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Add-Ons are the lifeline for a profitable Corporate LearnDash LMS site. As a peripheral device supports a computer machine to perform a greater operation, so do Add-Ons augment the productivity of your LearnDash site. Why do we need Add-Ons in our LearnDash LMS sites? Integrating Add-Ons to your Corporate LearnDash LMS site provides special and unique capabilities which help your business excel. It adds new features and gives your business an edge over your competitors. The advantages are a lot and we will discuss them in detail in the course of this tutorial. Let’s proceed now by getting an understanding of corporate learning management systems.
What are corporate learning management systems?
A corporate LMS is a system that provides training instructors with the ability to facilitate the process involved in implementing training programs. It offers advanced features including a course library, authoring tools, analytics, and learner engagement capabilities to help you achieve better learning results for your employees.
A corporate learning management system is a platform dedicatedly designed to create, manage, and present course content for the primary purpose of training in a work environment.
A corporate learning management system is an LMS platform that is built upon the CMS systems. LMS means learning management system, whereas CMS means content management system. LMSs are built upon CMSs, for example, LearnDash is an LMS, and it’s built upon WordPress which is a CMS.
WordPress won the hearts of many LMSs including LearnDash for the following reasons.
WordPress is Free
WordPress is a free piece of software. It implies that you can download, install, use, and change it to suit your requirements. It can be used to build any type of website, including building an LMS on top of it, this freedom is priceless.
Easy to Customize with Themes and Plugins
Plugins in WordPress allow you to add unique functionality to your WordPress site. WordPress plugins function similarly to small apps for your website, allowing you to add sophisticated features such as analytics, contact forms, membership areas, and more.
WordPress is Super SEO-Friendly
WordPress is built to be friendly with search engines right out of the box. The SEO plugins in WordPress can also be used to further optimize your website. This is why WordPress websites tend to rank higher in search engines than others.
WordPress Manages Contents
Out of the box, WordPress can manage your entire content base without needing assistance from a plugin. It is not just limited to managing written text but also media files such as images, audio, and video files. These few reasons give WordPress an edge over other systems, and to date, WordPress has not been threatened by the presence of any competitor.
Now that you understand the relationship LearnDash has with WordPress and how LearnDash has revolutionized corporate learning systems, let’s jump into comparing a corporate LMS with an Academic LMS.
Corporate LMS vs Academic LMS
Corporate points to a professional setting that portrays the business world, its ethics, and mode of operation. Academic on the other hand points to the professional setting of a scholar, his ethics, and functionalities. Bringing this to the LMS world it can be compared as follow.
The main distinction here is that, whereas a corporate LMS is used internally to train and develop workers and externally to teach customers how to utilize products, an academic LMS is intended to teach students and provide professional development to teachers.
While corporate LMSs are into providing online materials for training and development specifically in professional settings. Academic Learning management systems are geared with a focus on higher or lower education and it can vary between meeting educational standards and providing administrative assistance, in and out of the classroom.
Corporate LMSs are useful for commercial and non-profit organizations who want to teach their workers or consumers. Meanwhile, academic LMSs are ideal for educational institutions aiming to give students learning opportunities and/or logistical assistance for teachers.
Corporate LMS Features and Capabilities
Corporate LMSs provide a lot of features and abilities that are geared towards achieving organizational success and employee skill development. We have highlighted six important features and abilities of a corporate LMS and why they are so important, they are as follows.
Convenience and Accessibility
A corporate LMS should be accessible to your workers at all times and from any location. This feature allows employees to provide training services whenever they want without having to manually coordinate schedules as they would do with in-person training. The ability to access training material on demand allows a learner to do so at their leisure. It also allows students to go back and review the lessons and courses if they are faced with a problem and need to brush up on anything.
Progress Tracking
A corporate LMS should be able to keep tabs on students’ progress and deliver progress reports records to management for additional review. Managers can keep track of all trainee progression on a single platform, allowing them to discover the finest potential. Depending on the type of feedback received, management might intervene to assist or provide comprehensive feedback to a specific trainee.
E-Commerce Integration
Corporate LMS systems provide an e-commerce function that allows organizations to sell their courses to other communities or industries online if they deem their courses are valuable and may benefit other groups. This feature enables companies to offer courses (with permissions), providing an additional income stream while also looking for recruits who may be taking this course.
Multimedia Features
A corporate LMS will be able to manage all multimedia assets and also training materials for the in-training students/employees. Presentations, images, audio, videos, and other assets should work fine with a corporate LMS. This capability enables the management to upload various forms of learning content to the platform such as audio files, papers, videos, and so on, for the benefit of trainees.
Corporate and Brand Promotion
Organizations may customize their LMS platforms and admin interfaces with their logos and slogans to give their LMS software a more personalized and professional appearance. Every firm would prefer an LMS that communicated their company’s identity and promoted their brand, and this is now achievable with LMS software.
Trainee and User Feedback
Trainee and user feedback is critical for a corporate LMS to function smoothly and efficiently. A corporate LMS enables learners and users to provide feedback on training programs. This helps organizations to continually enhance their training programs to provide more effective and improved courses to their employees and trainees.
Best Add-Ons for Corporate LearnDash LMS
To get the best result, you need the best tools. Corporate LearnDash sites will generate profits for a business owner if he or she will invest in it. The following are the best Add-Ons recommended for maximum performance and profitability on your investments.
WISDM Instructor Role Add-On
The WISDM Instructor Role for LearnDash enables you to assign course Instructors who can develop, administer, and sell courses without sharing administration privileges.
This Add-On will assist your instructors in earning commissions on each course offered as well as assigning responsibility for student administration, allowing you to avoid the difficulties that come with a WordPress multi-site network and student management.
The WISDM Instructor job will give you the following perks.
- Use an integrated system to improve communication between students and teachers.
- Complete control over the creation of all courses, quizzes, assignments, and certificates.
- Using WooCommerce, sell solo, numerous, or packaged LearnDash courses produced by an Instructor.
- For paid courses, set a predetermined % commission per Instructor. The plugin computes the commission received on each course purchase automatically.
- Student reports assist teachers in tracking student achievement and increasing student engagement.
- Send email alerts for every student action, such as Course Purchase, Quiz Completion, and so on, as well as other triggers.
- Distribute course administration duties among numerous instructors. The admin and principal teacher of the course can appoint additional instructors with similar topic knowledge to the course.
- Throw away your security concerns. Instructors have limited powers and access in order to avoid interfering with LearnDash settings or seeing courses produced by others, among other things.
WooCommerce / EDD Integration
The Woocommerce platform has become one of the most popular options of an eCommerce plugin. This is because it includes all of the features required to integrate eCommerce ability into your website.
Developing a corporate LMS site from scratch can weary one down, and selecting the right eCommerce platform needs many studies. Before choosing a good eCommerce platform for your business, you need to conduct some research and comparison of the many options available. However, by utilizing the Woocommerce plugin, you can quickly and simply promote your products on your corporate LMS site. Here are some benefits of using Woocomerce.
- It is open source
- It’s easy to use for non-tech entrepreneurs
- Sell any type of products
- Integration capabilities
- It’s SEO friendly
- Analytics power
- Security Matters
- Content marketing benefits
- Best Support from the community
You can also utilize the EDD plugin on your platform to sell courses. EDD stands for “easy digital download.” With over 600,000 downloads, Easy Digital Downloads is a popular shopping cart for WordPress. The Easy Digital Downloads shopping cart can now be used to sell corporate LMS courses thanks to this integration.
The EDD plugin allows you to accomplish the following.
- Easily map courses.
- Connect one or more courses.
- Auto-Enrollment of Users
- Accepts payments through a variety of payment channels.
LearnDash Certificates
This is yet another important plugin for your corporate LMS site. This plugin helps you create a certificate and assign them to a course and quiz.
The LearnDash certificate builder addon allows you to quickly create and design certificates using the built-in Gutenberg Builder. Aside from the standard editor, you can now use the built-in blocks editor when creating your certificate, making it easier for those who prefer to create certificates with a WYSWYG editor.
The following are some reasons why you should have the LearnDash certificate plugin in your corporate LMS site.
- For awarding students certificate upon successful completion of a course.
- For awarding students certificates upon the passing of a quiz.
Certification is an important part of a learning program, your students will need proof that they have completed your course. This is why the LearnDash certificate builder plugin is so crucial to the success of your corporate LMS site and being that corporate training and upskilling require giving course completion certificates.
BuddyPress Integration
BuddyPress allows you to add online profiles, user groups, private message functionality, and much more to your corporate LMS site.
Using BuddyPress and LearnDash together is a great way to create a community around your course offering.
- Course participants are automatically added to the group.
- The group is restricted to course participants and invited members.
- Course Lessons appear in the group.
- Course activity is broadcast to the group feed (optional).
- The forum is added to the group (if bbPress is enabled).
- The course’s main image is transformed into the group avatar (if no group avatar has been set).
The above features come default with the BuddyPress plugin and when installed on your corporate LMS site it enriches the experience of all those partaking in your courses.
WISDM Group Registration
Your corporate LMS site will need the ability to create a group and assign group leaders that will manage and oversee the activities within that group. Allocating assignments to a group, grading a group, private message a group, are activities that will demand that you install the WISDM Group Registration plugin.
With the WISDM Group Registration add-on, you can do the following.
- Allow teachers and managers to buy multiple course licenses in Groups.
- Assign Group Leaders to delegate student management and view learners’ progress with the Group Registration plugin for LearnDash.
- Simplify enrollment by enabling group license purchases.
- Automatically create groups and assign group leaders.
- Easily manage groups from the front end.
- Let group leaders track progress with reports.
- Allow one-click student management.
- Easy management of Group Leaders and Members.
- Sell Group Licenses at a discount for a large number of students, etc.
Private Messaging for LearnDash
The need for private conversations in a social setting will always be there. The private messaging plugin fills this void by offering a private communication area for teachers and students to discuss topics that might be unsuitable in public.
The private messaging add-on will allow you to send real-time private messages to students, groups, and one-on-one with course instructors. It allows for many levels of the message.
You can use this add-on to host real-time private messaging chats that are directly linked to courses and groups, allowing you to have unique dialogues for each course.
This private messaging capability is a critical plugin to include in your corporate LMS site to provide a better experience for your platform’s users.
WISDM Ratings, Reviews, and Feedback
This is yet another important plugin for evaluating courses performance on your corporate LMS site and course takers’ reviews and opinions.
With the WISDM Ratings, Reviews, and Feedback plugin the following can be managed on your corporate LMS site without hassle.
- Increase students with ratings.
- Boost the course’s credibility with student feedback.
- Make it simple for students to locate relevant reviews.
- Encourage students to submit their reviews.
- Get quick feedback from surveys.
- Boost the credibility of a review with Images and videos.
- Obtain honest comments on course completion, etc.
Zoom WordPress Plugin
A corporate LMS site will feel more complete with the ability to make conference calls, create webinars, and manage meetings. The Zoom WordPress plugin allows for the above functionalities. The Zoom WordPress plugin is loaded with the following features.
- Manage WordPress articles and connect them to Zoom meetings and webinars.
- Organize recurring meetings and webinars (PRO).
- Allow registrations (PRO).
- Webhooks (PRO).
- Using your theme, you can override the single and archive page templates.
- Join immediately from the frontend using a web browser.
- Authors of posts can begin by clicking on the Start Links button.
- The individual meeting page displays a countdown timer to the commencement of the meeting.
- When contrasted to the zoom timezone, the start time and join links are presented in local time.
- Display user recordings depending on their Zoom Account.
- Webinars are displayed using a shortcode, etc.
Conclusion
To conclude, add-ons are super essential for creating a strong dynamic corporate LMS. The strength of a corporate LMS is predicated on the integration of top-grade plugins. These add-ons provide your platform with abilities that streamline your LMS site’s operations, render flawless user experience to your students, and amplify your return on investment.
