We have come to a time in which everything is online. This year particularly, meeting online rather than in person could save someone’s life. So it’s to no surprise that classes have also been put online.
Even without a pandemic, online classes are very useful if you are restricted by your location or simply don’t have the time to do them in person. Having classes online saves you the commute, plus, you don’t have to get up early to get ready and you have all the material you need on your computer.
Classes, courses, workouts, everything can be taught online, you just have to be smart about it. Most importantly, you have to make sure your video doesn’t lag or is jumpy.
If you are a teacher or an expert in a certain field and you want to share your knowledge and/or have an additional stream of income, LMS platforms are the way to go. LMS or Learning Management System is a platform for digital learning. On the platform, you can create a single source of online courses and class materials. You can manage courses, students, and also your own teaching.
On top of that, it is a platform that does the boring work for you, such as grading, statistics, and reports. Basically, an LMS has everything you need to teach a class without having to leave the comfort of your home.
Now you may be wondering, what LMS platforms do the best job and which one should you choose. To help you out with that, here are four platforms that take online education to the next level.
1. FreshLMS
FreshLMS is a platform that lets you set up a digital storefront, put up videos, and also handles payment without you having to write a line of code.
You want to make your teaching website as personalized as possible and with FreshLMS you can do just that. You can customize login and signup screens and have tailormade course chapters that improve user experience. Users are more likely to continue with a class if it is engaging and has a personal touch. Everybody can do the generic stuff, but it is better to be one-of-a-kind.
FreshLMS also gives you a custom domain for each course, to give you even more professional credibility. You can even connect individual courses to specific domains.
Since it can be overwhelming for your learners to have a large chunk of material, you can easily add chapters, sections, and modules to break down your course. You can upload and embed any video, document, or audio file from your computer as well as from media players like YouTube and Wistla in just a few seconds.
You can play around with any course element and make it fit your needs perfectly. You can also create custom sales landing pages, enrollment pages, and tweak CTA buttons.
I’m sure you are going to want to quiz your students and give them the possibility to earn certifications. Certifications work as both marketing and engagement boosting strategies. Students that earn certifications can share them which gives you the marketing boost you need but also gives them the satisfaction of having proof for their hard work. With FreshLMS, you can create short quizzes to boost awareness about your course or long assessments.
Of course, don’t forget about getting paid. FreshLMS allows you to connect payment gateways such as PayPal and Stripe. And it doesn’t charge you any fees so you don’t have to worry about losing money.
There is also an analytics feature that lets you know how your course is doing and how you can improve it as well as insights into payments and revenue. You can even see how your students feel about the course and analyze student engagement. Feedback from your students is very important because they are the ones receiving your knowledge after all.
Best of all, everything we mentioned can be done without any coding and it is made to perfectly fit your brand. It doesn’t matter if you are a solopreneur or an organization, FreshLMS supports creators and businesses of every scale.
2. Teachable
Teachable is a platform on which you can create and sell online courses and it is especially useful if you are a blogger or a creative person that wants to have a way of increasing your income. With it, you can also create a membership and connect with your students.
Teachable focuses on you, your business, and has easy-to-use features that make customization as simple as possible. You can easily connect your website with a custom domain on Teachable. You can also customize your classes, lectures, and videos in a way that works best for you.
There is a dashboard through which you can track sales and student insights as well as make sales and have authors, team members, and contributors help you, Teachable will pay them for you.
Keeping your students in mind, Teachable offers unlimited everything. There is unlimited bandwidth, unlimited courses and coaching, and unlimited students on all plans.
You can talk live to your students during one-on-one sessions and schedule and host sessions and conferences. Also, surveys and quizzes let you get student feedback that matters.
Finally, with Teachable, you can offers subscriptions, memberships, one-time payments, bundles, and more. You can even accept payments in over 130 currencies and via PayPal.
3. Thinkific
Thinkific allows you to create and sell online courses and membership sites under your own brand.
With Thinkific, you can build your courses to match your brand, just quickly upload, drag, and drop the content that will create the perfect curriculum. You don’t have to write any code and can choose which content you want to include, whether that is videos, quizzes, discussions, Google docs, or something else. You can also choose if the content will be permanent or temporary, a private or hidden course, led by multiple instructors, etc.
Thinkific allows you to design a site exactly the way you want it and in a way that complements your brand. You can pick between using already-designed themes or customizing every element. You can add, rearrange or delete sections, use your own domain name and have full access to HTML and CSS.
You can offer membership sites and subscription courses as well as boost course sales with coupons and promotions.
On Thinkific, you get paid immediately, plus, you can charge in more than 100 currencies and accept all credit cards.
With Thinkific’s marketing tools, you can reach even more students using reward affiliates, advanced data tracking, email campaigns, and external business and marketing apps.
Especially useful features provided by this tool are those that allow students to have fun and learn in a way they prefer. They can see their progress with clear indicators, unlimited replays of material, and language controls.
Thinkific also keeps your data safe, with secure cloud hosting and daily backups, 24/7 monitoring, instant access to updates, and built-in security. That way you can trust that your site is safe, reliable, and working optimally for you and your students.
4. LearnDash
LearnDash Focus Mode is a portal that creates a distraction-free environment for learners. With the drag-and-drop course builder, you can create customized courses in an instant. The platform also offers advanced quizzing where you can choose how you want to make your quizzes, pick between eight different question types, write custom messages, question banks, and more.
You can control who can access your courses if a course has prerequisites, the availability of the content, and other things.
There is no limit on the number of lessons and quizzes that you can add to your courses and you can publish as many courses as you want. And you can give students badges and certificates based on quiz performance and also award points and give out assignments required for continuing with the lessons.
You can also integrate PayPal into your site to enable payment collection. On top of that, LearnDash supports one-time payments as well as recurring payments.
Aside from creating content and publishing it, you also want to be able to manage your users and get insights into how are they interacting with your website. The reporting tools allow you to see the activities of individual users such as how much time they’ve spent on a course, how they’ve performed on the quizzes, and their overall progress.
LearnDash also has the option of sending email notifications to help automate some of the tasks of running an online class.
To top it all off, LearnDash is compatible with any theme, is easy to customize, and supports any media and page builders.
Final thoughts
Sometimes, we just don’t want to leave our houses. It might be raining or snowing, the weather is cold and you just want to stay in your bed, but you have to go to your morning class. Well, thanks to online classes and LMS platforms you don’t have to leave your bed and you don’t have to force your students to do so either.
By using an LMS platform, you can teach a subject you are an expert in, get paid, and have fun. You can expand your business and boost your marketing all from the comfort of your own home. FreshLMS lets you do just that and more. So be sure to check it out and enjoy watching your business bloom!