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LMS Low-Cost Webinars Hosted eCommerce Subscriptions

I was talking with a startup that has an existing audience and now want to provide a monthly subscription for access to training to this audience. They will only convert a portion of the audience to the new service. The learners will get access to webinars, recorded webinars, videos, and other online content that they will author separately.

They don't really have a tech team, so going with a hosted solution that would live at a subdomain would be best, i.e., subscribers would go to: learn.company.com in order to sign up, pay, and get access to webinars, content, etc.

They are early stage, so low-cost would be good. And it would be nice if it was a Rapid LMS.

I'm a little concerned how well LMS solutions will handle the webinar integration and the subscriptions.

What would you recommend they research as possible options?

Here are some resources that I found that may help:

And some of the resulting choices based on these resources:

Absorb LMS (Blatant Media e-Learning)
Acadia HCS (Acadia HCS)
Allen Communication Learning Portal
Avilar WebMentor
Course-Source (Course-Source Limited)
CourseMill LMS (Trivantis)
DOTS (WebRaven)
ED Training Platform (Strategia)
Generation 21 Enterprise
InforSource (InfoSource)
Inquisiq EX (ICS Learning Group Inc.)
IntraLearn XE (IntraLearn Software)
Isoph Blue (Learn Something)
Kallidus LMS (e2train)
LearnerWeb (MaxIT)
LearningServer IntraLearn
LearnShare LMS (Learnshare)
LMS Live (Wizdom Systems)
MindFlash E-Learning System
NetDimensions EKP Bronze
OnPoint Learning & Performance Suite
On-Tracker LMS (Interactive Solutions)
OutStart Evolution LMS (OutStart)
SSElearn Portal (SSE)
Syntrio Enterprise (Syntrio)
TeraLearn LMS (Teralearn.com)
The Learning Manager (Worldwide Interactive)
Tracker.Net (Platte Canyon)
TrainingPartner (Geometrix)
TrainingMine (Frontline Data Solutions)
Upside LMS (Upside Learning Solutions)
Virtual Training Assistant (RISC)

And if you want a MUCH longer list, go download the 475+ LMS names from here: LMS and Learning Platforms

eLearning Learning Launches New Features

Over on eLearning Learning, we've just launched a new version with some great new features.

In case you don't know about eLearning Learning, it brings together content from leading experts and companies like the Adobe Captivate Blog, Clark Quinn, Clive Shepherd, Jay Cross, Karl Kapp, and really too many to list. You can find a long list of the Featured sources on the right side. There is a lot more content that comes in as well beyond the Featured sources.

The home page itself will show you the latest and best content at any time. For example as I'm writing this, I see a couple of great posts right up top:

Best is decided by the system based on social signals - that's clicks, views, twitter, delicious, and other kinds of inputs that tell us what people are doing with the content. And we try really hard to make sure that great content from lesser known sources still makes it to the top.

Each day, week, month and year, the site generates a "Best Of" Edition. You can change the Edition at any time. That allows you to see some really great stuff looking a little more broadly than what you typically see on the home page. For example, if I look at July's Top eLearning Posts, I find (among others):

The site is categorized in various topics such as concepts like Instructional Design, Mobile, Social Learning; tools like Twitter, LMS, Flash, PowerPoint, Captivate; Companies like Rapid Intake, Saba; types like Examples and many more. For instance you could click on Mobile Samples and find a great post Mobile Learning Samples for mLearning Developers; or via Instructional Design for Rapid eLearning you can find Instructional Designer Competencies, Top 25 Rapid eLearning Blog Posts, Over 75 Free Rapid E-Learning Resources and many other great resources.

The intent of eLearning Learning is to bring together and make it easy to find great content. You will only see a snippet of each piece. When you click the link, you will be directed back to the source. In other words, we bring the content together, but we don't own the content. We want you still to comment and interact with the content back on the original site.

Visiting the site is probably one of the better ways to get to the content, but you can also subscribe to it by entering your email address and then choosing whether you want a Daily Edition or Weekly/Monthly/Annual Edition to be sent to you. If you've not already subscribed, then go over and do it now. It's worth the 30 seconds it takes.

There are some pretty interesting new features coming soon for eLearning Learning. We look forward to continuing to improve the site. If you have thoughts, or comments, please feel free to contact me: Tony Karrer via email at: akarrer@techempower.com.

Last, but certainly not least, this site is generously sponsored and made possible by Rapid Intake. Without them, we could not afford to keep the lights on. Please support them so we can continue to make this site better and better.

Emerging Asynchronous Conversation Models

I had an interesting conversation with Patrick Randolph from TalkWheel about different kinds of asynchronous conversation models that are emerging and how they might fit into broader eLearning Initiatives. Particularly we focused on the implications of TalkWheel, Quora and Namesake. Below I've captured aspects of our conversation (interestingly enough done via email - how old school). This post represents thinking from both of us that I've edited heavily to make it more easily consumed here in the blog.

There's obvious value in bringing the classroom collaboration dynamic to online learning. We see some of this dynamic when we run webinars and have chat. We also see it in twitter (see Twitter for Learning). The main issue with these is that the primary value is in the real-time nature. While Twitter is asynchronous, it's not easily used as other kinds of tools for discussion.

The standard model for asynchronous conversations is discussion forum software like vBulletin. I've talked before about the significant value that can be obtained as part of Discussion Forums for Knowledge Sharing at Capital City Bank and how that translates in a Success Formula for Discussion Forums in Financial Services. I also looked at Making Intranet Discussion Groups Effective.

However, I've struggled with the problem of destinations vs. social networks and the spread of conversation (see Forums vs. Social Networks). Because of that I've been watching closely what's happening with various tools that have different ways of supporting asynchronous conversation models. There are some new tools emerging that have a different take.

Talkwheel is made to handle real-time group conversations and asynchronous ones. It can act as an instant messaging service a bit like Yammer, HipChat for companies and other groups, but the layout is designed to make these discussions easier to see, archive, and work asynchronously. Because of the ability to attach documents, it can act like a collaboration platform. Each comment made within a thread appears as a tiny circle next to the name of the person who made the comment, and is linked by arrow to the person to whom the comment was made. The comments are also stacked and color-coded on the right side of the screen for reference. This organization makes the conversation seem more like a roundtable discussion.

Patrick tells us:

Talkwheel’s design makes class conversations easier to follow, more interactive, and more effectively organized. It eliminates the problem of navigating multithreaded conversations, enables real-time group conversation, and makes referencing asynchronous conversations much easier. Talkwheel’s dashboard organization allows teachers to organize all their classes and projects in one centralized location, while Talkwheel's analytics helps teachers and administrators quantitatively monitor their students’ progress throughout the year. Talkwheel’s collaboration platform is a new way of bringing students together in a way that is conducive to the group needs of online learning. In addition to e-learning, Talkwheel helps enterprises improve productivity and communication both internally and externally and allows users to organize their social and professional networks in an effective manner. It can be tried for free at Talkwheel.com.

Quora is a Q&A site nicely integrated with Facebook that has done a good job providing a means to ask questions and get answers. Each Quora answer is rated by users until the most popular answer is found. You can see a question below that had 16 answers provided by some pretty good folks and the top answer had 586 votes.

The answers are then used to provide valuable information to Quora users and the rest of the web. Quora has been able to form quite an elite network of VCs, entrepreneurs, and other experts to answer questions. They've also created topic pages such as: Learning Management System. It collects questions answer answers on that particular topic - you'll notice that there's not much expertise flowing around eLearning topics.

Finally, Namesake, is a tool for real-time and asynchronous conversations. It's a bit like Quora but more focused on conversation as compared to Q&A and it allows real-time conversation a bit like twitter. You can see an example of a conversation around phones below.

Like Quora, the goal is to build a network of user selected experts to provide valuable information to users. Within Namesake, any user can create topics of conversation for real-time chat and can follow conversations. Unlike Quora, Namesake is designed for real-time chats very similarly to the AIM Chat Rooms of old. New comments are stacked on top of the most recent one, updates are done in real-time, and chats are organized by high-level subject.

TalkWheel has taken a very different approach to its conversation model and is definitely aimed at smaller groups. I think that each conversation model has it's place and TalkWheel is more competitive with forum software but a much different visual model. Quora and Namesake are more trying to address the conversation from social networks issue.

All of these point to new types of conversation models that are emerging in tools.