New buying portal for e-learning, Course-Source, launches at Learning Technologies
Course-Source believes that its new buying portal, unveiled at Learning Technologies, rewrites expectations for e-learning ROI.
Course-Source is an online portal where those companies with their own LMS or VLE can find, fully evaluate, and purchase off-the shelf courses on an ad-hoc basis using a unique enrolment based pricing model.
Course-Source believes that the new model for buying e-learning has some simple – but fundamental – differences to the way most e-learning providers sell e-learning. These differences can radically transform return-on-investment from e-learning.
“Most e-learning is bought on a site license (per user) basis,” says Ken Wood, director of Source-Source .“This looks like the simplest approach, but it’s wasteful. At the end of the year, many companies look at the actual usage, and realise they are paying more per enrolment than it would have cost to purchase single courses on an ecommerce site”
In contrast, Course-Source has a ‘per-enrolment’ pricing model, so that customers only purchase training when it is needed and get discounts based on the number of enrolments purchased. There is no need to purchase a site license from a chosen publisher, that covers every potential user, nor choose specific courses, because they get access to all the courses from that publisher.
“This provides a completely different level of control,” says Wood, “and radically increases purchasing efficiency.”
Course-Source also allows buyers to take full courses, free, to evaluate them fully – before committing to a purchase for staff. “It’s important that buyers can experience the whole course,” says Wood, “and not just a tiny subset. Just as our pricing model helps customers pay only for what they use, our evaluation model saves a huge amount of time searching for course, dealing with individual suppliers and comparing radically different price models”
The portal is aimed primarily at companies with their own LMS or VLE that are looking to provide staff with a wide range of courses in a cost-effective way, and the company has invested in unique connectivity technologies which can be used to rapidly deploy its courses onto clients’ systems – “another key differentiator,” says Wood.
Course-Source is exhibiting on stand 193 at Learning Technologies, on 28–29 January, at Olympia Central in London. Ken Wood is speaking about “The hidden costs of sourcing e-learning for your LMS” at 4:15pm on the the 28th in Theatre 3 of the exhibition.