I am in the midst of my second LMS roll out, and although I am certainly no expert, I've failed enough times to potentially save you some time and heartache. There are several very big questions that come up when a company or organization is looking to move their curriculum to an elearning environment. The first is "what LMS is right for me"? The second, which will follow immediately, is "which authoring tool is right for me"?
There are many websites comparing many LMS products as well all of the authoring tools out there. I can't say that I am an expert on any of these items, but I have enough experience around a couple to offer you some short cuts to success. I will start with the LMS I have recently selected and then the authoring tool, and you can make the judgement as to if these might meet your needs.
When selecting an LMS, there were a few perameters I need to stick within. I needed something affordable, easy to use, with great support, and a company that didn't mind someone completely new to LMS'. I found all of these expected values in TraCorp and have since found even more unexpected values in their services. TraCorp is a relatively small LMS provider. They offer a very catered feel, to a very generalized product. Don't take that wrong, one of the best things about their LMS product is that it is simple and generalized. TraCorp offers a rarity in the LMS industry, by offering a "community based LMS". This type of LMS means that every LMS customer of TraCorp shares the same LMS platform. If one customer wants to make a change to the platform, they are quoted a price and if they agree and pay for it, all the customers get the benefit of the change. It's an amazing system for a company looking for to ride the coat tails of larger companies as they pay to make improvements to the program. TraCorp also provides this service for an incredibly nominal startup fee and the hosting fee is next to free in my opinion. Customer service has been spot on as well. So, if you're looking for an LMS that will grow and improve without you sinking money into it, TraCorp just might be the ticket.
In my search for an LMS, I tried the big ones as well. Moodle and BlackBoard. These are very different products. Moodle is an open source LMS, meaning anyone can write code and develop for the platform. I think this is a great feature, if you know how to harness that sort of power...I don't! Another option is BlackBoard, which is a proprietary LMS, making it the polar opposite of Moodle. These two are the equivalent of Apple versus Android and there is no "right" answer. It's a preference. I felt that TraCorp being a smaller developer, could offer me more assistance and support than I would get from either of the big companies, which is why I opted for them.
Authoring tools are your next hurdle. I shopped Lectora, Captivate, and Storyline. They all offer similar services, but what really swayed me was simply calling the phone number to all three and seeing what kind of service I got. I ended up having a lengthy conversation with a sales specialist at Articulate (the manufacturer of Storyline), and was very impressed. Upon a quick inquire to TraCorp to verify Storyline was a good choice, I pulled the trigger and my company invested the $1300 for the software that we would use to develop our curriculum modules. Have no fear though, TraCorp would be happy to completely author and develop your curriculum if you would like them to.
I hope you find these two recommendations for TraCorp and Storyline to be helpful. I have included links to all of these companies website in the resources section.
Resources
www.TraCorp.com
www.Moodle.com
www.BlackBoard.com
www.adobe.com/products/captivate.html
www.Lectora.com
www.articulate.com/products/storyline-overview.php
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