The eLearning world is like the Wild Wild West; it’s growing and developing so quickly and if you aren’t in the middle of it, you truly have no idea what even exists, let alone what could fit your needs perfectly.

I hate seeing organizations spending $$$$ on things they don’t need or that don’t fit their organizational strategy and end goals. Sadly, this happens unintentionally time and again.    Companies not having someone on staff, that knows what is out there, causes them to make uninformed decisions. Moreover, vendors can be misleading or have their own agenda, causing them to spend $$$$ buying something they may only use 10% of.

NEVER have something custom built for you unless you have worked with an eLearning solution specialist. An eLearning specialist works deeply in the eLearning industry and will know all the tools and options out there. It would be like not knowing MS Word didn’t exist and deciding to have a company build a document creation software that gives you more options than Wordpad or Notepad.

You can get an online course management system -a group of virtual training classrooms – starting around $50 a month that come with more options than you can imagine.  There are so many options I could go over, but here are a few I specifically want to point out.

Basic off-the-shelf options:

• Quiz Options
  • Question type: multiple choice, fill in the blank, match-up, use of images, use a video
  • Shuffle questions AND shuffle answers within all questions
  • Adaptive – if they pass a certain number of a specific group of questions, the quiz will no longer give that question group.
  • Lock all browser and app software from running when taking a quiz to minimize cheating
• Reporting Options
  • What % of students are failing each question?
  • How many students are using the system
  • How are students utilizing their time
  • Unlimited customized reporting options
• Certificate Printing
  • What qualifications do students need to get a certificate – hours met, deadline or score or a combo of all?
  • Automated notification to administrator every time a certificate is met
• Student Analytics
  • How long is each student spending in the course, on each question?
  • What are the student demographics (location, age, gender, etc.)
  • How do the student demographics correlate with passing or failing the course?
  • Are the students that are now passing actually studying?
• Security & Authentication
  • Role level security – who can access what (admin, teacher, student, etc.)
  • Multi-layered authentication – hard to hack or steal info
  • Multi-layered security when taking a quiz
  • Access security within a course – student cannot access section B until section A is passed with a specific grade.
• Payment
  • Shopping cart for people to purchase courses automatically
  • Non- payment options for students with specific credentials

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