Quite probably, anyone who has spent any time at all researching online platforms for publishing their Cp content will have had the same two thoughts as me:
There really seems to be no end to the number of elearning system providers.
They all claim that they are the ultimate solution.
It is easy to get a little despondent when conducting research as to which Platform/LMS/LRS you want to use. Hours disappear as you wade through a seemingly never-ending ocean of similar looking websites all promising to solve your problems. Get excited about one then have your hopes crushed as you see the per-user pricing. Spend time reading reviews of another only to find out that it only uses its own course editor and nothing else. It is a vast, fractured landscape and the sheer amount of choices means that it is piratically impossible to compare like for like. Here’s a list of over 300 alone.
To save you time and heartache, I would strongly recommend deciding on only two criteria and keeping them at the forefront of your mind as you conduct a more focussed search, they are:
Your budget (both time and money)
Your must have features
Your must haves should be only that, the things that will prevent you from publishing your coursework if they are not present. With the sheer amount of different platforms available, they should have to fit in with your requirements rather than the other way round. Why should you have to use software you don’t really like just so they will accept your material?
Cp gives a pretty clear idea from the outset of what it is and isn’t capable of exporting. The main draw for a lot of people will be xAPI/SCORM support. Lack of this will immediately disqualify a good number of platforms (be careful, as I mentioned in another post, xAPI/SCORM support is a good excuse for providers to demand more money over their basic tier).
Your time budget should be just how much of it your are prepared to spend on the backend of the process. Typically ‘turn-key’ solutions are more expensive because you don’t have to do any site administration. The cheaper you go, the more you’ll have to do yourself. Support can quickly evaporate for the less well known products.
Get everything ready before you start any free trials. It is amazing how quickly the time will go if you get distracted with other projects. Having a defined list of features that you want to try will save time which might otherwise be spent idly clicking around a platform. Have a variety of Cp projects ready to upload, have test videos ready to embed. Make use of support both before and after, if you identify exactly what you must have, send this list to any platform which catches your eye and have them confirm for you if they can help or not.
Ultimately, it is unlikely that you’ll ever be completely sure that you’ve found the perfect solution. I personally spent far longer than I should have researching LMSs and in the end had to just accept that my final choice was simply the best combination of factors that I’d seen up to that point. I’d by no means compared every product available.
- Identify your must-haves
- Identify your budget
- Set a deadline for making a decision
- Accept that there will always be other platforms which may look like better options
Gareth