Today the majority of startup owners and entrepreneurs are focusing on starting their websites, specializing in rendering online education to learners. But regardless of how enthusiastic, motivated and worked-up, they are, creating an entire e-learning platform from scratch is not a piece of cake. Even if owners have the expertise to build such a robust and effective e-learning platform, they would have to spend all their time and energy to sort out the technical part, and that becomes a huge task. So should they back-out from this brilliant idea which has been gaining so much attention these days? Many e-learning tools have come into existence to resolve these serious issues faced by some business owners.
The reason why these e-learning tools are a complete blockbuster today is that learners are adopting the whole concept of online learning wholeheartedly. Apart from the flexible timings of the online course lectures, the quizzes and the fun games available on some online learning websites manage to attract the attention of students.
It is for these reasons behind the demand for online courses that businesses running such websites are generating profits every day, and others are trying to follow its suit.
Below here is the learndash review, a similar LMS platform to help startups and entrepreneurs chase their dreams.
How to Create an Elearning Platform on WordPress?
The first thing you should do before creating an e-learning platform on WordPress is to know and understand your audience deeply. You need to generate courses which will be relatable to your audience. After knowing your audience, whether they are school students or a relatively older population, you should design your courses in a way so that their needs get fulfilled. For the lectures, you need to shoot high-quality videos, but those need not be mandatorily shot in a studio. If you are starting anew, you can save costs by shooting right from your home but obviously with a decent camera. After that, comes the main deal, that is the technical requirements like file compression, device compatibility and video storage. But to help you in this, Learndash offers a pre-built platform equipped with all technical features.
How Does Learndash Work?
Learndash is one of the best and widely used online course builder plugins for WordPress. The tool is for anyone and everyone who wants to publish courses in the e-learning mode. If you wish to create your e-learning platform or to publish educational resources in your existing WordPress website, you can seek help from experts at Learndash. Learndash is not only used by entrepreneurs but also famous educational institutes to make learning fun, interactive and engaging. All you have to do is to install the Learndash plugin in your WordPress website, and after that, you will be able to create lessons, quizzes and even exams. You can make most of the reporting tools which come with the tool to access the performance of your learners and based on it; you can even award them certificates. To make your learning platform more powerful, you can also integrate it with third-party plugins.
Learndash Review: Product Features
Before explaining the user experience of this LMS plugin, here are the attractive features it offers to benefit the users:
Learndash Features: unlimited courses
The best thing about this e-learning plugin is that it lets the user publish any number of courses, lessons and quizzes the user wants to. Thanks to the Learndash course builder and the drag and drop course editor because the entire process of creating and structuring courses have become quite simplified. You will be having a clear overview of the components of the course, and this will surely make your experience more intuitive than you have faced with other tools of the same kind. The platform enables you to move your courses and quizzes to new locations easily without creating challenges in the way.
Learndash Features: settings and controls
The default settings of Learndash allows you to create and structure your courses, but that is not it. You will be given the controls over each option of all the features. You can control who will be allowed to access your courses and also the content of the courses. You can also set who all can check the availability of your course content.
Learndash Features: powerful reporting tools
Creating content and designing it impeccably is just a part of running a successful e-learning website. You will also have to manage your learners and closely monitor how they are interacting with your website. To simplify your task as a course administrator, Learndash has some useful features for you to employ. For instance, the reporting tool will let you view the activities of your users on your platform, like how many courses they have purchased, and how they have performed in assessment exams. Also, to automate certain tasks, Learndash sends out emails based on specific triggers, including, when a new course is available or when a user has not logged in for a long time.
Learndash Features: online user documentation
Getting used to an LMS WordPress plugin might become overwhelming at first. So you would have to learn how to be well-versed in using it, by seeking help from the platform. To learn the controls and the usage of reporting tools, you can go through the online documentation for users offered by Learndash to help you get started. In case you are not satisfied with the documentation, you can watch some tutorial videos available on your Learndash dashboard.
Learndash Review:
Learndash Features: video progression
In case you are adding videos in your courses which is highly likely, the Learndash’s video progression feature makes it super easy to embed externally hosted or self-hosted videos.
If you wish to be more creative, then you can even do some things going out for your way. For example, send the learners to the next video once they finish the current one or hide the playbar of the videos to prevent skipping.
Pricing Plans
Learndash offers three different pricing plans to cater to the requirements of various businesses. The ‘Basic’ plan is priced at $159, and it includes a one-site license, and the next plan is worth $189, and it allows up to 10 site lessons. The last plan is priced at $329, and it offers the users to obtain the licenses of 25 websites. As the pricing increases, so do the features become more advanced. To experience the complete list of benefits without investing in the pricing plans, you can request for a demo session for a period of 30 days.
Learndash Review: Advantages and Disadvantages
Before you take the first step towards your successful online learning endeavour, take a look at the list of pros and cons of this WordPress plugin.
Learndash Advantages:
- Allows white labelling so that the content you share with your users has your brand logo.
- The platform consists of gamification tools to make learning more enjoyable.
- After registering with the platform, you would be allowed to access a library filled with useful content.
- You would be able to grade learners by using the grading and assessment tools
- You can now share files to external plugins
- The platform encourages peer to peer interaction to promote collaborative learning,
- You will be able to create courses by watching tutorials offered by the platform itself
- There are numerous industry-specific templates you can use in courses and even occasional emails.
- It also enables in-app messaging abilities so that learners can clear their doubts from their peers or instructors.
- You can plan assignments and set them automatically
- With the help of reporting tools, you can track the progress of your business
- You will be able to design and customize your platform exactly the way you want
- Instructors can conduct video-conferences with built-in functionality.
- Can be accessed by users from their mobile devices
Learndash Disadvantages:
- The platform is not beginner-friendly
- Reporting tools not as useful as per claims
- It might need an expert WordPress developer to set -up the entire thing
- The courses and lessons cannot be organized
- One can sell the courses through the Woocommerce platform, but the product features get removed
- Some features are found to be restricting
- You will need a 3rd-party plugin if you wish to receive a membership facility.
How to Create your First Course with Learndash?
After a recent software update, the course builder just got better, and with it, you can design courses easily. After this update, you can use WordPress editor to add a description to your courses. Once you have been successful in creating the first course, you will have to use the Learndash builder to add in lessons and quizzes. After you have created a few more courses, you would be allowed to arrange lessons with the help of the drag and drop interface. The recommendation is to create as many lessons as you want to put under a course and then add the content later. By doing so, you will be able to chalk out the structure of the course more effectively.
Learndash Review-G2-4
“ Out-of-the-box, this plugin ships with more features than any other similar system, including specifically advanced quiz types with question types for most situations; certificates and automatic grading. Reporting can be enhanced via their compatible ProPanel plugin. Support response within 24 hours and then happy to respond when requesting status updates for bug fixes; friendly support team. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. ” – as stated by Steven J.
Learndash Review-Capterra-5
Kike S. said “For the price, it is entirely satisfactory, and it shows that they have thought the tool very well.
Pros: I bought two other WordPress LMS but our system it’s pretty much all the e-learn community needs. “
Learndash payments
If you want to sell your courses, which you obviously will, you would have to use Paypal. It perfectly integrates with all the plugins of WordPress including Woocommerce, in case you want to sell your courses through it. But if you want, you can also use Stripe as your desired payment plugin instead of Paypal.
Learndash Success Stories
Learndash since the very beginning has managed to grab the attention of business owners who are willing to sell courses on their WordPress website. Nonetheless, to say, it has succeeded in making dreams come true for many entrepreneurs. For example, Tanya Smith admits that ‘can honestly say I sell more courses using LearnDash than any other off WordPress platform I’ve tried’. And Guilio Daprela feels that he is lucky to have chosen Learndash out of the numerous other LMS plugins.
Learndash Alternatives for Instructors
- Administrate
- Learning Cart
- Business Training Tv
- Edmego
- Learn-WiseGo
- Auzmor Learn
- WAVE
- SkillCast
Conclusion
If you want to build customized courses for learners in your WordPress website, then this learning management system plugin will offer you the exact functionality you wish to integrate on your learning platform. And it is also being adopted by some of the Tier-I universities of the world.
But as the features are quite in-depth and that is why the plugin might seem to be a little on the expensive side, especially for a newbie. Also, the learning curve is quite steeper; you will have to remain as attentive as you can to learn all the features of this plugin.
The built-in video progression support will help you to add videos in your courses easily while improving the video quality.
You might also want to use the email automation techniques coming along with the platform to make your email marketing schemes of the top-notch.
With the help of the course builder as well as the drag and drop interface, you will be able to design courses the way you want and sort them to make the system look more organized to your learners.
I and my team research various e-learning platforms and can help you choose the right toolkit to get you started. I am just a mail away, so reach out to me if you want to tap into the power of online learning business. mail: [email protected]