Speaker 1: All right, welcome to this video everyone. Today we're going to have a quick look at two things. First, LMS, Learning Management Systems, and then I will introduce one big learning management system called Moodle. So, very generally speaking, learning management systems take all traditional teaching and learning related processes from your university, from your school, but also from your businesses into the online world. Now, that means you can create the full study experience without necessarily ever having to see one single student in person. Of course, you can also use LMSs as central points that combine face-to-face teaching with online components of teaching. This hybrid model is done by most universities these days where teaching still happens in lecture theaters, but student submissions or grading or the provision of material is all done through the learning management system. However, if desired, learning management systems can really cover every aspect of the learning cycle. So, in other words, you can enroll your users and manage and monitor them throughout the entire teaching cycle. Obviously, you can create courses and course content in all shapes and with the newest learning methods from, let's say, interactive learning videos to individualized learning games. You can also communicate with your students individually or you can promote collaboration through forums, chats, group works, etc. Of course, you can create all different kind of assessments and evaluate those. Now, I know from my own experience that many academics and teachers argue that teaching is a very personal thing that requires an individual approach to reach each single student and I agree 100% with that. However, learning management systems do provide options to cater for individual student needs through detailed reporting and analytic tools, which in my opinion can even go beyond the traditional face-to-face approach. So, please don't make the mistake to ignore the quickly growing role of LMSs in the education industry. In the matter of fact, I saw something here. E-learning is the fastest growing market in the education sector, as it says in this article, reaching a revenue of over 345 billion dollars by 2025. So, the shift to more and more online learning is well underway and this is not a bad thing. We can reach a lot more people with valuable education. It is a lot cheaper and it enables you as teachers and academics to present your wonderful content with the most advanced technology. Now, let's talk a little bit about Moodle. Moodle is one of the largest learning management systems out there with more than 248 million users worldwide. And despite all the bugs and complexities that you hear me complaining about in my tutorial videos, it is one of the best. Just letting you know here, I'm not affiliated to Moodle in any way or getting paid by them. I just happen to work in the IT department of a big university that uses Moodle as their central system like many many other universities do. So, Moodle as large LMS covers every little aspect of the teaching cycle with plenty different plugins. But that doesn't mean that you have to use all features. So, Moodle can be used by really everyone that teaches something from large universities to private tutors with only a few students to corporations for staff training. So, Moodle provides three major products which are actually all the same learning management system just presented in other environments. Product one, do-it-yourself, is for institutions and businesses that have their own IT resources including servers and staff for maintenance. So, they can download Moodle for free. So, that means the software itself is free to download, but then you have to pay for the hosting and maintenance. If you are an academic for a big school, university or other large institution, this is probably the chosen product by your IT admins. For organizations with enough money, Moodle certified partners can help with everything in-house and customize Moodle sites and provide help with hosting, content creation, etc. So, this is the other option here. So, for this product it is also worth mentioning that Moodle provides a solution for businesses called Moodle Workplace. The LMS looks a bit different and has a few more business learning related plugins, but at the end of the day it's still the same LMS. Now, if you have your own small or medium-sized teaching business, the cloud solution could be a good idea for you. Because you don't have to worry about hosting since everything is stored in the Moodle cloud. So, you and your students can access your courses from literally everywhere. Now, when choosing your particular plan, notice two important things. Those plans have a maximum amount of users that are allowed on your site and these are authenticated users. So, users or students that have created an account on your personal Moodle website. And if you think about it, 50 or even 100 students are not even that many for some of your teachers out there. On top of that, 250 MB is not an awful lot of upload storage considering let's say a 30 second video is already roughly 10 MB at medium quality. And the file storage also includes all the files that students upload through assignments or forums, so just be aware of that. There is a way around that by having your videos and documents stored somewhere else and then just provide a link in Moodle. But I just wanted to let you guys know about that. It might also be a good idea to get in contact with Moodle and discuss your options and hopefully get a better deal because remember the e-learning market is extremely competitive and companies do have to fight for every customer, so take advantage of that. Also, one more thing before you get any of the paid versions, please try out the free trial. I think it's for one month at the moment and then make a decision. Alright, thank you so much for watching and I hope to see you next time.