Development:Tools/Team Organizing/Academy
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We are imagining an academy in which we offer theoretical lessons (either as videos or videos and written documents), but also practical lessons (with the possibility of those creating an output we need for our own research). Practical lessons could be evaluated by a team member ( not very scaleable in the future?).
We can achieve this using an LMS (Learning Management System) or using documents (probably not Office docs, but instead an app like Coda).
Maybe we can have an Coda Doc that contains the course overview and has links to all the lessons (imagining a collapsible Doc which is the Course Overview, then it collapses into all the lessons). For each lesson we could have a link for the practical side of the lesson, which when clicked generates a new Coda Doc with a template we created for that practical lesson, and the user can edit it. So that every user can have their personal Coda Doc for practical lessons, which they can edit and the submit the link for it somewhere.
EduFlow is certainly going in the right direction, but we need an app that is as scaleable as possible.
There are hundreds of LMS to choose from, according to Forbes.
Apps like Moodle, Blackboard are not suited for us because they were mainly created for universities. They are platforms, rather than LMS, such as Eduflow.
Comparison Table
Legend
X = Criteria fulfilled
~ = Criteria medium fulfilled
-- = Criteria not fulfilled
() = Footnote
Description
This table contains apps that have been mentioned at least a few times in articles that are the highest ranking in terms of SEO when searching for LMS.
Udemy is by far the most popular place for people looking to learn stuff, by watching courses, according to link. We should definitely use Udemy, but maybe also other apps, for which we are awaiting emails.
| Name | Consider? | Elimination Reason | Future Usecase | Presentation | Team Strength | Affordable | Design | Kudos (Praise) | Ease of use | Mobile | Accesibility | Additional features | Integrations | Funding | Changelog |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Skool | |||||||||||||||
| Udemy | Yes | "Guide on how to publish a course" | X (free to create and can publish courses as free) | ~ / X (overall good, but for assignments it's quite basic) | X | X (can search for any course and watching preview videos for them without registering) | |||||||||
| Thinkific | Yes, but not as popular as Udemy | No courses on investing or stocks ( at least on the free section) | |||||||||||||
| LearnWorlds | Sent an email | Very short, basic courses. A bit harder to access them as you have to look quite a bit. | |||||||||||||
| Cognitive Class | Only answer to emails from enrolled students (users) | Even so, they said that they doubt they would be able to address this piece of information. ( about instructor requirements) | |||||||||||||
| edX | Maybe | Hard to find information. ChatGPT says that you can become an instructor. | |||||||||||||
| Kajaby | No | Great app but it's more of an LMS as not everyone can easily access it, being behind a pay-wall. | !! Cannot test free trial as they need to hold $200 from the card. | ~ ($119, 199, 319 for 1000/10.000 and 20.000 users respectively) | Cannot create account without card details. | ||||||||||
| Podia | No | Very basic courses provided by them. Not specialized in courses, like other apps. | |||||||||||||
| Skillshare | No | Accesibility issues mentioned would make it harder for people to find us (lower audience) | Cannot create account without card details. | Can access free courses if you already have an account or can recieve free link for course and register but not put card details. | |||||||||||
| Canvas Network | No | Only universities and organizations can post courses. | |||||||||||||
| Coursera | No | Only universities or globally-renowned experts. | |||||||||||||
| FutureLearn | No | Criteria that don't fit us. Demonstrable expertise in an area of knowledge, strong academic research, a commitment to advancing education | |||||||||||||
| iversity | No | Cannot create and app your own courses | |||||||||||||
| Kadenze | No | Cannot create and app your own courses | |||||||||||||
| Khan Academy | No | Cannot create and app your own courses | |||||||||||||
| Udacity | No | Does not allow individual courses and they partner with big universities. | |||||||||||||
| LinkedIn Learning | No | Subscription based for users. Bad accessbility. Hard to upload your courses. | Can either buy courses or buy a subscription for access to all courses. | ||||||||||||
| TreeHouse | No | Bad accessibilty, subscription based, you can't upload courses. | Hard to view their courses, as you have to search on Google (instead of being on the main page) | ||||||||||||
| OpenLearning | No | Only offers 20 courses from Universities, from which you gain a qualification. | |||||||||||||
| MasterClass | No | Can only access course with a subscription, making it hard to access and reducing our possible audience. | |||||||||||||
| Will | leave | this | space to | separate | LMS | from | Courses | App | Which | We Are | Focusing on | For now | |||
| Coda | Yes | Example doc. | ? | X (only pay for doc makers) | X | X (templates for Kudos boards) | X | X | X | When sending link to doc, it can be made as view-only, view and comment , edit. | X (Linear,Slack, etc) | Had 4 funding rounds. $80 million in the most recent round. | Here | ||
| Eduflow | Maybe | Not limitless scaleable since it allows at max 500 monthly active users. | Interesting elements like Peer Reviews and Certificates | Youtube | ~ (yes, but only allows 500 users) | X | X? | X? | You can create courses. Adding activities (Youtube 3:20) is a very good feature because of their options : Submission, Video, Self-Review. Content, Discussion. | ||||||
| iSpring | Waiting for email. | ||||||||||||||
| CypherLearning | Have to contact them within working days and hours to see pricing | ||||||||||||||
| Circle.co | ~ ($360/month, 10 admins and 100 moderators) | ||||||||||||||
| Guru | No, but interesting search capabilities | Pricing makes it unscalable. | -- 10$/month/user | Interesting search functionality across apps | |||||||||||
| 360Learning | Pricing makes it unscalable. | -- ($8/user/month) | |||||||||||||
| CoAssemble | No | Website keeps crashing when trying to generate course or log-in to share via link. | X ($60/year to remove watermarks for your and students) | You can automatically generate courses (beta). | |||||||||||
| TalentLMS | No | Unscaleable because you get taxed for every user. | |||||||||||||
| Teachable | Yes, but not as popular as Udemy (only 20 free courses) |
|
Great Analytics tools (to understand who your audience is) | ||||||||||||
| LearnUpon | No | Not scaleable because they charge more for every 1000 users. | |||||||||||||
| Absorb | No | Not scaleable due to pricing. | -- (pay $16/month/active user, apart from the license cost) | ||||||||||||
| Docebo | No | Pricing starts at $25.000/year. (link) | You can scale up or down to as many users. but you have to pay for every monthly active user. | ||||||||||||
| Blackboard Learn | No | Youtube | Classic School LMS. Design, workflow is not suited. | ||||||||||||
| Canvas | No | Youtube | Classic School LMS. Design, workflow is not suited (check min 10:03). | X (free to use, with self-enlorment via a received link) | ~ / X | Course by default is private. | |||||||||
| Moodle | No | At max 1200 users. making it unscaleable. | |||||||||||||
| Schoology | No | Created specifically for schools. Similar to Google Classroom, not what we are looking for. | |||||||||||||
| Might Network | X ($99/month, unlimited admins, moderators, members) | ||||||||||||||
| SkyPrep | No | Cannot accomodate unlimited users, making it not very scaleable. | |||||||||||||
| D2L Brightspace | No | Extremely high pricing | Cannot contact them without work email and phone number, to ask for pricing. | -- ($30,000/year for 500 users, according to link) | Easy to create courses using drag and drop features. |