Selling courses

Hi Eric,

I'm actually looking to set up a website and open it for anyone who has material to sell to sell through it.  Here's hoping it is wildly successful and many want to sell through it... The options I've looked at include the major CMS's (Joomla, Drupal, and Wordpress) along with Moodle.

If you intend to support mobile learning, then you need something which will integrate with the new TinCan API.  If not, your options are less restricted.  As I understand from the Tin Can/Scorm Cloud website, the Wordpress plugin lets you track performance etc. but doesn't indicate a merchant option.  It is probably possible, but outside of my scope at the moment.  

Drupal has a scorm cloud mod, but is apparently built for Drupal 6 and my web host will only support Drupal 7 so I haven't explored it further.  Also, it appears the original developers of the mod have stop work on it and no one has step forward to develop an updated mod.  

Joomla doesn't have any partner listed, but someone could be working away quietly without us knowing.  

Finally, Moodle does have a mod and has some e-commerce options already integrated.  I was just getting around to trying it out to see if it actually works as promised, but I have no reason to think it doesn't.  The major drawback in many minds to Moodle is it's look and feel which some developers have tried to answer with Joomdle which allows you to integrate Moodle and Joomla.  I spent a long weekend a few months back stumbling through the install process and not all web hosts allow you the level of control needed to implement it, but it does give you a Joomla flexibility to look and feel with the educational power of Moodle behind it.  That said, I didn't try very hard to break the site so I won't say Joomdle can meet every need on every platform - but it looked promising.

Again, I was looking at Scorm Cloud and Tin Can API, because I want to put elearning on offline iPads in the hands of kids in the backseat of cars (as well as others), so I need to be looking at options that don't require a connection and that is what I've come up with so far.  That said, even without Scorm Cloud as a factor for me, I'm planning to go the Moodle route with the possible addition of Joomdle.

Of course, I'm a one person show at the moment and haven't seen all there is to see, so if there are better ways of doing things, I'd like to hear about it too.

Cheers, Mark

PS If anyone want to discuss setting up a marketplace for independent folks to sell their wares, drop me a message.