Who is getting paid?

Thanks. I took a peek.

Very nice looking pages.  Thank you for letting us take a look.

Angela

Great thread.

We've been looking at solutions for our courses that we are selling at www.reallearner.co.uk. We've been using litmos.com and its e-commerce functionality. I like the functions but the monthly fee doesn't really match up with selling courses as you can't time out your course.

Cathy's comments about PayPal and also LMS are really interesting. I see more and more people selling courses without LMS functionality - they just want the content.

Does anyone have any links with site examples using Learn Dash and Sensei? This would be really help?

Cheers,

Scott

Hey Scott,

Thanks for the tip about Litmos.  I tool an initial look at it.  It is interesting.  In many ways it seems similar to AOL but with what seems like many minor enhancements and advantages.  It is functionally similar to AOL -- one *major* difference - Seems like Litmos is a core product to the their owner Callidus Software - a Cloud service vendor.  Second, it seems like Litmos is a core product that is current and continually enhanced whereas AOL while totally functional and not problematic is (and has been) currently in the background to Articulate's current initiatives.  Nothing much new in the platform for over 2 years. 

As far as timeout user's access to  a course:  I handle that outside the LMS using software I developed and the AOL WebService API.  Most probably I could adapt my client to Litmos using their RESTful API.  Sound interesting?

Question Litmos touts Mobile access (iPad) - Will they automatically convert an Articulate Presenter Flash based presentation for mobile deploy?

Hi.

no problems. Litmos has iPad support but won't run Presenter files in an iPad- there is no converter.

Litmos was bought by Callidus.

At the moment we are looking at other solutions so thanks for the offer but we are trying to get a full solution as opposed to having to code or develop elements onto existing products. I'm not even sure that we will go LMS! As Cathy said in her post she had little demand for LMS functionality and we are seeing the same.

Thanks,

Scott

All,

I share a common observation on no need for statistics display to an individual user.  I would have turned it off in AOL years ago, but there is no switch to do that.  I don't have a  need for most LMS specific features since my courses are not compliance driven or learner progress measured (although this is changing now that we are doing site licenses).  However Reporting is useful in that I allows me to monitor if someone is sharing their ID.  When I see what I deem excessive plays on a module, I notify the learner about suspicious activity on their account..  One thing I can't control is someone buying a single access and then playing it in the company conference room to a packed audience...... I'm thinking of adding a 'We're a small company, if you didn't pay for your access or are using this in a group then you are stealing"

When I first got into this business in 2009, I looked at AWS and Moodle or even a "roll your own" client. (I also looked at BlackBoard - on the other end of the spectrum) But AWS would have required major effort that as a small business with a limited market appeal product was not willing to invest in.  Of course things have changed for the better as the market expands.  WordPress is a generalized platform not originally intended for courseware hosting.  I believe there will be lots of other compromises necessary there, including using 3rd party plug-ins and all their associated issues.  For me AOL has been a 0 aggravation 0 problem solution that worked from day one.  At the current point, my focus has to remain narrow to stay solvent.  I'd rather pay for a quality service and focus on my core competencies and value proposition.

Of course as a customer who pays thousands a year I'd be happier if there were minor useabliilty and incremental enhancements to AOL.....

Hi Scott, just picking up on this - you said that you currently use Litmos but need to move on, is that right?

I was thinking of using them, so it'd be great to know what didn't work for you?

I'm not quite sure what your reason was, something about timeout access? Can you be more explicit? Is this about preventing users passing on login details for multiple access?

I'm chatting with Justin re. LearnDash, they don't have any current examples using Storyline, but since I've just completed a 2 hour course we may use this as a test case. I'll keep you updated.

Hi Nick,

I'm happy to share our experiences.

I really like the product, the support has been really quick and very helpful. The sales team has been good - not pushy at all.

The functions are excellent and it has given us the software functions that we need. 

We are looking to sell in 2 modes - monthly subscription (rental) and sale. Litmos doesn't allow you to do a monthly subscription so that is the first issue that we have.

The second is the user control - it is excellent but not really set up for selling. Any user set above basic can add a new user (which when activated incurs a cost) which we will then need to track and re-charge to our clients - if we used those user levels.This might not be a big deal for some people.

Litmos is a monthly charge so let's so you have a course which is £20 that you sell via Litmos. After a period of time you lose that £20 as you need to cover the Litmos cost to allow the user to be able to access Litmos to access the course - unless we are missing something here! You need to cover the Litmos monthly access cost within the cost of your course.

I know that they have plans to be able to sell courses and timeout the courses - so a license for one year.

I think its great its not quite working for what we want to do in our model

I hope this helps,

Ah, I had a look at it again, so I just want to confirm...

It seems the Litmos monthly fee is linked to how many users you have registered (for example 100 accounts), not how many are actually using it (perhaps 50 active).

So if 1 user registers it eats into your allowance. Even if they only access one course, they have taken away one of your seats and that seat is being paid for until the user is deleted.

The only way this would be manageable is if the user 'auto deletes' after a specified period (the rental period), hence freeing up the seat for someone else.

Have I got that right? That seems a very real problem!

Have you tried doing this manually and then became exasperated?

Secondly, it seems if a line manager has rights to view assessment results, they can also add further registered users without actually paying you.

is that right too? That seems a very real problem too!

Scott, it seems you and I have exactly the same problems, albeit 8,000 miles apart.

I'm looking at Absorb LMS from Blatant Media in Canada, who seem extremely technically competent, but have prohibitive set up costs of $4k and monthly fee of $1,250 - but they charge a fixed one time fee of $5 per user (which can then be allocated in sales fee).

Have you considered them?

BTW the other element I'm looking for is some sort of 'unusual activity' alert.

For example if one user logs into an account 25 times in one day because they've passed the password to all their mates, we get this flagged to us in an alert and we can choose whether or not to suspend the account.

Absorb don't currently seem to have this, but we're checking.

Anyone seen one of those?