Huge opportunity in Community based LMS platform

3rd AnGle

3rd AnGle

Well-known member
Folks,

As you know online courses are getting big and bigger, there's a huge opportunity for a learning management solution (LMS) addon.

Business Problem: Current LMS solutions built around wordpress are really good.... what's bad is the discussion forum or the community interaction surrounding the online learning experience.

Why? Because wordpress or the bespoke LMS solutions are more focussed on giving a one way learning platform (from Instructor to students) and use poor performing addons like buddypress for online profiles and forums.

Solution:
  1. XF is already A in forums and user profiles
  2. LMS addon that allows instructors to teach to students
    • Videos (hosted or through other services like youtube, vimeo)
    • every course have its own dedicated category-->forums managed by the instructor
I have enrolled for more than 15 courses and i can tell you that i never enjoyed any of the websites (UX) coz they are all designed to show private videos to private members. The community experience is secondary.


Add on devs.. the market is huge. A lot of instructors i know are building their students base in udemy and others but eventually they all want to take them away to their own website for maximum gain and learning experience. Imagine reaching out to the 1000s of online instructors and telling them we have a better solution.

XF + that addon license sale will be huge. XF could also be expanded to non-forum markets very very easily. @Chris D do you have free time :D

Just look at the codecanyon sales for LMS if not convinced. Do you own research https://themeforest.net/item/lms-learning-management-system-education-lms-wordpress-theme/7867581
 
I know there are several threads asking for something similar. The problem is that the XF search engine is unable to find these, because searching for courses, education, learning all give results for irrelevant very common words. (of course, educate, learn)

Here are some related discussions that mention Udemy:
https://xenforo.com/community/threads/is-any-real-educational-or-online-learning-add-on.61323/
https://xenforo.com/community/threads/quiz-plugin.8949/
https://xenforo.com/community/threads/paid-i-am-inviting-quotes-for-a-survey-system.48804/
https://xenforo.com/community/threads/udemy-courses-on-xenforo-whose-doing-it.111497/
https://xenforo.com/community/threads/2-years-since-i-chose-xenforo-a-look-back.84425/

I also remember the discussion of social groups for learning clubs.
 
Thanks for the heads up @Alfa1

The future of education is online learning and the software platform that provides instructors to create their own website is the need of the hour. I believe LMS nested inside a forum (like i am proposing here) is better than LMS+Wordpress+Buddy press.

The former is community 1st, the later is watch the video and throw your questions around and let me see if i can find it
 
Oops. nvm. Looks like Facebook gonna eat this market share too as they have just announced e-learning, jobs modules and planning to go HHHUUUUGGEE.

They are pushing these modules inside Facebook groups and pages (those that killed most of the forums) and now they are after e-learning.

Why do product designers in facebook think like me? Oh, great minds think alike. May be that's why.

Future of education: community based e-learning. Do you sell community based software?
 
TL;DR:
  1. Online education is the future mode of learning
  2. 1000s of instructors creating millions of courses. You can be one too
  3. Instructors building students base in aggregated online learning sites like Udemy, Khan etc
  4. Instructors have to pay a huge % cut to these aggregators
  5. Online education is high involvement product/service just like medical service (choosing best doctors) so students prefer to follow the site wherever the instructors are.
  6. These instructors don't have much choice but to use poorly designed LMS softwares.. some Wordpress plugins which does fine for just video streaming but very very very bad community experience
    • Why? Coz, the existing LMS solutions are not revolved around a community but its just a private website with video streaming capabilities
Why Forum + LMS addon is a huge win?
  1. Forum, as they say, offers more in depth discussion. Sub matter discussion in forum is better than facebook groups discussions
  2. Forum is community
  3. Attach the LMS feature in the community and you have the winning combination to crack the next big industry
** The wise developer who cracks this first and develops the most UI/UX friendly plugin will laugh all the way to the bank

Market expansion for Forum devs: XF listening?
Win-Win for forum devs as well as LMS developer: XF will expand its market (DWINDLING market) to the newly opened industry. All emails of the 1000s of instructors are easily available online. All it takes is one email campaign telling them they can build their own LMS site with rich community experience. Even if 5% signs up, it is good sales.

Change my mind
 
3rd AnGle said:
Even if 5% signs up, it is good sales.
Click to expand...
Good sales maybe, but that doesn’t translate into profit in and of itself.

It’s my understanding that a truly revolutionary LMS product needs to be able to intuit how the students are learning. Some students are visual learners, some are auditory learners and some are practical learners. The best online tutor software will work out how each individual student learns and present the material in the way that matches the student.

That is more than just programming. You’d need to know how to capture and analyse data to make inferences about human behaviour.

In short, some outsourcing might be in order here, which costs money.

Add that to the significant initial cost of development, and cost to maintain (fine-tuning algorithms and learning methodology), and the initial investment is far greater than anyone on this site can undertake. This is either venture capital milk and honey of government grant territory.

Change my mind.


Fillip
 
DragonByte Tech said:
it’s my understanding that a truly revolutionary LMS product needs to be able to intuit how the students are learning. Some students are visual learners, some are auditory learners and some are practical learners. The best online tutor software will work out how each individual student learns and present the material in the way that matches the student.
Click to expand...
Oh. Upping to the level of Udemy or even youtube + forum experience should be good enough for now. Udemy is worth 710 Million now.

Usergroup based Private Videos + Forum Discussions over each category of the curriculum)... is enough.


DragonByte Tech said:
Add that to the significant initial cost of development, and cost to maintain (fine-tuning algorithms and learning methodology), and the initial investment is far greater than anyone on this site can undertake. This is either venture capital milk and honey of government grant territory.
Click to expand...
If it salivates the VCs and attracts the Govt''s honey they you can blindly believe that the market is huuuuuugggggeeee.

Forum Market: where it works and where it used to work
  1. Gaming
  2. Automobiles
  3. Tools related
  4. Niche subject
All of them, cannibalized by FB and other aggregator (Reddit, Telegram, Whatsapp, Quora) products.

I am just saying there is a product fit that the aggregators will not easily eat up but will act a complimentary product.. Coz, like doctors, Educators can sway his/her students in his own website and are ready to pay for a solid software.

Change my mind
 
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