Memberium comes with built-in integration for several different Learning Management Systems (LMS). Memberium seamlessly ties these systems into your Infusionsoft app for two way communication, access control, and automation. In order to understand whether or not you need an LMS for your site, it’s important to understand what we’re talking about.
The Key Concept
Simple Course Delivery: A system that delivers content to students/members. The content can be video, text, downloadables, etc.
LMS: An LMS goes beyond the delivery of content, it provides tools to track and measure individual users as they move through your courses. In addition, the LMS also handles user registration for courses, tracking and reporting, quizzing, and certificate delivery.
The distinguishing factor between an LMS and simple course delivery is that an LMS system handles all the aspects of the learning process including course delivery.
Options, Options, Everywhere
Option 1: Simple Course Delivery
How to Create Course Pages with Memberium Page Template
How to Create Lesson Pages with Memberium Page Template
The alternative to using an LMS is Simple Course Delivery using just Memberium. This is not a feature, but a style of delivery. You put your courses and modules onto regular pages and use Memberium’s access controls to protect your educational and training materials.
You can use Memberium and WordPress without any other plugins to manage your course material, control enrollment and drip the content to the students. If your goal is to simply deliver your course content and do not need robust progress tracking or student testing. this solution may be for you.
Option 2: LearnDash
LearnDash is taking cutting edge e-learning methodology and infusing it into WordPress. More than just a plugin, we provide practical and experience-driven guidance for individuals and organizations interested in setting up online courses.
Marquee Customers: US Department of Defense, 3M, DOW, Harman, Timken, VDDT, Utah State University, The University of Adelaide
Price: $129-$299
Learn More: http://www.learndash.com/
Memberium Setup: LearnDash Guide
Option 3: Sensei LMS
Teaching coursework has never been easier, all within WordPress. With the Sensei plugin, you can create courses, write lessons, and add quizzes. Set lesson and course pre-requisites, allow user registration, and even charge for your course content if you want. Sensei is the ultimate WordPress learning management system!
Price: Free
Learn More: https://www.woothemes.com/products/sensei/
Memberium Setup: Sensei LMS Guide
Option 4: LifterLMS
LifterLMS is a powerful WordPress LMS plugin that makes it easy to create, sell, and protect engaging online courses. The mission of LifterLMS is to democratize education in the digital classroom.
Option 5: WP Courseware
Simply create a course, a module, a course unit with course content, and perhaps a quiz or survey. Drag and drop to arrange the course and create a course outline using our [shortcodes] or widget. Courses can have automatic enrollment so you don’t have to worry about enrolling students. Course certificates can be distributed at the end of a course. If you want to move your course, you can do so using the export/import functionality!
Marquee Customers: Sheraton, CNN, BASF, Verizon Wireless, LexisNexis, Rutgers, Emory University, Miami University, University of Kentucky
Price: $99-$175
Learn More: https://flyplugins.com/wp-courseware/
Memberium Setup: WP Courseware Guide
Note: Prices are current as of the last time we checked, and may have changed since publication.
What is a learning management system?
A learning management system does just what you might think: it’s a system that manages your members learning process as they go through your online training program. That’s kind of vague, so let’s break it down…
Your online course or membership program is made up of a lot of different pieces. You probably have a lot of videos, written content, documents, quizzes, assignments and other content.
How do you control what order your students go through all of it in? This is what an LMS does. It manages the learning process within your training program and gives it structure.
It gives your members an order to go through your training in a specific order. This sets up your program so your students have to go through your lessons and courses in a specific order. It also helps organize all of your content into specific lessons that fall into courses.
You can use an LMS to require your students to complete certain steps first before moving onto the next. Such as passing a quiz, test, assignment that needs to be graded or making them complete your courses in a specific order before moving on to the next.
With an LMS, you can consolidate all your learning materials (videos, pdfs, powerpoints, etc.) into one place for easy delivery to users. The LMS will then help you lay all your materials and assessments out in a progression path, so you won’t have users jumping around randomly between all of your content.
When you’re just starting out with a simple online course that contains about 10-20 videos you don’t need an LMS to get started.
When your program starts growing in size and complexity, let’s say when you start to have more than a few courses in your program with over 50 individual lessons in your site, this is where an LMS can help keep everything organized for you. It also helps create a much better learning experience for your students.
Let’s look at the standard features that most LMS plugins have:
- Controls Learning & Course Progression
LMS plugins help control what order your students go through your training by organizing your content into individual lessons and separate courses. They can also track where they last left off in their training through progress tracking and resume where they left off after coming back. - Access from anywhere on any device
Learning management systems are web-based (not stored locally on a single computer). This means students can start a lesson on their desktop computer and pick up right where they left off with their cell phone, tablet or any other device. - Calendars
An LMS makes it easy to create and publish learning schedules, deadlines, assessments and more so everyone can stay on track. You can also run your training programs on fixed dates. - Social features & Community Aspect
Not all LMS solutions have these features. Collaboration and discussion can keep users engaged. An LMS will let you send notifications and create a space for students to message and share information. - Detailed Progress Tracking
This might be the most appealing feature of an LMS: the ability to track user progress and observe trends. If there are any weak points in your content, your LMS will help you find them. For example, if everyone is getting stuck on the same difficult quiz, or stopping after a certain lesson you’ll know to go in and improve that lesson or quiz.This also allows you to track how many students end up completing your course or program. Using Memberium’s integration with the LMS plugin you want to use, you can automatically tag users in Keap or ActiveCampaign after they complete any course or lesson. You can also use this to send out automated reminders to each member until they complete your full training program. - Quizzes and certifications
Speaking of quizzes, an LMS lets you use assessments like tests and quizzes to get an idea of where a user is at. They can then be assigned to the proper level of content. This means a user who needs access to higher level content can “test out” without missing anything.
Depending on the LMS you choose, there may be even more bells and whistles, but these are the basics.
