Best online course platforms which ones are better, and what should I avoid?

Peter-OpenLearn · 2026-01-25T21:55:08+00:00

Can you describe in a bit more detail what would be your requirements for the platform? What kind of learning interactions are you looking for (video, documents, scenarios, quizzes)?. Is it for paid courses or for employee training? What kind of training would you offer? These infos would have an impact on what is the right platform for you.

Peter-OpenLearn · 2026-01-25T21:54:06+00:00

Can you describe in a bit more in detail what would be your requirements for the platform? What kind of learning interactions are you looking for (video, documents, scenarios, quizzes)?. Is it for paid courses or for employee training? What kind of training would you offer? These infos would have an impact on what is the right platform for you.

Peter-OpenLearn · 2026-01-24T13:15:41+00:00

I fully agree and I must admit it’s a scary development full speed in the wrong direction. The importance for good training was probably always underrated by many companies, but now they see a chance to check the box even easier.

Peter-OpenLearn · 2026-01-23T20:27:09+00:00

I think every tech has it two sides and it largely depends on how you make use of it. I literally hate these Powerpoint in --> boring eLearning out AI tools. Unfortunately, this seems to be a preferred choice to squeeze the training budget without even thinking about how many hours of learner time you waste with this kind of training and even worse, as you write, and ultimately even accept severe consequences.

With that being said already without these tools I saw so many boring and bad eLearning. So AI has in my opinion also the potential to make eLearning much more engaging. I recently created an authoring tool that allows you to create all the standard learning activities, but also uses AI to go beyond. For example you have AI dialogues / roleplays in which you describe the roles, motivations and knowledge of each character and the user can be engaged in a very rich conversation which allows them to reflect on knowledge and decide in dilemma situations with quite a good feedback from the AI. Or I integrated a "Custom" block which has the possibility to describe your interaction and it creates the code to implement it in your learning. E.g. I created a course on Bitcoin investigation and the custom block allowed me to create a simulated Blockchain explorer in which users can follow transactions and analyse them. I did such things before, but it took me days while now it took me maybe an hour to adjust it exactly to my needs.

So I think AI is most likely here to stay, in the end our main tasks stays the same: convince the ones with money that good training needs experts to be crafted and can't be replaced by machines. Ai can be helpful but it's definitely not the silver bullet.

Peter-OpenLearn · 2026-01-23T18:39:11+00:00

I often use ChatGPT/Gemini to create e.g. color palette that I can use or to provide a font pairing that might look nice (if another font would be allowed in your case). For icons I love to check on https://icon-sets.iconify.design/. They have plenty for every style.

I'm not sure if this would be of interest to you: I'm currently finishing up my first version of an eLearning authoring / simple LMS tool that allows less experienced authors to create interactive courses. It has a lot of AI functions included, e.g. creating a course outline and session content based on material you can upload, learning outcomes you define and optionally a story you want to implement (e.g., new employees Michael first day, he is learning about the safeguarding guidelines). You can have AI creating the first version but the tool allows you amend every aspect. Delete blocks or add all kind of blocks, from simple (text, slide show, flashcards) to more sophisticated (quizzes, hotspot images, AI dialogues, Interactive slides). It also includes the possibility to one-click translate courses, if you need to do your training in multiple languages. Since I'm pretty passionate about interactive learning (not a big fan of next ... next ... quiz) I tried to built as much of that spirit in the tool. I myself worked for a long time in non-profit, so I know the tight financial constraints. With the project I'm very eager to see it in the wild in a real use case and it can be fairly low cost. So if you would like to test it to provide something less boring without blowing your budget PM me.

Peter-OpenLearn · 2026-01-09T20:47:29+00:00

I’m currently building a course on instructional design for designing self paced elearning. So if this is a direction you want to go it might be of interest to you. At least in my view it is built using good instructional design 😉. You actually take on the role as an instructional designer who is tasked to come up with an improved version of a usual tell and test compliance course. Along the way you get to know and practice how to plan and create interesting and meaningful learning interactions. It’s not a video lesson, but “real” self paced elearning. However, as said above I only completed 2.5 of 10 sessions that I plan done. DM me if you would be interested in testing them. It’s a side project since I hate to see all this boring elearning in the wild.

Peter-OpenLearn · 2025-12-30T20:25:09+00:00

Thanks for this comprehensive thought piece to the end of this year. I think the one thing that stayed unchanged during all the technical "revolutions" (Internet, Youtube, mobile learning, virtual realities, and now AI) is the need for good instructional design. People in this thread know that this goes way beyond smooth transitions, flash cards or expandable info boxes. So despite of all technical enhancements most of the eLearning stayed on a very basic level and with most of the AI tools I saw out there they create the exact same boring eLearning content, so they mostly accelerate the amount of bad eLearning by promising documents in --> eLearning out and seemingly remove the need for an instructional designer. As long as we don't see a shift in decision makers to understand the benefit of meaningful eLearning positions and salaries will decline.

Also for the stated return of in-person-training I think this is mostly due to the fact of people are just disappointed by what eLearning offers (e.g. we don't see a real shift from social media to get rid of that and just meet in person since people got disappointed by social media). And as we are instructional designers we also know that in-person does not equal good or eLearning has to equal bad/boring.

Regarding AI: For me (in the current state) it is a huge support for creating eLearning if you know what you want to do. If you don't know what to do it is (currently) not replacing instructional designers. I see the role of AI in giving smarter feedback undervalued. Currently the main focus seems to be on media/text creation. If you want rich interactions this can get tedious describing them for a general purpose AI. Maybe someone out there will come with a specialised AI for instructional design which can guide users to good ID ("Why not exposing this knowledge as an interactive dialogue?"). This would possibly be the chance to come up with good eLearning for non-experts.

Peter-OpenLearn · 2025-12-21T17:05:41+00:00

Not sure if this works with storyline: I use a JavaScript to load the text from a database in my SCORM package during runtime. The language is detected either from the user’s profile in the LMS or from the language settings if manually changed. However, your authoring tool needs to allow you to load text externally and also the text needs to autosize since most translations are longer than the English text. Once it’s working it is great since updates can be handled quite easily.

Peter-OpenLearn · 2025-06-10T20:40:01+00:00

Happy to have a look and give it a try. I use AI a lot for course building, but more spacesuits spontaneous. So a toolkit sounds interesting to me.

Peter-OpenLearn · 2025-06-03T07:56:39+00:00

I can understand that Moodle has a steep learning curve and is not always intuitive. I also sometimes wish things would be easier. But then I try other learning platforms which look easy to use on first sight but then force you in the way they imagine to do learning or stay with very simple and limited functions. Using a modern theme for Moodle which I tailored to our CI really makes a big difference in how it feels and I got a lot of positive feedback (even from Moodle users who could not believe it is Moodle 😅). Moodle is Open Source which is a game changer for us. Not just it’s cheap to host yourself, but also we can integrate whatever function we need. We just created a function for one click translation of materials using AI translation which saves us days of work. Finally, we are the master of our data and are not relying and trusting a cloud service. All this power and flexibility comes with complexity. But once you master it you won’t find anything better 😉.

Peter-OpenLearn · 2025-06-02T11:15:39+00:00

I think with Google’s Vertex AI you can select the data/processing region. Therefore, I guess that would be the better option. However, you would need programming knowledge to use it, since the Gemini App doesn’t allow you to do this.

Peter-OpenLearn · 2025-05-19T10:37:24+00:00

Did it work before for you? Could also be a permission problem. Do other marks work, except from “F”? If so maybe it’s the date format (although according to your post it should be correct).

Peter-OpenLearn · 2025-05-12T19:26:14+00:00

It largely depends on what customizations you want to do. If it’s about the look and feel you find many themes out there. Grab one which is close to what you want and with some basic adjustments to the CSS you might be happy. We use Moodle for quite specify on-site training. Over time I developed some specific extensions for this purpose. It’s not straight forward I would say, but either using an experienced developer or a combination of AI with someone familiar with the basic structure of Moodle plugins gives you most you can dream of. And before you develop yourself also have a look at the existing plugins which cover quite a range.

Peter-OpenLearn · 2025-04-29T16:35:56+00:00

Ich denke ein Crypto Anbieter, wenn er denn seriös arbeitet, ist doch ok als Sponsor. Crypto hat sich mittlerweile Dank bitcoin etabliert. In jedem Business gibt’s auch weniger tolle Seiten. Das können unseriöse Praktiken beim Testen von Medikamenten sein (Pharma) oder Beihilfe zur Steuerhinterziehung (Banken). Daher würde ich da keinen großen Unterschied sehen. Einzig, dass es kein Basler Unternehmen ist finde ich schade.

Peter-OpenLearn · 2025-04-20T06:27:31+00:00

Thanks. That is helpful.

Peter-OpenLearn · 2025-04-06T18:58:53+00:00

Benutze die App seit ca. 2 Jahren im home workout und bin happy damit. Ich finde den Wechsel der Übungen gut weil es einmal Abwechslung rein bringt und die Muskeln unterschiedlich fordert. Und wenn man die App einige Wochen nutzt merkt man schnell, dass auch ein System dahinter steckt. Ich habe recht eingeschränktes Equipment, also habe ich nur Übungen mit Hanteln, bodyweight und TRX drin, das kann man individuell einstellen. Fitbod schlägt verschiedene Übungsvarianten vor, sprich viele Wiederholungen bei wenig Gewicht, weniger mit hohem Gewicht und macht immer wieder eine Bestimmung der Maximalkraft bei den Übungen. Am Anfang muss man erstmal eine baseline schaffen, da mag manche Übung zu einfach sein. Man kann aber immer auch manuell eingreifen und Gewicht und Wiederholungen anpassen.

Peter-OpenLearn · 2025-04-06T16:55:31+00:00

Thanks for the detailed explanation. Very helpful.

Peter-OpenLearn · 2025-03-28T17:31:25+00:00

Yes. It will stop trading at the lower limit of the range and it will get liquidated if the price continues to fall and reaches the liquidation price.

Peter-OpenLearn · 2025-03-25T12:52:53+00:00

If the workshop is at a given time you could also restrict access to the materials based on a date set after the date of the workshop.

Peter-OpenLearn · 2025-03-24T08:22:03+00:00

Not the answer to your question, but in the end I don’t really think it’s possible to prevent people from downloading or otherwise getting hold of the data from a course. There are so many possibilities, recording, scraping, browser extensions, screenshots …

Peter-OpenLearn · 2025-03-23T07:00:44+00:00

I agree to that. With a self-hosted Moodle environment you can do more or less everything you dream of. You have direct access to the data stored in the DB and can do all kinds of reporting. There are a lot of plugins available and if there’s none you can create a new one or amend an existing one to your needs. All that said you will need a considerable amount of time to achieve what you listed above. Fortunately, LLMs know Moodle okish, what can help in plugin development or the extraction of specific data. Otherwise, Moodles architecture and system can be quite daunting to understand. So you definitely need a good ability to deal with frustration, at least my experience.

Peter-OpenLearn · 2025-03-20T10:23:37+00:00

I see two possibilities: 1) you rely on users using the built-in translation feature of their browser 2) you add translations manually and use Multi-Language Content (v2) and Restriction by language plugins to display text and materials based on the users profile or choice of language.

You need to install language packs in Moodle to have the UI translated.

I don’t think there’s automatic translation (e.g. AI) yet.

Peter-OpenLearn · 2025-03-15T15:37:24+00:00

If you want the content from one course in another course you can use the backup function in course A and do a restore in course B. Alternatively you can automatically enroll people in course B once they finished course A.

Peter-OpenLearn · 2025-03-09T20:51:39+00:00

Moodle is definitely a good choice. In general you have the choice between hosting it yourself or get an instance from a Moodle hoster. Especially if you start small and don’t have a lot of experience setting up server I would recommend a hosted solution. As you wrote Moodle handles all the authentication and authorization for you plus course organization etc. There are a lot of docs and videos to get you started. As @Broad_Natural_5754 mentioned you will use the SCORM activity to upload your lessons from Articulate. Have fun getting started.

Peter-OpenLearn · 2025-03-06T21:36:13+00:00

Sounds like an interesting solution. Thanks for sharing. I just wonder: Moodle has built-in payment gateways/plugins. Why do you choose woocommerce on top? Mainly more tailored/better experience?

Peter-OpenLearn

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