. The marketing, sales and e-commerce tools are just adjusted to fit the needs of an eCourse company. You’ll likely want: High quality hosting to handle all of the dynamic scripts you’ll be running (many will require you have root access to your server which means you can’t use a cheap shared hosting platform). Search Engine Optimization (SEO) software installed which will allow you to track your "head" and "long tail" search terms over time. Affiliate program software installed so others in your niche can promote your online course. Content marketing software to help you uncover search terms with a high payout potential and low competition. Content Delivery Network (CND) which takes your static content and stores a copy close to your site visitors actual location which speeds up website page load times dramatically. Search engines also favor faster loading sites. E-commerce software and an SSL certificate since you’ll need to be able to security sell your online course form your own website using the latest in encryption technology. Website themes and design work that will help you earn your visitors’ trust through good web design. Newsletter marketing software that will help you stay in contact with student leads. And maybe even popup advertising software (in this case study a popup led to 80% more leads) This is just a partial list, but you get the idea. THINGS YOU NEED YOUR STUDENT BACK-END TO DO Your student back-end is very different than your course selling front-end. Your student back-end will not be a typical website at all. It requires very specific software installations that are designed specifically for online education companies. You’ll likely want: Learning Management System Software (LMS) to handle the back-end educational framework (grade-books, student profiles, integrated communication between teacher and student etc) Video content protection (for commercial content): You’ll need to be able to protect your video tutorials so that only paying students can see them. You want to restrict embedding to only certain pages, and you’ll want to disable downloads. Social & communication tools like audio, video and text chat. Integrated video chat can get quite complex depending on which route you go. Many integrated systems require Red5 of Adobe FMS be installed on the server’s root. HOSTING IS WHERE THINGS FALL APART For both your eCourse selling front-end and your student back-end you’re going to need a website host capable of handling all of these pieces of software. The wrong version of php or MySQL installed will render one or more of these software packages dead. Finding a host capable of handing such a dynamic system can be difficult and often expensive. A cheap $20 / month shared hosting package won’t work. E-COURSE SELLERS MAKING THE INVESTMENT HAVE A COMPETITIVE EDGE If you were to add up all of the hosting and software costs you’re probably looking at close to $1000 / month on the conservative side of the spectrum. Sure you can do it cheaper as well. You can forgo the commercially developed, high quality software platforms for a DIY approach and then get a cheap $20 / month shared hosting package to host your basic no frills course content. However, the education companies making the investments in the features discussed above are going to have a massive competitive advantage over you. When push comes to shove you’ll likely find yourself close to last in the business race. The eLearning industry, because of its explosive growth and earning potential, is getting very competitive very quickly. THE PROBLEM IS… THE E-LEARNING "BUSINESS" IS FRAGMENTED The problem for many smaller vendors of online courses is that the companies that offer all of the necessary software, hosting and features are spread out all over the place. The market is  really fragmented. You need to find a company for LMS software, another for your SEO needs, another for newsletter marketing, another to protect your video content, another company to manage your affiliate program and another company for content marketing software. And worst of all, there are no guarantees that the pieces of the puzzle will fit together (compatibility issues are VERY common in the world of online education). For example, maybe your Learning Management System doesn’t function properly on your host. Or maybe your affiliate software doesn’t work with the latest version of your e-commerce software. The list, of course, can go on and on. THE ONLY ALL IN ONE SOLUTION So Academy of Mine was started by course sellers for course sellers. We understood that the Best Search Engine Optimization software wasn’t going to be developed by the same company that was developing the best Learning Management Systems. So we’ve found all of the software that "plays nicely together" and we install it on our members’ eLearning sites. We know it can be difficult and expensive to find, and then buy, each of the individual pieces of the puzzle separately. So what we do is we get the dedicated servers required to host such a dynamic educational site and then we buy "developer licenses" for the software. We then share these resources with our community at a huge discount. So for example, if one of our dedicated servers is costing us $300 / month, you might only pay $10 / month for the hosting platform. It’s like a hybrid system between dedicated and shared. Similarly, if a designer was going to charge you $100 each for 50 of their themes we’ll give you access to all 50 themes ($5000 worth) for only $10. The list of examples can go on but you get the point. If you’re interested in this "all in one" solution please visit our homepage or check out our pricing page here. We can get you setup by the end of the day today. Or check out our explainer video below:

An open source Learning Management System (LMS) such as ATutor, Moodle or Sakai have many advantages over commercial or proprietary options available on the market today. However, there are also some drawbacks to going the open source LMS route. There is really no one right way to approach the issue of open source vs. proprietary online course software. It really depends on what your needs and goals are as an educator, entrepreneur or subject matter expert. WHY DO YOU WANT OPEN SOURCE IN THE FIRST PLACE? Most people looking for an open source Learning Management System are generally doing so for 2 primary reasons: 1. Open Source means "free" in many cases. 2. Popular open source LMS’s are seen as stable options that are constantly undergoing development. There is great merit to both of those assumptions. However, both assumptions require further examination. FREE ISN’T NECESSARILY FREE IS IT? When a company doesn’t have resources they may have a hard time attracting the right kind of talent. When you look at most of the open source options available and then you look at a company offering proprietary LMS software, like Blackboard, you can see immediately that Blackboard has the resources to put into feature enhancement and design. Not to single out any open source option in particular, but most leave a lot to be desired from a design standpoint. Sure, many of them are very powerful options with great features, but software strength is only one piece of the puzzle for most people offering or selling courses online. They want a platform that they can be proud to present to their students. Looks aside, the assumption that open source options are free also needs examination. Most open source options don’t cost any money out of the box, but their are "freemium" version of the software available to those that want to upgrade to get access to more features. In some cases those features can end up costing a lot (sometimes even more than proprietary options). Again, the same goes for design. As we’ve already mentioned, the design standards "out of the box" for many open source LMS’s won’t inspire people with a strong eye for design. Which means in many cases you’ll be hiring designers and coders to help you tweak the code to bring it up to your own visual standards. HYBRID OPTIONS? There are hybrid options available and this is the route we’re most interested in at Academy of Mine (in fact it’s a hybrid system we run our members’ eCourse sites off). Or take this site you’re on now for example. We’re running on the popular open source WordPress Platform. However, our design was built by a premium theme developer who designs WordPress themes.  Similarly, many of the extensions running on our site (like our banking extension) was built by third party developers who charge us licensing fees to access their "add-on software". In the end it usually ends up being a mash up of plugins, extensions, themes and software installs that end up making your online course website work the way you want it to. The open source community, after all, can’t cater to everyone or everyone’s interest. So businesses come in to help innovate, add value and carve out their own niches. On our members’ eLearning sites we use both open source Learning Management Systems and proprietary LMS’s (depending on the member’s needs). one hasn’t proved to be better than the other. It’s just that each one fits the needs of the teacher, course vendor or subject matter expert differently. If you want to see how a few of the more popular online course software programs fare against each other you can view our Learning Management System comparison chart. Or if you’d like to see a working copy of our own hybrid LMS you can check out our demo here. Or watch how it all works below:

Not only do Learning Management Systems do different things, they are also designed to meet the needs of different groups of people in different ways. As we discussed in our post on Learning Management System Comparisons, a local school board will have different technological requirements than an individual course seller who wants to bring their course about dog training online. Generally speaking, Learning Management Systems like WebCT or Blackboard are used for larger educational institutions like colleges or universities, while LMS’s like the one we offer are used more by individual course sellers. ENTREPRENEURS: IT’S NOT JUST ABOUT THE LEARNING MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS If you’re someone from a school board, college or university then this post will probably not be valuable to you. However, if you’re an individual subject matter expert, teacher or entrepreneur then this post will help you sort out what you should be looking for in a Learning Management System. First of all, different Learning Management Systems do different things, and the things they can do that are the same are often done differently. For instance, two different LMS’s could have integrated and internal email communication for teachers and students to chat privately back and forth. However, the design, technology and integration of that feature could be handled different on both platforms. Again, using integrated email as an example, maybe one system automatically sends notifications to a student’s personal email address when they get a note from their teacher through the LMS. In another system, on the other hand, notifications might not be sent out. This is of course, a simple example, but you get the point. The features that most Learning Management Systems have built into them are: Student profile pages Grade books Progress tracking tools Grading forums Blogs and wikis Integrated email communication Quizzes Surveys Groups Conferencing technology (text, video, audio) Screen-sharing platforms White-boarding platforms Educational gamification features Class calendars Community activity streams and much more Of course the list can go on. However, it’s important not to get overwhelmed by the features of different Learning Management Systems. As we discuss in this podcast, sometimes all you need is the digital equivalent of two chairs and a table for a student and teacher to exchange ideas and work. We believe it’s better to start with the question "what are my students’ goals". From this point you can start working backwards to find ways for your LMS to help support those goals. Otherwise you risk having gratuitous LMS features for the sake of having the features… not for the sake of the advancement off your students. If the features aren’t necessary for your students’ educational progress then they end up just taking up space. AN LMS IS ONLY ONE SMALL PIECE OF THE PUZZLE FOR THE INDIVIDUAL COURSE SELLER If you’re an educational entrepreneur looking to sell a course online, you’ve probably been told you need a Learning Management System to deliver your course to students. And while that is true, it’s really an oversimplification of a much more complex process. Not to scare you away from your idea about bringing your course idea online, but in order to be competitive you’ll need much more than an LMS. You’re going to need an entire eCourse business framework. That framework needs to do many things including hosting, security, email marketing, affiliate marketing, eCommerce integration, content analysis, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) monitoring and tracking and much more. Having the technology to teach online is great, but without these other features, you’ll have no students to teach. If you’re an educational entrepreneur you should watch the video below to learn more how you can get your Online Course Software as well as all of the other pieces of the eCourse business puzzle!    

In a recent post on selling courses online using a WordPress Learning Management System we talked about why we love using WordPress LMS Plugins as a way to build an online education website. Essentially, if you’re a teacher and you’re thinking about bringing your course online, you at least need to give the WordPress platform consideration as your online course website solution. WordPress not only provides a powerful framework which helps you deliver your eLearning content, but WP also provides countless extensions and plugins to help you optimize your site for course enrollments, achieve high organic search ranking, increase your opt-in newsletter subscriber rate and much more. It’s’ so much more than just a teaching platform. It’s also a great eCourse sales platform. Not only that, but there are a countless WordPress design companies that are working hard to help people style their WordPress websites in such a way that meets their brand’s needs. There are, of course, other Open Source Learning Management Systems available on the market today, but many those systems are not supported by such a large or strong community of design focused people. Sure, these alternative open source LMS’s are often powerful, but take their demos for a test drive and see what you think. Some of them haven’t progressed passed 1990′s design standards. This is hardly an option for eCourse sellers that want to impress their students with professional themes and designs. At the end of the day, you’re looking for more in a platform than just teaching plugins. You need the whole package, and WordPress is one of only a few affordable options available that can provide this for you. Another great thing about using WordPress to sell courses online is that, because it’s such a popular publishing platform, new educational add-ons are being developed all of the time. With online education gaining in popularity each year, developers are stepping to the plate to give teachers and subject matter experts even more powerful teaching plugins and student progress monitoring tools. As online education continues to become more popular, it’s likely that student outcomes are going to be considered the "new gold" in the world of online education. Educators who can help students meet their educational objectives, and prove that they’ve done it through some kind of quantitative monitoring software or plugin, are going to have a huge advantage over educators who don’t have the systems or software in place to measure how much, and what quality of learning took place. So much of the discussion today is on online course design. As time passes, we’re seeing the discussion shift to the statistical monitoring and graphing of student progress. It will be interesting to see how this develops in the WordPress community. A LIST OF SOME GREAT TEACHING PLUGINS FOR WORDPRESS Below you’ll find a partial list of some of the most popular plugins for teaching online. WP Courseware LearnDash WooThemes Sensei

One of the biggest benefits of being an Academy of Mine member is that we’re obsessed with the small details often overlooked by entrepreneurs and teachers selling courses online. For instance, did you know that there is a correlation between site speed and organic search ranking? In fact, a site’s speed impacts more than just organic search engine ranking. Other consequences of poor eCourse site speed performance include: Lower perceived credibility (Fogg et al. 2001) Lower perceived quality (Bouch, Kuchinsky, and Bhatti 2000) Increased user frustration (Ceaparu et al. 2004) Increased blood pressure (Scheirer et al. 2002) Reduced flow rates (Novak, Hoffman, and Yung 2000) Reduced conversion rates (Akamai 2007) Increased exit rates (Nielsen 2000) Are perceived as less interesting (Ramsay, Barbesi, and Preece 1998) Are perceived as less attractive (Skadberg and Kimmel 2004) We know that search engines and site visitors reward fast loading sites so it’s in our best interest to help our members achieve fast page load times. So how do we do it? A CASE STUDY Let us give you an example. We recently had a new member sign up who has been selling their course online for the last 3 months, but ran into too many problems doing it on their own so they signed up with us. However, before we transferred them over to our servers we wanted to do some tests. Essentially, we wanted to measure their "before and after" site speed details. To measure site speed, you can use tools like Pingdom, Google Site Speed or GTmetrix. Just to give you an example of what’s average for more robust sites (like many eLearning sites), at the time of this writing Ebay had a site speed of 5:07 according to Pingdom. Ebay is a great site with lots of dynamic features so it’s never going to win a speed race. There are many faster sites online. However, it’s Ebay’s dynamic features (the parts of the site that slow it down) that make eBay worth visiting in the first place. It’s always a delicate balance between great website features and site speed. eCourse owners often find themselves in the same predicament. For example, they might have amazing features within their online course software, but those features might slow their site down to a crawl if too many users are using them at the same time. Which essentially was the issue in the case study we’re about to look at. THE BEFORE PICTURE Before this member joined us they had a site speed of 5:15. They were paying around $100 / month for a VPS server.  However, their host didn’t publish much relevant information about the server’s specs. Which was a bit surprising since it’s more common for shared hosting providers to hide that information since most people who sign up for shared hosting aren’t deeply concerned with processing power if they are only willing to pay $20 / month. These people often just want something cheap that does the trick. But like most things in the world, usually "cheapest" and "greatest" aren’t found in the same sentence together. That’s especially true when it comes to hosting. Since cheap shared hosting providers can’t sell their packages on server specs, they instead focus on gimmicky (and mostly untrue) statements like "unlimited bandwidth" or "unlimited space" or "99.9% up-time". For example, Hostgator, one of the most popular shared hosting solutions online, touts a 99.9% up-time guarantee, but just this week they had over 15 hours of downtime in one day and tens of thousands of customer complaints. You don’t have to be a math guru to figure out that it doesn’t add up. SO WHAT IMPACT DOES A SERVER HAVE ON SITE SPEED? Okay, so let’s get to our case study. In this example we took our new member off their old server and we put them on one of our dedicated servers. Not surprisingly there was an immediate increase in site speed. They went from a page speed of 5:15 to 2:70 (a 47% increase in speed!) THE JUICY STUFF! A CONTENT DELIVERY NETWORK (CDN) Then we took it a step further by setting them up on our Content Delivery Network (CDN) which essentially takes the static elements of their website, uploads them to different "clouds" around the world, and then delivers those website elements to visitors based off that particular visitor’s location. So a visitor visits their site from NYC, that visitor would be retrieving their site details from a server in NYC. However, if a visitor came to their site from London, then that visitor would be served their site content from a server in London. Adding their site to our CDN account took their site speed from 2:70 to 2:39 (a further 11% decrease in page load time). In total they had a 53.59% increase in site speed by becoming an Academy of Mine member. OUR SERVER SPECS WHEN YOU FIRST SIGN UP When you first sign up with Academy of Mine you’ll be put on our basic dedicated server with a limited number of other clients. It’s like a hybrid system between shared and dedicated. Our server specs are: Intel Xeon E3-1230 V2 3.3GHz, Turbo 3.7GHz 4 Cores, 8 w/ HT 8,883 CPUMark Score 12 GB RAM Dedicated servers are great because you don’t have to worry about the many pitfalls of shared hosting. If you’re selling courses online you’re probably running Learning Management System software which requires a substantial amount of processing power to make run smoothly.  At Academy of Mine we’ve setup our hosting environment to be able to handle that bulky software efficiently. Similarly, we’re always monitoring our hosting environment so you don’t have to. And our up-time is great. Last month our up-time on our starter dedicated server was 99.916%, and the month before was 99.932%. Best of all, since Academy of Mine manages our clients’ sites, our members don’t need to worry about someone uploading a rogue script that would bring down the entire system (which happens often in the world of shared hosting). We control everything on our end to make sure the hosting environment runs smoothly. We hope you found this case study helpful!

In this 5 part blog series we’re going to look at an Academy Of Mine member’s educational site that was launched 5 years ago and we’ll look at the financial benefit that online education has had for them as an individual eCourse seller. We’ve been with this site from day one so we have great insight into what made this eLearning platform perform so well from both a financial and educational standpoint. This particular eCourse seller’s journey began when they became frustrated with the high price of tuition and inefficient ways of teaching. After a lot of planning and even more hard work, they brought their comprehensive new media eCourse online and sold it for a $200 one time fee. This eCourse seller could offer such an in-depth eCourse for such a low price because he was using asynchronous teaching technologies and wasn’t required to be physically present and therefore he didn’t need to charge students his regular hourly fee. Of course, this doesn’t mean that there was no work involved. Quite the opposite. It just meant that, as the teacher, he could do the work once (creating video tutorials, writing content etc) and have his students benefit from the educational material for many years to come. In this 5 part blog series we’re going to look in-depth at the overview of this eCourse seller’s progress by looking at each year of their entrepreneurial journey on a year by year basis.  The reason we think our blog audience will find value in this case study is because many of you offering, or planning on offering, courses online may feel overwhelmed with the amount of work it takes to get an eCourse off the ground. You also might currently feel like you’re lost in the middle of the forest and have no idea what to expect when you come out on the other side…. if there even is another side. At first it can feel like a huge investment in both time and money. So you’re probably wondering if the risk is worth it. Well we can’t answer that question for you specifically, because the answer to the question depends on so many variables and changes on a case by case basis. However, what we can do is provide you with an overview of how someone else built a course, navigated their way through the forest and came out on the other side a winner. As you’re about to see in this case study, five years of hard work paid off in the end and this eCourse seller is now making over $130,000 / year in sales! However, when this eCourse seller first started out he was making less than he was making from his regular job. Much less. However, today he is making more than he could have made teaching the same subject at a college level. Take a look at the 5 year sales growth chart below. For many of you in the business of online education, you’ll probably be curious to know what type of traffic level needs to be obtained before you are able to support sales levels like the ones provided above. Well it’s obviously it’s not that simple, as many different elements play a role in determining enrollment growth. However, traffic is a major contributor to enrollment and sale growth so below we’ve included a traffic chart showing website visitors over the course of the same period. As we’ve mentioned, there is risk associated with taking this path. Just as there is risk associated with any entrepreneurial journey. That being said, in our experience, online course vendors who understand that starting a business (in the education industry or otherwise) is hard work, and are willing to put in that work will often be compensated for their efforts and risk. Not always… but most of the time. The case study we’re using today is a good example of realistically what the financial benefits of online education can be for edupreneurs. We used this case study specifically because although we have other members outperforming this eCourse vendor… we also have other members under-performing this eCourse vendor. We wanted to use an example from the "middle" that would provide insight into what’s possible for individual course sellers, as this case study looks at a course that was started by just one person. Many of you who read our blog are in the same position as this eCourse seller was when they started out. You might have limited resources and you’re doing it on your own. So hopefully this provides you with some insight into what the possibilities are under those restrictions. In the following 5 part blog series we’ll look at each year one by one. You can start by going through the years below.   MY FIRST 5 YEARS SELLING COURSES ONLINE Year 1: Finding the Right WordPress Membership Plugin Year 2: Developing the eLearning Platform Year 3: Thinking About eLearning Software & Tools Year 4: Course Management System - Focus on Student Goals Year 5: "Being There" - The Inclusion of a WordPress Chat Plugin  

As we start our 5 part series on exploring the 5 year growth of an eCourse company, we’ll start at the logical place; the platform. It should be mentioned now that our members’ sites use the WordPress platform to facilitate teaching and learning. So for much of this first part, we’ll discuss various WordPress membership plugins that allow you to restrict access to your eCourse content. To make the educational system work within the WordPress framework you need to adapt the basic WordPress platform to work like a Learning Management System. Most of our members run private online courses that are accessible on a "pay per use" basis. Therefore, it’s important that our members setup a platform that allows them to restrict access to certain parts of their site so only paying students can access those premium pages. So how do you do this? Well … let’s start with the foundation. If you’re selling courses online you’ll have two parts to your site. You have the course selling front-end where students can pay for access to the course, and then you’ll have the course back-end where students can access your restricted educational content. USING A WORDPRESS MEMBERSHIP PLUGIN TO RESTRICT ACCESS TO COURSE CONTENT Once you have your course ready for delivery, you’ll need to find a way to restrict access to only paying students (or clients, members or employees. Essentially, whoever you need to train).  There are many ways to achieve this depending on which WordPress membership plugin you decide to use. The registration process can be almost 100% automated or you can make it a manual process setting each student up, one by one, along the way. No matter which option you choose you need to find a way to make the two sides (front-end and back-end) "talk" to each other. Once a student signs up on your front-end they need to be registered in your back-end. Not only that, but their restriction levels need to be set depending on which of your courses they signed up for. For example, if you’re selling two courses online but a student registered for only one course, then not only do they need to have a new account created for them, but they also need to be restricted access to only the course they’ve paid for. As you can see, WordPress membership plugins are not only used to block a section of your site. These plugins are required to do many complex tasks. AUTOMATED REGISTRATION VS. MANUAL REGISTRATION Automating the registration process obviously can save you a lot of time, but depending on your eCourse company it might not be your best option. You might instead want to use tools like Role Scoper or Press Permit. These WordPress plugins can seem quite complex on the surface, but they are also very powerful and give you a full range of control over who can access your content. These can be great plugins for eCourse sellers who have complex tiered pricing or tiered access levels. However, if you’re interested in automating the process you’re going to need to find a way to make your two systems (i.e. your course selling front-end and your student back-end) "talk" to each other. Essentially, you’ll need your system to work like this: When a student signs up for one of your courses from your front-end, your back-end will need to be relayed their signup information so it can set "conditions" based on the course they paid for. For example, if a course seller was offering two courses for sale on their educational website, they would need their system to be able to communicate restriction levels based off of a new student’s registration details. Let’s say, for example, that a student registered for just one of their two courses, the system would need to be able to understand which course they registered for, grant them access to that course and restrict access to the other course. There are various plugins that can do this from WooThemes Sensei. If you go this route, you’ll also need to download various extensions to make this work including: WooCommerce, Groups and Groups for WooCommerce. By using those extensions together you can setup an automated tiered membership site. Or, if you’re using WP Courseware you can use the magic members plugin to help you automatically enroll new members into your course based on a new users membership level. Lastly, if you’re using WPLMS their system is already integrated with course restriction levels allowing you to restrict access to each course based off the student’s registration records. THE DECISION TO GO WITH MANUAL REGISTRATION In the case study we’re looking at in this 5 part series, our member decided to go with a manual registration process. They wanted to go this route for various reasons. First, their course was being offered at $200 which meant that they didn’t expect to deal in great volume. They were hoping to achieve 10 enrollment sales / week ($2000 / week) and they thought that setting up each student manually wouldn’t take that much time. Which it doesn’t. Secondly, it gave them an extra layer of security as they needed to manually add each user to their back-end meaning absolutely nobody could take their online course unless they themselves, as the site administrator, setup a new student in their back-end. Lastly and most importantly, they setup their system manually because they had a fairly complex system of "tiers" and levels of access. At a basic level they had 2 different courses and various restrictions within each course. Basic "course", "group" or "user" restriction levels were just not going to work in this case. Their more complex system allowed users to scale their course to their needs. Students could pick and choose which parts of their course they wanted to pay for and therefore get access to. This route is a little more time consuming, but it allowed this particular eCourse seller to meet the "architectural" needs of their online course. MY FIRST 5 YEARS SELLING COURSES ONLINE Year 1: Finding the Right WordPress Membership Plugin Year 2: Developing the eLearning Platform Year 3: Thinking About eLearning Software & Tools Year 4: Course Management System - Focus on Student Goals Year 5: "Being There" - The Inclusion of a WordPress Chat Plugin