Please recommend an LMS for Lectora courses

OK, but can someone point me in some direction? I've come across sites that advertise as an LMS guide but just seem to want to sell their product. How do I even go about finding what would be good for the organization I work for? Having never used an LMS, I really don't know what there is to expect from one. I just know something has to be better than going through hundreds of emails to record test scores and often having no clue who took what courses.

When I looked this up a few years ago, it seemed easy to find 5 or so top LMSs. Now there appear to be hundreds and they all want to have salespeople contact you before you can even get to a price or a trial version.

I've been trying look stuff up for a couple days and I feel like I've accomplished nothing.

Any LMS which accepts SCORM 1.0-1.2 or 2004 (4th Ed.), xAPI, or AICC content will work with Lectora since those are all formats Lectora has built-in publishing capabilities for. And almost any commercially-available LMS will accept several if not all of these formats.

Beyond that, which LMS you choose is purely based on the specific needs of your organization.

I can speak to Cornerstone, as I used that in my previous position. I really liked the interface and methods used for course, class and eLearning creation and housing, especially compared to what I use in my current job.

The "catch" with Cornerstone is that pricing is based on packaging. They have a full suite of products that includes a talent management, recruiting, HR, etc. My previous workplace used the HR, Recruiting and Learning modules, but I can't speak to what their cost would have been.

If you want to look into Cornerstone, it may be a worth a shot bringing HR into the discussion, since they may also benefit if they're looking into other systems.

My work's HR uses UltiPro for payroll and general HR stuff. They mentioned that they might be interested in the UltiPro LMS, but I have no idea if it's any good.

I would suggest starting by breaking down what you need/want your LMS to do. The reason for the massive increase in LMS software over the years is the increased market for diverse organization-specific needs, and the fact that there is simply no one-size-fits-all solution for everyone.

You mentioned making it easier to track test scores and course completion. That's a start, and 95% of LMS software out there is more than capable of that. Do you need it to do anything else? SCORM importing is obviously important. What about Google Apps Integration? Do you want Developer API access to customize it yourself? LTI Support? Native Web Hosting?

Knowing these will give you a great launching off point where you can narrow down your search significantly.

Blackboard, for instance, does all of this save for native web hosting. Instructure Canvas also does that, plus allows for native web hosting, and allows for bundled course content. Absorb is probably the easiest and most straight-forward, it's basically plug-and-play, and if your office is small to mid-sized it might be perfect for you.

If you're in an industry like me where there are highly stringent regulations regarding record-keeping and auditable trails, you might need something like Syberworks or Noverant, for example.

And if at the end of the day all you really need is a way to track course completion and test scores, you can save a lot of money by simply maintaining a basic SQL database that Lectora exports completion data and test scores to. No email notifications required!

Tracker.net by Platte Canyon. We use Tracker and Oracle PeopeSoft ELM. Tracker is better and it only cost 11K.

How timely that ELM gets mentioned. I was helping another division with some cmi.imteraction errors they were getting using ELM. After scouring the Lectora dev, I narrowed it down to an LMS issue. As it turns out, the LMS admin said that the course was reporting question level details that “...SCORM 1.2 in ELM doesn’t report on.” This raised an eyebrow (well, both, since I can’t raise one at a time), as it seems a pretty standard function used more and more frequently. Luckily, the person didn’t need question level data, so we just removed the option for reporting when publishing.

Hi @rwalters

About 3 years ago, I spent roughly one week reviewing the LMSs on the market at that time. I narrowed the field to 40, then down to 5. My process involved a spreadsheet with all of the features I thought we'd need, and I added some as I went through the task. I grouped these features together to make it easier, and also prioritised them. This included things like ability to customize with our company branding, compatibility with xAPI, SCORM, SSO etc, Reporting, ILT course admin, Help desk (and where in the world they are - I'm in Australia so this is important), Multilingual, Responsive, Certification, Webinar integration etc.

If I was going through the process now, I would also do some research into pricing, such as pay-per-user, pay-per-active-user, upfront license, free etc... as I think this would narrow the field quite quickly.

I wouldn't recommend any now, since it has been so long, but as a starting point, you could identify the requirements you know you need, then research common LMS features and see if you want those as well, consider the size of your organisation and your budget and you should be able to come to a short list.

Note that Trivantis Support uses SCORM Cloud from Rustici Software for testing. That would indicate full compatibility, I'd think. Rustici invented SCORM, so they're probably pretty good with it.

Actually, Rustici did not invent SCORM. They did, however, spearhead the development of later versions (such as xAPI 'Tin Can') as part of a US Dept. of Defense Advanced Distributed Learning Initiative resulting from Executive Order 13111. The original SCORM (1.0) was around before Rustici Software existed. I do agree that they are experts.

Anywho, the whole idea of SCORM is compatibility between authored content and Learning Management System, therefore ANY LMS that is SCORM compatible will work.

Amanda presented great info that will give a good starting point in the hunt for the LMS that best suits your needs.

By the way, if any developers are interested, there is a Broad Agency Announcement out right now for white papers that closes May 18, 2018.

I use ( and like ) TalentLMS and Moodle. Seldom have problems with LMS's clients have. Cornerstone in combo with IE has some pecularities. Some buildin functionality lowers IE's compatibility settings. You can though set it hard to any IE you need and that fixes it, but not knowing that can cause hours of frustrated testing.

I was trying out TalentLMS. I like the simplicity of it and it's relatively cheap. My only issue is that it displays the Lectora course with scroll bars within a window too small for the course. Is there a way to get it to open in it's own window or is this the only way to view a course in TalenLMS? Is there at least a way to get it to display without scroll bars or being cut off?