The #1 Interactive WordPress Quiz Plugin for Your Online Course
Do you want to increase course value, learner results, personalization, and completion rates in your online course. Well designed quizzes can help.
Our Journey with You | LifterLMS 2017 Year in Review
The LifterLMS story continues to unfold, empowering education entrepreneurs all around the world to teach online and build profitable teaching companies. 2017 saw incredible growth for LifterLMS in many ways. I’d like to take a pause and share some highlights from 2017. What went well with LifterLMS in 2017? We released the Infinity Bundle and began adding advanced functionality to it with Private Areas and Social Learning. 2 new add-ons were added to the Universe Bundle: Twilio and Authorize.net. The launch of the 30-day demo so prospective LifterLMS users can test out the premium add-ons and bundles before they buy. 61 new releases to the core free LifterLMS plugin bringing new features, integrations, bug fixes, and security enhancements. According to the small percentage of users who allow tracking in their LifterLMS install, over 1.5 million students have enrolled in a course or membership powered by LifterLMS. According to WordPress, LifterLMS crossed over 150,000 downloads with 7,000+ active installs. LifterLMS live Office Hours was born to help power-users and the community find live strategy, technical, and industry help. The LifterLMS expert program rolled out to provide custom freelance services to the LifterLMS community and create a new revenue channel for LifterLMS and general WordPress freelancers. The LifterLMS community Facebook group grew to over 2,500 members. The free LifterLMS Labs was born to incubate niche features and deeper integration with tools like Beaver Builder and Divi. A new user and customer onboarding support system was built. LifterLMS documentation pieces crossed 300. LifterLMS awarded 23 partial scholarships for education entrepreneurs in extreme situational need or with limited financial resources. Our podcast for course creators called LMScast crossed the 150 episodes milestone. LifterLMS Cofounder Thomas Levy took over as lead organizer for WordCamp Los Angeles. LifterLMS sponsored WordCamp Sacramento, WordCamp Los Angeles, and podcaster Joe Casabona from How I built It. LifterLMS attended CaboPress for the third time. The LifterLMS project turned 4 years old. What could be improved on with LifterLMS in 2017? More theme options with direct LifterLMS integration like Astra is doing now. Quicker support turn around times. More evolved public beta testing program. Deeper page builder compatibility. What’s in store for LifterLMS in 2018? 2018 will be a great year for the LifterLMS community as growth continues to compound on itself. Smart education entrepreneurs, would-be course creators, and membership site builders are flooding into LifterLMS for good reason. Some of the biggest things to look forward to in 2018 are: The complete roll out of the Infinity Bundle with the release of Assignments. A commitment to the WordPress ecosystem with support and leadership around Gutenberg compatibility with LifterLMS users. Improvements and new features across ALL existing LifterLMS products. A commitment to helping other entrepreneurs launch products, services, training or integrations for LifterLMS like you see with Astra, Wisdm Labs, WP Plugins For You, the Larry theme, Ventura, The Core, ConsultPress, Course Lady, WP Fusion, AffiliateWP, iDevAffiliate, WP Crafter, WP Tonic, and the LifterLMS Experts. But wait! There’s one more thing … I have not talked about this publicly yet … This year we are also rolling out something completely different that the online course, membership site, and LMS industry has never seen before. This new thing is fundamentally revolutionary. It will solve these 3 problems: After release of this new thing student engagement and completion rates will soar. After release of this new thing experts and teachers will be able to teach way more effectively. After release of this new thing education entrepreneurs will be able to focus a lot less on marketing, because the course will literally sell itself. That’s all …
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The #1 WordPress LMS Just Got Even Better: Hello Quiz Builder …
The much anticipated LifterLMS quiz builder and Advanced Quizzes add-on just rolled out for you to use and enjoy. These are the highlights. First Let’s Take a Quick Tour of the Quiz in Action An all new app-like quiz building experience LifterLMS exists to make a useful tool for course builders to quickly and intuitively create learning programs from the vision they have in their minds. We do this with the course builder, which now integrates the quiz builder, so you can create a curriculum or course architecture from one screen. This allows you to rapidly lay out your course structure so you can quickly get to the point where you just have to “add content.” The new quiz builder provides improvement light years beyond the old quiz system so that you can build an entire quiz from one screen. This app-like experience is something we are very proud of as we push the boundaries of what’s possible with web application development in the WordPress environment. As WordPress democratizes publishing, LifterLMS extends that vision, democratizing education in the digital classroom. Sometimes in the LMS industry, course creators to go to the “cloud” and pay expensive monthly fees for the right to have their training program on another LMS company’s platform with limited flexibility. LifterLMS champions a different narrative. YOU get to own your platform, have no financial penalties for success (no limits on students, teachers, or courses), and get to enjoy the freedom that comes from platform ownership and the incredible extendability of the WordPress ecosystem. New question types Here is a list of all the new question types in the Advanced Quizzes add-on: Short answer (manually graded) Long answer (manually graded) File upload (manually graded) Fill in the blank Fill in the blank (manually graded) Code (manually graded) Until now the base LifterLMS quiz system included only the automatically graded multiple choice single answer question type. At LifterLMS our philosophy is to give away as much as we possibly can to the startup education entrepreneur in the free core LifterLMS plugin. In that spirit, here are the new question types we added to the base quiz system in the core LifterLMS plugin’s quiz system: Text multiple choice multiple correct answer True / False Picture multiple choice single correct answer Picture multiple choice multiple correct answer * Also note that when you update your version of the LifterLMS plugin to the most current version, your existing automatically graded multiple choice single correct answer questions will migrate automatically into the new system. Manual grading and remarks Manual grading allows the instructor to review answers and leave remarks. Remember those old-school tests where it had a grade on it and the teacher wrote some comments? That’s what we’re talking about here, but in a more modern, digital way. Many different question types could have manual grading, like short answer, long answer (essay), fill in the blank, file upload, etc. Manual grading can also be used to prevent forward progress or course completion until something has been graded and the grade is above the minimum passing score set by the course creator. An easter egg … Thanks to some feedback from a member in the LifterLMS community on one of our weekly Office Hours calls, we added a secret feature into the Advanced Quiz add-on. We’re not big on secrets, so allow me a moment to describe a way you can use the quiz system for something completely separate from graded tests… If you set a question’s weight to 0, you can also collect survey and assessment data from students. How might this …
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Get Ready for LifterLMS Advanced Quizzes
Tomorrow (January 31, 2018) is the roll out of LifterLMS Advanced Quizzes! The top 2 benefits of the Advanced Quizzes add-on are: New question types like short answer, long answer, upload, scale, fill in the blank, and more Manual grading for increased personalization and feedback loops The new add-on will be released in tandem with an update to the free core LifterLMS plugin. This update to the core LifterLMS plugin includes: The new quiz builder (integrated with the course builder) which makes building quizzes easier and much faster A few new question types for the base quiz system like picture choice, true false, and more Your existing automatically graded multiple choice quizzes will migrate seamlessly into the new system There’s a lot more coming, but those are some of the highlights. Coming pricing changes After the release of LifterLMS Advanced Quizzes add-on, the preorder window closes, and you will no longer be able to lock in cheaper pricing for Advanced Quizzes. Also after the release of Advanced Quizzes, the Infinity Bundle (which includes Advanced Quizzes) will increase by $100. So if you’d like to lock in cheaper pricing for the Advanced Quizzes add-on or the Infinity Bundle, now is the time to invest in your education business. Chris, this blog post is a little light on details … I know. Sorry about that. We’re knee deep in final development and testing, but … We have a lot of great content coming your way around the new quiz system and Advanced Quizzes. Here’s some of what you can expect coming soon: A detailed live demo webinar of the new quiz system and the Advanced Quizzes add-on (You should have received an email to register for this if you are on our email list) An official release blog post with lots of information and images An informational podcast episode on our podcast LMScast Documentation and FAQ’s More YouTube videos (subscribe here) So keep an eye on your inbox and our official facebook group for updates and new content as it rolls out. Do you have specific presales questions about quizzes, the Infinity Bundle, or LifterLMS in general? Click here to send us an email. “Together let’s build the most engaging learning platforms online!”
When it’s Time to Ask for Help | LifterLMS Done For You Service
help (verb) definition: make it easier for (someone) to do something by offering one’s services or resources. Sometimes we all need a little help. This is a busy time of year. Actually, let’s get real — it is always a busy time of year. Whether it is the holidays, tax season, back to school, summertime, end of the school year, a birthday, or just life, we are always busy. If you are like me, it is easy to feel overwhelmed and fall into the trap of trying to take on everything yourself…and as a result get very little, or nothing at all, actually done. Here’s a personal example. When I first lived on my own, I loved planning meals. Every Sunday I would sit down and create a healthy, balanced menu for the entire week — breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I would figure out all the ingredients and grocery shop for all of my food for the week at once. This would involve price comparing and going to several different grocery stores. Fast forward to twenty years later. With 2 kids, a job, family, and outside community commitments, my “meal planning” had evolved into something quite different, and less than ideal. It went something like this: “Mom, what’s for dinner?” Me, looking at the clock as I try to finish up a few more emails…”Umm, I’ll figure it out in a few minutes.” [30 minutes later] “Mom, have you figured out dinner yet?” Me, looking at the clock and realizing we have 45 minutes until I need to scramble to get the kids off to activities and very little in the fridge to eat…”How does pizza sound?” So, I used to be a thoughtful meal planner and grocery shopper. It used to be in my skillset. But, at this moment in time, at this point in my life, I had to accept that this type of meal planning was no longer at the top of my list. And in order to prioritize other things in my life and still feed my family, I knew something had to change. I needed help. So, I outsourced. I recently subscribed to a meal kit delivery service. And yes, it is a little bit more of a financial investment than going to 3 different stores and bargain shopping, but it is also a lot less time consuming. This investment allows me the freedom to spend more time focusing on the things I want and need to focus on — my job, my family, and my community obligations. And, in turn, I let the experts plan and ship ingredients and recipes for 3 healthy family meals a week right to my front door. LifterLMS Done For You Service I shared my personal story, because I know there is someone out there reading this who can relate. It’s not easy to “do it all.” As an online course creator, you know that your unique online course has the power to change peoples’ lives…but you need to get it out of your head and onto the web. Maybe you are a business advisor, a health and fitness coach, or a foreign language instructor. Whatever your niche, you have a special skill set, a specific information base, and you’re eager to share your knowledge with the universe. You likely empower your students to overcome the obstacles obstructing their path to success, and if technical requirements of building your course platform are slowing you down, it’s time for you to do the same. Overcome the obstacles keeping your course offline. With our freshly relaunched Done For You services we handle the details of installing, styling, and deploying your …
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How to Build a LifterLMS Website Livestream – Step 13
Here’s the next video in the livestream video blog about how to build a LifterLMS site from scratch (with no step skipped). This video training is about using a WordPress page builder called Beaver Builder to modify the content included in the optional homepage template included in LifterLMS Pro. This step is optional. View all the video blog posts in this series: https://blog.lifterlms.com/category/step-by-step/
How to Build a LifterLMS Website Livestream – Step 12
Here’s the next video in the livestream video blog about how to build a LifterLMS site from scratch (with no step skipped). This video training is about setting up access plans for courses and a recurring revenue monthly membership option. View all the video blog posts in this series: https://blog.lifterlms.com/category/step-by-step/
Advanced Quizzes Release Extended to January 31
The release date of the Advances Quizzes add-on has changed.
Spotlight On: Monica Garrett, Margaux Agency
It’s time to Spotlight another one of our LifterLMS Experts. Here’s a quick rundown on Monica Garrett from Margaux Agency. Monica specializes in Full Site Builds, Custom Development, Web Design Specialties, Branding, and Logo Design. What are your hobbies and interests outside of the internet? I love to spend time with my daughter Gianna, who’s middle name was the inspiration for Margaux. Any time that I can spend with my family and my pup Stella, my heart is full! My husband and I enjoy attending Improv and Comedy shows, too. We love exploring new cities, and seeing what new experiences and restaurants they have to offer. 3 words your best friend would use to describe you… Motivated, Driven, and Optimistic What first made you interested in web development or design? I have always felt that anything can be made to look better with a little attention. It all started while working on wedding invitations. I took it further than just the initial invite. I looked at it as branding their wedding leaving no detail unlooked at. Once I got into branding for businesses, this same approach amplified my love for visual styling for businesses. On to some fun stuff…what’s a little-know fact about you? Since today’s world is so digital, you don’t often meet your community in person. But if we were to meet in person, it might surprise you to know that I am a whopping 5 feet tall. Because of that, my spirit celebrity is Kevin Hart. He just ‘gets it’! What’s your favorite flavor of ice cream? I don’t like to complicate my meals or my desserts. Vanilla bean all the way. What part of the world do you live in? Beautiful, sunny SoCal! Famous last words (anything to add)… Make every detail perfect, and limit the number of details to perfect. — Jack Dorsey
LifterLMS Data Freedom | The Scorn of the Hosted LMS Industry
Many course entrepreneurs have started to realize the downside of not owning their learning platform. At LifterLMS we are seeing a flood of people leaving hosted LMS marketplaces and expensive hosted online course platforms with monthly fees.