Hi all. I am new to this, so forgive the ignorance. We need to create a course for various institutions. Some will be schools, some businesses, some just in-home private use. Some instututions will use Blackboard (or a similar in-house LMS), some have no LMS whatsoever, and some may have alternatives to Blackboard.
How can we create something that can be offered to all of them?
I was thinking about creating the SCORM file and uploading it to a cloud that can manage subscriptions for those with Blackboard or something similar. (I have no idea which ones offer this, but I have heard this is an option).
I was also thinking about hosting it on an LMS for those organizations that do not have an LMS. But we are trying to keep costs down (we are a non-profit with limited funds, you know how it goes).
We have already needed to buy Captivate. With this approach, we would also need to buy a cloud subscription, buy a Vimeo subscription (for video streaming within the course), and buy an LMS for those with no LMS. (BTW there are lots of LMS options discussed and they seem to be spoken of in different spaces as course hosting sites like Teachable. Can someone clarify the difference)?
So my first question is- does what I’m saying make sense? Would I need two differerent versions of the same product, one with LMS one without?
Second, does anyone know of a way to keep this as cheap as possible?
Has anyone done this before? I get the feeling I’m gonna mess this up somehow. The whole thing has been rather confusing.
Thanks for any help you can offer!
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To me it sounds like you have two business models on your hands. For one client you produce scorm packages that they put in their LMS and manage their users. Its up to them to do the implemention and track results and evaluate the training.
Clients who have no LMS should pay you for managing their LMS, enrolling their students and tracking and providing statistics. You could get Moodle for free or very low cost or get something more robust like LearnWorlds if you wanted something more.
Either way, the course development could be the same, you just give the clients with an LMS the files to implement or do the implemention for the other clients.
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Look up scorm cloud dispatch. It is a way for you to use the scorm package in many different ways including no LMS.
For an authoring tool captivate is ok. There is a learning curve and workarounds to make it work but it will get you what you need. If you want something cheaper let ok at H5P. It is open source and free.
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Awesome, thanks for the insight @AnnThomas . So, to clarify, I should offer these as two separate options (i.e. the course itself for those with an LMS, then the course with management for those who need an LMS). Is that correct?
Also, not sure if you’d have any ideas about this, but it seems, on the business sides of things, you should always offer multiple options. Low tier, middle tier, high tier. These, as you said, would be two completely different models, since those without the LMS would need the LMS, so they’re not really parallel “options”, per se.
Any ideas on how to offer tiers when it comes to the eLearning world? I know that’s a bit of a vague question, but any ideas might be helpful? At first, I was thinking about selling annual subs or a one time lifetime fee as a way to offer “tiers” but the problem is I can’t do that with LMS management, since that would be an ongoing cost. Plus, I read somewhere that subs are more profitable long term (might be harder to sell tho, not sure).
Thanks again for the help!
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Have a look at KnowVela.com . It was designed specifically for situations like yours. You can upload your module to KnowVela and then share links for LMS and non-LMS users to access.
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If you don’t care about tracking you could maybe embed as an iframe into a free lms like Google Classroom. I think Moodle and Canvas also have a free tier.