In this comprehensive guide, we’ll walk you through the step-by-step process to create and sell online courses on WordPress.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. Why sell online courses on wordpress?
3. Getting Started with WordPress
4. Choosing the Right Theme
5. Selecting a Learning Management System (LMS) Plugin
6. Creating Your Course Content
7. Setting Up Your Course in WordPress
8. Integrating Payment Gateways
9. Marketing Your Course
10. Managing and Growing Your Online Course Business
11. Providing Excellent Student Support
12. Leveraging Technology for Enhanced Learning
13. Expanding Your Course Offerings
14. Analysing and Improving Performance
15. Ensuring Legal Compliance
16. Conclusion

1. Introduction

Online education is booming, and creating and selling online courses on wordpress has never been easier, thanks to platforms like WordPress. This guide will cover everything you need to know, from setting up your website to marketing your course effectively.

2. Why sell online courses on wordpress?

WordPress is a popular choice for creating online courses due to its flexibility, ease of use, and the vast array of plugins and themes available. Key advantages include:

• Customizability: You can tailor your site to match your brand and the specific needs of your course.
• Scalability: Start small and expand as your business grows.
• Cost-Effectiveness: Many high-quality themes and plugins are available for free or at a low cost.
• Community Support: A large community of developers and users can provide help and resources.

3. Getting Started with WordPress

Choosing a Hosting Provider

The first step in creating your online course website is choosing a reliable hosting provider. Some popular options include:

• Bluehost: Known for its excellent customer service and easy WordPress integration.
• SiteGround: Offers high performance and robust security features.
• WP Engine: A premium option that provides managed WordPress hosting for faster load times and better support.

Installing WordPress

Once you’ve chosen your hosting provider, you’ll need to install WordPress. Most hosting providers offer one-click installations, making the process straightforward:

1. Log into your hosting account.
2. Find the WordPress installation option (usually under the website or scripts section).
3. Follow the prompts to install WordPress on your domain.

4. Choosing the Right Theme

Education Themes

Selecting the right theme is crucial for the look and functionality of your online course site. Some recommended themes for education websites include:

• Astra: A lightweight and customizable theme that works well with most LMS plugins.
• Eduma: Specifically designed for educational purposes, offering features like course structures, events, and more.
• Academy: A learning management theme with built-in course and user management features.

Customization Tips

Customize your theme to ensure it aligns with your branding and provides a user-friendly experience:

• Logo and Color Scheme: Incorporate your logo and choose a color scheme that reflects your brand.
• Navigation: Ensure easy navigation with clear menus and links to important sections.
• Responsive Design: Choose a theme that looks great on both desktop and mobile devices.

5. Selecting a Learning Management System (LMS) Plugin

Popular LMS Plugins

An LMS plugin transforms your WordPress site into a fully functional e-learning platform. To create and manage your online courses, you’ll need an WordPress LMS plugin. Some of the most popular options include:

• LearnDash: Known for its robust features and ease of use, suitable for a variety of course types.
• LifterLMS: Offers a range of features including multimedia lessons, quizzes, and drip content.
• Sensei by WooCommerce: Integrates seamlessly with WooCommerce for selling courses.
• Tutor LMS: User-friendly and includes many essential features.

Features to Look For

When choosing an LMS plugin, consider the following features:

• Course Creation Tools: Easy-to-use tools for building courses, modules, and lessons.
• Multimedia Support: Ability to include videos, audio, and other multimedia content.
• Quizzes and Assignments: Features for assessing students’ progress.
• Student Management: Tools for tracking student enrollment and performance.
• Payment Integration: Options for selling courses and handling payments.

6. Creating Your Course Content

Structuring Your Course

A well-structured course helps students learn effectively and keeps them engaged. Consider the following structure:

• Introduction: An overview of the course objectives and what students will learn.
• Modules: Break down your course into manageable sections or modules.
• Lessons: Each module should contain several lessons focused on specific topics.
• Quizzes and Assignments: Include assessments to test students’ knowledge.

Creating Videos and Multimedia

Engaging multimedia content is key to an effective online course. Here are some tips:

• Videos: Use high-quality video recordings to explain concepts. Tools like Camtasia or ScreenFlow can help with editing.
• Audio: Ensure clear and crisp audio. Consider using a good microphone and sound editing software.
• Slides and Documents: Supplement videos with slides, PDFs, and other downloadable materials.

Writing Course Materials

In addition to multimedia content, well-written course materials are essential:

• Clear and Concise: Write in a clear, concise manner that’s easy for students to understand.
• Engaging: Use a conversational tone to keep students engaged.
• Organized: Structure your materials logically, with headings and subheadings for easy navigation.

7. Setting Up Your Course in WordPress

Installing and Configuring Your LMS Plugin

Once you’ve created your content, it’s time to set up your course on WordPress:

1. Install your chosen LMS plugin from the WordPress plugin repository.
2. Configure the plugin settings to match your course requirements.
3. Create your course structure by adding modules and lessons.

Creating Course Modules and Lessons

With your LMS plugin installed, follow these steps to create your course:

1. Add New Course: Navigate to the LMS section in your WordPress dashboard and select “Add New Course.”
2. Create Modules: Divide your course into modules. Each module should cover a specific topic.
3. Add Lessons: Within each module, create individual lessons. Include videos, text, and other materials.
4. Set Up Quizzes: Add quizzes and assignments to test students’ knowledge and provide feedback.

8. Integrating Payment Gateways

Popular Payment Gateways

To sell online courses on wordpress, you need a payment gateway. Ensure your LMS plugin supports the payment gateway you choose.

Some popular options include:

• PayPal: Widely used and easy to set up.
• Stripe: Offers seamless integration and supports a variety of payment methods.
• WooCommerce: A powerful e-commerce plugin that can handle course sales and payments.

Setting Up WooCommerce for Course Sales

WooCommerce is a great option to sell online courses on wordpress. Here’s how to set it up:

1. Install WooCommerce: From the WordPress plugin repository, install and activate WooCommerce.
2. Configure Settings: Set up your store by following the WooCommerce setup wizard.
3. Create Product: Add your course as a product. Include details like the course description, price, and images.
4. Set Up Payments: Configure payment gateways in the WooCommerce settings to accept payments.

9. Marketing Your Course

Create a Sales Page

Design a compelling sales page for your course. Include information about the course content, benefits, testimonials, and pricing. Use a call-to-action button to encourage visitors to enroll.

Building an Email List

An email list is a powerful marketing tool for promoting your online course:

• Lead Magnets: Offer free resources (e.g., eBooks, webinars) to attract subscribers.
• Email Campaigns: Send regular newsletters with valuable content and course updates.
• Automated Sequences: Use email marketing tools like Mailchimp or ConvertKit to automate your campaigns.

Social Media Marketing

Leverage social media to reach a broader audience:

• Platforms: Use platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter to promote your course.
• Content: Share valuable content related to your course topic to attract followers.
• Engagement: Engage with your audience through comments, messages, and live sessions.

Content Marketing Strategies

Content marketing can drive traffic to your site and build your authority:

• Blog Posts: Write informative blog posts related to your course topic.
• Guest Blogging: Contribute articles to popular blogs in your niche.
• SEO: Optimize your content for search engines to attract organic traffic.

 Offer Discounts and Promotions

Attract more students by offering limited-time discounts, bundles, or referral incentives. Most LMS plugins allow you to create coupon codes and promotional offers.

10. Managing and Growing Your Online Course Business

Engaging with Students

Student engagement is crucial for retention and success:

• Community: Create a community space (e.g., a forum or Facebook group) for students to interact.
• Feedback: Regularly seek feedback from students and make improvements based on their suggestions.
• Support: Provide prompt and helpful support to address any issues or questions.

Track Student Progress

Use the reporting features of your LMS plugin to track student progress and engagement. This data helps you understand which parts of your course are most effective and where students might be struggling.

Gathering Feedback and Making Improvements

Continuous improvement is key to maintaining a high-quality course:

• Surveys: Use surveys to gather detailed feedback from students.
• Analytics: Track course performance using analytics tools.
• Updates: Regularly update your course content to keep it relevant and valuable.

Scaling Your Business

Once your course is successful, consider scaling your business:

• Additional Courses: Create new courses to expand your offerings.
• Membership Sites: Offer a membership site with exclusive content and benefits.
• Partnerships: Partner with other educators or influencers to reach a wider audience.

11. Providing Excellent Student Support

Create a Support System

Establish a system to provide support to your students. This can include a dedicated email address, a support forum, or a ticketing system. Make sure students know how to reach you if they have questions or encounter issues.

Develop a FAQ Section

A Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) section can help address common concerns and reduce the volume of support requests. Include answers to questions about course access, payment issues, and course content.

Engage with Students

Create a sense of community by engaging with your students regularly. Use forums, discussion boards, or live Q&A sessions to interact with them. This can improve their learning experience and satisfaction.

12. Leveraging Technology for Enhanced Learning

Use Multimedia Content

Enhance your courses with multimedia content such as videos, audio recordings, and interactive elements. This can help cater to different learning styles and make the content more engaging.

Incorporate Gamification

Gamification elements like badges, certificates, and leaderboards can motivate students and make learning more enjoyable. Many LMS plugins support gamification features.

Mobile Optimization

Ensure your courses are mobile-friendly. Many students prefer to access content on their smartphones or tablets, so make sure your website and course materials are optimized for mobile devices.

13. Expanding Your Course Offerings

Develop Additional Courses

Once your first course is successful, consider developing additional courses. This can help you attract a broader audience and increase your revenue. Think about complementary topics or advanced versions of your existing courses.

Bundle Courses

Offer course bundles at a discounted rate to encourage students to enroll in multiple courses. This can increase the perceived value and boost sales.

Partner with Other Experts

Collaborate with other experts in your field to create joint courses. This can expand your reach and bring new perspectives to your course offerings.

14. Analyzing and Improving Performance

Analyze Course Data

Regularly analyze the data from your LMS to understand student engagement, completion rates, and feedback. Use this data to make informed decisions about course improvements.

A/B Testing

Experiment with different elements of your course and marketing strategies through A/B testing. This can help you determine what works best for your audience and optimize your approach.

Continuously Improve

Always look for ways to improve your courses and website. Stay updated with the latest trends in e-learning and incorporate new techniques and technologies as needed.

15. Ensuring Legal Compliance

Protect Your Content

Ensure your courses are protected against unauthorised distribution. Use DRM (Digital Rights Management) tools and watermarking to safeguard your content.

Compliance with Laws

Ensure your website and courses comply with relevant laws and regulations, such as GDPR for data protection in the European Union. This includes having a clear privacy policy and terms of service.

Conclusion

Creating and selling online courses on WordPress is a powerful way to monetize your expertise while helping others achieve their learning goals. By following the steps outlined in this guide to sell online courses on wordpress, you can build a professional and engaging e-learning platform that attracts and retains students. Remember to stay flexible and continuously seek feedback to improve your courses and overall strategy. With dedication and the right tools, you can create a successful online course business that grows over time.

Subodh

Product Marketing Specialist, VdoCipher.

www.vdocipher.com

The post How to Create and Sell Online Courses on WordPress appeared first on VdoCipher Blog.

It’s a dynamic playground where popular platforms like Netflix, Disney+, and HBO Max compete for your screen time, while social media giants like YouTube, Facebook Live, and Twitch keep us endlessly entertained. Meanwhile, E-Learning pioneers like Coursera, Udemy, and Khan Academy are schooling millions with their engaging video lessons.

For viewers, it’s all about finding the perfect mix of entertainment and education. For businesses, it’s about staying ahead in the race to deliver fresh, engaging content that clicks with audiences.

In this comprehensive analysis, we’ll unravel the stats and trends for VOD/OTT streaming platforms, social media platforms and e-learning platforms that are redefining streaming basis subscriber growth, content consumption habits, device preferences, and the emerging trends.

Without further ado, let’s get started.

VOD & OTT Streaming Stats

Subscriber Counts:

Additionally, more on this:

• Though Amazon Prime Video has around 220 million subscribers, it’s unclear how many actively use Prime Video due to its inclusion in Amazon Prime. 

• Together with Hulu and ESPN+, Disney as a platform reaches a combined total of 224.7 million. 

• Google Play Movies & TV/ Vudu VOD platform subscriber metrics are unclear because both of these operate as a rental/purchase service rather than a subscription-based platform.

Content Consumption and Trends:

1. Netflix: Still a leading service, Netflix remains a top service with originals like Bridgerton and Stranger Things, plus popular licensed shows like Seinfeld. Offering plans from $7 to $23 a month, it boasts a catalog of over 5,500 titles. (SlashFilm)​​ (Entertainment Tonight)​

2. Amazon Prime Video: With over 18,000 movies and nearly 2,000 TV shows, Prime Video is a leading streaming service, attracting viewers with its originals, licensed titles, and exclusive rentals. (SlashFilm)​

3. Disney+: Thrives with its Disney legacy content, Star Wars, and Marvel franchises. It features around 7,000 TV episodes and 500 films, appealing to nostalgia-driven viewers. (TV Guide)​​ (SlashFilm)​

4. HBO Max: Offers over 10,000 hours of content, combining Warner Bros., DC, and CNN. Its impressive library of originals and hit shows, like Succession and Euphoria, keeps users engaged. (Entertainment Tonight)​​ (SlashFilm)​

5. Hulu: Leads in up-to-date TV content with next-day access to current episodes. It offers over 68,000 hours of programming, including reality shows, live TV, and on-demand movies.​ (TV Guide)​​ (SlashFilm)​

6. Peacock: The NBC Universal platform attracts users with its mix of originals and licensed content like The Office. Its library of 15,000 hours focuses heavily on comedy and crime dramas​. (Entertainment Tonight)​​ (SlashFilm)​

7. Apple TV+: Despite a smaller catalog than competitors, Apple TV+ distinguishes itself through high-quality, exclusive originals like Ted Lasso and The Morning Show. (SlashFilm)​

8. Crunchyroll: This platform has a vast library of over 1,200 anime titles, offering both subtitled and dubbed versions. 

9. Paramount+: Paramount+ attracts Star Trek and Yellowstone fans with CBS Sports, Showtime add-ons, reality shows, and live TV. (Entertainment Tonight)​
10. Search for Religious Information: 30% of U.S. adults go online to search for church live streaming or information about religion, indicating a strong interest in digital religious content.

Device Preferences:

1. Smart TVs lead as the top streaming devices, used by 74.5% of households. Streaming sticks follow at 64%, while gaming consoles have gained popularity, reaching 43.5%.
2. In Asia, mobile phones have surpassed desktops as the preferred streaming devices, with 45% streaming via mobile. Big screens, like TVs, account for 43%, while desktops are used by just 7%. (Comparitech)​
3. Millennials and Gen Z are known to shift their subscription patterns and are more likely to cancel and resubscribe based on specific content​.
4. Binge-watching is highest among the 30 to 44-year-old age group, at 70%, and this preference shapes their device usage​. (Exploding Topics)​
5. Ad-supported services are gaining traction, as nearly 57% of consumers express interest in them for their cost-saving potential​. (Comparitech)​

Emerging Trends

1. Subscription Fatigue: Due to rising SVOD prices, over 50% of consumers have switched to cheaper, ad-supported versions. The shift to AVOD is growing, with ad-supported streaming projected to reach $81.2 billion in 2024.
2. AI in Streaming: AI enhances viewing hours by up to 80% through personalized recommendations. Studios using AI for content creation and prediction see up to a 12% increase in viewership. (Axinom)​ (Muvi One)​
3. Short-form Video: Short-form videos are gaining popularity, with Netflix offering series under 15 minutes per episode, catering to younger and busy audiences. (Exploding Topics)​
4. Niche and Non-English Content: Demand for niche platforms and non-English originals is rising, as seen with Dark and Money Heist. Local-language content appeals broadly.. (Exploding Topics)​​ (Muvi One)​
5. 5G and Immersive Content: The rollout of 5G will enable faster download speeds and latency-free streaming, supporting 4K and 8K videos. AR/VR content and spatial streaming will offer immersive experiences, particularly for sports and concerts.​ (Muvi One)​
6. Live Sports and Docuseries: Live sports streaming draws viewers, with Netflix set to stream a tennis match in 2024. Docuseries like Tiger King gained 64 million viewers in its first month, showing a strong demand for this content. (Exploding Topics)​​ (Fast Company)​

E-Learning Video Courses Streaming Stats

User Count:

Content Consumption and Trends:

1. Coursera: Technology (data science, computer science) and business courses account for 56% of enrollments, with 77% of users leveraging the platform for career skills.​ (BitDegree)​​ (Online Courseing)​

2. Udemy: Web development, IT certification prep, and marketing lead among the 200,000+ courses, and business-focused courses saw a 70% pandemic-driven growth​. (Thinkific)​

3. edX: Computer science, business management, and engineering are high-demand subjects, with STEM enrollments up 28% thanks to professional certificates.​ (Online Courseing)​

4. Khan Academy: Math makes up 55% of views in K-12 and SAT prep, while mobile learners account for 40% of traffic amidst a 60% pandemic-driven usage boost​. (BitDegree)​

5. LinkedIn Learning: Business analytics and leadership development lead among 16,000+ courses, with 80% of learners using it for career advancement​. (skillfrontier.io)​

6. MasterClass: Creative arts, business leadership, and cooking lessons are most popular, while self-care and wellness course consumption jumped 80%​.

7. Skillshare: Photography, graphic design, and writing are highly viewed, with user-generated courses in creative hobbies accounting for 40% of enrollments​. (Thinkific)​

8. Pluralsight: Cloud computing, cybersecurity, and software development are trending, with 55% of businesses using the platform to close tech skill gaps​. (skillfrontier.io)​

9. FutureLearn: Healthcare, language, and digital skills courses are popular, and business/management enrollments surged by 30% for workforce upskilling.​ (Thinkific)​

10. Treehouse: Web development and programming remain top subjects, and shorter courses (under 30 minutes) saw a 45% increase in consumption.​ (Thinkific)​

11. Teachable: Content marketing, business branding, and freelancing are popular, with 68% of platform content creation and consumption driven by solo entrepreneurs​. (Thinkific)​

12. Thinkific: Business skills, fitness, and health courses dominate enrollments, and fitness coaching classes saw a 50% post-2020 increase​. (Thinkific)​

13. Codecademy: Python, web development, and data science courses are most popular, while backend programming languages are up 30% in interest.​ (Thinkific)​​ (Online Courseing)​

14. Simplilearn: Data science, project management, and IT security are in demand, while certification programs represent 60% of new enrollments​.

15. OpenLearn: Languages, health, and social sciences attract significant interest, with social sciences courses up by 50% due to rising student demand.​ (Thinkific)​

16. Udacity: Machine learning, data science, and robotics are the most popular, and its skill-focused nanodegree courses boast up to 80% retention.​ (Online Courseing)​

Device Preferences:

When it comes to streaming educational content, different devices cater to diverse preferences and learning habits. 

Mobile Devices:

• Growth Trend: Mobile devices are increasingly popular for e-learning. In 2023, about 68% of online course content was consumed on mobile devices like smartphones and tablets.​ (Comparitech)​

• Regional Influence: In regions like Asia and Latin America, mobile streaming accounts for nearly 45% of educational content consumption.​ (Comparitech)​

• K-12: Approximately 40% of Khan Academy users stream content through mobile apps, leveraging offline downloads for flexible learning.​ (BitDegree)​

Desktops/Laptops:

• Desktops or laptops remain the primary devices for detailed and technical learning. Over 70% of e-learning content is accessed via these devices, particularly for coding or intensive coursework​. (Online Courseing)​​ (skillfrontier.io)​

• Udemy: Around 80% of Udemy users prefer desktops for interactive and longer courses due to the better user experience​. (Thinkific)​

Tablets:

• Tablets offer a middle ground between desktop and mobile devices, attracting around 20% of users, particularly for video lessons and creative content like design or writing.​ (Thinkific)​

• Coursera: Tablets represent 10-15% of Coursera’s device preferences due to the flexibility of switching between multiple devices.​ (BitDegree)​

Smart TVs:

• Streaming on Smart TVs is gaining traction, especially for professionally produced video courses. MasterClass and LinkedIn Learning reported a 30% growth in TV-based viewing in 2023.​ (Thinkific)​​ (skillfrontier.io)​

• Mobile & Desktop: While learners primarily access courses through desktop computers, mobile access remains crucial, particularly in regions with higher smartphone adoption like Asia and Africa.​ (BitDegree)​

Emerging Trends

Emerging trends in educational content streaming reflect how advancements in technology and changing consumer behaviors shape the e-learning landscape. Here are some emerging trends with numbers:

Short-Form Content:

• Micro-Learning: The need for quick, digestible content is on the rise, with 55% of learners preferring short-form video lessons under 10 minutes.​ (Exploding Topics)​
• Increased Retention: Platforms adopting bite-sized videos (2-5 minutes) have reported up to 80% improved engagement​. (Axinom)​

Mobile-First Learning:

• Mobile Usage: Mobile-first strategies are becoming prevalent as mobile device usage exceeds 68% for streaming educational content.​ (Comparitech)​

• Regional Uptake: In Asia and Latin America, mobile-based course consumption has surpassed desktop by up to 20%.​ (Comparitech)​

Interactive and Gamified Learning:

• Gamification Impact: Interactive courses using quizzes and gamified elements increase student retention by over 35% compared to static content​. (Fast Company)​

• Immersive Experiences: AR/VR technology is projected to grow by over 20% in educational use due to its engaging, immersive learning experiences.​ (Muvi One)​

Live and Social Learning:

• Live Streaming: Live lessons and real-time feedback drive increased participation, with platforms like LinkedIn Learning noting a 60% rise in live video engagement​. (Axinom)​

• Community Learning: Collaborative platforms with active student communities, such as Skillshare and MasterClass, have seen a 40% increase in shared learning experiences​. (Thinkific)​

Adaptive Learning and AI:

• Personalization: AI-powered recommendation engines have increased student satisfaction by 20% through curated, personalized course suggestions​. (Muvi One)​

• Adaptive Paths: Platforms using adaptive learning paths tailored to individual progress have reduced course dropout rates by 18%.​ (Axinom)​

Social Media Platform Streaming Stats

User Count:

Content Consumption and Trends

1. YouTube: Gaming, music, and educational videos remain the most popular, contributing to over 1 billion hours of video watched daily. YouTube Shorts have driven a 30% increase in engagement since their launch​. (Brian Vander Waal)​​ (The Tech Edvocate)​

2. Twitch: Gaming is the primary driver, accounting for 80% of live streams, with non-gaming content (like Just Chatting) seeing a 20% annual growth. Average concurrent viewership is around 2.5 million.​ (UpJourney)​

3. Facebook: Live streaming content and video posts (including Watch) garner 1 billion daily views, with a noticeable 30% growth in video consumption. (Transizion)​​ (Upskillwise)​

4. Instagram: Reels are now the primary engagement format, making up more than 20% of time spent on the platform.​ (Brian Vander Waal)​​ (The Tech Edvocate)​

5. TikTok: Short-form videos drive an average of over 850 minutes of monthly usage per user, with dance challenges, memes, and educational clips being among the most viral content​. (Thinkific)​​ (Brian Vander Waal)​

6. Snapchat: Visual messaging and Stories dominate, with 75% of Gen Z active daily. Spotlight, Snapchat’s short-form content feature, grew by 40% in 2023​. (Transizion)​

7. Twitter:  Twitter Spaces (audio) and video tweets receive 10x the engagement of text posts, while sports, news, and entertainment videos are top performers​. (Upskillwise)​

8. Dailymotion: News, entertainment, and sports videos lead content views, with the platform reporting 300 million monthly visitors across Europe and Asia​. (Brian Vander Waal)​

Device Preferences

Mobile Devices:

• Growth Trend: Mobile device usage is dominant on platforms like Instagram and TikTok, with over 95% of Instagram users and nearly 100% of TikTok’s 1 billion users accessing the platforms via smartphones.​ (Brian Vander Waal)​​ (Thinkific)​
• YouTube: More than 70% of YouTube’s global watch time comes from mobile devices​. (The Tech Edvocate)​
• Facebook: Facebook sees over 80% of its active users accessing content on mobile devices, especially for short videos and Facebook Live.​ (Transizion)​

Desktops/Laptops:

• Dominant Device: Desktops and laptops remain key for detailed and interactive streaming, especially on platforms like Twitch and Twitter, where they account for 60% and 40% of viewership, respectively​. (UpJourney)​​ (Upskillwise)​
• Twitch: Desktop streaming is crucial due to the need for interactivity in gaming content, representing around 60% of total Twitch viewership​. (UpJourney)​

Tablets:

• Balanced Preference: Tablets offer a mix of portability and screen size, making them attractive for platforms like YouTube, where tablet usage contributes to nearly 15% of total mobile watch time.​ (The Tech Edvocate)​
• Amazon Live: Tablets provide a flexible browsing experience, helping shoppers stream product demos interactively​. (UpJourney)​

Smart TVs:

• Emerging Trend: Connected TVs are gaining traction, with YouTube reporting over 20% of watch time coming from smart TVs, particularly for long-form and professionally produced content.​ (Transizion)​
• Facebook Watch: Facebook’s episodic series and curated videos attract increasing TV-based viewing through smart TV apps and streaming devices​. (Upskillwise)​

Emerging Trends

When it comes to emerging trends in streaming content, different behaviors and technological shifts are shaping the landscape:

1. Short-Form Video: Platforms like TikTok and YouTube Shorts are leading a surge in short-form video consumption. TikTok’s rapid growth to over 1 billion users is driving this trend, and YouTube Shorts have seen a 30% rise in engagement​. (Thinkific)​​ (Brian Vander Waal)​
2. Live Streaming: Real-time interaction via platforms like Twitch and Instagram Live is gaining popularity, particularly in gaming and influencer marketing. Twitch saw a significant increase in non-gaming live streams, while Facebook Live videos received twice the engagement of standard posts​. (Transizion)​​ (UpJourney)​
3. Connected TV: Smart TVs are gaining traction for streaming, with YouTube reporting a 20% watch time increase from connected TVs. Professional content, like YouTube’s original series and longer form shows, benefit from TV-based viewing.​ (Transizion)​​ (The Tech Edvocate)​
4. E-Commerce Integration: Social platforms like Amazon Live and Instagram Shopping are blending content and commerce, making it easier for users to shop directly from live streams or videos.​ (UpJourney)​
5. Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR): AR filters and VR experiences are being incorporated into streaming, especially on Snapchat and Instagram, providing users with immersive and interactive content.​ (Brian Vander Waal)​​ (Transizion)​

Conclusion

The streaming revolution is in full swing as VOD and OTT platforms continue to gain massive followings with ever-diversifying content preferences. Social media streaming remains a creative place where influencers, gamers, and content creators reach millions instantly. Meanwhile, E-learning services like Coursera and Khan Academy are transforming online education with dynamic video courses. These shifts indicate major changes, with content creators adopting new strategies to attract viewers, businesses using data to compete, and consumers enjoying a wide spectrum of entertainment and educational content.

Akash Kandari

Hi, I am Akash, an engineer turned marketer. I talk about SaaS products, video tech, and product marketing. When not working I enjoy my time watching anime, learning something new and hanging out with friends & family.

The post Video Streaming Stats 2024: Trends Across VOD, OTT, and More appeared first on VdoCipher Blog.

What is LMS (learning management system) platform

An LMS (Learning Management System) is a web-based or software application specially designed to facilitate the creation, management, delivery, and monitoring of e-learning, educational content, development programs and learning activities. LMS acts as a central platform to manage courses, evaluate performance, and track learning progress at various stages. Since it is a cloud-based service, it can be accessed from anywhere using an active internet connection.

Some key features of an LMS platform are course creation and management, curriculum and learning paths management, reporting and analytics, collaboration tools, and other integrations with business intelligent tools like Tableau or its alternatives.

Popular LMS platforms include Moodle, TalentLMS, Blackboard, and Canvas. These platforms cater to different industries and use cases such as K-12, higher education, professional development, and corporate training.

For example, a course creator can create courses on ‘Digital Marketing’ and upload videos and other resources on an LMS platform. They can later create assignments and quizzes. Many companies use LMS platforms to onboard new joiners and provide training material based on their job profile. An organization may integrate an LMS platform with their HR system to automatically enrol newly hired employees and track their completion status.

Types of LMS platforms or LMS website

Cloud-Based LMS

These LMS are hosted on the service provider’s servers and accessible anytime from any place. It’s a good choice for organizations, remote teams, and learners across different locations. Example – LearnUpon and TalentLMS

Self-Hosted LMS

This type of LMS is hosted within an organization’s servers. Installation and setup require technical expertise but there are many customization options. Examples – Moodle and iSpring Learn.

Open Source LMS

As the name suggests, open-source LMS are free to use, modify, and distribute. These LMS usually have a strong community where people contribute updates and various improvements. They require technical expertise to set up and manage but can be easily customized as per business needs. Examples – Open edX and Sakai.

Commercial LMS

These are typically sold by a vendor as a locally hosted enterprise product, hosted on an organization’s servers, or as a SAAS offering, hosted on the vendor’s servers with online accessibility.

Benefits and Importance of an online LMS platform

Centralized learning repository – LMS platforms provide a central platform to store, organize and manage learning content. It makes the content easily accessible to admins and learners. It also reduces the risk of losing learning resources.

Time and cost efficiency – LMS platforms have a lot of automated administrative processes such as registration, enrollment, and tracking. This reduces a lot of time and cost. It also reduces the workload on educators and admins, giving them more time to focus on the learning process aspects.

Personalized learning experience – Educators can create curriculum and learning materials on LMS platforms as per the learner’s unique preferences and needs. A personalized learning experience ensures learning engagement and higher retention rates.

Flexibility and accessibility – LMS platforms support various content types such as images, videos, and text, and cater to different learning styles. Learners also get to access the content anytime and anywhere on any supported device.

Scalability – Most LMS platforms are easily scalable to accommodate the growing count of learners or users and educational content, making it cost-effective for organizations where the learning and training needs are expandable.

Data security and privacy – Popular LMS platforms have robust security measures in place to protect their confidential data such as user information and video content. This includes measures such as secure authentication protocols, encryption, and access control to ensure secure access and sharing.

 Some of the basic features of LMS Tools

Role of LMS Platforms in Education

In an LMS setting, teachers are facilitators, providing a learning environment where students can conduct research and engage with technological resources to professionals.

• • Role of Teachers – In an LMS, teachers act more as facilitators than traditional instructors. They set up an environment where students can independently explore and learn using various technological tools. This helps students become adept in handling information, which is crucial in today’s information-heavy world.
  • Adapting to Student Needs – Different students have different learning paces and capabilities. Some may struggle with deadlines, while others may need more challenges. The LMS helps instructors to tailor their teaching strategies to meet these diverse needs.
  • Continuous Learning and Assessment – The LMS enables continuous monitoring of students’ learning progress and provides ongoing feedback. Teachers can set clear expectations, and students can regularly assess their progress and achievements.
  • Accessibility and Flexibility – Students can access educational materials, participate in discussions, and complete assessments all within the LMS. This system supports various learning activities like group chats and online discussions, making education more interactive and accessible.
  • Constructivist Learning – The LMS allows for constructivist learning, where students build their knowledge through experiences and interactions within the platform. This method focuses on students’ active participation and encourages them to construct their own understanding of the material.

Must have capabilities in an LMS System

Centralize and Automate Administration – An LMS should bring all administrative tasks related to education and training into one central system. This includes automating processes like enrolling students, tracking their progress, and managing resources, which saves time and reduces errors.

• Use Self-Service and Self-Guided Services – It should allow learners to manage their own learning experiences. This includes enrolling in courses, accessing learning materials, and tracking their own progress without needing to rely on others.
• Assemble and Deliver Learning Content Rapidly – An LMS should be able to quickly put together educational content from various sources and deliver it efficiently to learners. This helps in keeping the learning content up-to-date and readily accessible.
• Consolidate Training Initiatives on a Scalable Web-Based Platform – The system should be able to support different training programs or initiatives within a single platform that can scale as the number of users grows. This is essential for organizations that want to expand their training programs without switching systems.
• Support Portability and Standards – An LMS should adhere to industry standards for e-learning, which ensures that the content and data can be easily transferred or used across different systems and platforms. This compatibility is crucial for maintaining flexibility and extending the reach of educational programs.
• Personalize Content and Enable Knowledge Reuse – The system should offer options to tailor the learning experience to individual needs, preferences, and learning styles. It should also facilitate the reuse of existing content in new educational contexts, which can enhance learning efficiency and resource utilization.

How to choose the best LMS platforms for your business

• Define clear objectives – It’s important to have a clear understanding of your organization’s learning and training requirements and objectives.
• Evaluate the ease of use – A user-friendly interface ensures administrators and learners navigate and use the LMS more effectively. This includes an intuitive user interface, customizations, mobile accessibility, and an efficient platform learning curve.
• Access scalability – As your organization’s requirements grow, the demand to accommodate more users, content courses, and learning requirements increases. An LMS platform must be capable of handling such evolving needs without compromising performance and resources.
• Integrations – An LMS needs to have seamless integrations with 3rd party systems to improve efficiency. Integrations with content libraries enrich course offerings and communication tools to improve collaborations.
• Mobile and responsive support – Most LMS platforms support mobile learning and responsive web design to encourage learners to access course content and other activities on a range of devices, such as smartphones, tablets, desktops, and more.
• Data privacy and security – Modern LMS platforms have robust security measures in place to secure sensitive data and content from piracy and unauthorized access. It includes encryption (platforms like VdoCipher offer DRM encryption), password protection, secure authentication protocols, and access controls.
• Budget and pricing – Before making a final decision, compare the pricing model and features of different LMS platforms. Your own budget is also a crucial factor in making a choice. Apart from one-time or subscription fees, consider other factors such as set-up costs and other additional costs.

LCMS vs LMS: Similarities and Comparison

The Learning Content Management System (LCMS) is a newer term and is primarily concerned with the creation, management, and distribution of learning content. It allows for the handling of digital learning objects in a multi-user environment. Users can create, store, reuse, manage, and deliver these learning objects, which may include media files, assessment items, simulations, and other content types. The LCMS also enables content editing and storing. The LCMS provides tools that support the repurposing and efficient assembly of learning content. This avoids redundancy in content creation and enables quick customization of content for different training needs.

Similarities and Comparison

• Similar Tools – Both systems may share tools for delivering and managing online training, including synchronous (real-time) and asynchronous (on-demand) methods.
• Content Development – LCMSs are specifically equipped for authoring and reusing content, which includes the ability to modify and republish learning materials for various audiences while maintaining version control and history.
• Integration – Despite distinct roles, the term LMS is often colloquially used to refer to both systems. However, the LCMS is a more specialized development that focuses on content management, which is not a capability of a traditional LMS.

In summary, while both LMS and LCMS are crucial for educational organizations, they serve different but complementary roles. The LMS administers and delivers learning processes, whereas the LCMS focuses on the content itself, providing robust tools for creating, managing, and optimizing digital learning materials.

Best LMS platforms and learning management solutions

TalentLMS

TalentLMS is a cloud-based learning management system (LMS) designed to deliver online training courses and educational programs. Catering businesses of any size, it offers a streamlined approach to e-learning. It provides an intuitive interface that makes the creation and management of online courses a seamless process.

Features

• Course Management – Build courses from scratch, a variety of assessments, latest eLearning content standards, like SCORM, xAPI, and cmi5.
• Blended learning, Certifications, and gamification include badges, points, levels, rewards, and leaderboards.
• VideoConferencing support
• Ecommerce to sell individual courses or via the subscription model.
• API and integrations with Salesforce, GoToMeeting, Shopify, and more.
• GDPR compliant
• Easy customizations and themes

Pros – Course creation tools, ease of use, mobile learning, reporting & analytics
Cons – Limited customization. Some users find the platform’s design somewhat plain.

User Reviews – “One of the advantages is to train multiple people at once with sometimes different training modules. With the fast turnaround of employees, it is difficult to think of other ways to keep up. Also, recruitment of employees is made easy and fair.” – capterra.com

Canvas LMS

Canvas LMS is a cloud-based educational platform designed to facilitate online teaching and learning. Developed by Instructure Inc., it’s used by educational institutions of all levels, from K-12 to higher education, as well as by businesses for employee training. Canvas LMS provides an open, customizable, and scalable solution to engage and educate learners.

Features

• Course Creation and Management
• Rubrics, Modules, Calendars, Schedules, Quizzes, Syllabi, Analytics
• Canvas API to integrate with tools and apps such as Adobe, Microsoft Teams, and G Suite.
• Mobile apps for iOS and Android
• SpeedGrader feature allows teachers to view and provide feedback on student assignments.
• Integrated tools for real-time communication, including announcements, discussions, chat, and video conferencing

Pros – Integration capabilities, strong user community, and scalability
Cons – Pricing seems somewhat expensive compared to other LMS platforms. Limited customizations.

User Reviews – “I loved that Canvas was easy to use. Even though I had never used Canvas before, I jumped in and was able to do everything I needed pretty quickly. I had all of the features I needed but it wasn’t difficult to use.” – elearningindustry.com

Moodle LMS

Moodle (Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment) is an open-source LMS designed to provide a secure, robust, and integrated system to create a personalized learning system. As it is open-source, it is customizable by educators, administrators, and learners to offer flexibility and numerous alterations.

Features

• Complete control as an open-source platform
• Easy add-ons with more than 200 open-source plugins
• Moodle versions 3.10 and 3.11 are WCAG 2.1 AA compliant
• Content access and manage activities and assignments with the Moodle app
• Collaborative learning with Forums, Web Conferencing, and more.

Pros – Highly customizable, open-source, extensive features, and community support. Adding and embedding videos in Moodle is also very straightforward and easy.
Cons – Some users find Moodle’s interface less intuitive. Although free, it requires additional costs for hosting, maintenance, and other services.

User Reviews – “Moodle’s high adaptability enables us to create lessons and learning activities that precisely suit their requirements and preferences. It is simple to design exciting and interactive classes thanks to this flexibility.” – g2.com

iSpring Learn

Cloud-based Learning Management System (LMS), iSpring Learn facilitates online training for businesses of all sizes. It offers a set of features to create, deliver, track, onboard, train, and develop corporate training activities. The various training programs include new hire onboarding, compliance, product, and sales training.

Features

• Easy content creation – interactive courses, role-plays, assessments, and video lessons.
• Data and analytics tracking to give insights into training effectiveness
• Automated progress reporting, deadlines, notifications, and smart user groups.
• Multiple admin roles on iSpring Learn’s supervisor dashboards
• Social learning along with newsfeed with reactions.

Pros – iSpring Suite, a complete toolkit for creating eLearning content. Structured learning paths
Cons – Reports lack flexibility. iSpring Suite comes with additional pricing

User Reviews – “We are using iSpring Learn as a tool to deliver training materials to our staff team across multiple departments, eradicating the need to complete multiple face-to-face sessions. Whilst primarily focused on our technical support team, we are also using the platform for bulk training needs, such as health and safety and fire safety.” – trustradius.com

360learning

360learning is a collaborative LMS focusing on learning creation and training delivery within an organization. Organizations can create and share learning modules, connect all of their business systems, and optimize workflow integrations. The platform reduces your administrative burdens and maximizes fill rates.

Features

• Host and review the existing eLearning catalog of SCORM courses without content migration
• Create company-specific trainings, automated enrollments
• Data-driven insights and dashboard
• Audit proof e-signature
• Customizable validity period for a certificate
• Real-time one-click feedback

Pros – Collaborate learning, easy content creation along with fast customer support
Cons – Not enough gamification. Complex workflow to create trainings reported by some users

User Reviews – “I like that 360Learning makes it easy for anyone to create learning content that is actionable and measurable. I like that the interface of the tool is intuitive, making it easy to navigate through the various courses and modules.” – gartner.com

Thinkific Plus

Thinkific Plus is a premium learning management system from Thinkific, designed to create, market, and sell eLearning products. With no coding required, you and your teams can create amazing learning experiences. It comes with high customizations, controls, and support for enterprise-level services.

Features

• Advanced security features and Single Sign-On OpenID (SSO)
• Enterprise API access. Advanced CSS customization. Custom migration planning
• Multiple seats and tiered pricing checkout options
• White-labeled mobile app. Dedicated customer success manager
• Unlimited administrators and B2B group management

Pros – Automated reminder based on progress, dedicated support team, easy customizations
Cons – Reporting could be better with complex analysis. Need more integrations.

User Reviews – “We can upload our contacts from the previous database within just a few minutes. Also, there are additional groups of learners, which is easier for us to take care of various learning cohorts.”- g2.com

LearnDash

Specially designed for WordPress users, LearnDash is a flexible LMS plugin to create and sell online courses. It is used mainly by universities, startups, and mid-size companies. With LearnDash, you can create free and paid courses.

Features

• Drag and drop course builder, No coding required.
• Easy course cloning to head start on a new course.
• Learning Paths to with challenge exams
• Onboarding wizard, assignment management, and focus mode
• Built-in payment system with subscriptions
• For WordPress

Pros – Integration with 3rd party extensions. Good documentation, support, and webinar guides. Easy-to-use built-in tools.
Cons – Compatible with only WordPress. Limited default payment options. No free trial.

User Reviews – “LearnDash is a power-packed LMS plugin that caters to all types of LMS requirements. It is a very user-friendly, lightweight, and robust system that provides a seamless end-user experience in online learning.” – g2.com

Adobe Learning Manager (formerly Adobe Captivate Prime)

Previously known as Adobe Captivate Prime, Adobe Learning Manager is a cloud-based LMS to set up, deliver, and track enjoyable learning experiences. On a single platform, engage customers, drive sales, and develop staff skills. With Adobe Learning Manager, you can deliver personalized learning across multiple devices with ease.

Features

• A suite of API integrations and custom connectors
• AI-based recommendations, social learning, and gamifications
• Headless LMS with personalized dashboard
• Extended enterprise learning
• Hybrid learning support with flexible learning options

Pros – Various modes to track learner engagement. Badging and gamification. Easy content creation.
Cons – Mobile experience is a little clunky. Pricing is a bit higher.

User Reviews – “It has helped our Learning & development division very effectively. It helped us get huge amounts of people trained and certified, and it’s a great LMS. Its powerful ability to create different types of e-learning content easily.” – trustradius.com

Teachable

Teachable is a cloud-based learning management system to create personalized online courses and coaching products like videos, quizzes, and lectures. Creators engage with online audiences and collect payments on their own terms with coaching, courses, and downloaded content.

Features

• Advanced editing tools. Less to no coding skills to create, manage, and sell courses.
• Variety of templates to create landing pages for marketing and sales campaigns
• Majority control over your payment solutions
• Drag and drop builder with multiple file format support across devices
• Built-in authoring tools and automated enrollment based on user data

Pros – Free trial. Support for offline access. Built-in shopping cart.
Cons – Payout options seem a problem for subscribers outside the USA. The basic paid version has a limitation of only 5 courses at a time.

User Reviews – “My overall experience with Teachable has been very positive.Improved features, and excellent onboarding training. My only frustration is the inability to auto-schedule blog posts.” – capterra.com

Blackboard Learn

Features

• Automated assessment grading
• Built-in software with accessibility and anti-plagiarism tools
• Easy-to-use tools and workflows
• Personalized support for students from their own institutional resources
• Real-time improvement insights

Pros – Customizations as per educational institutions. Built-in web tools
Cons – Some find it expensive. Integrations are a little tedious.

User Reviews – “Blackboard has been very user-friendly and easy to navigate. After years of using it, it is not hard” – g2.com

Vdocipher Secure Plugin for seamless integration with popular LMS platforms

The VdoCipher plugin works smoothly with most LMS platforms like LifterLMS, WpCourseLMS, LearnPress, Teachable TutorLMS, and LearnDash. Hosting your videos on the LMS may result in a website slowdown. This can hamper the user experience when someone with low internet connectivity comes to access your content and ultimately drops out.

The best case scenario is to host your videos on a video hosting service like VdoCipher which offers numerous features along with Hollywood Grade DRM Encryption at affordable pricing. To do so, simply upload the video on the VdoCipher dashboard and embed it on the page you want. Learn more about embedding on 3rd party LMS websites or platforms like Teachable.

How VdoCipher Plugin is the best choice to stream videos on your LMS platform

Multi-DRM Protection using Google Widevine and Apple FairPlay DRM for the highest level of protection against piracy and unauthorized access.

Dynamic Watermarking to deter screen capture and establish branding. Customizable for color, size, and transparency.

Custom HTML5 Video Player with closed captioning, adaptive bitrate streaming, picture-in-picture, offline download, subtitle support, chapters, and video analytics.

Domain/IP Restrictions to whitelist/blacklist specific countries and regions. Block a range of IPs and set time-based restrictions and expiry of URLs.

Easy Embed Options to generate embed code using one line code in simple steps.

Video Analytics gives video parameters to monitor your content. It includes the number of visitors, bounce rate, average view time, and other engagement metrics.

Video APIs to automate and ease the integrations and other functionalities. Server and Player APIs automate video upload, inject custom HTML in the video player for Android or customize player design.

Adaptive Bitrate Streaming (ABR) automatically adjusts the video quality as per the viewer’s internet connectivity. To do so, the player must be capable to offers multiple video quality options.

We’ve written several other blogs on LMS, feel free to check them out if it piques your interest

• Video LMS
• Enterprise LMS
• Corporate LMS
• Top LMS Platform
• LMS Systems
• Learning Management Systems

FAQs

What is LMS software?

Often used interchangeably, the LMS platform and LMS software have slight differences in their meaning as per the context. LMS software refers to a standalone application or some module within a larger system, designed for learning purposes. LMS software often has fewer features and functionalities in comparison to LMS platforms.

How does an LMS work?

An LMS platform allows content creation, enrolling learners, and tracking and accessing their performance. An LMS automates the workflow of administration, managing, and reporting events.

Are LMS platforms available on mobile devices?

Most modern LMS platforms have a mobile app or a responsive web design. There is also the option of offline access, making it a hybrid learning experience.

How much does an LMS solution cost?

Based on the number of users and features, the pricing model of an LMS platform varies. While some have free plans and others have subscription pricing models or one-time fees.

Can I integrate LMS with other systems?

Each LMS has specific integrations with 3rd party systems. For example, most LMS integrate well with Human Resources Management Systems (HRMS) or Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems.

Jyoti

Jyoti began her career as a software engineer in HCL with UNHCR as a client. She started evolving her technical and documentation writing skills to become a full-time Content Marketer at VdoCipher.

The post Best LMS (Learning Management System) Platforms & LMS Tools appeared first on VdoCipher Blog.

A brief categorization is listed at the start and then we dwell on each tool individually. There is no ranking, it is a compiled list of useful popular tools. Let’s dive right in!

Steps in Creating and Selling Online Courses

1. Commit to Creating Your Course – Decide today that you will create an online course. Don’t worry about being an expert; focus instead on committing to the process.
2. Identify a Profitable Course Idea – Explore ideas that align with your interests or existing skills. Consider what problems people face that you could help solve. Check if similar courses exist, which is a good indication that there is a demand.
3. Validate Your Idea – Before investing too much time and resources, test the market’s interest in your course. You could create a mini email-course or pre-sell the course to gauge potential customer interest.
4. Outline Your Course – Develop a clear structure for your course by breaking down the overall problem it solves into manageable steps or lessons. This will help you organize your content effectively.
5. Create Course Content – Focus on delivering valuable content. Use simple tools to create videos or write content. Remember, initial production quality does not have to be perfect; focus on the quality of the information.
6. Set Up Your Course Online – Choose a platform that allows you to easily upload your content, manage customers, and handle transactions. Tools like Zippy Courses can simplify this process.
7. Pricing Your Course – Set a price that reflects the value of the outcomes your course delivers. Consider the costs of alternative solutions and the unique benefits your course offers.
8. Attract and Enrol Students – Build an email list to market your course. Utilize effective marketing strategies to attract students, such as offering free content, using social media, and engaging in online communities.
9. Launch Your Course – Choose between an evergreen model, where your course is always available, or periodic launches, which can create urgency. Use email campaigns and other marketing tactics to reach potential students.

Content Creation Tips

Elearning Video Creation/Production Tools

Elearning video creation tools mainly vary on the basis of what kind of video you want to build. It can be through slides with audio, screencasting, and at times with animations as well. Depending on your needs, you can find the relevant tools for your needs.

Three major methods of eLearning video creation are:

-Narrated Slides
-ScreenCasting
-Animations

Here are some tools, which will help you get the work done.

Camtasia

This screencasting + editor tool offers high flexibility to create long videos and add overlays. Get powerful editing, animation, and interactive features with special effects. You can even upload your videos straight to Vimeo, Facebook, YouTube, and Screencast. I have also used the paid version of this for creating tutorials.

• Pros – Intuitive User Interface, High-Quality Output
• Cons – Higher price point compared to some competitors
• User reviews – “As a long-time user of Camtasia, I can confidently say it’s one of the most user-friendly video editing tools I’ve ever used. It’s fantastic for creating professional-looking tutorials and presentations without needing a degree in video production.”

Powtoon 

Powtoon can help you create animated videos and presentations. Use Powtoon to create engaging online lessons for in-classroom and remote learning. Leverage ready-made templates to drag and drop elements. Powtoon is a user-friendly video creation tool for the less technical video content creator. Customize available templates or design your own with voiceovers, images, and music.

• Pros – User-friendly with drag-and-drop functionality.
• Cons – Limited customization options
• User reviews – “The range of templates makes it easy to get started, even for those of us without a background in animation. However, sometimes I wish there were more customization options to really make our videos unique.”

Animoto

Turn photos and short video clips into full-fledged videos and slideshows. Online course creators can use Animoto to create ads, social posts, tutorials, and newsletters. Choose from a wide variety of ready-made styles and add text or music to your material to convert it into a video.

• Pros – Easy to use, great templates
• Cons – Limited advanced editing features
• User reviews – “I love the drag-and-drop interface and the variety of templates. It’s perfect for quick, professional-looking videos for social media.”

SharpeyeAnimation

SharpeyeAnimation provides custom animated video production for e-learning and marketing businesses on service model. The key features include handmade videos and unlimited revision policy.

Flixtime

Flixtime is a free site you can use to create production-quality, custom videos with text, images, and videos. The tool allows you to create, download, ad share a 1-minute video for free. Flixtime also offers selected award-winning soundtracks and stock music to enhance video appeal.

• Pros – Simple interface
• Cons – Limited functionality
• User reviews – “Flixtime offers a straightforward platform for creating short video clips, but the features are quite basic, which limits creative freedom.”

Screencast-o-Matic

Get fast and free screen recording for material that’s not solely in a browser window. Use options to record screencasts, webcam recordings, or both. With the added ability to record your voice and use a microphone. The Pro Recorder offers editing effects such as drawing on the screen, zooming in, creating options, and sharing tools.

• Pros – Simple interface
• Cons – Limited functionality
• User reviews – “A go-to for screen recording and basic editing. It is affordable and functional, though it lacks some of the advanced features of its competitors.”

                                                              Procedure of developing an E-learning course

Magisto

Turn photos and videos into edited movies. Magisto allows you to capture video from within the app or upload one. Then, select an editing style, soundtrack, and title your video. The app automatically adds special effects and filters to it. Magisto Shot turns photos and text snippets into micro-movies.

• Pros – AI-driven, quick edits
• Cons – Limited user control
• User reviews – “It’s good for quick edits and social media content but doesn’t offer much control.”

ScreenFlow

This intuitive, Mac-only video recording software allows you to screen-record iOS devices. Get access to a stock media library of 0.5+ million media clips to use in videos. The app boasts of several standard video recording features such as GIF creation and annotation capabilities.

• Pros – Comprehensive features, high-quality output
• Cons – Primarily for Mac users, can be pricey
• User reviews – “More than a screen recorder; it’s a powerful editing tool. Ideal for Mac users looking to produce high-quality videos and tutorials.”

VideoScribe

VideoScribe automatically animates anything you position on its canvas. The tool comes with a large library of selected graphics. Other appealing features include voiceover recording, calls to action, soundtracks, and text-adding capabilities. Publish the created video on your website or share it on social or in emails.

• Pros – Unique whiteboard animation, intuitive
• Cons – Niche application
• User reviews – “Perfect for creating whiteboard animations. It’s intuitive and offers a unique way to present information engagingly.”

Wirecast

Use this live streaming video software for conferences, live tutoring, etc. The tool can capture feeds from multiple devices, such as web feeds, microphones, and live camera feeds. Also, get live production software and encoding capabilities.

• Pros – Professional live streaming, high-quality production
• Cons – Steep learning curve
• User reviews – “Wirecast is my go-to for live streaming with professional-grade production. It has a steep learning curve but offers incredible control and quality.”

Screenr

This web-based recorder allows you to seamlessly capture your screen without having to install it. Record a maximum of 5-minute long videos using Screenr. Videos created can be embedded in websites or shared across social media. Screenr works with MAC and PC, and even with an iPhone.

• Pros – Was easy to use
• Cons – No longer available
• User reviews – “Straightforward web-based screen recorder but is no longer available. It was great for quick captures.”

GoPlay

This Windows video recording software lets you create high-definition videos quickly and edit them. A standout feature of GoPlay is the picture-in-picture option. It lets you record both your PC screen and yourself via webcam simultaneously. Editing options include trimming, filters, cropping, and captioning.

• Pros – Easy for beginners, basic screen recording
• Cons – Lacks advanced features
• User reviews – “Decent for beginners with its simple editing tools and screen recording capabilities, but it lacks advanced features for more serious video editors.”

eLearning Video Tools for Editing

Elearning video tools for editing help you fine-tune your videos. You can use these eLearning video tools to trim down your videos and edit all the irrelevant parts. You can add features, overlays, and more.

Camtasia

This screencasting + editor tool offers high flexibility to create long videos and add overlays. Get powerful editing, animation, and interactive features with special effects. You can even upload your videos straight to Vimeo, Facebook, YouTube, and Screencast. I have also used the paid version of this for creating tutorials.

InVideo

InVideo is a versatile video editor with a focus on video marketing. The tool comes with thousands of stickers, images, and text boxes to create engaging video content. The free option includes the entire feature set with 1 GB storage and 720p video resolution.

• Pros – Wide template selection, rich stock media
• Cons – Can be overwhelming for new users
• User reviews – “Offers a lot of creative flexibility with its wide range of templates and stock media, great for creating videos quickly and efficiently.”

Adobe Premiere Pro

This one’s highly popular with professional video editors and post-production professionals. The non-linear editing tool enables direct access through a video acquisition source. It’s stable, responsive, and has all professional features you might need in creating the best online courses.

• Pros – Extensive features, professional-grade
• Cons – High cost, steep learning curve
• User reviews – “Industry standard for video editing. Its vast range of features and integrations makes it the top choice for professionals like us”

iMovie

iMovie is an iOS-based video editing software. Start editing on an iPhone and finish up on a Mac machine. Add beautiful titles and credits. Use picture-in-picture and split-screen effects. And, pick from 10 creative video filters for that cinematic touch.

• Pros – Free for Mac users, user-friendly
• Cons – Limited advanced features
• User reviews – “iMovie is fantastic for quick edits and personal projects. It’s free for Mac users and offers enough features for basic video editing.”

Filmora

Filmora works on Mac, Windows, Android, and iOS. Get up to 100 layers of media, YouTube and Vimeo export, precision speed control. Use creative filters and split-screen effects, besides several other attractive features.

• Pros – Balanced functionality, easy to learn
• Cons – Watermark in the free version
• User reviews – “For me, it strikes a good balance between functionality and ease of use, offering a range of effects and tools for creators of all levels.”

Blender

Blender is an open-source video editing software available on Mac, Windows, and Linux. The editor comes with video cutting and splicing features, besides more sophisticated ones such as video masking, audio mixing, waveform visualization, and histogram displays. Blender works for both beginners and advanced video editors.

• Pros – Powerful 3D and video editing, free
• Cons – Complex for beginners
• User reviews – “It is not just for 3D modeling but also has impressive video editing capabilities. It’s free and open-source, though it has a steep learning curve”

Lightworks

Lightworks is for Linux, Mac, and Windows. The free version offers multicam support, high-precision video trimming, a wide range of video formats, and exporting to 720p for YouTube uploading. The tool is best for holistic desktop video editing.

• Pros – Professional features, free version available
• Cons – Challenging for newcomers
• User reviews – “Lightworks is a professional video editing tool that’s free to use. It offers comprehensive features but looks challenging to master.”

Shotcut

Shotcut is another open-source software available on Mac, Windows, and Linux. It supports a variety of video formats and boasts a collection of tutorial videos. The most striking features include 4k HD resolution support and timeline editing.

• Pros – Open-source, feature-rich
• Cons – Interface can be clunky
• User reviews – “Great open-source video editor with a range of features. It’s a bit clunky at times but offers good flexibility and no cost.”

Pinnacle Studio

Pinnacle Studio is a great video editing software for beginners with rich features. The tool is intuitive and accessible with simple drag-and-drop features. Capture and import material from various sources and include unique effects such as stop-motion and 360-degree editing.

• Pros – Powerful tools and effects
• Cons – Can be complex for simple edits
• User reviews – “Pinnacle Studio provides powerful editing tools and effects which make it ideal for more complex projects, though it may be overkill for simple tasks.”

Splice

This video editing software for mobile is free and fully featured for the iPhone and iPad. Features include trimming, speed control, and custom audio narration.

• Pros – Mobile-friendly, intuitive
• Cons – Limited compared to desktop editors
• User reviews – “Great for mobile editing, with an intuitive interface and decent features for quick, on-the-go video edits.”

FilmoraGo

FilmoraGo is a free mobile alternative of the Filmora software, available on both Android and iOS. Users can create videos without watermarks and time limits and share them directly across social media.

• Pros – User-friendly, good selection of effects and templates
• Cons – Some advanced features are paid
• User reviews – “I’ve been using FilmoraGo for quick mobile edits, and it’s fantastic for that purpose. Easy to use with plenty of effects and templates, it makes video editing on the phone a breeze.”

OpenShot

This is a cross-platform, open-source video editor for Windows, Linux, and Mac. Top features include title editor with templates, trimming and slicing, unlimited tracks and layers, background removal, Slow-mo, and 3D animations.

• Pros – Free and open-source, simple to use
• Cons – Can be unstable or buggy
• User reviews – “No-cost editing tool with enough features to satisfy most of my video editing needs. It’s open-source and straightforward but can be buggy at times.”

Elearning Quiz Creation Tools

Any eLearning experience wouldn’t be complete without testing the student on how much they’ve learned. Quizzes help students to remain sharp and work as a great tool to enhance learning. This is why every great platform opts for a good eLearning quiz tool.

Edpuzzle

Check if remote learners are watching your content. Know how many times a student is looking at a specific video, and assess if they’re understanding the content. Use videos from Khan Academy, YouTube, Crash Course and more, or upload your own video to add interactiveness.

• Pros – Enhances video interactivity, tracks engagement
• Cons – Limited question type variety
• User reviews – “Edpuzzle has transformed how I create interactive video lessons. It’s easy to integrate questions and track student engagement, although I wish there were more question types.”

PlayPosit

Allow learners to explore and interact with online course material at their pace and interest. Enrich video content with PlayPosit using graded fill-in-the-blanks, multi-choice questions, and quizzes. Accelerate learning through interactive videos.

• Pros – Comprehensive analytics, interactive features
• Cons – Time-consuming lesson creation
• User reviews – “Invaluable tool for building interactive video lessons. The analytics are insightful, but creating bulbs (lessons) can be time-consuming.”

Vizia

Engage viewers into your online course by integrating polls, quizzes, and CTAs into videos through Vizia. Ask questions and multiple-choice quizzes and collect feedback through your online videos.

• Pros – Easy to add interactivity to videos
• Cons – Basic features, limited customization
• User reviews – “It’s quite basic but does the job for creating engaging video content with quizzes and calls to action”

QuizBean

QuizBean is an effective online video quizzing tool that allows embedding videos into quiz questions. Quickly send quizzes to your learners and track student progress with real-time analytics.

• Pros – Quick and easy quiz creation
• Cons – Limited analytics and design options
• User reviews – “An okay platform for quick quizzes. It’s fairly simple and good for rapid quiz creation, but it lacks depth in analytics and design flexibility”

iSpring QuizMaker

iSpring QuizMaker comes with an easy-to-use interface and several quiz design options. It allows you to embed images, audio, and video files within questions, enhancing the learning and assessment effectiveness.

• Pros – Wide range of question types, detailed reporting
• Cons – Learning curve for new users
• User reviews – “The variety of question types and detailed reporting are excellent, though it can be quite complex for beginners.”

Kaltura

Evaluate video engagement and content comprehension by using Kaltura. Include questions and solutions in the video experience. Online video quizzing improves active learning, measurement, and brings a new way to improve learning outcomes.

• Pros – Comprehensive video platform, feature-rich
• Cons – Complex, requires training
• User reviews – “It’s versatile but can be overwhelming without proper training”

EduClipper/Participate

EduClipper is now Participate. The tool is available on web and as an iOS app. It allows creating lesson boards with videos and other multimedia content. Integrate various assessments, including quizzes to track learning.

• Pros – Good for resource curation and collaboration
• Cons – Shifted focus from content curation to professional development
• User reviews – “It’s great for curating educational content and resources. It’s more of a collaborative platform now, focusing on teacher professional development.”

Seesaw

Seesaw offers various options for assessment. The tool works on the web and is also available as an app. It allows teachers to create interactive video lessons to keep a tab on student progress. Ideal for classrooms and remote teaching.

• Pros – Enhances student engagement, easy to use
• Cons – Limited features in the free version
• User reviews – “Seesaw has been a game-changer in student engagement and portfolio management. It’s intuitive for both teachers and students, though I find the free version quite limited.”

Buncee

Buncee is a video creation and communication tool for educators. Create interactive videos and allow students to visualize concepts and learn creatively. It has an interactive drag-and-drop interface to aid in creating multimedia content. Embed quizzes and other forms of assessments with ease.

• Pros – Creative and interactive, user-friendly
• Cons – Costly subscription for full features
• User reviews – “Creative platform for making interactive lessons and presentations. It’s user-friendly and versatile, though the subscription can be pricey for the full suite of features.”

Online Teaching platforms

As an educator, you might not want to go through the hassle of building your own website and video infrastructure. It’s always better to play with your strength. While you focus on creating quality content, you can let these teaching platforms take care of the rest.

Teachable

Create and market your course with custom branding and control over your content/pricing. Build a website. Create a sales page to launch your course. Use coupon codes to accelerate subscriptions. Avail international payment options, affiliate programs, email marketing, and more. Here’s a short comparison of Teachable with other popular video platforms like Teachable vs Thinkific

• Pros – User-friendly interface, comprehensive course-building tools
• Cons – Higher transaction fees on basic plans
• User reviews – “Its user interface is intuitive, making course creation and management straightforward. However, I find the transaction fees a bit steep on the lower-tier plans”

Podia

Create and sell videos online and digital downloads using Podia. You get a separate landing page for your course. Podia lets you immediately publish your course or pre-launch it to build your mailing list. Bundle audios, checklists, and other assets along with video content.

• Pros – All-in-one platform for courses, digital products, and memberships
• Cons – Limited advanced marketing tools
• User reviews – “Podia is a gem for selling digital products and memberships along with courses. It’s all-in-one, so I don’t need separate tools. Yet, I wish it had more advanced marketing features.”

Thinkific

Use a ready-made course structure out-of-the-box. Create your first video course without feeling overwhelmed. Choose from templates such as a flagship course, mini-course, webinar replay, etc. Other features include course bundles, marketing, coupons, promotions, and integrations. You can also do a Thinkific vs Kajabi before getting started as both are equally good and close competitors.

• Pros – Extensive customization options, strong community support
• Cons – Free plan is limited, paid plans required for advanced features
• User reviews – “This robust platform allows me to customize courses extensively. The free plan is great to start with, but moving to a paid plan was necessary for more advanced options”

Teachery

This one comes with zero transaction fees. Best suited for beginners, Teachery lets you access many features without upgrades and commissions. A dedicated support team assists you with taking your online course off the ground.

• Pros – Affordable, straightforward course creation
• Cons – Lacks some advanced features and customization options
• User reviews – “No-frills option for course creation. It’s simple and effective, though it lacks some of the bells and whistles of more expensive platforms.”

Ruzuku

Ruzuku allows you to start and sell online courses fast. Besides, it encourages students to communicate and collaborate, having to track their progress throughout. Seamlessly set up your course with minimal technical know-how. Use features such as support options, daily backups, and teleconferencing.

• Pros – Easy setup, good student engagement features
• Cons – Limited design customization
• User reviews – “I love the direct student engagement features. However, the design options are somewhat limited, which can affect the overall course aesthetic.”

Kajabi

Kajabi takes video course creation to the next level. It also allows you to automate the marketing of your video course. Connect landing pages with checkout pages for exclusive offers and course launches. Upsell and cross-sell existing buyers seamlessly. If you’re looking to compare Kajabi with other LMS platforms, we’ve got you covered with a Kajabi vs Thinkific here.

• Pros – Comprehensive all-in-one solution for course creation, marketing, and sales.
• Cons – Higher cost, may be complex for beginners
• User reviews – “It offers extensive tools for course creation, marketing, and sales. It’s an investment, but for a full-service platform, it’s worth it.”

WizIQ

Sell video courses and mock tests. Besides, WizIQ allows you to hold live classes. Virtual classrooms in this tool are full of features such as YouTube video streaming, screen sharing, live chat, polling and surveying, along with whiteboards, circuit diagrams, shapes, graphs, and maps.

• Pros – Excellent for live training and webinars, good virtual classroom features
• Cons – Steep learning curve, somewhat dated interface
• User reviews – “WizIQ’s virtual classroom environment is excellent for live training sessions. The learning curve is a bit steep, but it’s a solid choice for real-time teaching and training.”

Learnworlds

Set up your own online school with multiple teachers, websites, and a course catalog. Add instructors and their corresponding courses. Learnworlds allows you to become an admin and offer as many online video courses as you’d like. Get features such as custom domain names, coupons, and payment gateway.

• Pros – Strong interactive and social learning features, high customization
• Cons – overwhelming due to feature richness, higher price point
• User reviews – “Fantastic for creating interactive and social learning experiences”

Academy of Mine

Get a full website to launch your online video course. Choose from a fully hosted template that offers landing pages, galleries, and course offering pages. Generate chapters and units, embed quizzes, assignments, and give out badges and certificates.

• Pros – Highly customizable, great for enterprise-level training
• Cons – Expensive, more suitable for established businesses or professionals
• User reviews – “Comprehensive, customizable platform suited for high-end course creators. It’s expensive, but you get what you pay for in terms of capabilities and support.”

Udemy

With over 20000subject matter experts, Udemy has disrupted the educational ecosystem. The e-learning platform comes with tools to create PowerPoint presentations, PDFs, and videos to curate the perfect course.

• Pros – Large audience reach, no upfront costs for course hosting
• Cons – High competition, limited control over pricing and student data
• User reviews – “Great for reaching a broad audience, but the competition is fierce, and revenue share can be disappointing. It’s perfect for starting out and testing the waters in online teaching.”

Educadium

Through its EasyCampus platform, Educadium allows entrepreneurs and organizations to create, manage, and earn from online video courses. Use a plethora of features for course designing and publishing.

• Pros – Simple, budget-friendly platform
• Cons – Basic functionality, limited scalability
• User reviews – “Straightforward, budget-friendly platform for hosting online courses. It doesn’t have all the advanced features, but it’s reliable and easy to use”

Skillshare

Almost all courses on Skillshare have two key components- video and class projects. Earn through Skillshare’s Partner Program by enrolling 25 learners per class, and a few other pre-requisites. Top teachers on this platform make nearly $40000 annually.

• Pros – Community-focused, good for creative content
• Cons – Pay based on student engagement, limited control over course pricing
• User reviews – “Earning potential is based on engagement, which is a double-edged sword but motivates creating compelling content”

CourseCraft

Turn your blog into a course. The editor of CourseCraft is simple and powerful to create various kinds of courses. It’s integrated with PayPal and Stripe. Run discounts and offers. Students can collaborate with peers and instructors to create a knowledge ecosystem.

• Pros – Easy to use, good for small-scale course creators
• Cons – Lacks advanced analytics, limited customization options.
• User reviews – “Simple and effective for launching courses quickly. While it lacks some advanced analytics and customization, its ease of use makes it a good option for beginners.”

Here’s a comparison of 3 of the most commonly used Online Teaching Platforms i.e. Teachable vs Thinkific vs Kajabi

WordPress LMS Plugins

If you don’t want to opt for an eLearning teaching platform, you can always go for WordPress and use an LMS plugin, and voila, you get your own platform.

WordPress LMS Plugins allow you to create classes, share assignments, and resources with your students. They are quintessential when it comes to a WordPress-based teaching platform.

LifterLMS

This one is a powerful WordPress plugin that makes it easier for you to create and sell online video courses on your site. LifterLMS focuses on engagement with features such as achievement badges, social learning, 1:1 private coaching, and certificates. Monetize the LMS platform by selling site-wide membership, bundling courses, and selling individual courses.

• Pros – Comprehensive with deep integration options.
• Cons – Can be costly with advanced add-ons.
• User reviews – “LifterLMS offers a wide range of features that cater to all my e-learning needs. It’s a bit pricey when you start adding multiple extensions, but the functionality is top-notch.”

LearnDash

LearnDash is a superior LMS plugin that makes it a breeze to create and sell courses, quizzes, award certificates, etc. Support gamification, micro-content, and social learning through your online video courses with this cutting-edge plugin. Encourage students to earn points by completing courses to unlock new courses, facilitating engagement.

• Pros – Feature-rich, highly flexible.
• Cons – Steeper learning curve.
• User reviews – “LearnDash has transformed how we deliver online courses. The learning curve was a bit challenging at first, but it’s incredibly powerful once you get the hang of it.”

WooCommerce Sensei

Sensei comes with an extension for WooCommerce. Add it to an e-commerce store that sells online video courses. The basics of Sensei are simple- create courses, write lessons, and add quizzes. The standout factor of Sensei is its seamless integration with WooCommerce. Leverage course analytics, quizzes, automated quiz grading, WordPress-like user registration, and easy pricing/charging.

• Pros – Seamlessly integrates with WooCommerce.
• Cons –  Limited features compared to standalone LMS solutions.
• User reviews – “Integrating Sensei with my WooCommerce store was straightforward, making it easy to sell courses. However, I find it lacking in advanced LMS features that other platforms offer.”

LearnPress

The cleanest and simplest choice for a WordPress LMS plugin is LearnPress. One downside here is the customer support that’s not as robust as with other premium plugins. Activate a few add-ons to make your online course website as advanced as you’d like. Use add-ons for course reviews, wishlists, pre-requisites, and importing or exporting capabilities.

• Pros – Free with optional premium add-ons.
• Cons – Support can be inconsistent.
• User reviews – “LearnPress is a cost-effective solution for my online courses. While it’s great for a tight budget, getting timely support can sometimes be a hassle.”

CoursePress Pro

CoursePress Pro retired in May 2019 and is no longer supported by WPMUDev. The code is available on GitHub if you want to fork and maintain it. Use CoursePress Pro if you need several learning websites. Connect with over 13 payment gateways, upload quizzes, automate instructor feedback, and upload audio, video, text, and course files.

• Pros – Offers a wide range of e-learning features.
• Cons – Has been discontinued in favor of other solutions.
• User reviews – “CoursePress Pro was a comprehensive tool for creating and managing online courses. It’s a shame it has been phased out for newer platforms.”

WP Courseware

Use WP Courseware for less complicated pricing. It’s used by the University of Illinois and the University of Wisconsin Madison. Speak with active tutors on the member portal, use the seamless drag-and-drop designer, integrate with your preferred e-commerce plugin, or run a multi-instructor system by assigning each teacher a specific role.

• Pros – Drag-and-drop course creation, user-friendly.
• Cons – Lacks some advanced features.
• User reviews – “WP Courseware made it easy for me to create courses. While it’s fantastic for getting up and running quickly, I wish it had more depth in some areas.”

Good LMS

Create courses like you would a WordPress blog post with this one. Build quizzes, certificates, and courses right from the WP Dashboard. Features include coupon codes, real-time countdowns, process lines, and student backends where learners can see their scores, badges, progress, and retake quizzes.

• Pros – Cost-effective with essential LMS features.
• Cons – Not as feature-rich as other LMS options.
• User reviews – “Good LMS is a budget-friendly option for setting up courses. It covers the basics well, though it doesn’t have the advanced features of more expensive LMS platforms.”

MasterStudy LMS

Easily customize, create, and manage online video lessons with MasterStudy LMS. Use variety in lessons with slideshows, videos, and text. Display correct and incorrect answers in quiz results. Leverage a messaging and announcement system and seamless certificate creation. While offering all core features, MasterStudy LMS lags in allowing gamification of the learning experience.

• Pros – Integrated with a powerful theme, visually appealing.
• Cons – Can be a bit cumbersome to customize.
• User reviews – “MasterStudy LMS looks great and offers a good user experience. Customizing it to fit my exact needs can be tricky, but overall, it’s a solid choice.”

Membership 2

This membership WP plugin comes as a free software with a paid pro version. It’s designed for ease-of-use for the beginner course creator. Use the how-to guide to kickstart your online video course creation journey. Grant content access for lessons and courses to various membership levels.

• Pros – Integrates with WordPress for membership-based sites.
• Cons – Development and updates are limited.
• User reviews – “Membership 2 was easy to integrate with my WordPress site for managing memberships, though it seems to lack regular updates and new features.”

WP eMember

This one offers a robust plugin with bot content protection and features such as Drip content capabilities. Create multiple membership levels, grant differential access to content, and use in-page partial protection with shortcodes. Effectively minimize content piracy risk in your online video courses.

• Pros – Simple membership management, integrates well with WordPress.
• Cons – Basic functionality, lacks some advanced features.
• User reviews – “Straightforward for managing site memberships. It’s pretty basic but does the job effectively for a simple membership setup.”

Namaste! LMS

This free LMS plugin allows you to create different rules to access courses after completing pre-requisite courses. Features include grading system, certificates, badges, and a progress bar that shows students how far they’ve come in a course. It’s a simplistic LMS plugin for the beginner course creator.

• Pros – Free and straightforward LMS plugin.
• Cons – More suitable for basic e-learning setups.
• User reviews – “Decent start for someone new to online course delivery. It’s quite basic, but for a free tool, it provides good value.” 

Payment gateways

After you’ve done setting up your website, a payment gateway is the next big step. After all, you can create the best platform for your users. If you are not able to monetize it, or users are not able to pay due to several reasons. It can be pretty counterproductive for you as an eLearning platform.

Pricing Strategy

PayPal

PayPal is one of the most trusted payment gateway, ideal for your online course website. It charges a monthly fee for Advanced and Pro users. The customer support and ease of use make it an appealing option. While it has higher transaction fees, flexibility, and ease of integration make it worthwhile.

• Pros – Widely accepted, easy to use.
• Cons – Fees can be high, account freezes reported.
• User reviews – “PayPal is incredibly convenient and trusted worldwide. However, I’ve had issues with unexpected account limitations, which can be a hassle.”

Stripe

Stripe is customizable, quick, secure, and easy to set up. Allow customers to buy your course directly from a tweet or save card information for one-click checkouts. Stripe can help you accept alternative forms of currency, such as ACH and Bitcoins.

• Pros – Excellent API, seamless integration.
• Cons – Not available in all countries.
• User reviews – “Stripe’s integration into my platform was smooth, and their developer tools are top-notch. Just wish they were available in more countries.”

RazorPay

Offer your course buyers net banking, wallets, and all card options to pay for your content. RazorPay is one of the faster-growing payment gateways. Easily integrate with your online video course website. Primarily an Indian company but supports international payment way.

• Pros – Tailored for Indian market, feature-rich.
• Cons – Limited global reach.
• User reviews – “Razorpay has been a game-changer for my India-based business, offering many localized payment options. However, its services are limited outside India.”

CCAvenue

One of the longest-service gateways, CCAvenue, is considered highly reliable and trusted. Customer trust is critical in the payment processor industry and CCAvenue banks on that. Integrate it with your site for secure payments.

• Pros – Wide range of payment options, strong in Indian market.
• Cons – User interface can be clunky.
• User reviews – “CCAvenue supports an extensive array of payment methods, which is great for my customers in India, but the user interface feels outdated.”

WePay

WePay can handle complex payment requests such as crowdfunding campaigns and multiple payers. The payment gateway is tailored for both international as well as domestic markets. WePay even offers modern payment options, such as Apple Pay and Android Pay. It conforms to your unique needs, setting itself apart from other platforms.

• Pros – Good for platform businesses, integrated payments.
• Cons – Limited to US and some other countries.
• User reviews – “WePay offers great solutions for platform-based businesses like mine, but its geographic availability is too restricted.”

Authorize.net

Use a host of flexible and trusted payment options designed for small and medium businesses. Besides payment options such as checks and mobile payments, Authorize.net also caters to recurring and subscription billing. Use in-site ordering, simplified PCI compliance, custom checkout pages, and an Advanced Fraud Detection Suite.

• Pros – Reliable and secure, wide acceptance.
• Cons – Setup can be complex, fees.
• User reviews – “Authorize.net is a stalwart in online payments, known for reliability. Setting it up was a bit complex, and there are various fees to consider.”

2Checkout

2Checkout offers heavily customizable hosted checkouts and seamless integrations, leaving the checkout experience on brand. Set up your business globally with 15 different languages and 87 currencies. Use an easy-to-incorporate payment API to embed credit card processing on your site.

• Pros – Global payment acceptance, multiple currency options.
• Cons – Higher fees and complex fee structure.
• User reviews – “2Checkout expands my market reach globally and handles multiple currencies”

PayUBiz

PayUBiz offers a wide variety of customizations for both small and mid-sized businesses. With a fast merchant onboarding process, get your gateway setup instantly. PayUBiz focuses on user experience, and so do you as an online video course creator.

• Pros – Tailored for the Indian market, comprehensive features.
• Cons – Can be complex to integrate.
• User reviews – “PayUBiz provides a robust payment solution for my business in India, but integration was more complicated than I expected.”

InstaMojo

This is one of the cheaper options for a payment gateway. No installation costs, and highly recommended for businesses offering physical goods. However, for digital goods, their transaction discount rate is five percent. Setup your website with InstaMojo and integrate seamless payment processes for success.

• Pros – Simple setup, instant payment collection.
• Cons – Primarily for the Indian market.
• User reviews – “InstaMojo made it really easy to start collecting payments for my small business, though it’s mainly suitable for Indian users.”

Worldpay

This is a UK-based (global) service offering omnichannel payment solutions for businesses of all sizes. Pay as you go or pick a monthly payment option as per your needs. Leverage automated billing, customizable loyalty cards, card updates, card-on-file support, and simplified backend payment settlement.

• Pros – Global reach, wide range of payment options.
• Cons – Customer service can be slow, complex fee structure.
• User reviews – “Worldpay’s global payment capabilities are impressive, but I’ve experienced slow customer service responses and the fees can be confusing.”

GoEmerchant

Don’t want a contract-based solution? GoEmerchant is a monthly service offering simple and straightforward features with a pre-configured web store design. Set up an eCommerce platform from scratch with a web storefront, payment gateway, and a customer account management platform. Configure your gateway and set up a merchant account, hassle-free.

• Pros – Integrated solutions for online and physical stores.
• Cons – Pricing can be opaque.
• User reviews – “GoEmerchant offers a good range of services for both my online and offline sales, though getting clear pricing information was challenging.”

Merchant One

Competitive rates with this payment gateway can allow online teachers with the slimmest margins to earn good revenue. Easily set up a merchant account and start accepting credit card payments quickly. The only downside is that you need to sign a contract that comes with cancellation charges.

• Pros – Offers solutions for high-risk merchants.
• Cons – Reports of aggressive sales tactics and hidden fees.
• User reviews – “Merchant One was one of the few processors willing to take on my high-risk business, but be wary of aggressive sales tactics and unclear fees.”

MerchantPlus

This one is a great e-learning course payment gateway if you need competitive rates, advanced customer support choices, and shopping cart features. This is an ideal choice for a reliable, easy, and simple solution for e-learning professionals. The credit card processing system easily integrates with most shopping cart software, accounting software, and web stores.

• Pros – Competitive rates, good for small to medium-sized businesses.
• Cons – Customer support issues reported.
• User reviews – “MerchantPlus offered competitive rates for my business, but I’ve found their customer support could be more responsive.”

Video Hosting & Player Options

Opting for video hosting is the best option for anyone with their own website. It is always recommended to keep your website’s hosting and video hosting to be separate. As in case of using the same for both can put a heavy load on your website and in turn disrupt user experience. These video hosting services not only cater to the hosting part, but also gives you an access to complete video infrastructure required to stream your videos online.

VdoCipher

VdoCipher.com provides video hosting for online course businesses to help them stream content on their site/app in a most secure and smooth manner. The key features are the highest security from video piracy through Hollywood Grade DRM encryption & watermarking technologies; and smoothest streaming at slow connections due to optimized encoding at lower sizes. Packaged offerings include Amazon AWS server + CDN integration, Transcoding,  API & Plugin integration, Custom Player, Offline app playback & Per video analytics. VdoCipher already serves e-learning and media businesses from 40+ countries with its offerings.

Brightcove

Brightcove encourages its users to leverage videos to move their business in critical ways. This could be in distributing, communicating, showcasing, or venture exchanges. This is a great video hosting platform if you are looking for high speed and more power over your video content.

Wistia

This one is a popular old tool for video hosting for entrepreneurs. Pay based on the number of recordings, and get the first three for free. Use more detailed analytical capabilities, adjust display dimensions, password-protect videos, add CTA links and lead capture forms, and include SEO keyword phrases in your video description and title.

Vimeo

Get an attractive interface to distribute your online video content. While the transferring space is limited, the incredible examination framework compensates for it. Get several customization options, powerful analytics capabilities, higher quality video display than YouTube, no ads and popups, and a strong network.

Kaltura

Flip traditional teaching with Kaltura as your online video hosting platform. Get gamification features, intuitive UX, and leverage the current trends in video creation with this leading video hosting platform for online course creators. Use excellent support and improve learning outcomes for your students.

Panopto

This is an ideal platform for online course hosting for colleges and businesses alike. Use features such as live streaming, recording, and sharing video content. With little to no technical know-how, Panopto allows you to host videos seamlessly for better learner engagement.

YouTube

Use YouTube and create a full-time career as an online course tutor. The SEO value of optimized video makes this platform attractive. Embed YouTube videos on your site or landing pages, enable video sharing, encourage subscriptions, and earn through the ads platform.

Video Hosting/Website Server options

In case you are looking to host the content of your courses including the videos on your own (instead of going for a 3rd party video hosting platform), then below are the popular cloud options.

Amazon AWS Cloud

Use Amazon AWS Cloud for two streaming services- on-demand video streaming and live video streaming. Use flexible pricing with the pay-as-you-go model, leverage 99.99 percent content availability, support data security, and features such as storage optimization.

Google Cloud Platform

With the Google Cloud Platform, render huge workloads at peak hours, live stream video to masses, and launch new applications. Use Google’s Anvato for video broadcasting and OTT content delivery. Generate closed captions in over 80 languages and rest assured about your video content’s security, reach, and availability.

Microsoft Azure Cloud

Decrease the complexity and cost of cross-platform content. Use streaming services for local, low-scale streaming. Leverage DVR workflow capabilities and prepare video assets with required quality resolutions and levels for any device. Get flexible pricing and inexpensive video hosting.

Akamai

This video hosting server can eliminate challenges concerning the preparation, delivery, and monetization of online video content. Minimize complexity with a managed service for streaming with a video hosting server monitored 24/7 by specialists. Provide a premium viewing experience to your viewers by extending video libraries and streaming videos to any device seamlessly.

Domain name providers

Godaddy

One of the oldest players in this industry, GoDaddy offers a wide variety of popular domain extensions to choose from. Get a huge discount on your first year of domain registration on GoDaddy. The powerful domain management interface makes it a breeze to transfer your domain name or change its settings.

Bluehost

This one is one of the largest hosting companies, also an official WordPress hosting partner. Get started for $2.75 per month and get reliable support and customer service as part of your domain registration.

HostGator

A one-stop-shop for domain names and shared site hosting. They also offer domain privacy, extensions, and easy DNS management tools. Quickly find a suitable domain name and manage domain names seamlessly within the domain management area.

Namecheap

The powerful domain search tool helps you find the right domain name. Also, use add-on services such as premium DNS and domain privacy. A standout feature si that they offer free domain privacy with all domain names. The domain management tool might not be the ideal one out of all options here.

DreamHost

DreamHost is another known name in the market for domain names registration. Get 400+ TLDs and all domain management tools you can expect from a large service provider. Register a domain without hosting or get both services under one umbrella.

Shopify

Start an e-commerce store to sell your online courses without any technical proficiency with Shopify. Quickly set up your store using a custom domain name. Also, get the option to move your domain name to another service when need be. One downside is that Shopify doesn’t offer email addresses along with the domain names.

Domain.com

This provider specializes in domain names, VPS hosting, web hosting, SSL certificates, email, and online marketing services. No matter which hosting plan you choose, get at least one free domain name with SSL certificate, unlimited disk space, e-commerce solutions, and marketing tools- everything you might need for your online course website.

Moodle LMS

Moodle LMS is a world-leading online learning management system with hundreds of millions of users around the globe. Exploring the essentials of Moodle Video Hosting can also enhance your educational content. Kickstart your Moodle online course with ready-made templates, use analytics and reporting to increase student engagement, and earn better learning outcomes through your online video courses.

Online resources to learn how to set up an online course

How to Create an Awesome Online Course on UdemyIn this Udemy course, learn about the opportunities for monetizing your online courses. Validate the course idea, promote your course, and monetize. Also, get more information on the hardware and software needs of setting up a course.
How to Create, Sell, and Profit from an Online Course from PodiaWatch the one-hour video or read the 12,000-words guide. This resource breaks down creating an online course into easy parts such as deciding if it is right for you, finding your course idea, creating an outline, building the course content, setting a price on it, choosing a launch model, selling the course through email marketing, and so on.
Create and Sell Your Own Online Course from TeachableRegister for an online webinar by Teachable to learn how to create an online course on the platform. The webinar promises you to create your first course on the platform without any technical headaches. You will need to submit your email address to register for the webinar.
10 Steps to Creating a Wildly Successful Online Course on ThinkificThis 16-minute read breaks down the gigantic rock of creating and selling an online course on the web. Discover the ten major phases of creating an online course. Pick the perfect topic, ensure there is demand, create better learning outcomes, select and curate course content, and more with this guide that makes course creation sound like a child’s play.
How to Create an Online Course- a Step-by-Step Guide on LearnworldsThis is a massive guide to help you learn how much money you can make with an online course, the types of courses you can choose from, how you can bypass any mental blocks, create an online course step-by-step, and more. This is a different kind of content to help you get to creating and not think more about it.
How to Make Money with an Awesome Online Course: Social TriggerThis is a complete guide again. Right from committing to create a course, choosing a profitable idea, testing your idea, to getting students registered and launching your course. This guide also includes further resources in each of the steps, like a course idea worksheet to help you make decisions faster.

Elearning field famous blogs

Elearningindustry.com

This one is a top resource for everyone working or getting into the e-learning industry. Get hundreds of free resources, including webinars, ebooks, and articles about the left and right in the eLearning industry. The website also allows you to guest post articles to earn backlinks to your website.

Edtechreview.in

Get infographics, case reports, videos, books and documents, webinars, and courses all in one place. This blog is a comprehensive compilation of everything that’s new and hot in the e-learning industry. Publish a guest post and backlink to your website.

Coursera

Coursera has partnered with universities to offer students and learners free information on a wide variety of topics. The blog updates with three blog posts per week.

TeacherTube

This is a free community for sharing educational and instructional videos and content for teachers and students alike.

Swift E-learning and Training Blog

Swift E-learning is a top service provider in India, offering custom e-learning and software solutions to companies around the globe. Get in the know of the latest happenings, trends, and software freebies in the e-learning industry.

Online platforms to sell courses directly

Coursera

Some of the world’s best companies and universities such as the University of Stanford, Michigan, and Duke use Coursera to publish online video courses.

Lynda

Now LinkedIn Learning, this online course marketplace caters to business professionals. Add certifications and publish an online course seamlessly. 

Presentation & Infographic creation

Visme

While videos and text are the common teaching medium; adding detailed creative presentations and infographic gives the additional attractivity to your courses. Visme.co is one such popular tool that helps you add powerful visual stories in the form of engaging presentations, infographics, and other visual content.

FAQs

What are online course creation tools?

Online course creation tools are software applications that help educators and trainers design, develop, and deliver e-learning content. These tools can range from video production and editing software to learning management systems (LMS) and quiz creation applications, supporting various aspects of course development and delivery.

Are there free online course creation tools available?

Yes, there are free tools available, though they may offer limited features compared to paid versions. Tools like Moodle or Google Classroom can be used to create and deliver courses without a financial investment.

How can I evaluate the effectiveness of my online course?

Utilize analytics and feedback tools within the course creation platform to track engagement, completion rates, and learner feedback, which can help in evaluating and improving the course content.

Planning your online video course? Use resources mentioned above to create the best one yet. Did we forget to include your favorite solution or tool? Let us know in the comments below.

References:

https://www.vdocipher.com/blog/2016/11/wordpress-plugins-for-elearning/
https://www.wildapricot.com/articles/online-payment-services#best
https://www.dreamhost.com/blog/10-online-payment-gateways-compared/
https://www.learningrevolution.net/sell-online-courses/
https://www.getcloudapp.com/blog/best-video-recording-software
https://filmora.wondershare.com/screen-recorder/best-free-video-captures.html
https://digitalmarketinginstitute.com/blog/15-04-2018-top-10-video-editing-tools-for-small-business
https://learn.g2.com/11-best-free-video-editor-tools-beginners/
https://www.educatorstechnology.com/2017/02/6-excellent-tools-for-creating.html
https://americantesol.com/blogger/videoquizsites/
https://www.isitwp.com/best-wordpress-lms-plugins-compared/
https://medium.com/@didolores/8-online-teaching-platforms-that-will-make-you-want-to-teach-online-1b9b23dc2503
https://oedb.org/ilibrarian/6-free-platforms-teaching-online/
https://www.vdocipher.com/blog/2019/08/video-hosting-platform-online-courses/

Planning your online video course? Use resources mentioned abover to create the best one yet. Did we forget to include your favorite solution or tool? Let us know in the comments below.

Siddhant Jain

CEO, VdoCipher. Writes about video tech, ed tech and media tech.

www.vdocipher.com/

The post 101 Online Course Creation Tools appeared first on VdoCipher Blog.

The global mobile learning market is expected to witness significant growth, with a forecast reaching around $156 billion by 2026, demonstrating a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 30.12% during 2022-2026. This growth underscores the increasing demand for digital education and the role of mobile devices in facilitating learning.

An online learning platform brings numerous benefits, such as :

• Cost-efficient learning
• Easy and round-the-clock accessibility
• Flexibility of education
• Options for every learning preference – one-to-one online classes, group-based.
• Seamless use on the smaller screen- a factor that has significantly contributed to the growth in the eLearning market.
• A diverse range of subjects
• Interactive learning experience

What are online learning platforms?

Online learning platforms are websites or applications that provide educational content of all sorts, be it tutorials, courses, training, or study materials. Individuals can learn and acquire new skills and opt for free or paid learning platforms. Each platform comes with its own features, some are generic learning platforms while some are dedicated to a single learning stream. For example, a learning platform may be solely dedicated to train K-12 students and others may cater to courses for learning foreign languages.

Compared to traditional classroom learning, online learning platforms are more flexible, scalable, and cost-effective and are today’s tool for learning and acquiring knowledge. There is a range of subjects to choose from, nearly everything is available on a learning platform, and benefits like accessibility, interactive learning, self-paced learning, and even certifications to improve career growth.

Types of online learning platforms

Learning Destination Sites – On these sites, a number of course creators offer various sorts of learning materials. Based on your course preference, you choose a topic and instructor. One such popular platform is Udemy which has over 210K video-based lessons.

LMS – Learning Management Systems or LMS is a software application to manage and deliver educational courses and training programs. The key features include course content management, mobile access, collaboration, assessments, student tracking, reporting, and grading.

Massive Open Online Course – MOOCs are online free courses at reasonably cheaper pricing that are open to anyone, irrespective of their location or background. MOOCs accommodate a number of learners and usually, students learn diverse skills for career upliftment.

Custom-built learning platform – These platforms are designed specifically for an organization or institute like Harvard. The platform is suited to the needs and particular requirements within the organization. They have tailored features and restricted access to the students or team employees.

“Among learners, 95% stated that they are able to retain information better with the help of video-based educational materials. This points towards the effectiveness of multimedia in enhancing learning experiences.”

How to create an online learning platform?

The various steps involved in creating an online learning platform are as follows

• Set your goals and target audience.
• Choose a platform to like an LMS, CMS, or custom-built online learning platform. You can create your own website for your audience.
• Design an intuitive and user-friendly website with a good layout, navigation, and search.
• Create courses. The format may include pre-recorded and live videos, written material, and quizzes.
• Choose a video hosting platform like VdoCipher where your videos are protected from piracy using Hollywood-Grade DRM encryption and other interesting features
• Test before launching and market your online platform through social media, email marketing or advertisements

But, when planning to launch your online course, you might wonder which online learning platform will help you create and sell video courses with ease.

Best online learning platforms in India and Worldwide

Teachable

Teachable is one of the best online learning platforms for marketing your course. The platform offers options to customize the look and feel of your online course. To do so, you can
1. build a website to reflect your brand,
2. create a sales page for launching your course,
3. or use the Power Editor to tweak the underlying code.

Teachable’s course builder accepts documents from Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, and so on. You can choose to sell them as a standalone product or in bundles. You can also choose how you want to get paid- establish a payment plan, charge a one-time fee, or allow your audience to subscribe to the course.

Before launching the course, you can use coupon codes to accelerate sales. Teachable also offers multi-language support, which is a plus when you want to cater to a global audience. The platform also provides solutions such as international payments, affiliate programs, email marketing, and more to maximize your outreach.

Teachable is priced from $39 a month to $499 a month.

VdoCipher DRM encrypted video streaming & watermarking security integration is possible with the Teachable and similar portals and is explained here in another blog.

Podia

Podia allows you to create an online store for your digital content. You can create and sell video courses, digital downloads, and membership sites using this online learning platform. All storefronts built on Podia have a similar template. Each store’s landing page includes details such as an overview, a ‘what’s included’ section, a content section, FAQs, and creator bio.  

All courses, digital downloads, and memberships created using Podia have their separate landing pages. When you create an online video course, Podia lets you publish it immediately or pre-launch it to collect email addresses. 

The platforms also allow you to bundle assets such as videos, audios, texts, checklists along with the course. Podia is priced starting at $33 a month for the Mover plan, which includes online courses, digital downloads, email marketing, and no transactional fees.

Thinkific

If you are still in doubt regarding the structure and content of your online course, this online learning platform lets you create and sell a video course from scratch. It can be daunting for a first-time video course creator to chalk out a plan and a strategy to develop and sell the course.

Thinkific makes it a bit easier for you. Use the simple and readymade templates to create and launch your video course in two parts: creating the course material, and building the landing page. 

Users get to choose from a template such as a flagship course, mini-course, membership bundle, digital download, and webinar replay. Thinkific is free for unlimited courses and students, payment gateway integration, course upsells, and so on with a 10% transaction fee. The online learning platform starts at $36 a month for other features such as course bundles, marketing, email integrations, coupons, and promotions.

Teachery

Teachery is a popular online learning platform for having no transaction fees at all whatsoever. At first glance, it seems other platforms offer good-enough features at no cost. However, experienced course creators realize that sooner or later, they have to upgrade and buy a premium version to access the more advanced tools and functions.

Teachery is an ideal platform for experienced online tutors who are tired of upgrades and commissions.

Teachery lets you access a wide array of functions. It also offers a dedicated team to support your journey. Teachery is priced at $49 a month or $470 per annum.

Learnworlds

This online learning platform facilitates you to set up a school of your own with multiple websites, teachers, and a course catalog. You can add instructors and select the courses you want them to teach.

When you add an instructor, they can author course,s but not publish a new course or change general settings. As the school admin, you are free to offer as many courses for a fee you deem fit.

Learnworlds starting price is $24 per month for the Starter plan for unlimited paid courses, custom domain, coupons, and payment gateway.
VdoCipher DRM encrypted video streaming & watermarking security integration is possible with Learnworlds and similar portals and is explained here in another blog.

Ruzuku

Ruzuku is another feature-rich online learning platform. To start and sell video courses on Ruzuku is fast and seamless and you can upload just about any media file to sell your course. Ruzuku encourages you to prompt students to collaborate and communicate with their peers and allows you to track their achievements throughout.

When integrated with MailChimp, Ruzuku can automate emails to go out to notify people of upcoming courses. Besides these, Ruzuku has functions such as teleconferencing, support options, daily backups, and so on.

Ruzuku might be an ideal solution for those with limited knowledge of technology which only wants their course up and running in no time. Ruzuku is priced between $99 a month to $199 a month.

VdoCipher DRM encrypted video streaming & watermarking security integration is possible with the Teachable and similar portals and is explained here in another blog.

WizIQ

This online learning platform helps you sell video courses and mock tests, but its flagship feature is to hold live classes. A virtual classroom on the platform can accommodate over 200 students. Features such as multiple whiteboards, circuit diagrams, maps, and shapes and graphs facilitate learning on the platform. The tutor is also free to share resources such as files, videos, and presentations from their library.

WizIQ LMS pricing starts from $1/user/month while Virtual Classroom pricing starts from $18/teacher/month.

TREEHOUSE

Treehouse is an online platform that offers a broad range of development courses covering topics such as HTML, CSS, PHP, JavaScript, and Python. It provides learners with access to a vast library of content, including workshops, bonus content, and conferences. Treehouse aims to help students learn coding skills to land their dream jobs, offering a 7-day free trial for new students to explore thousands of hours of learning content​.

Engoo Tutor

Engoo is a platform offering private online English lessons, accessible anytime and anywhere. It features 1-on-1 sessions lasting 25 minutes each, with a pool of 9,319 tutors from 116 countries. Engoo caters to various learning needs with over 11,000 lesson materials, including daily news to keep learners informed. The platform makes learning convenient with no downloads required and starts at $42.70/month

Udemy

Udemy is an online learning platform emphasizing 130,000+ video courses taught by expert teachers. Students can take courses in anything from programming languages like Python, and Java to personal advancement classes like design, drawing, writing, and yoga. Tutors can use this platform for free. However, Udemy makes big money by taking 50% per transaction of your course. Udemy has more than 12 million students.

Proctur (Indian)

Proctur is an online learning platform that provides end to end digitization solutions to enable tutors and coaching institutes to sell courses online, teach live online, conduct exams online, and manage the coaching institutes. They offer important features like inquiry management, fees management, admission management, tools to conduct online tests, etc.

ProProfs Training Maker

ProProfs Training Maker is an online learning platform. The tool makes it easy to create, design, share and track online courses, lessons, and tests. Being cloud-based, it enables users to deliver anytime, anywhere learning to anyone, on any device. The LMS system provides a premium library of 100+ professionally designed and ready-to-courses and default templates. These resources are fully editable with a logo, theme, colours, and branding.

To help you get online learning up and running in no time, the learning management system (LMS) provides a premium library of 100+ professionally designed and ready-to-courses and default templates. These resources are fully editable with a logo, theme, colours, and branding.

ProProfs starts at $2/learner/month. No per-user fee. No hidden cost. There is also a 15-day free trial on all plans.

Fatbit Online Learning MarketPlace

Fatbit Online Learning MarketPlace (formely Yo!Coach), offered by FATbit Technologies, is a customizable online tutoring and consultation marketplace platform. It’s designed for entrepreneurs and trainers aiming to launch businesses centered around online learning and coaching. Yo!Coach facilitates the creation of an online learning platform, offering features like live video interaction, pre-recorded courses, multi-language support, and more, making it a versatile solution for different online learning business models. For more details, you can explore the platform here:

TalentLMS

TalentLMS is an online learning platform where you can build courses by re-using presentations or videos you already have or by consuming content from web-sources. They provide support for multiple types of questions and a variety of test types. You can also collect and analyze survey responses.

BrightSpace

BrightSpace is an online learning platform that creates personalized learning paths for each student that is neatly presented on a Progress Dashboard. Teachers can map, foretell, even reroute individual student learning outcomes as well as create rubrics to evaluate quizzes, assignments, discussions, and more. Brightspace is loaded with an arsenal of tools that educators can use to fine-tune their teaching styles

Uteach

Uteach is a different path to the online teaching system. This isn’t just an online learning platform where you may upload your online courses. Uteach presents a chance to create your own portal-website that becomes your personal brand with your imagined domain name and design. Once you registered to the platform, you can include your video courses of quality knowledge.

TutorHub

This online learning platform is easy to use. Tutor Hub is a secure website, which is useful for students and teachers. It is comfortable for teachers to arrange lessons and use an online tutoring classroom. Students also like Tutor Hub because they instantly find a teacher online and start training. This platform is right for learners both inside and outside formal education.

Educadium

Educadium is the complete online learning platform for nonprofits, educators, and trainers. With Educadium, you can set up your online school and create an online course that looks professional, and that meets the most poignant learning fundamentals. It’s safer and more convenient than free dilemmas.

Complete package platforms-

Kajabi

Kajabi is the best course creation software for automating the marketing of an online video course. Busy course creators get marketing automation from Kajabi. It helps you connect landing pages for exclusive offers, course launches, and more to checkout pages within a few clicks.

For instance, the promotional offer pipeline comprises of three steps- first, you collect email addresses of attendees by offering them an ebook or cheatsheet. When a visitor enters their email address, they are directed to a sales page where they are offered a discount on a product.

You choose what you want to do with the email addresses collected- send them a thank you, upsell them, or follow up on their purchase.

Kajabi is priced from $129 per month for the Basic plan, which contains one site, five products, 25 pipelines, and 25,000 marketing emails.
VdoCipher DRM encrypted video streaming & watermarking security integration is possible with Kajabi and similar portals and is explained here in another blog.

Academy of Mine

This could quickly become one of your preferred online learning platforms to sell video courses online. Academy of Mine offers a full website for you to launch your online course. You get to choose from a fully hosted template that offers galleries, landing pages, and course offering pages.

Academy of Mine is a perfect choice for its holistic course creation and management functions. Generate chapters or units in your course, give out certificates, carry out timed quizzes, assignments, and badges.

Academy of Mine begins at $499 a month.

Video Plugin compatible with multiple Platforms-

VdoCipher

VdoCipher is targetted for the course creators who are hell concerned about security from piracy of videos. VdoCipher provides Hollywood Grade DRM encryption & dynamic viewer specific watermarking to prevent download and screen capture.

This product integrates well with WordPress, moodle, and multiple LMS platforms. You can choose any of the platforms and use this plugin to provide your videos with the highest possible security.

VdoCipher pricing starts from $129 and the pricing model is based on bandwidth and storage.

WordPress Plugins-

AccessAlly

AccessAlly isn’t just a WordPress plugin – it also handles payments, membership management, and integration with your email marketing CRM. That means you don’t need to cobble together a bunch of different tools or custom code to have a first-class LMS system on WordPress.

Each member or student has their own login on your membership site, and from there you can design courses that include everything from quizzes, video, and audio, downloads, and so much more.

This platform has features like drag-and-drop course builder, progress tracking, video and audio bookmark, different types of quizzes, and auto-generated certificates.

Course Cats

Course Cats help you to build a website, grow your email list, and sell your courses online. They also you in dealing with tech stuff like how to point your domain to your WebHost. If you need they will help you in installing the WordPress plugin and selecting the themes as well.

With Course Cats, you’ll have just the right amount of options to customize the look and feel of your site without getting into that overwhelming, way-too-many-options mess. Regardless if you’re ready to sell your courses now or if you’re still working on the content – with Course Cats, you can build a blog, grow your email list with our gorgeous landing pages, and when you’re ready, sell your online courses.

Course Cats starting prices are $59/month or $497/year.

LifterLMS

LifterLMS is a powerful WordPress plugin that makes it easy to create, sell, and protect engaging online courses and training based membership websites. LifterLMS helps you build online courses from one screen with the intuitive multi-tier drag and drop course builder. You can also create dynamic multimedia quizzes to reinforce learning.

It strikes a beautiful balance in being an all-in-one solution while also integrating with other best of breed technologies relevant to course creators and membership site owners. LifterLMS has a flourishing well supported user community through, active listening, and strong documentation.

Besides trial for 30 days in $1, the starting price for LifterLMS is $99 for one year.

Content Marketplace cum Course Platforms-

OpenSesame

OpenSesame provides an online marketplace for buying and selling e-learning courses.

OpenSesame doesn’t only work as an online course selling platform but also works as course vendors who curate the right courses for your training program as well as guide you through improving e-learning utilization and employee engagement. If your Learning Management System works with SCORM or AICC compliant courses, then working with OpenSesame courses will be simple for your LMS administrator.  Its platform allows companies to buy courses created by industry experts instead of having to create their own.

Skillshare

Skillshare is an American online learning community for people who want to learn from educational videos. Skillshare operates on a membership model, so your class will have a built-in audience from the start. They also help you to grow your community and promote your classes. Skillshare classes include a combination of video lessons and a class project. They also provide resources like teachers’ handbooks. They also help you improve your classes with features like ‘Teach Challenge’.

Skillshare operates under a subscription model, which means that students pay a monthly or annual fee for a premium membership. They pay teachers for every minute watched by premium students in their classes. Also, they compensate teachers for every student they bring to Skillshare through their referral link.

Moodle Plugins-

CourseMerchant

If Moodle is your choice for your online learning platform then you should try CourseMerchent. CourseMerchent provides you a complete package from course creation to selling and even how to market your course. Some of their features are instant student enrollment into the LMS with single sign-on and sell multiple seats and allow purchasers to allocate seats to users with ‘Manage Licenses’ admin capability.

You can integrate CourseMerchant with Brightspace, Totara, Kallidus LMS, etc.

LMS Checkout

LMS checkout fits perfectly with your moodle course. All you have to do is create an account on the LMS Checheckout website and download the plugin to install it into your Moodle account. You can connect it with payment gateways like Paypal and authorize.net. If you want some other gateway they are open to your request as well.

FAQs

How do I choose the right online learning platform?

Selecting the right online learning platform involves considering factors such as the variety and quality of courses offered, the credentials of the instructors, the platform’s interface and user experience, the cost, and any additional features like certifications or interactive tools. It’s also important to think about your learning goals, preferred learning style, and the specific skills you wish to develop.

Are there free online learning platforms?

Yes, there are numerous online learning platforms that offer free courses or have a freemium model where basic content is free, and advanced features or courses require payment. Free platforms often provide a wide range of courses but may limit access to certifications or personalized feedback.

Are online courses as effective as in-person classes?

Online courses can be just as effective as in-person classes, depending on the course’s quality, the learner’s motivation, and the presence of interactive and engaging materials. Many platforms incorporate various teaching methods, including videos, quizzes, and peer interactions, to enhance learning outcomes.

What technical requirements do I need to fulfill to learn online?

To learn online effectively, you’ll need a reliable internet connection, a computer or mobile device capable of running the platform’s software, and any necessary software or tools specified by the course (e.g., programming environments for coding courses). It’s also helpful to have a quiet, comfortable space dedicated to learning.

Smita Singh

Digital Marketing | Writing

I read therefore I write.

The post 31 Online Learning Platforms in India & Worldwide (2024) appeared first on VdoCipher Blog.

In 2022, video usage analysis will be used extensively in the education sector to improve the quality of learning. By tracking and analyzing the usage of videos, educators will identify which videos are most effective in engaging students and teaching them new concepts. This information will then be used to create more effective videos that can be used in classrooms across the world.

The increasing use of videos for learning and teaching purposes is expected to drive market growth. The market is expected to be driven by the growing demand for video-based learning tools and the increasing demand for online education. The ever-increasing adoption of video-based learning tools by educational institutes is expected to boost the market growth. As per the BusinessWire report, The US and China are leading countries in the eLearning sector due to the rapid increase in the available online courses and course hosting platforms, rise in disposable income per capita, and internet penetration. The North American region is expected to dominate the eLearning market in 2022.

Many research studies related to eLearning have provided that students benefit from e-learning. These benefits can be summarized as providing time and location flexibility, helping the educational institution to save time and money, providing self-directed and self-paced learning activities, building an environment to study collaboratively in the distance; make available learning materials anytime.

Under the view of these previous research findings, this Online vs Offline Learning Survey in Education Sector aims to examine the impact of video consumption on online learning in 2022. The Video Usage Analysis Survey in the education sector in 2022 will aim to understand the current and future video usage trends in the education sector.

The Online vs Offline Learning Survey in Education Sector will focus on understanding the video usage patterns of K12 students, Graduates, Exam Aspirants and those who are Employed. It will also identify the factors influencing video usage in the education sector. The Online vs Offline Education Survey in 2022 is a comprehensive report that provides a detailed overview of the current and future use of video in the education sector.

Education Survey Background and Objectives

Surveys are important because they provide researchers with data that can be used to make informed decisions. Survey data can help researchers understand how people feel about a specific issue, how they behave, and what they believe. Surveys are often the best and usually only reliable way—to discover what people think and want.

Our Video Usage Analysis Survey aimed to collect information and opinion of students, aspirants, professionals, and graduates about how video consumption impacted learning in 2021. We collected unbiased survey data and analyzed it based on results or opinions. This valuable feedback is our baseline to measure and establish a benchmark to compare results over time.

Online vs Offline Learning Survey in Education Sector Methodology

The Video Usage Analysis Survey was conducted in January 2022 by VdoCipher. The analysis in this report is based on both Online Polls and Manual Survey Questionnaires. The Manual Survey was conducted among a sample of participants, including K12 students, Graduates, Aspirants preparing for competitive exams, and employed. The Manual Survey Questionnaires were distributed via Google Forms for the participants to fill in. Also, the participants were limited to demography based in India.  On the online side, the poll was conducted on social media covering Global demography.

Manual Survey Questionnaires are important because they allow for more personal interaction with the respondent. This can help to gather more accurate information. Manual Survey Questionnaires provide accurate data about people’s opinions and experiences. They can be conducted in a variety of ways, including through interviews, focus groups, and our chosen way of questionnaire forms.

Our Manual Survey methodology involved a few in-person questionaries which included multiple-choice questions (5), Yes/No Questions (5) and some Open-ended questions (2). The verbal responses were collected on a Google Spreadsheet attached to Google Forms for further analysis in combination with the results of Online Poll results.

Nearly, 30% of the respondents gave no answer to the subjective question about the platform and reason of liking and that’s why their data was cleaned and processed for observation results to be procured. They were usually marked with “None Specific” and “No Reason Specified” markings respectively.

Survey Results (Charts, Stats and Online Poll result)

In this section, we will present the outcome of our Video Usage Analysis Survey and will try to draw various inferences out of it. We will also present related study results so that the viewers can observe the similarity and contradictions based on their sample demography or time frame in which they were conducted.

The Shift in Learning Mode

Internet usage has seen a tremendous surge in the form of video chats, video streaming, online classes, and online gaming since early 2020.

• A Pew Research survey highlighted that 90% of Americans believe the internet has been essential to them.
• In our Video Usage Analysis Survey, 46.3% learned new things in life by both offline and online means. Among the remaining, 38.8% believed online mediums helped them learn things. The proportion of offline learning in life was just 14.9%. This may be presumed due to the shift from traditional learning to online learning in recent years.
• Statistics by Statista also show that internet penetration in the United States is at approximately 91%. We adopted – willingly and not-so-willingly – new ways of using the internet for business, education, and social activities.
• Similar to the Manual Survey results, when the audience were asked to choose among the two modes, 65.75% of respondents chose the ‘Online’ mode out of 946 responses received for the question.
  

Online Education better than Offline?

Online education will continue to increase in popularity as costs get lower due to technological availability and the quality of instruction continues to evolve and improve. Learning online will become more of a norm and less of a novelty within the next generation.

• In December 2020, the U.S. National COVID-19 School Response Dashboard found nearly 56% of schools adopting a hybrid model, 29% offering in-person instruction, and 15% running remotely.
• While in our Manual Survey, only 47.8% of participants believed that online education is better than offline. With 52.2% of participants inclined towards offline education, the margin seems very small.
• As per the ‘How America Pays for College report’, conducted by Ipsos, 75% of college students and their families prefer to have in person-only or hybrid learning next semester, citing difficulty concentrating and difficulty collaborating with peers among their top critiques of online education.
• In the conducted online poll survey, the audience was asked the question, “Is online education better than offline?”. 1074 poll responses were recorded. Nearly 61% of the audience felt online education to be better than traditional learning. For Higher Education or 4-year institutions, retention rates for online students were 60–65% compared to a 75–80% retention rate of students in offline courses. This report was published after thorough research in 2016.

Both online and offline learning has specific benefits and drawbacks. To the learners, Some learners prefer interactive and visual methods. Others prefer face-to-face training to online training. Both types of education are essential in their own right. Even though online learning has benefited us, it will never replace classroom education completely.

Have you benefited more from online learning?

Peer-reviewed open access scientific journal, PLOS One accessed student’s experiences with online teaching following Covid-19. In the survey, after two weeks of online education, 8/16 students (50%) expected that their learning outcomes would be inferior with online education compared to their pre-COVID-19 education at campus. After 12 weeks, 15/ 21 students (71%) expected their learning outcome to be lower, and, notably, none of the students expected it would be higher. On both occasions, most students reported that studying had become more difficult compared to the time before the pandemic.

On the contrary, we were able to observe that participants who were nearly forced to adopt Online Education due to Covid-19 for 2 years have a better acceptance. Their responses include 55.2% of participants choosing ‘yes’ as their choice and the remaining 44.8% believing in Offline modes of learning.

Cost of Online Education vs Offline Education

A study called “Making Digital Learning Work,” released by Arizona State University analysed the cost of delivering education of large-scale online efforts at six colleges and universities. In the study, When they compared the overall costs of online courses with average costs at four of the institutions, they found that the savings for online courses ranged from $12 to $66 per credit hour, a difference of from 3 per cent to 50 per cent of the average credit hour costs”

Digital learning can help institutions reduce costs and pass along savings to students. This can be done through three primary mechanisms: raising student-to-instructor ratios, drawing on a broader network of adjunct faculty, and avoiding additional operations costs.”

The same can be corroborated in our Manual study where 61.2% of participants believe that Offline Education is costlier than Online one. In the online survey, we asked the audience to choose “Which education system they believe is more costly?”. Interestingly, out of 1070 poll responses, 621 (58%) respondents opted for Online education as more costly compared to offline.

To understand the contrast between the Online and Manual Survey, we must recall that Manual Survey had an audience only limited to India and the Online Poll had a Global audience. This can also be inferred as the Indian Audience having a majority overview towards Online Education being less costly while the Global audience having a reverse overview on that.

Have you ever done Online Group Study?

The benefits of online group study are many. First, online group study allows students to learn in a collaborative setting from one another. This type of study can provide students with various perspectives and deepen their understanding of the course material.

Additionally, online group study can help students develop essential teamwork skills. Various skills teachers can educate students on different in-demand subjects, such as programming, digital marketing, copywriting, or UI/UX design. Group members must work together to stay on track and complete assignments on time. Finally, online group study can be a cost-effective way for students to receive supplemental instruction.

• One participant in the survey says that screen-sharing allows him to better understand some of the students’ issues in the group. Some participants feel that there’s simply no ideal replacement for face-to-face study groups. Beyond the other considerations, online learning requires more self-discipline.
• While many K-12 students are now connecting using Zoom to form smaller group study communities. 55.2% of the respondents said they had done online group studies, while 44.8% did not feel a need for the same.

Recorded Videos, Live Classes or eBooks?

The participants were given four choices to select – Recorded videos, eBooks, Live Classes – One to One, and Live Classes – One to Many.

• Interestingly, 55.2% opted for recorded videos, followed by Live Classes One to Many (23.9%), Live Classes – One to One (17.9%), and 3% for ebooks. The result clearly states that students prefer video learning over ebooks. The reasons can be many.
• Recorded Video content is absorbed in a more accessible and easier manner. Students can learn and review in their way to playback recorded lectures. Learning is more easily accessible for everyone with playback speed adjustment and closed captioning features. This way, students who may have disabilities or prefer to learn a certain way can review what works for them.
• Some participants said they need to hear lessons more than once to comprehend. They can re-watch lectures as many times as they want or need. Also, without thinking about slowing down the class or course for everyone else.
• Coming to Live Classes One to One, which was the second voted online learning content mode, one K12 student says, conversations are almost student-driven. The student has complete control over the instructor’s questions and their feedback. Some students feared answering questions in one to many live classes and comparatively felt less stress in one to one interactive classes.

Social debates are already raging on the internet and offline on whether ebooks are still the best way to learn or learning videos presents a better alternative. Both learning modes have their strengths, and one is always better for specific tasks over the other. For example, videos appear as a better medium when used for introducing complex topics instead of reading.

Short vs Long Videos

According to the research study at the University of Wisconsin, most students agreed online video content learning helped them. Also, it notably worked best when video length was kept below 15 minutes. Another article by Wall Street Journal, too, made the same deductions. The optimal preferred video length is 6 minutes or shorter. This was when the students watched most of the way through these short videos.

• The average engagement time of any video is a maximum of 6 minutes, regardless of the video length. Also, the engagement rate decrease as videos lengthens. On average, learners spent around 3 minutes on videos longer than 12 minutes. This means they engaged with less than a quarter of the video content.
• Certificate-earning students engaged more with videos, maybe because they had greater motivation to learn the material. The VdoCipher survey found participants opting for short video content (40.3%) over long-form video content (16.4%). For 43.3% of participants, the length of the video was not a concern. They were comfortable in both, short and long videos.

Do you think your school should be available in the Online format?

The use of online courses among K-12 students has grown rapidly in recent years. All high schools in metro cities now require students to take at least one online course. Most online courses, particularly those serving K-12 students, have a format much more similar to in-person courses. The teachers have virtual discussions among the students, assign homework, and follows up with individual students. On comparing online and in-person classes, however, online classes aren’t as effective as in-person classes for most students.

Jessica Heppen and colleagues from the American Institutes for Research, assigned second-semester Algebra failed students to either take face-to-face or online courses in the summer. Students algebra test scores were lower in the online medium. They also rated their class more difficult than their peer of face-to-face option.

58.2% of our survey participants feel that schools should not be in the online format. Both studies found evidence that online schooling was less effective.

Overall, Being in person with teachers and students creates social pressures and benefits that help motivate students to engage. Some students do as well good in online courses as in in-person courses, some may actually do better. On average, students do worse in the online setup, and this is mainly true for students with weaker academic backgrounds.

Other Research on Online Vs Offline Education

One research conducted by Senthil Veerasamy and Susobhan Goswami, published in the International Journal of Education and Development using Information and Communication Technology (2022), explores the academic performance of students in online versus offline learning environments. The study utilized statistical tools like descriptive analysis, independent t-tests, and Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) to assess whether online learning provides better academic performance compared to offline (face-to-face) learning.

Descriptive statistics showed a slight advantage for offline learning in terms of academic performance, with average scores of 73 (offline) versus 71 (online). Independent t-tests and ANOVA further supported the significant impact of the mode of learning on academic performance.

Another study conducted by Priyanka, published in the International Journal of Creative Research Thoughts (2023), investigates the preferences between online and offline modes of learning, especially in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. This research collected data from 100 students across various regions in India, using an online survey structured into four sections to gather personal information and views on both learning modes.

Key findings and data include:

• Demography – The respondents consisted of 53% males and 47% females, primarily aged 18 to 25 years. The educational background ranged from high school to postgraduate levels, with a significant portion in urban areas (58%).
• Preference – 53.5% preferred offline learning, while 46.5% opted for online learning.
• Inclination – 70.7% favored hard copy study materials, showing a strong inclination towards traditional learning resources.
• Compatibility – 60% reported no difficulty in finding offline coaching, indicating accessibility to face-to-face educational services.
• Focus – A higher focus and interaction were noted in offline classes, with 80% of students finding them more engaging and motivating.
• Technology – About 60% had a laptop, and 88% had an internet connection, crucial for online learning.
• Engagement – Despite the convenience of online learning in saving time and enhancing efficiency, a considerable percentage of students (64%) felt bored compared to offline classes.
• Online Platforms – YouTube was the most used platform (86%), followed by Google Meet and specific educational websites.

Appendices

Survey Questionnaire

1. How do you mostly learn new things in Life?
   Online/Offline/Both
2. Do you think Online education is better than offline?
   Yes/No
3. Have you benefited more from online learning?
   Yes/No
4. Which Education System is more costly?
   Online/Offline
5. Are you aware of any Online Tutorial (Tuition/Coaching) platforms?
   Yes/No
6. Have you ever done Online Group Study?
   Yes/No
7. Which type of Online Learning Content do you like more?
   Recorded Videos/Live Classes – One on One/Live Classes – One to Many/eBooks
8. What Videos do you like more?
   Short/Long/Both
9. Do you think your school should be available in the Online format?
   Yes/No
10. How many daily hours do you usually spend on Online Learning?
    <2 hours/>2 hours
11. Which eLearning site or App is most used by you and why do you like it?
    Subjective Answer

Technical Terms

We have tried to produce this report in very easy language for our intelligent users. We believe that moderate terms like sample size and demography are also understandable as per our readers’ capabilities. If we have missed explaining a term within the report, kindly search it on any search engine of your choice and we believe it will be easily learned.

Ethical Considerations

All participants gave their informed consent. The questionnaires did not include questions about personal health information or sensitive data. The quantitative data were collected through a self-administered survey. The participants provided their written consent to draw observations on data except for their names and identity.

FAQs

Why Classroom Learning Is Better Than Online?

The physical presence in a classroom environment enhances focus, minimizes distractions, and fosters a sense of community and collaboration among students. The structured schedule of offline learning helps in better time management and discipline, contributing to more effective learning outcomes.

What Is Better Online Or Offline Classes?

Offline classes are better for those who value face-to-face interaction, hands-on learning experiences, and a structured learning environment. On the other hand, online classes offer flexibility, accessibility, and convenience, especially for those with time constraints or geographical limitations.

What Is Offline Education?

Offline education typically involves standard teaching aids like textbooks, physical materials, and on-site facilities, emphasizing real-time learning and interaction.

What Major Difference Do You Find In The Teaching Of Online Classes And Offline Classes?

The major difference between online and offline classes lies in the mode of interaction and communication. Offline classes benefit from direct, in-person interaction, allowing for nuanced communication, including non-verbal cues, immediate feedback, and spontaneous discussions. In contrast, online classes rely on digital platforms, offering greater flexibility and accessibility but potentially limiting the immediacy and depth of teacher-student interaction.

References

• Business Wire – link
• Statistsa – link
• Sallimae – link
• PLOS Journal – link
• Academia Edu – link
• US Edu – link
• Delhi Univ – link

Vishal Sharma

My expertise focuses on DRM encryption, CDN technologies, and streamlining marketing campaigns to drive engagement and growth. At VdoCipher, I’ve significantly enhanced digital experiences and contributed to in-depth technical discussions in the eLearning, Media, and Security sectors, showcasing a commitment to innovation and excellence in the digital landscape.

The post Online vs Offline Learning Survey in Education Sector – 2024 appeared first on VdoCipher Blog.

Now, how to find a video hosting platform to satisfy all your needs? Searching ‘video hosting platforms’ in a Google search gives you 5,41,00,000 search results. Also consisting of paid ads and content around the best online video hosting platforms.

Here we bring to you 12 video learning platforms & LMS video platform that you can consider for fulfilling your requirements. But, before you go on, you can check out the best video hosting platform, VdoCipher, with a 30-day trial by clicking here.

The list is segmented into 3 different types of educational video platforms-

• Video hosting platforms that can be integrated with any website/LMS.
  
• Online Course  platforms that provide ready to launch branded website
• WordPress based LMS course platforms

What is an elearning video platform and its importance?

An elearning video platform is where educators and course creators create, upload, host, and share educational videos digitally. These video elearning platforms have a bunch of features like video hosting, editing, content creation tools, analytics and secure content delivery.

There are significant benefits of video elearning platforms including:

• Accessibility – E-learning video platforms offer on-demand access to courses which can be accessed anytime and anywhere. This makes the whole learning experience much more accessible, flexible, and self-paced.
• Visual & engaging content – Studies have shown that humans have a better understanding and retention rate of a concept in visual format rather than text-based. Videos present an engaging way to present information and keep the audience motivated and engaged.
• Cost-effective – Online elearning video platforms are cost-effective as compared to traditional learning. Students from even the remote places can learn just with basic internet connectivity and smartphones. These platforms reduce the costing of infrastructure setup, travel and meal costs, and other maintenance.

Features to look for in an elearning video platform

• Video hosting – The platform must allow video hosting and streaming at the best possible video quality along with customizations for video size, format, and resolution.
• Adaptive streaming – Adaptive bitrate streaming allows automatic adjustment of video quality as per the viewer’s internet connectivity. It’s very useful when viewers are based in tier 2 and tier 3 cities with limited bandwidth.
• Analytics – Analytics keeps track of progress and learning. It includes several video performance metrics like views, demographic, heatmaps, bounce rate, and more.
• Customization – Customization options like adding branding, custom themes, templates give a personalized feel and authority.
• Multi-device compatibility – The elearning video platform must be compatible with a range of devices and browser types to have content accessibility on-the-go.
• Security – Security measures like Digital Rights Management as offered by VdoCipher prevent video piracy, unauthorized access and illegal downloads.
• Easy integration – The platform must have easy integrations with popular LMSs and other third-party platforms to enhance the functionalities.

Platforms to host videos for Online Courses

VdoCipher Video Platform

VdoCipher.com provides video hosting for all kind and size of online course businesses/organizations. It allows you to stream e-learning videos on your course site/app in a most secure and smooth manner. Few of the key features include – highest level of security from video piracy through Hollywood Grade DRM encryption & watermarking technologies; and smoothest streaming at slow connections due to optimized encoding at lower sizes. VdoCipher partners with Google to provide Netflix like DRM encryption security and packages AWS cloud infrastructure to ensure security and scale for customers across 40+ countries.  This enables users to earn maximum revenues from their content and ensure the best user experience.

Vdocipher provides you a video player with complete video hosting services that you can integrate with your own website or app portal hassle-free. You can integrate the player with your website, app, or multiple LMSes.
If security from piracy is your priority then VdoCipher is the way to go.

VdoCipher is the perfect video LMS solution for anyone looking to secure their video content.

Plans start from just $49 and a Free 30 Day trial is available.

Vimeo

Vimeo offers robust video hosting but generally focuses on creatives, rather than on the educational or eLearning market. You get a good looking interface for distributing your online video courses. It is one of the fewest video streaming platforms that offer both- streaming and video hosting services. You also get analytics, a video management platform, privacy controls, and more.

You need to purchase a premium plan if you’re looking to access basic live streaming functionality. It also offers a wide range of proprietary hardware and software for live streaming. It doesn’t contain ads and its customizable video embeds make it a good choice for those looking to embed a video on the landing page of their website.

Panopto

Panopto is a video hosting platform for online courses that serves businesses and colleges across the world. You get a dedicated video platform for education and focuses on streaming video courses for business & universities. Panopto describes itself as a single platform for managing, live streaming, recording, and sharing video content online.

It is preferred by organizations and colleges who are looking for a simple, dependable solution for overseeing, streaming and video recordings. The platform can be used by any representative, educator, and student without any prior knowledge on video hosting and going through their knowledge base.

They have partnered with Streaming Media to survey global leaders in higher education, aiming to understand the usage of video and its impact on learning experiences and outcomes. Key areas of focus include synchronous and asynchronous video use, student engagement, learning outcomes, and evaluation criteria for video management tools.​​

Kaltura

Kaltura have a  customizable video hosting platform for e-learning course creators & educators. Functionalities include you  include the ability to create videos and publish them directly to your post, centrally manage, and track your video content. The platform offers some key features like – , video management, social sharing, monetization, mobile and tablet delivery, and more.

It is enterprise focussed ( not small-medium business-friendly) but offers a variety of solutions for media, marketing and education businesses looking to monetize online videos. Kaltura’s solutions are designed to enhance student learning through video technology, offering flexibility for both synchronous and asynchronous instruction.​​​​

You can easily do video upload, import rich-media directly to your blog post. The platform provides good viewing experience anywhere, anytime, on any device: automatic transcoding of uploaded videos, adaptive streaming, and delivery via leading CDNs.

Standalone Online Course Platforms

Thinkific

Thinkific is a course platform that lets you sell your e-learning video courses online. You get everything one can ask for – creating an online education business with an easy-to-use interface to build courses. It offers a full-featured software solution to help you create, deliver, and market and sell courses online. You get to choose from predefined templates such as a flagship course, mini-course, digital download, webinar replay, etc. Use simple and readymade templates to create and launch your video course in two parts: creating the course material, and building the landing page.

If you are still wondering about the structure and content of your online course, Thinkific lets you create and sell a video course right from scratch. Though, It can be a bit challenging for a first-time video course creator to decide a plan and strategy to build and sell the course.

Thinkific’s 2023 report highlights digital learning trends, focusing on microlearning for mobile audiences, the shift from creator entertainers to creator educators, and the rise of community-first digital learning. The report emphasizes the importance of personal branding over crowded marketplaces and provides actionable insights for future-proofing businesses.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Teachable

Teachable is an online teaching platform to serve the everyday instructors & educators. It offers an easy and simple solution for uploading content, customizing your online school management software, and interacting with your students very effectively. It is one of the best online learning platforms available for marketing of your course.

The online platform lets you customize the look and feel of your online course for best user experience. The best part being their course builder accepts documents from Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, etc. You can choose to sell courses as a standalone product or in bundles. There are various modes of accepting payments as well, you can – establish a payment plan, charge a one-time fee, or allow your audience to subscribe to the course.

Teachable also offers multi-language support in case you are planning to launch your course world-wide. The platform also comes with other additional solutions such as international payments, affiliate programs, email marketing, and more to maximize your outreach. Teachable is enhancing its platform with new tools and features for 2023. These include integrations with AWeber, ActiveCampaign, Google Analytics 4, LinkedIn Insight Tag, Stripe, Meta Pixel, Calendly, Zapier, Dropbox, and Wobo

Kajabi

Kajabi is an online platform that provides tools for selling digital products, including online courses. It specializes in building landing pages, high-converting sales pages, webinar pages, and launching your advertising campaigns for your online business.

It is described as “the one system you need to market, sell, and deliver your knowledge online.” Along with courses, you can also sell memberships, training portals, file downloads, and any other digital product you can come up with.

Kajabi is one of the best course creation platform to automate the marketing of an online video course. If you are a busy course creator you can get marketing automation done by Kajabi. It helps you connect landing pages for exclusive offers, course launches, and more to checkout pages within a few clicks.

Kajabi charges from $119-$319/month for the Basic plan to Pro plan.

Proctur

Proctur is an Ed-tech company that is a pioneer in digitization of educational institutes. It provides end to end digitization solutions to enable education institutes to sell e-learning videos online, , conduct online exams and manage the coaching institutes.

It offers key features like inquiry management, fees management, admission management, tools to conduct online tests, etc. Many premium coaching institutes use proctur at their institutes to manage multiple branches across India.

Proctur is featured amongst the top 10 most promising education apps. Proctur offers its portfolio of digital solutions to over 2,500 coaching institutes in more than 125 cities across India. Over 1 Million students and 15,000 tutors use Proctur apps and tools.

Proctur offers its basic plan at just $12/month for 100 students to $28/month for unlimited students.

WordPress LMS Plugins to host e-learning videos

If you have a wordpress-based website and want to start creating and selling courses, a WordPress LMS plugin is a must need for you.

If you are interested in creating your own video courses online, feel free to check out these elearning video software to fulfill all your basic requirements to create courses.

Following are few of the LMS plugins which are recommended which are easy to use and doesn’t require much efforts during their setup:

LifterLMS

LifterLMS is a powerful WordPress plugin that makes it easy to create, sell, and protect engaging online courses and training based membership websites. LifterLMS helps you build online courses from one screen with the intuitive multi-tier drag and drop course builder. You can also create dynamic multimedia quizzes to reinforce learning.

LifterLMS is the leading free open source WordPress Learning Management system solution. It comes with content management tools that can help you offer individual courses, training based membership websites, and MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses). LifterLMS allows you to build an LMS that can be enriched with add-ons that meet the unique needs of individuals, small groups, and niche markets.

Besides trial for 30 days at $1, the starting price for LifterLMS is $99 for one year.

LearnPress

LearnPress is one of the most popular WordPress LMS plugins. It offers a free version with all the essential features and you can get further add-ons at an additional cost depending upon your selection and its use on your website. It is easy to use with a friendly interface and requires minimal efforts for its setup.

This free LMS plugin lets you create courses, lessons and pages directly. You can first separately create the course, lesson and quizzes, and to then assign quizzes to lessons and lessons to courses. This is because at last all of them are brought together in the main course page. This will consume less time with more clarity.

LearnPress does not allow the support of question banks – you can only use a question once in a quiz, and the quiz only once in a course.

WPLMS

WPLMS is one of the best social learning management systems for WordPress. It makes it easy to create and sell online courses, allows you to coordinate & work with other instructors within a community and earn commissions. It offers some key features like activity tracking, course directories, course management and a front-end course creator.

LearnDash

LearnDash is one of the premium WordPress LMS plugins in the store. It allows you to design, promote, and sell online courses. Currently, it is in use by Fortune 500 companies and prestigious universities. Out of its best features is its speed and its drag-and-drop course builder that makes the process of course creation both easy and enjoyable.

Learndash have developed a complete marketing and product solution i.e. they have their own membership solution and have an integrated payment processing setup. The flip side of being an all-in-one solution is that this does not allow much scope for customization. On the other hand they have an active community support forum.

Learndash is optimal for developing detailed and academic-level E-Learning solutions, where little customization is required. Pricing starts at $159 for the basic version and tops out at $329 for the Pro version.

We’ve written several other blogs on LMS, feel free to check them out if it piques your interest

• Video LMS
• Enterprise LMS
• Corporate LMS
• Top LMS Platform
• LMS Systems
• Learning Management Systems

FAQs

What are Video Training Platforms?

Video Training Platforms are online tools that provide an interactive environment for delivering and managing training content in video format. They often include features like video hosting, streaming, interactive quizzes, and analytics to track learner engagement and progress.

What makes Video Platforms for Education different from general video platforms?

Video Platforms for Education are specifically designed for academic use, offering features like course structuring, assignment submission, student-teacher interaction, and educational content libraries. They focus on facilitating learning, monitoring student progress, and integrating with educational tools.

Can Video Platforms for Education be used for remote learning?

Yes, Video Platforms for Education are ideal for remote learning as they provide a virtual learning environment with tools for live lectures, recorded lessons, student engagement tracking, and collaboration features, making them effective for distance education.

Are eLearning Video Platforms suitable for all types of learners?

eLearning Video Platforms are generally versatile and can cater to various learning styles, including visual and auditory learners. However, their effectiveness can vary depending on the course content, platform usability, and individual learner preferences.

How does a Video Learning Platform enhance the learning experience?

A Video Learning Platform enhances learning by providing interactive and engaging video content, often with features like annotations, quizzes, and discussion forums. These platforms cater to visual and auditory learning styles, making complex subjects easier to understand.

What is an LMS Video Platform?

An LMS (Learning Management System) Video Platform is an integrated solution that combines the features of a traditional LMS with video capabilities. It allows for the creation, management, and delivery of video-based learning content alongside other learning resources.

Can I integrate VdoCipher with my existing LMS?

Yes, integrations on VdoCipher are pretty easy. We have seamless integrations with popular LMS like LearnDash, LearnPress, Sensei, WP CourseWare, and LifterLMS.

What is the pricing model of an elearning video platform?

The pricing depends on the number of videos, required storage space and bandwidth. Some charge a flat monthly fee while others charge on the amount of bandwidth and storage occupied.

Subodh

Product Marketing Specialist, VdoCipher.

www.vdocipher.com

The post Top 12 E-Learning Video Platforms [Updated 2024] appeared first on VdoCipher Blog.

Earlier there used to be only one exam for JEE but in 2013 it was changed to two parts JEE (Main) and JEE (Advanced). Basically AIEEE was renamed to JEE (Main) for admission in NITs, and other top engineering colleges while JEE (Advanced) is for admission in IITs. It’s important to clear the Main exam to appear for the Advanced exam.

JEE is the toughest engineering exam in India that tests your knowledge in physics, chemistry, and mathematics. And because it’s so tough to crack, aspiring students prepare hard and often take up offline or online coaching to score well.

We have all witnessed the rising trend of online education. The online coaching platforms market is expected to grow by 19.94%. There is freedom and flexibility with online JEE coaching compared to traditional coaching. You can choose your own time to take lessons.

The Growth of Online JEE Coaching

The COVID-19 Pandemic was responsible for the increase in the shift from traditional to online learning. The coronavirus outbreak made people think beyond normal offline learning methods. This was the trend setter from offline to online JEE coaching.

Classroom learning is still popular among students but online coaching is the present need. 

Let us look at the benefits of eLearning for JEE aspirants,

• Freedom and Flexibility: You get to choose the time slots for taking lessons
• Accessibility: You can record and rewatch the sessions
• Affordable: It cuts down the expense of visiting coaching centers
• Personalized learning experience with the rise of live classes
• Saves you the extra time you spend commuting to offline coaching centers 
• Easier to make notes while attending lectures
• Anyone can experience the best learning from the experts, especially useful for people from remote areas where coaching centers are not a thing.

JEE Offline vs JEE Online Coaching

Let’s compare JEE offline and online coaching basis a few factors,

Time

There is no doubt that online coaching is a big time saver as it cuts down the time to visit coaching centers. You can use the extra time to prepare for additional lessons. Since JEE is an extremely competitive exam, you need to be extra efficient with your time. So efficiency-wise online coaching is a win.

Flexibility

Online coaching is much more flexible than offline coaching. As one can attend the classes in the comfort of their place. You just need to have a stable internet connection. Offline, you have to attend the classes based on the prior decided time and place.

Resources

In online classes, modules and sessions are available to students at all times. One can anytime log into the platform and can view or download the learning material. In offline, you are handed over with learning modules when you join the coaching center. It’s your responsibility to keep them safe.

Interaction

In offline classes, you get to interact with the faculties and can discuss the doubts at the end of classes or even between. However, some students shy away from asking questions for fear of getting judged. Online coaching offers live doubt clearing sessions, and with one-on-one sessions, you can approach the tutor without the fear of being judged.

Online Exams

Online coaching offers countless tests and mock exams from previous years that you can take at your convenience. One popular online mock test series is the All India Test series for JEE, which allows you to evaluate your preparation. Real aspirants participate in this exam. Top IIT JEE coaching institutes like Allen, Aakash, and FIITJEE all offer these test series.

So offline and online both have their pros and cons. It’s up to you to decide which works better for you. It all depends on your comfort, way of learning, and how motivated you are to study.

Free vs Paid Coaching: What’s Best for You? 

I mentioned earlier in this article that JEE is no joke. Therefore hardly anyone relies on free coaching for this exam. Sure, you can find tons of free resources around exam preparation. But you can’t just study from YouTube and shady apps when preparing for the toughest exam in India. All the information will be in bits and pieces and not structured in any way.

Paid coaching on the other hand gives you the opportunity,

• To study from the expert coaches
• Structured modules which cover the entire syllabus
• Free mocks are created keeping in mind the exam difficulty and pattern
• Live doubt clearing one-on-one sessions
• Most importantly, with features like progress tracking you get to know where you stand and optimize your preparations accordingly

Top JEE Online Coaching Platforms in 2023

Many JEE coaching institutes in India have become a household name. Institutes like Allen, FIITJEE, Aakash, Resonance, and more. You can find their centers in almost all Tier 1 cities in India. When online coaching was not available, aspirants used to choose from one of these.

Let’s take a look at top IIT JEE online coaching platforms in 2023 and discuss in brief about them,

IITIANGUIDE – One of the best online platform for IIT JEE with IITian faculty. They have one-year and two-year programs which you can take in groups as well as 1-1 coaching sessions.

Vedantu – The course is designed keeping in mind that it suits everyone who wants to crack main and advanced. Here students can choose between Hindi and English as language to take lessons. You are free to choose from different timings and faculty.

Physics Wallah – PW offers a team of dedicated expert tutors who help each student in all the exam subjects. Apart from JEE, they also have teaching experts for other competitive exams. They have courses aligned for Class 11, Class 12, and Droppers.

Unacademy Plus – Another popular online platform for JEE coaching, offers everyday live classes, quizzes, and mock tests. The disadvantage with this one is that it’s expensive compared to other platforms with relatively high net data consumption.

All major platforms for JEE coaching online have a lot of similarities like +1 or +2 or crash course programs, 1-1 live doubt clearing sessions, free tests, and syllabus-wise modules. Many students who cracked JEE 2021 opted for these courses and were successful in cracking amid the pandemic.

Key Features to Look Out for When Choosing Best Online Platform for IIT JEE

With so many online coaching options out there, it sometimes gets overwhelming to choose from. Here are some key features you can watch out when choosing a JEE online coaching platform,

• Check out the reviews and recommendations online. Read real-life success stories online from real students and pick your green flags.
  
• Do a background check around the faculty. Most of these institutes offer ex-IIT faculty but still go through their teaching experience once. Also, make sure the teachers don’t change amid the course frequently as it can hamper your pace.
• Skim through the platform and its features. It should not be too complicated or too poor when it comes to user interface and experience. Features like interactive sessions are a bonus. Make sure it’s not too boring.
• Since it’s an online platform, you expect flexibility in terms of learning. Make sure you can rewatch old sessions or be able to download missed out lectures. Live sessions as per your preferred time are a gold mine.
• You need tons of practice mock tests while preparing for JEE. Make sure the platform you’re sticking to offers you the same.
• Compare the prices of different platforms and go with the one you think is most suitable for your budget and at the same time offers all the basic things.
• Lastly, just like before buying a tee, you try it once. Do the same when selecting the platform. Take a demo class and get an actual feel of the day-to-day lessons.
  

Selling JEE Courses Online: A Guide for Creators

In the era of the creator economy, educators have found a way to create something and then sell it online. We discussed how popular e-learning platforms like Vedantu and Physics Wallah sell online JEE coaching courses for aspiring students. 

Selling online courses has become more and more common now. You can also be an individual who likes teaching, leverage online course creator platforms like Teachable, and sell an online course.

Market Demand and Potential Earnings

Market demand for online education is on a steep rise. People are feeling more and more comfortable learning online. As we discussed the benefits of online learning over tradition above, the flexibility and freedom online courses offer is unmatchable, along with several other benefits. And with the internet, the sky’s the limit on your potential earnings. It can go up as the vast internet is, provided you deliver actual value in your course.

Advantages for Educators

If you are an educator, there are many benefits of teaching online. With remote learning, you can widen your audience by entering into cities where there are no proper coaching facilities. Another advantage is that you get to enjoy the work-life balance as you will be in the comfort of your home teaching more students than you could ever imagine.

Designing a Curriculum: Ensuring Comprehensive Coverage for JEE Subjects

The first step to creating a course is designing an effective curriculum. You need to create a comprehensive curriculum covering the entire JEE syllabus. Every subject, each topic needs to be included in the best possible way. It’s also important to explain each topic in the most digestible way. Adding media, infographics, and real life examples and making sessions a bit interactive help too. You don’t want to create a boring course.

Choosing the Right Platform

Next comes choosing the platform where you can host your course. You can start with WordPress, many educators use this CMS to host their course. Additionally, you can integrate any Learning Management System (LMS) along with the course. It will help enhance the experience of learning as it offers features like quizzes, discussions, track progress, and more.

WordPress for Selling Courses and Benefits of LMS for Course Delivery

The core element of any online teaching course is the video content. Now you need to host your videos on your CMS. WordPress allows you to host videos but the disadvantage of free hosting is that pirates can download your content without your permission and may sell it as their own. You might want to consider using a secure video hosting platform to protect your course content from pirates or hackers. 

Protecting your content from unauthorized access will make sure your content value remains intact and is accessible only to enrolled users.

Setting the Right Price for Your JEE Course

It’s also important to decide on your pricing strategy. For starters, you can watch a few competitors and their pricing. Then you can strategically come up with a pricing that offers maximum value at optimum price. When promoting your course, don’t underestimate the power of giving discounts and coupon codes to attract your new customer base or to retain existing customers. 

Engaging Students

The most effective way of learning a course is by engaging. Make sure your module is interactive for students. You can include quizzes, trivia, live Q&A, and more such elements to make your course exciting. 

Take feedback from students and continue improving your course. Use positive testimonials to attract more customers. Word of mouth works like a charm in the e-learning industry.

To summarize, an online selling course is a lucrative career option. It also has a good sense of purpose as you are the bridge between an aspiring JEE student and his dream coming true. Especially for students who are not in metro cities and are deprived of good JEE coaching.

The Future of Online JEE Coaching

With the evolving role of technology in online education, many passionate tutors and coaches invest in creating an online course. Since the demand for JEE online coaching is on the rise, some educators make a fortune by creating and selling courses online. It’s a win-win for both the creator and the consumer. Consumers get to access and learn from the course at their own pace and in the comfort of their place. 

With the continuously growing need for e-learning coaching platforms. And with traditional coaching centers making a shift to online learning, the future of online JEE coaching looks bright.

In conclusion, we can say that in today’s ever-changing digital world, online learning platforms hold a lot of value for both educators and students. Choosing the right platform improves the overall learning and teaching experience. 

For the coaching experts, it provides a powerful medium to teach aspirants online using the latest various features to improve the learning experience. Features like secure video hosting stop your valuable course content from getting stolen. And for the students, it’s an effective new way to take interactive online coaching without the hassle of commuting to coaching centers. 

The online coaching scenario is changing for good and we should all aim for continuous learning and adaptation in the e-learning space.

Lets Answer Popular FAQs about Online Courses

Is online coaching better than offline coaching for JEE?

It depends on an individual’s preference whether to opt for online or offline coaching. Online coaching does offer many benefits over traditional coaching in the sense of freedom, flexibility,  accessibility, and affordability.

How to sell online courses?

There are many online platforms out there that let you host your course on their platform and help you monetize the same. Additionally, you can also create your course on WordPress integrated with any good Learning Management System (LMS). 

Where to sell online courses?

You can sell your online course on platforms like Udemy, Skillshare, and Teachable. You can build a comprehensive curriculum and can host your course on any of these sites. And earn a decent income.

How to create an online course to sell?

Try to make the course content as valuable as possible. It should cover all the syllabus in the best possible way. Making an online course engaging and lively should also be given importance. Think beyond classroom teaching, and make use of learning models or real-life examples in your course.

Is selling online courses profitable?

Scaling your online course has never been this easy. You can reach a wide range of students online compared to offline teaching. Take your time and focus on creating a practical useful course. Promote your course initially and then let the course content and learning experience drive your course from there.

Akash Kandari

Hi, I am Akash, an engineer turned marketer. I talk about SaaS products, video tech, and product marketing. When not working I enjoy my time watching anime, learning something new and hanging out with friends & family.

The post Cracking JEE: How Online Coaching Transformed India’s Toughest Exam appeared first on VdoCipher Blog.

We cover various methods, technologies & statistics on both video piracy and video protection in this blog.

Introduction to the e-learning video piracy problem

It can be a real downer, creating good quality content and only to realize that it’s been distributed all over by the pirates just after a few days of launch. No content creator would ever choose to be in such a position. 

As the technology progresses so does the means to pirate your content. There are several tools such as  Video Download Helper, IDM which are used extensively to download premium content. These tools are easy to use, users just need to put in the URL of the video to download it or they work as an extension on the browser. So these make digital customer journey better. From here on it is quite easy for your content to pop up in the popular sharing platforms like Telegram or torrent or sometimes even Youtube.

But there are solutions to preventing this too. Major ed-tech companies have adopted technologies such as account restriction and DRM video encryption (DRM – Digital Rights Management) to protect their content. 

In case you are still wondering how to create online courses, feel free to check out these elearning video software to fulfill all your basic requirements to create courses.

So, before I take a deep dive into how you can stop your learning videos from getting pirated, I’ll explore how pirates are getting access to your videos.

How Are Your Elearning Videos Being Pirated?

Edtech companies lose a lot of revenue and paid users due to content piracy. One paid user downloads the content, shares it with their friends or on some online platform. Thus many users often chose not to go for the premium course when the same content is available for free. This is a major issue, if by now you have not put much thought into it; you might want to take actions against it.

Passwords Sharing

A lot of times students share the password to their learning account to their friends. As a result, all of their friends or anyone with the password can view the premium account. You might not have restriction on total watch time and device usage. Using this loophole several students can use a single account to access content for free.

Piracy done by password or credential sharing can be done in a few forms, these are:

Casual – Shared among friends and family. 

Swapping/pooling – Where users(often strangers) share their passwords with each other to benefit from different services they are already subscribed to.

Commercial – When a user sublets an account in exchange of money.

Password Theft –When account credentials are hacked and stolen from the users. These accounts can be further sold by Pirates. In 2019, there were around 5 billion hacked accounts up for sale or use in both open or dark web combined.

Content Downloading

At present, there are several tools available to your users to download your premium content easily. All they have to do is just enter the URL of your video in the tool or use it as browser extension and voila, your premium content is easily downloadable.  Detailed statistical analysis on such popular video downloaders was done by us previously here.

Also, pirates often hack the key used to encrypt the video which allows the video to be decrypted and accessed directly from the CDN/Server. 

Copyright Violation

It is also quite possible that someone who has downloaded your course might edit it slightly, rename and then eventually sell it as their own. There have been several cases like these where someone sold someone else’s copyright content on a different platform. 

Back in 2015, there was a huge outcry against Udemy regarding the selling of copyrighted content. In one such case, the content was taken from Troy Hunt’s channel on plural sight and was uploaded to Udemy without their consent. You can read more about this in the Verge’s article on the Udemy controversy.

Screen Recording 

Another way by which malicious users might pirate is your content is by performing screen recording from their mobile or computer. After that content can be spread all over the internet making it easy for anyone to access the content without paying for it. 

How To Ensure Elearning Video Protection?

Now that you know why and how your content is being pirated let’s further explore what you can do to ensure elearning video protection. Torrent has been a long source for pirate to enjoy free content. Lately, this has changed to an extent. Even though torrent is still being used, modern-day pirates keep finding new ways to loot premium video content. Some of which was completely unheard of before. It’s not just about illegal copying of files, but also unauthorized “access”. 

Block Password Sharing

As discussed before password sharing is one of the major causes of piracy. Students often share passwords of their accounts with each other. This results in several simultaneous logins from an account. This leads to the consumption of the same premium content several times. Which ultimately leads to a loss in revenue that you could have gained from those views

-In WordPress

A simple solution to this is to block password sharing. If your website is based in WordPress, one simple way to do this is by using WordPress plugin to block simultaneous logins.

By using this plugin, you can ensure that at a time users can only login from a single device, ultimately stopping the account from being accessed by multiple users at the same time. 

Another plugin you can use to block simultaneous login is WP bouncer

-For non-WordPress websites

If you’re not a WordPress user, you need not worry about video protection, although for this you’d need to take the help of your developers for this. Without going into technical terms I’d simply explain it to you how you can achieve this. 

• For this, you’ll have to generate a unique ID  login and write that ID to the database for that user. Set that ID as a cookie for the user. When you receive traffic from that user, only consider them logged in if their cookie matches the value in the database.
• When the user logs in to a new device, a new unique ID is generated and sent as a cookie to that new device. The new device’s traffic has a cookie that matches the database and is therefore considered logged in. When the old device visits your application, the login cookie no longer matches the value in the database, so the user is considered logged out.
• When the old device logs in again, a new unique ID is generated in the database and sent as a cookie to that device. They are now logged in, because of their cookie matches. The second device, having its cookie no longer match the database, is logged out.

Using SSO for login

Another way to curb password sharing can be by using Single sign-on for login to the user account. Using SSO a user can log in to the platform using social login such as Google, Facebook etc. 

Even though a user might share their login for the e-learning video platform easily but a Facebook or google password is more personal and the user would refrain from sharing it with their friends. Also, since it’s SSO is user friendly and it saves trouble such as remembering password and login is much simpler with just a click it makes sense to promote this feature to the user.

Restrict Video Watch time to Prevent Misuse or Overuse

Another way to make sure that the account is not shared by the users is to restrict the total watch time for a user. Typically a user won’t watch a lecture twice or thrice, depending on your user’s behavior you can keep a total playback time for a video restricted. 

This way you can ensure that your e-learning video is not being watched multiple times by several users. For a more technical explanation on this, you can refer to the video linked for restrict watch time by vdocipher, also, in case you need code for this you can get it here.

All the above-mentioned methods for e-learning video protection catered to access related piracy, another important way is to prevent video download.

Using Video Encryption

Video encryption technology is used to secure your videos by encrypting or hiding them from anyone you haven’t been given access. Basically, it stops anyone from viewing the video without your permission(the encryption key).

At present there are two major popular and easy-to-use encrypted video streaming protocols:

1. AES 128 Video Encryption (Normal or Sample AES 128 protocol): It is the most common basic encryption technology used by developers to encrypt content and prevent raw video to be seen in the network.
2. HLS Encryption with AES-128: In HLS Encryption, video streaming is done with the help of HLS protocol and the videos are encrypted using the AES-128 algorithm. Here the key exchange is done via the secure HTTPS protocol and it

The flaw in common video encryption technologies – Even though these encryption by themselves are decent strong and cannot be cracked by brute force but they have a major flaw, that is the fact that their keys are exposed and can be accessed by any hacker or a tool/extension with some effort. Hackers can use the key to easily download the video without making an effort on the encryption itself. 

But you need not worry about this, there is a solution to every problem and there’s certainly for this one too. Since the major flaw in common encryption technologies is an open key exchange, it makes sense only to use a technology that can fix this. This is where DRM comes in. 

Using video DRM encryption technology for highest security

DRM(Digital Rights Management) works alongside the DASH & HLS encryption to make the video more secure by making it impossible to find the encryption key. DRM effectively removes any flaws in the video encryption to ensure that the video is not downloadable. 

The two major DRM being used for e-learning video protection are:

1. Google Widevine DRM: Widevine is a DRM licensing and encryption solution by Google to help platforms to secure their premium content on Chrome, Firefox, Edge browsers on Desktop, Android Apps & Android TV. More details on Widevine DRM.
2. Apple Fairplay DRM: FairPlay is a DRM technology by Apple Inc. Until 2009 it was used to protect copyrighted content sold on iTunes. Using Fairplay DRM you can protect content on Safari browsers, iOS, and macOS. More details on Fairplay DRM.

In order to ensure e-learning video protection, DRM is often used along with user-specific Watermarking to track any pirated content.

Using Dynamic Watermarking: User Specific details on video

Watermarking involves embedding digital information in a video signal to identify its source of origin. It aims to identify the redistribution source of illegal streaming services. User ID, Email ID, IP address, timestamp are some common watermarking parameters. Many times, the watermark is kept moving in the video at regular intervals to prevent it from being removed easily using video editing tools. 

Screen Capture block where ever possible

DRM video protection with Mobile apps (Android, IOS Native Apps) also have additional security to completely block any screen capture tools from working. This allows pretty hard security in mobile apps.

Domain Restrictions

Another way to ensure e-learning video protection is to make sure that your videos are domain restriction. This enables you to limit your video embed codes to play and load only on your domain. This prevents copying of embed code and its use by hackers to view the video on their domain.

Choosing A Secure Video Hosting Service

In case you don’t have much idea using the above-mentioned e-learning video protection technology, you can always fall back on a 3rd party secure video hosting service. 

These hosting platforms take care of all the tech parts related to making sure that your video is secure and streams seamlessly on the client-side. All you need to do is upload the video on the platform, and use the embed code on your website. 

But that’s not all a good video hosting platform has a few prerequisites that you need to check while choosing any such service. 

• First and foremost, is the security, if your video hosting platform does not provide DRM and video encryption, chances are that your premium content might be downloaded and pirated.  
• Secondly, a good video API to manage videos, to enable automatic video upload and get OTP for playback. Also, to insert custom HTML in the video player, change the player design, and add interactive features using Player API.
• Another important feature is a top tier global server + CDN to ensure speedy content delivery to the user regardless of their geographic location. Apart from this video analytics, smart video player also comes in handy.

Top 7 Video Hosting Platforms for Online Courses

How VdoCipher Helps In Elearning Video Protection?

At VdoCipher, eLearning video protection is something that we take very seriously, and our constant endeavor is to ensure smooth and secure video hosting to our users. We ensure the highest security for our clients from video piracy by providing Hollywood-grade DRM encryption and our dynamic watermarking technology.

Vdocipher has the privilege of working with over 1500 eLearning companies from 30+ countries, which made us realize that one of the major concerns for them is video security. Organizations often come to us to ensure that their video is not downloadable and to provide video encryption to ensure it is not accessible. 

At present, there are several platforms that provide Elearning video protection, but their offering is limited to video encryption without any DRM technology. This exposes the key, which an informed user can easily identify and use to access the video. A lot of our current customers have faced such issues before finally sticking to our video security solution. 

• Encrypted DRM Video Streaming: With Vdocipher’s Hollywood-grade video DRM technology, no one can download your videos using a plugin or any hacks.
• Dynamic Watermarking: You can watermark Ip address, user id, email id, phone no, logo, text overlay to identify the source of the piracy. You can even customize the watermark in terms of opacity, color, speed and size as well.
• Screen Capture Blocking in Mobile Apps – VdoCipher mobile SDK integration default includes screen capture protection in both Android & IOS Apps. Screen capture protection in common browsers like Chrome, Firefox on desktop is not possible.
• Server To Player Package:  With Vdocipher you not only get video protection but we also provide Amazon AWS for Servers, CDN, Transcoding, Analytics, API, Dashboard, Plugins, and Custom workflows. All these features further add to the security and make it easy to control your videos. 
• Smart Online Video Player: With our smart online video player, you can give access to popular features such as subtitles, speed changes, and forward rewind options to your users. In case you provide an android app, you can also give the option to keep those videos for offline use without worrying about piracy. 

Above mentioned eLearning, and video protection features are our core features, and we provide a wide range of small features to support them. You can check out all of our features on our blog- Vdocipher’s video hosting features.

Also,

Read:57 Video Hosting Features By VdoCipher for Video Website & App

That’s All For Now

Noticing how the demand for e-learning content is on the rise, it’s high time that if you run an ed-tech company, e-learning video protection should be one of the top priorities.  After all, why wouldn’t you since the major source of revenue for any ed-tech company is their content and without proper countermeasures, you might incur a heavy loss even though the quality of your content is of good quality.

You need to make sure that your accounts are protected against password or account sharing, where multiple users are using the same account to access your content. Also, make sure that the content is not easily downloadable with the help of video DRM and video encryption technology. To top it off in case any content might leak, screen capture block in apps and watermarking on the desktop can help you ensure enhanced security. Do leave any comment down below, in case you have any questions regarding video protection.

Rahul Rana

Head of Digital Marketing at Vdocipher. I love the art of connecting the right product to their users. When i’m not doing that i love getting lost in books.

www.vdocipher.com/

The post Elearning Video Protection: Ensure Piracy Protection of Your Videos appeared first on VdoCipher Blog.

From basic budgeting to advanced investment strategies, online finance courses cater to a wide range of skill levels. Top universities and financial institutions offer accredited courses, making quality education accessible to a global audience.

This demand is fueled by several factors, including the rise of fintech, increased regulatory complexities, and a general shift towards remote learning. Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the adoption of online education, with finance being a key area of interest.

Benefits of Finance online classes

In light of the rising consumer credit card debt, which saw an average balance of $5,910 in 2022 according to CardRates, the accessibility of these courses is crucial, allowing individuals from all backgrounds to gain the necessary skills to manage their finances more effectively. These advantages make online finance education an appealing choice for many, whether they are beginners looking to understand personal finance or professionals aiming to advance their careers. Finance online classes have become an increasingly attractive option for finance learners, and the benefits are wide-ranging:

Accessibility

Online finance courses are available to anyone with an internet connection. Whether you live in a metro city or a remote village, platforms like Udemy, Coursera, and edX, provide access to finance education.

Affordability

Websites like Udemy often offer courses at discounts, sometimes free or as low as $5, making quality education more affordable.

Wide Range of Options

Online platforms provide diverse course offerings, from basic personal finance to advanced corporate finance. edX has a variety of courses, from MicroMasters in Finance for professionals to beginner courses in personal finance.

Interactive and Engaging Content

Many online courses incorporate videos, quizzes, and interactive content to enhance the learning experience. Most online financial courses use video lectures and interactive exercises, making complex finance topics more digestible.

Networking Opportunities

Some platforms facilitate interaction with instructors and fellow students globally. For example, LinkedIn Learning enables students to connect with professionals worldwide, enhancing networking within the finance community.

Certifications

Completing online finance courses often leads to certificates from renowned institutions, adding value to your resume. For example, The Wharton School’s online finance courses offer certificates that are highly recognized in the industry.

The Rising Popularity and Demand for Online Finance Courses

​​In a 2020 survey, 28% of adults were cruising with only a week’s worth of financial cushion. Imagine losing your main source of income and having just one week to figure things out! And that’s not all: usually 25% could last a month, and 15% could make it three to six months. Similarly, in 2021, 60% of non-retirees felt like their retirement savings were like a bike off track.

This suggests, not only people who are looking to learn finance as a career but there are people who are keen to learn about finance as a parameter of literacy. For example, taxpayers can improve their financial literacy to avoid tax submission hassles, understand the economics and even improve their personal financial decision-making.

The result – A Whopping 350% Growth! – According to McKinsey, the demand for online finance courses has skyrocketed by 350% since 2015. According to Statista, the global e-learning market is expected to reach over $370 billion by 2026.

Key reasons for popularity:

• Starting at just $0 on platforms like Udemy (Free course section), and Coursera, online finance education is like getting a high-performance part for your bike at a fraction of the cost. The average cost of an online finance course ranges from $150 – $200.
• Busy schedule? No problem! Online learning is like having an adjustable clutch lever; you can fit it around your life. Perfect for working professionals who want to upskill without taking time off.
• Employers Love It Too! – A LinkedIn survey revealed that 62% of hiring managers consider online finance certifications as valuable as traditional degrees. It’s like upgrading your bike with the latest accessories; it just adds value!
• User’s Suggestions – “Online finance Classes have allowed me to double the savings and investment without quitting my job. The flexibility and affordability are unmatched!” says John, an MIT engineering graduate.

Popular Financial Course Categories

Whether you are trying to solve a personal finance problem or become an advanced guide to help clients manage their finances, the following are the major subject to drill into.

1. Income Taxes: With tax laws constantly evolving, understanding country-specific income taxation laws has become a priority for many. Online resources offer taxation guides, calculators, and expert advice to help individuals and businesses navigate the complex world of taxation.
2. Insurance: This subject can be further segregated into life, health, property, and auto insurance. Whether it’s life, health, or auto insurance, people are keen to understand their options and find the best coverage to suit their needs. Online platforms provide comparisons, reviews, and personalized quotes to simplify the decision-making process.
3. Mortgages: Buying a home is a significant financial decision, and understanding mortgages is crucial. From interest rates to repayment terms, advance EMI to arrears, APY to APR, online tools and articles demystify the mortgage process, empowering homebuyers to make informed choices.
4. Retirement Planning: With the fastest-growing senior population in states like Wyoming, retirement planning has become a hot topic.
5. Estate Planning: Ensuring that one’s assets are distributed according to their wishes requires careful estate planning.

Key Fundamentals of Financial Planning

1. Financial Goals

A good financial plan begins with defining both your big and small goals. These can be further categorized into short-term (next five years), medium-term (next five to 10 years), and long-term (10 or more years away) goals. Being specific with your goals, including the in-use currency figure and target date, makes it easier to measure progress.

2. Net Worth Statement

Understanding your net worth is essential. By listing all your assets and debts, you can calculate your net worth. Even if liabilities outweigh assets, especially when starting out, it’s a crucial baseline for planning.

3. Budget and Cash Flow Planning

Your budget is the practical aspect of your plan. It helps you to understand where your money is finally going and where you can cut back to meet your goals. Separating expenses into must-haves and nice-to-haves, and then using tools like budget calculators and interest calculators (in case of mortgages) can provide clarity.

4. Debt Management Plan

Not all debt is bad. While a mortgage can build equity, high-interest consumer debt like credit cards can be burdensome. Creating a plan to pay off high-interest debt quickly is vital.

5. Retirement Plan

Planning for retirement requires careful consideration of income needs, work-related expenses, mortgage status, children’s financial independence, and uncovered healthcare expenses. General rules like the 80% income-replacement may apply, but individual fine-tuning is necessary.

6. Emergency Funds

An emergency fund covering at least three to six months’ worth of essential living expenses provides a safety net for unexpected situations. Keeping this money in a highly liquid account ensures quick access.

7. Insurance Coverage

Insurance, including health, disability, auto, homeowners’, and life insurance, plays a vital role in protecting your financial downside. It’s essential to have adequate coverage without overpaying.

8. Estate Plan

Estate planning involves having a will, keeping beneficiaries up to date, and considering powers of attorney for financial and health care decisions. Working with professionals like estate attorneys or financial planners can be beneficial.

Selecting the Right Course for You

Here’s a handy guide to help you pick the right financial course that fits your needs like a glove:

1. Align with Your Goals and Interests – What’s your financial jam? Personal finance, investing, corporate finance? Identify what makes your financial heart tick, and you’ll be on the right track.
2. Match Your Learning Style – Are you a reader, a watcher, or a quiz-taker? Courses come in all flavors, so pick the one that suits your taste.
3. Beginner, Intermediate, or Advanced – If you are learning for yourself or do not have prudence about financial terms, go with the beginner-level courses. These categorizations are usually attached as a category or tag with the course you will be taking. Before educating clients and managing their finances, you must be capable enough of taking an intermediate or advanced course.
4. Budget Wisely – From affordable to premium, there’s something for every wallet. Just remember, quality doesn’t always mean expensive.
5. Check the Instructor’s Street Cred – You wouldn’t take fashion advice from a clown, would you? Look for instructors with real-world experience and a solid reputation.
6. Read the Reviews – Get the inside scoop from those who’ve walked the path before you. Reviews can be your guiding star.
7. Requirements to Acquire – Always take a look at the minimum educational or professional requirements to avail and complete the course. Sometimes they require other relevant certifications or a mix of qualification to attain the certificate.

Additional Considerations:

• Course Duration: How long’s the journey?
• Format: Online, in-person, or a mix?
• Course Delivery: Self-paced or instructor-led?
• Content: What’s on the menu?
• Course Materials: What tools are in the box?
• Instructor: Who’s leading the way?
• Course Cost: What’s the price tag?

By following these tips, you’re not just choosing a course; you’re paving your path to financial success.

Best online finance courses

• Personal Finance for Everyone by EdX: Your gateway to budgeting, saving, investing, and credit. This introductory finance course will be a gateway into the world of finance and will examine multiple applications to apply to your everyday life. More info
• Personal finance by Khan Academy: A complete guide to stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and ETFs. In this course you will cover, Saving and budgeting, Interest and debt, Investments and retirement, Income and benefits, Housing, Renting vs. buying a home,  Housing, Mortgages, Buying vs. leasing a Car, Taxes, Paying for college and more.  More info
• Data Science for Investment Professionals by CFA Institute: The Data Science for Investment Professionals Certificate provides you with practical knowledge of machine learning fundamentals and how they are used in the investment process. The content is hands-on application-oriented and includes instructional videos, coding labs, and case studies from industry practitioners. More info
• Financial Modeling and Valuation by Wall Street Prep: A must for aspiring investment bankers and financial analysts. Wall Street Prep is the trusted training provider for the world’s top investment banks, private equity firms, Fortune 1000 companies and business schools. Their online training and instructor-led boot camps are direct adaptations of corporate training for those looking to break into finance. More info
• Finance & Quantitative Modeling for Analysts Specialization by Coursera: Create your own quantitative models, harness the power of spreadsheets to map and predict data, and read income and cash flow statements – all pivotal skills for any aspiring analyst. More info

Best Financial Modelling Course

Investopedia Academy’s Financial Modeling Course

A self-paced online course that covers financial modeling, Excel, and corporate finance. Suitable for those looking to build a strong foundation in financial analysis.

• Course: Comprehensive financial modeling, Excel, and corporate finance.
• Duration: Self-paced.
• Course Delivery: Self-paced.
• Content: Financial statements, forecasting, valuation, and Excel skills.
• Course Materials: Video lectures, Excel templates, quizzes.
• Course Cost: $199
• Link to Join: Investopedia Academy’s Financial Modeling Course

Coursera’s Wharton Business and Financial Modeling Specialization

A comprehensive instructor-led course by Wharton School faculty that focuses on business decisions, financial modeling, and spreadsheets. Ideal for those seeking an academic approach.

• Course: Business decisions, financial modeling, spreadsheets.
• Duration: 5 months (2 hours/week)
• Course Delivery: Instructor-led.
• Content: Decision-making, spreadsheets, quantitative modeling.
• Course Materials: Video lectures, readings, quizzes.
• Instructor: Wharton School faculty.
• Course Cost: Free (with paid certificate option)
• Link to Join: Wharton Business and Financial Modeling Specialization

Udemy’s Beginner to Pro in Excel: Financial Modeling and Valuation

Course to take you from beginner to pro in Excel, focusing on financial modeling and valuation. Great for those looking for hands-on experience.

• Course: Excel skills, financial modeling, valuation.
• Duration: 7.5 hours.
• Course Delivery: Self-paced.
• Content: Excel functions, financial modeling, valuation techniques.
• Course Materials: Video lectures, Excel templates.
• Instructor: 365 Careers.
• Course Cost: Varies (often discounted)
• Link to Join: Beginner to Pro in Excel: Financial Modeling and Valuation

CFA Institute Investment Foundations Program

A self-paced online course that covers investment tools, ethics, and finance. Suitable for those looking to understand the investment industry.

• Course: Investment tools, ethics, finance.
• Duration: 130 hours.
• Course Delivery: Self-paced.
• Content: Investment industry, tools, ethics.
• Course Materials: eBooks, sample exams.
• Course Cost: $250
• Link to Join: CFA Institute Investment Foundations Program

Wall Street Prep’s Premium Package

Focuses on financial modeling and Excel skills, taught by experienced industry professionals. Ideal for those aiming for a career in investment banking or financial analysis.

• Course: Financial modeling, Excel.
• Duration: Self-paced.
• Course Delivery: Self-paced.
• Content: Financial modeling, Excel skills.
• Course Materials: Video lectures, Excel templates.
• Instructor: Experienced industry professionals.
• Course Cost: $499.
• Link to Join: Wall Street Prep’s Premium Package

Best Certificate courses in Finance

CFA Certification (Chartered Financial Analyst)

The CFA certification is a globally recognized credential from the CFA Institute, indicating expert-level knowledge and experience in investment analysis. It’s considered one of the most respected credentials in the investment industry.

Duration

The CFA certification requires passing three levels of exams. The CFA Institute estimates that successful candidates spend about 300 hours studying for each level of the exam.

Content

The CFA exam comprises three parts:

• Level I: 180 multiple-choice questions covering professional standards, ethics, financial reporting, economics, fixed income, equity, derivatives, and portfolio management.
• Level II: Vignettes with 88 accompanying multiple-choice questions.
• Level III: Vignettes with accompanying multiple-choice and essay questions.

Course Cost

• Enrollment Fee: $450 (one-time)
• Exam Registration Fees: $700 (early birds) or $1,000 (standard) for each exam level
• Rescheduling Fee: $250
• Retake Fee: Same as registration fees for each level

You can find more information and register for the CFA Program on the CFA Institute’s official website.

• Professional Requirements: 4,000 hours of relevant professional experience.
• Educational Requirements: A bachelor’s degree or equivalent in any field (or a combination of work experience and education).
• Maintenance: Charterholders must renew their membership yearly and are recommended to complete 20 hours of continuing education.

Financial Risk Manager Certification (FRM)

The Financial Risk Manager (FRM) Certification is a globally recognized credential for risk professionals offered by the Global Association of Risk Professionals (GARP). Here’s an overview of the FRM Certification based on the information from the official GARP website:

Content

Divided into FRM Part 1 and Part 2, covering basic and advanced risk management topics. The FRM Certification covers the ability to identify, analyze, and mitigate risk at a high level. It includes specialized areas and proves the candidate’s skill in risk management.

Candidates can download the comprehensive FRM handbook from the GARP website, which includes information about sitting for the Exam, earning the certification, and using the designation to further their career in risk.

Instructor

The preparation for the FRM exam can be done independently or with the help of GARP-approved exam prep providers.

Link to Join

You can find more information and register for the FRM Certification on the GARP’s official website.

Additional Insights

• Global Recognition: The FRM Certification is comparable to a Master’s degree in fourteen national and regional educational systems.
• Employment Benefits: FRM certified professionals are in demand by the world’s leading companies and banks, employed in more than 190 countries and territories worldwide.
• Professional Network: Join an exclusive global network of top risk managers, including professionals employed at top banks and consulting firms.

Certified Fund Specialist (CFS)

The CFS® designation was developed in 1988 and is the fourth-oldest designation in the U.S. It’s designed to fill a gap in the professional practice of certified financial planners. The course focuses on providing a strong working knowledge of various investment funds and sophisticated investment strategies used by top financial advisors.

Content: What’s on the menu?

The CFS® course covers the following key areas:

• Mutual funds, ETFs, and REITs
• Closed-end funds and similar investments
• Advanced fund analysis and selection
• Asset allocation and portfolio construction
• Risk management, taxes, and estate planning

Instructor

The website does not provide specific information about the instructors, but the course is offered by the Institute of Business & Finance (IBF), which likely has experienced professionals leading the course.

Link to Join

You can find more information and register for the CFS® certification on the Institute of Business & Finance’s official website.

Additional Insights

• Target Audience: The CFS® program is suitable for accountants, advisors, bankers, brokers, money managers, and planners.
• Market Advantage: The certification aims to provide an advantage in the marketplace by keeping professionals ahead of the needs and long-term interests of clients.

Certified Government Financial Manager (CGFM)

The CGFM® certification is a respected credential that recognizes the specialized knowledge and experience needed to be an effective government financial manager. It demonstrates competency in key areas of government financial management and distinguishes professionals in the field.

Content

The CGFM® certification covers the following key areas:

• Governmental accounting
• Auditing
• Financial reporting
• Internal controls
• Budgeting at the federal, state, and local levels

Link to Join

You can find more information and apply for the CGFM® certification on the AGA’s official website.

Requirements to Become a CGFM

• Ethics: Read and agree to abide by AGA’s Code of Ethics.
• Education: Have a bachelor’s degree in any subject area from an accredited U.S. college or university.
• Examinations: Pass three comprehensive CGFM® examinations.
• Experience: Have at least two years of professional-level experience in government financial management.

Certified International Investment Analyst (CIIA)

The Certified International Investment Analyst (CIIA) is an advanced professional qualification and certification recognized internationally for individuals working in the finance and investment industry. The CIIA certification is designed to provide individuals with a superior standard of applied knowledge essential for working in domestic and international investment markets. It’s considered a passport for professionals seeking to work in any international financial position, and in many countries, it’s a legal requirement.

Link to Join

You can find more information and request details about the CIIA certification on the ACIIA’s official website.

Additional Insights

• Unique Advantage: The CIIA certification is recognized as a unique advantage by employers, enabling certified professionals to work in international financial positions.
• Global Presence: The certification is present all over the world, reflecting its international recognition and applicability.
• Ethical Conduct: ACIIA emphasizes principles of ethical conduct, reflecting the certification’s commitment to professional integrity.

Free Finance Courses with Paid Certificate

University of Cambridge: Foundations of Finance

“Foundations of Finance” provides a rigorous but straightforward introduction to key concepts of financial understanding. Using real-world case studies, practitioner interviews, and timely knowledge checks, students will integrate new knowledge and problem-solving skills with practical application. No prior knowledge is required or assumed.

Duration

The course spans 5 weeks, with an estimated 3–5 hours of study per week.

Content

The course covers various topics, including:

• Money and Capital
• Cash Flows and Cash Flow Forecasting
• Financial Reporting
• Interest and Return
• Risk and Risk Management

Online Finance Courses Material

The course materials include case studies, lessons, and exams, all available through the edX platform.

Instructor

The course tutor is Doug Williamson from the Institute of Continuing Education, University of Cambridge.

Course Cost

The course is free to audit, with an optional upgrade available for $199 USD, which includes a shareable certificate upon completion and access to graded assignments and exams.

Link to Join

You can enroll in the “Foundations of Finance” course on the edX website.

Additional Insights

• Target Audience: The course is suitable for those who engage with financial specialists, are self-employed, considering a career in finance, or simply interested in the subject.
• Language: The course is offered in English, with English video transcripts.
• Associated Skills: Financial Management, Finance, Corporate Finance, Problem Solving.

Stanford University: Principles of Economics

The course covers both microeconomic and macroeconomic concepts, including the behavior of consumers and firms, markets for goods and services, policy choices, national production, employment, inflation, interest rates, long-run growth, short-term fluctuations, government regulation, monetary policy, and fiscal policy.

Duration

The course spans 10 weeks, with an estimated 5–10 hours of study per week.

Content

The course is divided into two parts:

• Part 1: Microeconomic analysis, including supply and demand models, competitive equilibrium, deviations from competition, labor markets, key economic policy issues, and financial and capital markets.
• Part 2: Macroeconomic concepts, including macro facts and measures, long-run macro, short-run macro, macro policy issues, and international economic issues.

Course Materials

The course materials include lessons, quizzes, and exams, all available through the edX platform. A strongly recommended textbook is “Principles of Economics, Version 9.0” by John B. Taylor and Akila Weerapana, available for purchase online.

Instructor

The course instructors are John Taylor, George P. Shultz Senior Fellow in Economics at the Hoover Institution, and Yiming He, PhD Candidate in Economics at Stanford University.

Course Cost

The course is free to audit, with a Verified Track available for $50 USD, which includes a shareable certificate upon completion and access to graded assignments and exams.

Link to Join

You can enroll in the “Principles of Economics” course on the edX website.

Additional Insights

• Language: The course is offered in English, with English video transcripts.
• Associated Skills: Economics, Microeconomics, Macroeconomics, Monetary Policies.

Try It: Finance Fundamentals

The course provides industry insights, key financial concepts, and terminology. Through this course, participants will gain practical knowledge and will be challenged with an engaging final activity to test their understanding. No prior fintech experience is required.

Duration

The course spans 1 week, with an estimated 1–2 hours of study per week.

Content

The course focuses on the global economy’s digital transformation and the fintech industry’s need to adapt by automating the delivery and use of financial services. Before diving into the technical aspects, participants will be introduced to financial theory. The course will teach participants how to find important values on three types of financial statements:

• Income statement
• Balance sheet
• Cash flow statement

Additionally, participants will study five key financial ratios:

• Debt Ratio
• Current Ratio
• Return on Sales Ratio
• Asset Turnover Ratio
• Return on Equity Ratio

Course Cost

The course is free to audit. However, there’s an option to upgrade for a Verified Track at a cost, which provides full access to course materials, graded assignments, and a shareable certificate upon completion.

Link to Join

You can enroll in the “Try It: Finance Fundamentals” course on the edX website.

Additional Insights

• Target Audience: The course is ideal for professionals with minimal finance knowledge or those interested in entering the fintech industry.

Learning finance for beginners: Recommended Sources

Books

There are many great books available on finance. Some of the best books for beginners include:

• “Personal Finance for Dummies” by Eric Tyson
• “The Little Book of Common Sense Investing” by John Bogle
• “The Intelligent Investor” by Benjamin Graham
• “Rich Dad Poor Dad” by Robert Kiyosaki
• “The Automatic Millionaire” by David Bach

Articles

There are many great articles available online about finance. Some of the best websites for beginners include:

• Investopedia
• The Motley Fool
• Kiplinger
• Forbes
• The Balance

Free Learning Websites

There are many great websites that offer financial education. Some of the best websites for beginners include:

• YouTube
• Khan Academy
• Coursera
• EdX
• Udemy
• LinkedIn Learning

Building Online Finance Courses Platform Basics

In the modern era, where finance governs much of our daily lives, educating oneself in this field is paramount. Whether you’re an individual seeking to improve your financial literacy or an institution aiming to provide top-tier education, building a finance course platform can be a strategic endeavor. Let’s delve into the key components of constructing this platform.

VdoCipher – Choose the Right Provider for Videos

Leveraging cutting-edge technologies like cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and intuitive user interfaces can help create a seamless learning experience. Since you will be dealing with video content, it is mandatory to implement CDN, Adaptive bitrate streaming, transcoding, encoding, DRM encryption to prevent piracy of your valuable content. All these aspects with custom player and easy integration gets covered with the use of secure video hosting provider like VdoCipher.

User-Friendly Design Principles

In finance, complexity is often the enemy of the investor. The same principle applies to the design of a financial course platform. Prioritize clean design, easy navigation, and interactive elements to facilitate the learning process.

Certification and Compliance

Partner with reputed financial bodies and adhere to the relevant legal regulations to ensure that your courses not only educate but also empower through recognized certification.

Ensuring Quality and Accreditation

Collaborate with industry experts, seasoned educators, and financial institutions to develop content that meets the highest standards. Accreditations from reputable financial associations add a layer of trust and credibility.

Adhering to Educational Standards

Align your course material with international financial educational standards. Such adherence not only elevates the quality of the content but also broadens its appeal to a global audience.

Marketing and Selling Your Course

Target your audience through social media, SEO optimization, partnerships with financial bodies, and compelling content marketing that speaks the language of finance.

Pricing and Payment Options

Offer various subscription models, discounts, and even free trials to cater to different segments of your audience.

Providing Support and Resources

Providing 24/7 support, rich resources, and personalized assistance can make this journey smoother and more enjoyable.

Creating an Online Community

Encourage discussions, debates, and collaborative projects to create a thriving online ecosystem.

Offering Additional Learning Tools

From interactive simulations to downloadable resources, supplementary learning tools can enhance understanding and retention of financial concepts.

Feedback and Continuous Improvement

Regularly solicit feedback from users and industry experts and strive for continuous improvement in all aspects of the platform.

Keeping the Course Up to Date

Regular updates, trend analysis, and current real-world scenarios will keep your content fresh and relevant.

Popular FAQs Around Online Finance Courses

Why are online finance courses becoming increasingly popular?

The demand for online finance courses has surged due to the rise of fintech, more complex regulations, and a shift towards remote learning, especially accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

What benefits do online finance classes offer?

They provide accessibility, affordability, a wide range of options, interactive content, networking opportunities, and valuable certifications from top institutions.

How can I select the right online finance course for me?

Consider aligning the course with your financial goals, learning style, skill level, budget, instructor credibility, and course reviews.

What are some recommended online finance courses and certifications?

Courses range from beginner-friendly topics like personal finance to specialized programs such as financial modeling, investment analysis, and certifications like CFA and FRM.

Vishal Sharma

My expertise focuses on DRM encryption, CDN technologies, and streamlining marketing campaigns to drive engagement and growth. At VdoCipher, I’ve significantly enhanced digital experiences and contributed to in-depth technical discussions in the eLearning, Media, and Security sectors, showcasing a commitment to innovation and excellence in the digital landscape.

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