I’ve been doing online education for quite some time, and the defacto standard for an LMS (Learning Management System) has been Moodle because it is free and open source.   My experience with Moodle dates back to the 1.x days.   Moodle, despite its complexities, is an incredibly flexible LMS.

However, with the advent of Moodle 2.x, I’ll be honest and say I’ve begun to feel like it’s flexibility has become a burden.

It now take a significant amount of effort to get a class up in Moodle.  While for formal, accredited courses, this flexibility is useful, and probably necessary, I find myself in an ongoing position where I want to put up a class quickly, and don’t need all the functionality of Moodle.   I simply want to put up some videos, maybe some audio, and some readings, have a quiz or two, and some discussion forums.    While Moodle can provide this functionality, I’ve found getting the materials up and ready to be a significant burden.

So I began exploring alternatives.   I run this blog, and other blogs on WordPress, and WordPress, while originally a blogging platform, has grown to be a full blown CMS (Content Mangement System) and I wondered if maybe there were plugins that could enable core LMS functionality as well.

 

And I discovered Coursepress.   There’s a free version, that limits you to two courses, and a paid version, which is $19 a month (Or $24.50 depending upon which options you select).

I’ve been working with it a couple of days now, and I’m pretty impressed.   It has discussion forums, the ability to put up content, quizzes and more.