lifterLMS

Does your online course design engage users? Listen as Joshua Millage and Chris Badgett discuss blended learning ideas you can use with WordPress based lifterLMS learning management system.   An effective online course is built with a cohesive mix of multimedia, quizzes, and student interaction in an online environment similar to Google Hangouts. This podcast focuses on how to design eLearning courses that engage students by using integrated course design and a variety of existing resources.   Each user learns differently, so offering information in a variety of formats ensures that individuals learn in a way they understand best. lifterLMS makes course design simple and effective by providing easy access to resources and seamless integration.

022: Blended Learning

There are several points you need to consider when choosing a learning management system. Listen in as Joshua Millage and Chris Badgett outline the most important tips for evaluating and choosing a WordPress based LMS, and how lifterLMS provides all these elements.

Some of the basic requirements for any LMS include simplicity and ease of use, reliable functionality, creative control, and learning assessment capabilities. This podcast focuses on essential LMS functions and features, plus challenges and resources specific to delivering your content in a WordPress environment. 

Remember that your LMS will be used by a variety of people with varying levels of expertise. LifterLMS makes WordPress-based course design simple and effective by providing the intuitive access and seamless integration, scalability, functionality and reliability you require.

024: Tips For Choosing The Best Learning Management System

Listen in as Joshua Millage and Chris Badgett discuss tips on how to increase engagement in your online course and how a learning management system like lifterLMS simplifies effective online course design.

Your use of basic design elements in building your online course will either engage focus and comprehension, or create distraction and confusion. The way you structure content using text and formatting, images and streaming media, and integrated resources determines the effectiveness of your eLearning environment.

Without careful curation of your content, your pages can look like a randomly assembled scrapbook. Assure that you are achieving student engagement by making the most of eLearning design and technology using a learning management system like lifterLMS to build your online courses.

025: Tips for Improving Online Learners' Engagement

LMS gamification promises to become an important tool for making online courses more effective. In this LMScast podcast Joshua Millage and Chris Badgett discuss how gamification helps students retain more of the course material presented to them, and offers more motivation and interest in their learning process than traditional classroom methods provide. 

Gaming has become a significant part of our culture. Most people are already comfortable in gaming environments and associate the activity with pleasurable experiences. Gamification employs challenges and rewards for quizzes and recaps, so there is positive incentive to push past barriers to gain points, badges, and other tangible indicators of success. Competition is also motivational, as students can evaluate their performance relative to others taking the same courses.

The lifterLMS WordPress learning management system plugin includes the option for LMS gamification, which provides incentivization and encourages interaction with course information eLearning students need to learn, while making the learning process satisfying and enjoyable.

028: LMS Gamification

Do you want to make more money with your blog?  In this LMScast podcast episode Joshua Millage and Chris Badgett discuss how to monetize your blog with online courses delivered through a WordPress learning management system.

While you’re creating free content for your blog posts, you’re building knowledge in your subject area, which you can then monetize by offering online courses.  In some markets offering courses for beginners is a huge opportunity, so you don’t necessarily need to be on the cutting edge of your field to be profitable with an online course.

You can create online courses to monetize the expertise you’ve built in your market through your blog, and the lifterLMS WordPress learning management system plugin makes it easy for you to create and sell courses online.

029: How To Monetize Your Blog With Online Courses

Video is the closest thing we have in the online learning environment to a real human interaction, because you get both audio and visual connection with your students.  But there are some pitfalls to be aware of when choosing how to host videos for your online courses.

In this LMScast podcast episode Joshua Millage and Chris Badgett discuss hosting your LMS videos on Wistia or Vimeo versus using YouTube, as well as how to get your videos into your WordPress LMS.  It’s important to keep in mind the speed of your website, protecting your video content, and the mobile responsiveness of your videos.

With the lifterLMS WordPress learning management system plugin, it’s easy to use videos to enhance your online course lessons so you can build a better connection with your users.

030: How to Embed Video in Your WordPress LMS

Creating a successful eLearning package requires the DNA of an education entrepreneur. In today’s LMScast, Joshua Millage and Christopher Badgett discuss the traits of educators and entrepreneurs, and how they can learn to become successful edupreneurs. Specifically, an educator has a core passion for their subject matter, and they want to share it with as many people as they can reach. An entrepreneur’s primary drive is to promote and sell a product that will benefit many people. Both are passionate and want to reach an audience, but educators generally don’t know about selling, and entrepreneurs are not necessarily good teachers.

To be successful, an edupreneur needs to have traits of an educator and an entrepreneur. This can be realized with an active commitment to taking small, experimental steps toward gaining new skills. With the proper tools and a desire to succeed, teaching and selling can be learned.

When developing a tool to help each of these people to fully apply their strengths while developing new capabilities, the designer needs to understand what educators and entrepreneurs already know, how they do their work, and what they need help with in order to develop fully functional applications for them. A WordPress learning management system using LifterLMS makes it easier for each to achieve their end goals while becoming complete edupreneurs.

036: The DNA of an Education Entrepreneur

Have you considered adding a social network to your online learning system? This LMScast looks at BuddyPress Courseware for WordPress and how it works with learning management systems like LifterLMS. 

BuddyPress is a social network development plugin designed for online learning environments. A social network can enhance your online courses by allowing students to create profiles, participate in course discussions, and stay in touch with their instructors. It also provides for blogging, activity feeds, visual media, and private messaging, much like Facebook. 

Your network can include groups, subgroups, and forums for specific courses, as well as a social network for everyone in your system, plus free access and paid membership areas. It’s an exciting option, but only if you have a need for it. A social network requires a lot of direct involvement and could be more work than it is worth for your learning environment. 

If your students are enthusiastic about their subjects, giving them a place to discuss that with other equally involved students will enhance their learning experience. A social network also helps new students become involved more quickly, and provides a place for support and mastermind groups.

An online learning-based social network makes instructors more accessible to their students, and students can more easily interact with each other no matter what their daily schedules are like. BuddyPress Courseware integrated with a course development platform like LifterLMS can help you create a thriving, successful eLearning community for your students.

045: BuddyPress Courseware with LifterLMS

In today’s LMScast Chris Badgett talks with Sebastian Cazacu about product management and project management for education entrepreneurs. Sebastian is a project management consultant and trainer who expanded into the online courses business a few years ago. His expertise in project management can help as you’re planning and strategizing your online courses.

Many people get confused when they think about product management versus project management. Managing the product means actually to manage the business, because the product is the value generation engine in your business. So whenever you say product management, it means you're managing all aspects of your business involving the product, starting with envisioning, creating, and selling the product, and also delivering and supporting the product. All these aspects are related to the product as the core part of your business. And for an education entrepreneur, the product is their course or education product.

Project management means to manage the work that you need to do in order to achieve various objectives as you advance your business. When you're executing a project, the result of that project will be the product.

When applying a product management versus project management approach, it’s important for education entrepreneurs to establish a product life cycle. The first phase is to clearly strategize your product into something you can create an action plan for. The second phase is to experiment and test your assumptions about your product. The third phase is growing your business and improving your processes.

Education entrepreneurs should consider which learning management system they’re going to use before finalizing their online course strategy, because their choice of LMS will also help shape their product through the tools and features available in the LMS.

Our LifterLMS course development platform has built-in features to let you engage with students, combine courses together into a certification program, and offer a free sample lesson as part of the course marketing strategy

You can get more information about Sebastian’s planning guide to help education entrepreneurs make better choices as they strategize their business at EducationProjectRoadmap.com.

062: Project Management vs. Product Management for Education Entrepreneurs

You’ll find fresh ideas for course development in this LMScast episode with Joshua Millage and Chris Badgett. In this discussion you will learn how to use online courses to create a community around your product or service. 

Joshua and Chris recently interviewed Kim Albee, founder and president of WP Marketing Engine, about how she onboards new customers and receives valuable feedback using the LifterLMS development platform integrated with BuddyPress to provide discussion forums, training, and user guides for her marketing automation software. 

Online courses add value in helping new clients get started, and users often find solutions in community forums, so you spend less time on customer service. You can also find testimonials and case studies from your client’s postings. The LifterLMS demo at demo.lifterlms.com is a fine example of an online course used as a promotional application, as customers get to explore the software fully before they buy. 

Online communities engage users through innovation and shared experience while giving you valuable input toward improving your products. Your FAQ section also provides you with a basis for online course design.

Watch previous LMScast interviews with Kim Albee and with Michael Eisenwasser of BuddyPress to learn more about how to use online courses to create a community around your product or service. And try out the LifterLMS demo to experience what it can do for you.

067: How to Use Online Courses to Create a Community Around Your Product or Service

Until now online coaching has been limited to blogs, email lists, eBook sales, and online meetings. This LMScast will transcend those old-school limitations as Joshua Millage and Christopher Badgett tell you how to use online courses to get more leads into your coaching business.

The 3 main areas of coaching are relationships, business, and health. The coaching market is saturated with dating game players, fitness trainers, and business consultants, and if you promote yourself using conventional methods you will be ignored as just another coach. But if you bring fresh, exciting content to the party, you will attract attention.

Online courses get noticed, and a free mini-course is a great way to let customers see what you can offer them. A beginner’s guide or step-by-step how-to course will showcase your knowledge, style, and personality. Video, images, and lively dialog present you as a real person and build rapport with your target audience. They’ll trust your expertise and be willing to pay you for more of it. And they’ll tell others about you.

Stand out from the masses of online coaches by learning how to use courses to get more leads into your coaching business. Start today with Chris Badgett’s list of 6 free bonus courses to help you choose your first courses and put them together using a platform like LifterLMS. Text "coaching1" to 33444 to get the link. Try a free demo of LifterLMS at demo.LifterLMS.com as well and see what our course development platform can do for you.

074: How to Use Courses to Get More Leads Into Your Coaching Business

This LMScast will show you how to think about the role of the learning management functionality versus the design of the online learning environment. You’ll also learn about the release of the new LifterLMS LaunchPad WordPress LMS theme.

Choosing the right WordPress LMS theme and plugin for your course platform is crucial to its success. 

There are several things to consider when choosing a WordPress LMS plugin and theme. Functionality belongs in a plugin, and design belongs in a theme.

If you are using a WordPress LMS plugin like LifterLMS, then it’s logical to use a theme created by the same company who makes the core plugin.

082: LifterLMS LaunchPad WordPress LMS Theme vs. Plugin Debate

Today’s LMScast discusses morning routines for teachers that help you generate more time and energy for your online course development. The way you start your day can make a profound difference on how you feel and how well you function. 

If you feel like there’s just never enough time to curate and create your course content, establishing good habits is a simple and powerful way to get more done in less time with quality results. It all comes down to taking care of yourself first. This is especially crucial if your life is stressful and chaotic, and if you are working around a full-time job.

A morning routine is as much about boosting energy and reducing stress as it is about increasing your time. Building your routine is an ongoing process, so start with just one simple task. Focus on activities that increase your physical, mental and emotional/spiritual well being. Exercise and nutrition, reading and meditation, and creative visualization all contribute to ensuring you have a productive and satisfying day.

Morning routines for teachers leverage the power of habit for consistent rewards that make you a more productive person. It also helps to choose helpful, powerful tools to build your courses, such as our LifterLMS development platform. Try a demo of LifterLMS today at demo.lifterlms.com to see how it can work for you.

084: Morning Routines for Teachers

Today’s LMScast tells you how not to fail as an instructional designer or eLearning consultant by balancing the three fundamental elements that make up your online course. You must have expertise, instructional design, and a functional online delivery system or your course will fail. 

You may actually be an instructional designer or an expert in your specialty area, but you’re still only contributing a third of what’s needed. If you’re a solopreneur trying to do all three tasks yourself, you’ve really got your work cut out for you. And in each case you still need an optimal learning management system to package and deliver your courses. 

Like a three-legged stool, if you’re missing the expertise, instructional design, or LMS element then your online course simply won’t stand up and function. And if you’re only skilled or knowledgeable in one of these three areas, the other two legs are going to be short and your business will be unstable.

Partnering with a company like LifterLMS can ensure your requirements for expertise, for instructional design, and for online course packaging and delivery are fulfilled. Watch our introductory video at lifterlms.com/my-elearning-technology-partner. We’re ready to help you build your course and make it successful.

096: How Not to Fail as an Instructional Designer or eLearning Consultant

The world is evolving in their approach to education, and so is LifterLMS. This LMScast will explain our vision for the future of online education, the new LifterLMS 3.0 and beyond. 

Chris employs a philosophy with his children called “unschooling,” which advocates exposing learners to a variety of learning opportunities to discover what really interests them, including learning from mistakes. We made one of those mistakes when we announced the LifterLMS 3.0 upgrade without explaining why major changes were made.

Our mission is to democratize education in the digital classroom through personal leadership, rapid learning, and connection to others through progressive technology. We made some tough decisions in pursuing that vision that need to be explained, and in this podcast we offer the reasoning behind adding paid extensions and removing some free services, and we provide options for our users to maintain control of your transition process. 

The new LifterLMS 3.0 software release is a major upgrade, and inevitably some things will be backwards incompatible. To deliver on our vision for the future of online education, we’ve made progressive decisions for LifterLMS 3.0 and beyond. We want you to enjoy everything we’ve introduced based our users’ feedback. This podcast is a start to that.

LMScast Podcast

106: The Future of Online Education | LifterLMS 3.0 and Beyond

Our new LifterLMS 3.0 release features a new access plan engine that lets you generate a variety of pricing models. This LMScast covers the top 10 pricing models for online courses and membership sites and offers advice on making your best choice.

In this LMScast you’ll learn about these 10 pricing models:

•	One-time payment
•	Flat recurring payment
•	Payment plan 
•	Free with membership 
•	Members-only pricing 
•	Dollar trial 
•	Free trial 
•	Service fee and recurring payment
•	Launch pricing, sale pricing, special occasion
•	Free course or membership. 

Hear about each of these top 10 pricing models for online courses and membership sites pricing models in the podcast, and learn how to decide which is best for your specific situation. You can also visit the LifterLMS blog at blog.lifterlms.com for a detailed, illustrated discussion of these pricing models and how to build them.

109: Top 10 Pricing Models for Online Courses and Membership Sites

Learn how to sell and manage courses and coaching with LifterLMS Private Areas. Chris Badgett and Ali Mathis of the LifterLMS team discuss the new Private Areas add-on in depth on this episode of LMScast. They get into the different features the add-on has to offer, and they talk about where the idea came from and who it is for.

The Private Areas add-on allows you to sell a course, and then to also sell a more expensive version of the course that includes a personal level of coaching. The private area is where you can communicate directly with your student and help them out with any questions they may have or offer them more advice specific to their situation.

The idea for Private Areas originated with a suggestion from a member of the LifterLMS community. They wanted there to be an area where the course creator or coach could have a private page per student per course in order to give them some additional help in areas specific to them that are separate from the rest of the course content that everyone gets.

We floated this idea around in our LifterLMS VIP Facebook group, and a large number of people thought that would be a very useful tool to have. You can contact your students directly via Facebook or email, but it can be hard to hold someone’s attention and focus when there are so many distractions in the online space already. It also doesn’t help that contacting them via different tools can make things more complicated and can help to discourage them from continuing with your course. Using Private Areas help to increase engagement.

Course completion is something that every course provider seeks to have for their customer, and offering them the ability to have a personal contact line with the coach is very useful in that respect. But you can also integrate Private Areas on your membership site as well. Chris and Ali talk about how this add-on can work for you for both courses and memberships.

147: Sell and Manage Courses Plus Coaching with LifterLMS Private Areas

Cofounder of Brainstorm Force and creator of the Astra theme Sujay Pawar joins us on this episode of LMScast with Chris Badgett of LifterLMS. Chris and Sujay talk about professional web design for course creators, page builders, and the Astra WordPress theme for LifterLMS.

While in college Sujay offered SEO services to website owners in his free time. He noticed most of his clients used WordPress to build their websites, so he teamed up with a business partner to offer SEO and WordPress customization services to clients. They started making a few plugins for WordPress, added developers to their team, and over time assembled Brainstorm Force, which now employs 30 people.

Chris and Sujay talk about front line obsession and what it means to be in touch with your customers as a business. Sujay and the Brainstorm Force team take solving the customer’s needs very seriously when developing and designing their products.

Originally the Astra theme was just a theme used for testing out new Brainstorm Force plugins and services, but the team realized that it may be a theme WordPress users would like to utilize. So they polished up the Astra theme, and now you can download it for free in WordPress.

Astra now integrates with LifterLMS beautifully, and many course creators use it as their go-to theme. The Astra theme has support for LifterLMS sidebars, and it offers you a high level of customization on your site. Brainstorm Force also offers an Astra Pro add-on for those creators looking for more customization with the styling of the site.

Head over to BrainstormForce.com to learn all about the suite of products and services they offer, including: Convert Pro, Schema Pro, WP Portfolio, and Ultimate Addons for Beaver Builder.

177: Web Design for Course Creators, Page Builders, Website Speed, & a WordPress Theme for LifterLMS

Ali Mathis and Chris Badgett of the LifterLMS team discuss how you can increase understanding and learner results in this episode of LMScast. Chris and Ali talk about the newly released Advanced Quizzes add-on for LifterLMS and the expanded functionality of the quiz builder in the most recent update of the LifterLMS core software.

Quizzes and tests are essential for making sure your students are truly understanding the content in your course. Now it is easier than ever to create quizzes using the LifterLMS quiz builder. You can build your quizzes with three question types: multiple choice, true/false, and picture choice.

Chris and Ali also dive into the added features that come in the Advanced Quizzes add-on. Fill in the blank, short answer, reorder pictures, and the scale questions are just some of the new question types that come with Advanced Quizzes. You can also add manual grading into your course and collect testimonials with the new add-on.

Building a feedback loop with your students in order to track how they are learning is important for delivering the most value possible to them. The Advanced Quizzes Add-on is a great way to enhance the student learning experience.

You can get started with LifterLMS by heading to LifterLMS.com and checking out the 30 day demo site where you can try out all of the premium tools the LifterLMS team offers. There is also a 30 day money back guarantee with the LifterLMS add-ons, so there is no risk in trying them out!

180: Increase Understanding & Learner Results w/New LifterLMS Quiz System & Advanced Quizzes Add-on

Chris Badgett and Ali Mathis of the LifterLMS team talk about the release of the LifterLMS Assignments add-on in this episode of LMScast. In this episode the roles are reversed, and the guest Ali Mathis interviews our host Chris about what assignments can do for your online courses.

One of the most powerful marketing strategies for online courses is to sell the result the student receives. Sometimes you need to see the students take action on what they learn in your course and assignments are a great way to do that. 

There are two assignment types you can use with LifterLMS. The essay assignment allows your students to write out papers, and they can save their results in LifterLMS as they work so they don’t have do write out a whole essay in one sitting.

The upload assignment type gives you the ability to have students upload videos, photos, audio files, PDFs, PowerPoint presentations, and more. Opening up a feedback loop between you and your students can be very powerful when creating successful online courses.

Pricing your digital products can be a tough thing to do. Chris and Ali talk a bit about the factors you should take into consideration when deciding how much to charge for your online education products.

If you want to integrate LifterLMS Assignments into your courses, head to LifterLMS.com/Product/LifterLMS-Assignments. You can also check out all of the other cool features LifterLMS has to offer by going to LifterLMS.com.

lifterLMS

Francisco Jimenez 99