Over the last year, many people have asked me why we used components of Moodle to build a distinct eLearning product / service rather than just using Moodle in its native mode and offering a hosting and implementation service.
It’s a fair question, as Moodle offers a great deal of facility for those that have the ability, time, and / or funds to build out the platform to its fullest, to create a true social learning environment for their use. We really love a lot of the features, and have embraced many of them in our service.
However, we have also found many organizations, both academic and corporate, would prefer to have their staff work on their core competencies around training and education rather than spend the time necessary to do the wide variety of ancillary tasks and integrations many organizations require for an advanced eLearning / social learning platform.
As social learning becomes more prevalent, many organizations would like to integrate their platforms with both internal, in some cases external social networks like Facebook, or LinkedIn. Others would like connections with Twitter.
Some organisations would like to have a fully integrated eCommerce system. Others would like to have Single Sign On and integration with their authentication system.
All of this requires time and effort by your staff, or yourself to achieve. Sometimes its only a little, but in many cases, its a great deal of time and expense. The true cost, the opportunity cost, and time to market can be quite high in some instances.
This is why we’ve done what we’ve created TOPYX®, our social eLearning software solution.
We’ve created a platform that essentially offers all of this in a single, complete solution and you as an organization can simply enable or disable the components you see fit through simple administrative settings.
You can create course communities, enable whichever external social networks you see fit, or have a completely internal integrated social network, somewhat like a Facebook site for any or all of your courses, programs, content, and more. It’s all available in tandem with the course offerings you load into the system.
There’s no programming required, and no searching and mashing together various components.It is fully hosted, supported and customized to your brand.
Let’s face it, piecing together all of these components for a single organization could be a daunting and very expensive task whether you start with Moodle, or any of a number of proprietary commercial learning management systems.
Imagine integrating this at your institution.
It’s a little intimidating.
But that’s what we’ve done, and we’ve made it clean, easy and fast to implement.
You can establish any communities and community tools you wish to enable around your course content. Communities can effectively become their own integrated social network for your students or community members. As well, if you wish to enable integration with external social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn or even Twitter, as an example, you can do so by simply selecting whichever you choose in the administrative settings .
This is just the tip of the iceberg of what you can do with a TOPYX site. The options are limitless, and many who are under tight timeframes or budgetary restrictions are finding it a very prudent approach.
In a nutshell, it’s about delivering the most flexible, affordable, quick and easy to implement eLearning system we can possibly provide.
Learn more about TOPYX as a complete, affordable eLearning software solution.