I asked the professional community of instructional designers (IDs) on LinkedIn and others in the learning industry to help me out last week. I needed some suggestions for an off-the-shelf solution to help me manage a bank of questions I'm creating over several online courses for RealtyU. As I develop them, the idea is to link each question to the learning objectives we've developed for each topical area. So far, I've been managing these associations using a simple desktop database I created from a Filemaker variant called Bento. But, as the question bank grows, I wanted to look down the line a bit to see if there was something off-the-shelf I can migrate to.
As expected, the professional community came through. (If you're on LinkedIn and not using the Q&A forum, then you're missing out on a great professional and support community at your fingertips.) Though, I don't think the responses will help my immediate search for the off-the-shelf solution I was hoping for, they did help with future growth plans for a bigger and better LMS (Learning Management System) platform.
A few asked if I could keep them posted on a summary of responses. I'm glad to reciprocate. Especially since, as some have pointed out, there will likely be other IDs who have the same question. Below is a summary of the recommendations that were given:
- Questionmark Perception (www.questionmark.com)... # of recommendations: 5
- Articulate Quizmaker (www.articulate.com)... # of recs: 2
- Moodle (www.moodle.org)... # of recs: 1
- Articulate Online (www.articulate.com)... # of recs: 1
- Testcraft (www.testcraft.com) ... # of recs: 1
- Lectora ... (www.trivantis.com) ... # of recs: 1
- Zarca (www.zarca.com) ... # of recs: 1
- Expand Media's L-Train (www.GetExpanded.com) ... # of recs: 1
- CLiKS (no URL reference found) ... # of recs: 1
I looked at a number of the ones above including: Questionmark's Perception, Moodle and Lectora. (I'm already using Articulate Studio so I'm quite familiar with it's product line -- Quizmaker, Engage, Presenter, Online. I recommend it, btw, for rapid development and relative ease of integration with other solutions.)
I liked the feature set in the Questionmark solution and can see why there were 5 mentions of it the responses I received. There was something to be said, too, for Moodle and Lectora. Much more than a simple question bank, these are all more robust LMS solutions and will definitely be something to keep on the short list as we consider our move from our current proprietary platform.
Thanks for all who responded. You helped a lot. And, for others who may be on the lookout for LMS systems, thank the community of IDs on LinkedIn. And, I hope this post helps.
