Learn how to add SCORM, xAPI, and LRS support to your WordPress LMS website to deliver interactive content via eLearning authoring tools with Pankaj Agrawal from GrassBlade. GrassBlade is an eLearning solution that combines the best of Learning Record Store (LRS) along with the eLearning authoring tools and what the WordPress LMS industry has to offer.
These topics can be confusing to many users, especially if they’re new in the eLearning space. But Pankaj has some great analogies in this episode and explains how each of those parts works together, along with what purpose each one serves.
GrassBlade is an ecosystem of separate products and features that allow you to host your eLearning content that you build in any authoring tool, such as Articulate, Captivate, Elucidat, Adapt, etc. They allow you to package that up as a zip file, and with GrassBlade you can upload that to WordPress.
A cool thing about the integration GrassBlade has with LifterLMS is that it allows you to track all the data for how people interact with your content inside LifterLMS. So you can have quizzes inside videos and see reports on that data inside the LifterLMS reporting.
There are two standards used for tracking data. One is xAPI (Experience API), or if you’ve been in the industry for a few years you may also know Tin Can API. These are all three names for the same thing. And there’s an even older standard called SCORM.
The GrassBlade products really come in two parts. The plugin which sits inside WordPress, the GrassBlade xAPI Companion plugin is one part, and the second part is the Learning Record Store system that hosts the learning data.
Pankaj shares how there are some advantages of using a third-party system to host your learning content. One example is portability of content. If you want to move your LMS system to another system in the future, you wouldn’t have to do as much work recreating content if you went from WordPress to another tool in the future.
Another advantage is the advanced options for progress tracking. For example, you could mark a lesson as complete based on how many slides a user has watched inside a specific media format or how many questions they got correct on a quiz.
To connect with Pankaj and learn more about eLearning authoring tools and how they can help you in your online course or membership site business, check out NextSoftwareSolutions.com. You can also connect with him on Facebook and LinkedIn. There are all kinds of neat features you’ll learn about as well, such as heat maps.
At LifterLMS.com you can learn more about new developments and how you can use LifterLMS to build online courses and membership sites. If you like this episode of LMScast, you can browse more episodes here. Subscribe to our newsletter for updates, developments, and future episodes of LMScast. Thank you for joining us!
Episode Transcript
Chris Badgett:
You’ve come to the right place if you’re a course creator looking to build more impact, income, and freedom. LMScast is the number one podcast for course creators just like you. I’m your guide, Chris Badgett. I’m the co-founder of the most powerful tool for building, selling, and protecting engaging online courses called LifterLMS, enjoy the show.
Chris Badgett:
Hello, and welcome back to another episode of LMScast. I’m joined today by a special guest, Pankaj Agrawal. He’s from GrassBlade, which is over at nextsoftwaresolutions.com. Welcome to the call, Pankaj.
Pankaj Agrawal:
Thank you. It’s nice to be here.
Chris Badgett:
I’m really excited to talk to you. So GrassBlade is an eLearning solution that combines the best of a Learning Record Store or LRS along with eLearning authoring tools and what the WordPress LMS industry has to offer. If that sounds confusing and a lot of technical stuff, we’re actually going to get into that and talk about what all that is. And Pankaj has been innovating in the space for a long time.
Chris Badgett:
So I want to just start with the listener who may be a little bit unsure about what all these terms mean. When you talk about GrassBlade or you’re introducing it to somebody, what is it exactly? How do you help them figure out what you offer?
Pankaj Agrawal:
So GrassBlade is an ecosystem of separate products and separate features. It allows you to host your eLearning content which you can build in any authoring tool. There are a lot of authoring tools around which you can use to build your content apart from what we were already doing on WordPress. So you could be using Articulate or Captivate, or maybe Elucidat, or domiKnow, Adapt, Lectora, anything. You can purchase that up as a zip file and then you can upload it to WordPress using our tool.
Pankaj Agrawal:
So it allows you to upload to WordPress and attach it to LifterLMS lessons or quizzes. And then it also allows you to track all that data. So if you want tracking data, you can enable that option. There are two standards which are used for tracking data; one is xAPI, which is also called Experienced API, or if you are back from a few years in the industry you might know Tin Can API. So these all three things are names of the same thing, so this is one standard. And if you know the older standard it is called SCORM.
Pankaj Agrawal:
So you can package it as xAPI or SCORM, and if you have these packages you can also enable tracking. So when tracking is enabled you can get this to mark your lesson as completed or if you add it to LifterLMS quiz, the LifterLMS native quiz is suppressed and you can have the quiz inside your authoring tool inside the module that you built in these authoring tools. And this course will be tracked inside LifterLMS, you get it in LifterLMS reports as well and you can award certificates and do all sorts of other things based on that.
Pankaj Agrawal:
So this is the general view, you can do a lot more than this. This was where we started with and then we added support for H5P and Zapier and all the other stuff. So it comes with two parts, one is the plugin which sits inside WordPress, the GrassBlade xAPI Companion plugin. And the other thing which you already mentioned, the Learning Record Store, so there’s a GrassBlade LRS, GrassBlade Learning Record Store. So Learning Record Store is just a record store of learning data and it is an essential component of an Experience API ecosystem.
Chris Badgett:
Wow! That’s awesome. Well, thank you for taking us to school on that. Let’s unpackage one of those a little more. If we look at the learning content, what’s the difference for somebody who is making content in WordPress, maybe embedding videos or some text content versus what you can do on these eLearning authoring tools? If you were going to recommend someone to use an eLearning authoring tool like Articulate Storyline/Rise/Studio 360, Captivate, Lectora, iSpring, Adapt, domiKnow and more, why would they go to that versus Create and WordPress? What’s the advantage of using an authoring tool.
Pankaj Agrawal:
So there are a few different advantages of using those authoring tools. One of them is portability of content. So let’s say you are building content on maths and you build that content calculus, let’s say, and now you don’t know whether you are going to use LifterLMS for your entire life. You might be doubtful whether LifterLMS will be able to support 50,000 students when you have that many, today you only have 50 students and you don’t need a more complicated system, and you’re doubting the platform, you can build the content on a separate software. You get a zip file, so it is a single file of the entire learning module and then you can use it on any LMS that supports that standard. So if you are packing as xAPI… So packaging as xAPI or SCORM means you just have to enable that checkbox inside the authoring tool that I want this as xAPI tracking module. So you just enable that and select what tracking you want. Let’s say you want to mark it complete based on how many slides the user has viewed, or if you have quiz inside the module, you want it to track based on the percentage score of that quiz. So you just enable that and you get a zip fie.
Pankaj Agrawal:
Now this zip file can be used on any LMS, now this allows you to, one, switch LMSs. So if you’re currently on another LMS you want to switch to LifterLMS you can bring that zip file and upload it on LifterLMS using our GrassBlade xAPI Companion plugin. Or if, let’s say, you build this module and you want to sell it to different people and people using different LMSs, so you can give this zip file to them and they can load in their LMSs. So you build one module and it can be loaded on any LMS that supports xAPI or SCORM, whatever standard you’re using. So it allows this portability of data, portability of the learning content and it also allows one more thing which cannot be done in single a single post or uploading images or videos, that is interactivity. So a lot of time when you have lengthy content, it is more than, let’s say, 15 minutes, you want some interactivity with the person. And these authoring tools allow you to create interactive content, where, let’s say, after 10 minutes of video you ask one question to them so that you know that person is in the content, he’s listening, he’s trying to understand. And that extra level of interactivity makes the content much more interesting and the person involved into the content.
Pankaj Agrawal:
So, you can build this content in these authoring tools. And there’s one good authoring tool which is free and is on WordPress and is called H5P. So apart from all these authoring tools you can also use H5P on WordPress.
Chris Badgett:
Yeah, that’s awesome. And could you do a hybrid if you wanted to? Do some content in a course, just videos, WordPress basic and then do other more advanced content with the authoring tool, say, in another lesson.
Pankaj Agrawal:
Yeah. So what you can do is… Just like you can can create a course structure, you can have multiple lessons in a course and multiple quizzes in the course of any LifterLMS course. You can add separate modules on separate lessons or quizzes. With GrassBlade you can even add multiple modules in the single lesson. So on a single lesson page you can have multiple module, and if completion tracking is enabled the lesson will not get marked complete till all the modules which have completion tracking enabled are completed. So the user has to complete all those modules which have completion tracking enabled to get that lesson marked to be complete. And the lesson will get marked as complete automatically as soon as the user has completed those modules.
Chris Badgett:
Wow! That’s fantastic. And we get this question a lot at LifterLMS, is, does LifterLMS work with SCORM content? But you’re saying now instead of saying, “No,” I can say, “The answer is yes, you need to go get GrassBlade and you can load SCORM content.”
Pankaj Agrawal:
Yeah. So this helps people to load SCORM content on LifterLMS.
Chris Badgett:
That’s awesome and what-[crosstalk 00:10:00]
Pankaj Agrawal:
If you need completion tracking you would the Learning Record Store as well.
Chris Badgett:
And if somebody is new to it, what’s the difference between SCORM vs xAPI? The standard of content or whatever, what does that mean? Is one just older than the other or is it… What is it?
Pankaj Agrawal:
So let me give an analogy to make it much more clear. Because when we talk about xAPI or SCORM it is much easier for me to understand because I have been involved with the development of the standard itself since 2012 when it was in the initial stage of development as Tin Can API standard, I was part of the development of the standard itself. Now, it is much easier for me to understand but for the general public it is much easier to understand within a better analogy.
Pankaj Agrawal:
So, let’s say you have been using monitors and there is a connection between your monitor and your desktop. So that cable used to be a VGA cable back few years which had around eight or nine pins and blue plastic connector, that was called a VGA connector. So that uses a standard called VGA. Now today if you have newer monitors you would have an HDMI connection. So if you see there is a difference between VGA and HDMI. Both of them do the same thing, they connect your computer with the monitor, they allow you to send video signals from the computer to the monitor but there’s a key difference. The design of the connector is different, so that is a big difference. The way that data is sent between the computer to the monitor is different and the quality resolution is different.
Pankaj Agrawal:
So you can think SCORM as a VGA standard and xAPI as a HDMI standard. Now, a newer standard generally bring newer features. So SCORM is a very good standard and it has been serving very well till today but xAPI is a newer version of that SCORM, which has a lot of new features. For example, SCORM content has to stay inside the LMS. So SCORM was built for the LMS. xAPI was built to allow learning outside of LMS. So the reason why xAPI was built was that people realized that learning also happens outside LMS, it is not just inside an LMS. So if there is any learning happening anywhere outside LMS that data can be sent to the Learning Record Store, it can be recorded, it can be reported and it can even be sent the LMS. So this is the key difference between SCORM and xAPI. So the content can be anywhere, the data on the Learning Record Store and it can be sent to the LRS. So there are a few component difference but in terms of standard you can think that there are some feature upgradations.
Pankaj Agrawal:
And I gave this analogy to make you understand one more thing, is that if you have, let’s say, any monitor of any brand, any make, if it has a VGA connector on it you can connect any computer with a VGA connector to that monitor. If you have any computer which has HDMI connection cable ready, it can connect to any monitor of any make, any brand that has HDMI connector on it. Now, why this is important is if you have any LMS that has xAPI capability it will most likely support any content built on any authoring tool that creates xAPI packaged content. So you take any authoring tool of today or of future which packages the content as xAPI, it can be uploaded on any LMS which supports xAPI content. So that is what standard has to it.
Chris Badgett:
Wow. You are a very good teacher. I understand it better now as well and I’ve been around it a little bit but I’m not a power user and that really helped understand it a lot better so thank you for explaining that. Perhaps you can also explain the difference between just a basic WordPress LMS website that has… Lifter has reporting and stuff, but what is a Learning Record Store? How is that different from just the analytics and reporting that is on the WordPress website? You mentioned that you could have multiple locations reporting into an LRS or maybe multiple LMSs but what are the… How does that happen?
Pankaj Agrawal:
Okay, yeah. So this is where it gets very interesting when you’re interested in data. So what happens is you can, for example, as of today if you have GrassBlade xAPI Companion and any LRS, it could be any LRS or it could be GrassBlade LRS, you can send a lot of different kinds of data. So one of that could be login and log out. So if you enable that feature in GrassBlade xAPI Companion, anytime a user logs in or logs out that information is sent to the LRS, “Chris logged in lifterlms.com.” So that information is sent to the LRS and you can anytime see that this user has logged in at least. So if the user come back and says, “I did this content but it was not marked as complete,” you can go back in and check if this guy at least logged in or not.
Pankaj Agrawal:
And then, let’s say, if you enable page views, he goes on any page on your website or it’s a webpage you have selected to be tracked, it will send a page view statement. So it will be, “Pankaj experienced so and so page.” So that information is sent to the LRS, similarly, when a user is registered on the site. So a new user is added to the site there is a joined statement. If a user is deleted from the site there is a left statement. If the user is enrolled to a course there is a enrolled statement. If the user is unenrolled from the site there is a unenrolled statement. And if there is a post creation, you create a post, that data can also be tracked. If you update a post on the site, that can also be tracked. And if you have comments enabled and if you that to be tracked it can also be tracked along with the text of the comment.
Pankaj Agrawal:
So these are some of the events that is part of the GrassBlade itself. Whenever there is a completion of a unit or a quiz or a course, there are statements like, “Pankaj attempted Math 101. Pankaj completed Math 101.” So these kind of statements are sent. If it is a quiz it will also include the score of the quiz and it will include whether that quiz was passed or failed. If you are using authoring tools, it will have statements based on the authoring tools whatever they generate. So most of the common statements are the starting of the content, the completion of the content or passing or failing the content. And apart from that very common statements are answered statements. So if you answer any question there will be answered statement which includes the correct answer, which includes all the options in that question, which includes the question text as well and the answer that the user gave. So if there’s a free style question there’ll be the answer that the user has actually input. If there is an essay question there will be the entire essay text that the user input. And all that goes to the LRS which can be reported on the LRS. And on the LRS you can also create email reports and those kind of things.
Pankaj Agrawal:
There’s one extra integration that we have which makes it very interesting if you want to do some funny stuff, is Zapier integration. So anything that Zapier can track, let’s say you switch on the bulb and you want that information in the LRS, “Chris switched on the bulb,” and it goes as a statement to the LRS. So you can add that using the Zapier integration. You can also do the other way round using Zapier integration. Let’s say if you completed Math 101 and you want that user to be added to, let’s say, a mail chain list or whatever. So anything that is happening on the LRS, any data that is coming on the LRS, you want to some activity somewhere else, “If Math 101 is completed switch on the bulb or switch on the motor.” You can do any funny stuff you want using this Zapier tool, which integrates with somewhere around 2,000 plus applications. So it would do anything anywhere, generate tickets or anything.
Chris Badgett:
Wow. Well, tell us about your Advanced Video Tracking in GrassBlade, what is that all about? And it works with YouTube, Vimeo, Audio, the self hosted MP4s and what not. What does it do?
Pankaj Agrawal:
Yeah. So this feature took a lot of effort. I think the most effort we have put in any feature is the Advanced Video Tracking. It took around five years to develop the standard which is xAPI Video Profile. It is an open standard developed using people from the open community and it was part of the an official ADL group. So this group was part of the official ADL working group for xAPI Video Profile. So I was heading that group and built that standard along with people in the community and then I added it to GrassBlade xAPI Companion. It does very interesting stuff that no one else can claim that they can do. It is the best in the industry standard. When you talk about completion of a video, normally, reaching the end of the video is completion of the video.
Pankaj Agrawal:
So anywhere when the user jumps to the end of the video you call it completed, but what this standard does is it tracks what parts of video you have watched and it will mark it as completed only when you have watched all parts of the video. So if you are skipping parts of the video it will not be marked as complete. It also allows you to set a lower threshold, so let’s say you call 90% video. So if you set it to 90% completion, user has to watch any parts of the video summing up to 90% of the video. So if he watches the same parts of the video multiple times it doesn’t count. So let’s say he watches from first to the middle twice, it doesn’t count as 100%, it counts still as 50%. So one of the most interesting thing is the completion, the way it is calculated.
Pankaj Agrawal:
The second most interesting thing is the way you can visualize that data. So you can visualize that information in a heat map where you can see which parts of the video they have watched. And if the user has repeated same parts of the video that part gets darker. You can see that this user has watched this part of the video multiple times.And- [crosstalk 00:21:54]
Chris Badgett:
I just want to say, if that sounds interesting to you just do a google search for GrassBlade Advanced Video Tracking. Pankaj has some great animated GIFS and videos and demos about this so you can see what we’re talking about here. Go ahead, what else does it do?
Pankaj Agrawal:
Yeah. So it gets much more interesting when you sum that up across the students. So if you combine that up into a single report, we have a single report as well on the LRS. So you can see these, whatever I’m talking about you can see this in the LRS, and you can do the striking on LifterLMS based on this. So what it does is you can see on a particular video, let’s say we create a YouTube out of this podcast and add, or maybe a mp3 out of this podcast and add to our lesson, multiple users watch this and if you go to the LRS and see a report for this particular video, you would see where people are dropping off so you would know that Pankaj is not doing very well in this part of the video. Or if, let’s say, people are watching over certain parts of the video you would know there’s something special in this part of the video, either it is very interesting or there is low audio or bad audio or something is very confusing that people want to re-watch that part of the video.
Pankaj Agrawal:
So it gives you a very good idea where you want to improve your trainings, your videos, and how you can do better with new content.
Chris Badgett:
Yeah, just reading. It’s, “The data being tracked is play, pause, completion, volume change, skipping, full screen,” these are all helpful data points to know how your video is performing. And for you out there listening there’s the Advanced Video but there’s also everything we are talking about if you go to GrassBlade at nextsoftwaresolutions.com. There’s a demo, so you can see what all this looks like. I know if you’re listening right now this is a lot of technical stuff but Pankaj has done a great job creating demos that showcase all these different things so you can see what we are talking about here, whether you’re an advanced user or beginning user. I want to ask you more about the LRS, what is the…You mentioned… It’s one thing to store data, it’s another to use it in a useful way and you mentioned email reports or whatever. Can you help us understand how to… If we are going to use a LRS, how do we make it the most valuable for us in terms of interpreting the data or creating reports and that kind of thing?
Pankaj Agrawal:
So in most cases what people want depends on the person himself. So different people will have different requirement and LRS gives you the ability to have all that data in a raw format first. So first you have all the raw format which is portable. So a good feature Learning Record Store is that the data can be moved to another LRS as well or another analysis platforms as well. It allows also to download the data as a CSV format. So you can download that as a CSV format into excel and you can analyze it on your own. You can download it and put it to any analysis tools like Power BI and make your own analysis. And LRS in itself includes some analytics information. So let’s say you create a report on the LRS using separate filters, there are reports for what works are on the LRS, what users are there on the LRS. And there are several reports on the LRS, you can create filters and save them as separate report pages. And then you can also add emails to it.
Pankaj Agrawal:
So you can add your email ID, add the time period which you want reported and based on that it will send you emails on regular intervals, whatever frequency you have set to that. So it can generate CSV reports as well as PDF reports. So based on whatever you have configured, it will send you emails or whatever email ID you’ve configured it to send emails on that email ID for those filters.
Pankaj Agrawal:
We have also got standard distribution chart for scores. So if you have quizzes where there are scores, you can see the standard distribution chart where you can see what is the mean, what is the standard deviation, you can see the entire curve of that. We have a report for videos, where you can see for individuals, also you can see what parts of the videos they have watched and you can see the entire report for the video, where it will show you how many users have completed the video, what is the average minutes on the video, number of completion and all those stuff.
Pankaj Agrawal:
Video report is very interesting if you see… You’ll understand only if you see that, there’s a lot in that. There’s a attempts report where you can see all the attempts user has made on quizzes or whatever modules are added to LifterLMS. So there’s a lot that can be done and you can anywhere download it as CSV and do your own analysis as well.
Chris Badgett:
Wow, this is so cool. I’m just checking out your site and I’m… Like the LifterLMS, there’s a bunch of demos here. We’ve got Articulate demo, we’ve got a SCORM demo, there’s a YouTube and Vimeo and the whole video, what we were talking about, video tracking demo. There’s Captivate and iSpring content on LifterLMS and then the H5P content on LifterLMS, which is really cool.
Chris Badgett:
Since I have the expert here I want to ask you. You’re answering all these questions that we get all the time, I’m going to end up early releasing this podcast so that we can help more people faster by connecting them with you. People ask a lot about slides, slide shows. As an example, people, let’s say they are not an advanced eLearning authoring user and they’re like, “I got slides, I’m not trying to make a video, I got slides.” And maybe they can make a video but often here people recommend iSpring as a solution for slideshow presentations, but what do you see as… If somebody wants to do something with their slides and they want to use GrassBlade, what could they do? Or what authoring tool is best to ease into creating a slideshow, interactive content on a WordPress site?
Pankaj Agrawal:
I see most of the people use iSpring or Articulate. Articulate has its own range of products where you can upload these… add the slides, PowerPoint presentations and it will convert them into interactive content.
Chris Badgett:
So it’s not just a-[crosstalk 00:29:47] It’s not like a PowerPoint, you upload the PowerPoint and somebody can download the PowerPoint. It’s an actual interactive slideshow they can go through. Right?
Pankaj Agrawal:
Yeah. So iSpring has a plugin which can be added to… I’m not an authoring tool expert but based on what I’ve seen with people using the way… It is a plugin which goes into PowerPoint and you can convert that PowerPoint into a packaged content. Articulate has its own software ranges where you can use that. So most of the authoring tools support PowerPoints in some way and then you can add interaction layers to it. So you don’t need to just have it work as a slide, you can add interaction layers to it where, let’s say, user click on after each slide or you add a question after every video inside the slide. You can add audio, video, images, whatever you want into it. So there’s a lot you can add apart from the PowerPoint slides itself.
Chris Badgett:
I think that’s the big idea here, is you can go a lot further than just a lesson video which is the fundamental course creation building block. When do you and the industry see a WordPress LMS being the best fit versus… Let’s say there is somebody working with eLearning authoring tool and they are deciding on a learning management system, in what case is WordPress a great or in what case is maybe WordPress not the best fit?
Pankaj Agrawal:
This is an interesting question.
Chris Badgett:
Why do you say it’s interesting? I’m just curious.
Pankaj Agrawal:
It is interesting because most of the time what I think is, is challenged by worse. For example, about 10 years back I used to work on Moodle, and I used to develop on Moodle and I realized that Moodle is very complicated. So if anyone has used Moodle they would understand what I’m talking about. And when I used to use that tool I would think why can’t it be easier and that is where GrassBlade came from. When this xAPI standard was being developed I realized that this can be brought to WordPress, and this plugin was the first plugin that added xAPI to WordPress. In fact this was probably the first product which would support xAPI in itself apart from the authoring tools. So we started before the xAPI standard was actually released, it was Tin Can back then.
Pankaj Agrawal:
So when we talk about who is the best fit, I used to think that people in the corporate who just need completion completion out of contents who don’t need complicated grades or complicated [inaudible 00:33:00] additional structures, would only need these tools. So let’s make something which is very simple for them, they don’t need to go to very complicated LMS system which has a lot of features. So let’s make it simple for them, let’s have completion for them, let’s have content upload for them and those kind of things.
Pankaj Agrawal:
But today when I look back and see, there are people from all backgrounds using our product. But I still believe that people who have simpler requirements, it is much better to use WordPress than any other complicated LMS environment. WordPress provides easy to use interface, which is much easier to understand for even a beginner. If a beginner is coming to WordPress and using LifterLMS or any other tool like GrassBlade, they might think it’s very complicated, they might think there is a steep learning curve, but they need to understand that if they go to some other tool like Blackboard, or Moodle, or Canvas they would realize that LifterLMS or WordPress based LMSs are far more easier to use and they have all the features that most of the people would require, at least in the corporate world.
Pankaj Agrawal:
If you are into a university, organizing the entire university, you might need some custom development and there might be some challenges there, but in most cases WordPress. Today I believe that WordPress has a lot of good learning management systems especially LifterLMS is a very good learning management system, and it allows you to do most of the stuff that you would want from any LMS.
Chris Badgett:
Wow, that’s awesome. And WordPress is continuing to evolve and tools are continuing to improve, it’s really great. Are you seeing anything, any trends or anything in terms of the COVID economy? We’re in the early part of July 2020. As a software company in the eLearning space I’m curious what you’re seeing. We’re definitely getting more traffic, more people buying products and stuff like that, but what are you seeing over at GrassBlade with the challenges of the COVID economy?
Pankaj Agrawal:
We have been seeing some increase in traffic, but because GrassBlade is into slightly more advanced or slightly more, higher level of understanding, where people need a little more involvement, I believe things will get more intense, I think, one year down the road.
Pankaj Agrawal:
Using LifterLMS is much easier because you just go in, create pages, create posts, add your images, add your videos and you’re done. Using GrassBlade you would need a little more work building your content on the authoring tools. So there’s definitely some increase in traffic, but I believe once the schools start to get organized, most of them are doing education over Zoom classes, Zoom or online meeting and they don’t have… Those who never had online platforms, they are still planning on how how they can build the LMSs. So I believe this will have a major change in how education is delivered over the next few year.
Pankaj Agrawal:
People now understand that online education is an integral part of education system, it is not just a small part of education but an integral part of education system. And this will change how online education is viewed in general.
Chris Badgett:
That’s awesome. And I was hearing a talk that Matt Mullenweg, the founder of WordPress, was giving about remote working, how there’s all these levels of… The first level is just to do everything you did in person but at home which is what… But then there’s five levels. You’re, I’m sure a lot like me, and you’re very used to remote working but we’ve been doing it for over a decade. So like teaching right now, I agree with you, and that’s what I’m seeing is a lot of teachers are figuring out how to Zoom. But I like to say, “Eventually they are going to find the record button and they’re going to make a video.” What we’re seeing right now, at least in the United States, is a lot of talk about returning to schools but blended learning where it’s a combination of in-person and online. B ut if we start making videos then maybe we want to make those videos more interactive and there’s just the layers keep building overtime.
Chris Badgett:
So it’s a transition and it’s big. I mean, we’ve been in the online world for a while but a lot of the world, at least in terms of online education, it’s fairly new. Even though it’s been around a long time it’s not mainstream but it’s going there.
Pankaj Agrawal:
So this will help create that transition much faster.
Chris Badgett:
Mm-hmm (affirmative)
Pankaj Agrawal:
A lot of teachers who had never had any experience of online education, probably they even didn’t take any online courses, today are delivering online courses or at least zoom classes. So they’ll probably start to realize that there’s some value to this system. One of the biggest values is that it allows an expert to deliver that content to people across the globe.
Pankaj Agrawal:
So a person from Harvard University can deliver a lecture and I, sitting in India, can take that course. That can not be done on one to one in-classroom trainings. So it will let people blend content from different places, high quality content from different places, different trainers and deliver it to the students.
Chris Badgett:
That’s awesome. Well, it’s great to be on the journey with you Pankaj and I’m glad that our companies are innovating together in service to the educators, and the entrepreneurs, and the technologists out there. Now that you’re done with this podcast I want you to go check out GrassBlade and if it sounds complicated, still go check it out. Click on all the great demos that Pankaj has on his websites, it’s demo.nextsoftwaresolutions.com or just go to nextsoftwaresolutions.com, and he’s done a really great job of laying out what he offers over there. Any final words for the people or best ways for them to connect with you if they have further questions after listening to this on the podcast or watching it on YouTube?
Pankaj Agrawal:
You can connect me from our website, create a support ticket or you can find me on most social platforms as Pankaj. So you can go to Facebook, Twitter or any social platform mostly you will find… Or if you just search my name you would find me. So you can connect with me for any questions, any concerns. I would also like to make an announcement if you allow, Chris.
Chris Badgett:
Sure.
Pankaj Agrawal:
So we are making a major upgrade to GrassBlade and with this new release which should be, maybe today or tomorrow[crosstalk 00:41:20]
Chris Badgett:
We’re recording this on July 10th 2020, just if… Because people will be watching this video for years. So we’re at July 10, 2020.
Pankaj Agrawal:
So in next one or two days we would release this update which allows any H5P user, if you have H5P content, now you would not require the LRS if you just want completion. So if you just want completion and scores, you don’t need the LRS, you can do it just with the GrassBlade xAPI Companion plugin. For xAPI or SCORM content you would still need the LRS for tracking data. So this is a big announcement, no one else has heard it before, only for these podcast audience.
Chris Badgett:
Awesome. And there’s an H5P demo for LifterLMS on the GrassBlade website, go check that out. Pankaj, I want to thank you for coming on the show. Thank you for the great work-
Pankaj Agrawal:
Thank Chris.
Chris Badgett:
At GrassBlade. And I know what it’s like to innovate and lead in a space like you’re leading with the xAPI thing and especially at the intersection of WordPress. So I appreciate what you do. Thanks for coming on the show. And for those of you out there go ahead and head on over to nextsoftwaresolutions.com and check out GrassBlade. Have a great day everybody and thanks for listening. Thanks for coming on the show, Pankaj.
Pankaj Agrawal:
Thank you.
Chris Badgett:
And that’s a wrap for this episode of LMScast. I’m your guide, Chris Badgett. I hope you enjoyed the show. This show was brought to you by LifterLMS, the number one tool for creating, selling, and protecting engaging online courses to help you get more revenue, freedom, and impact in your life. Head on over to lifterlms.com and get the best gear for your course creator journey. Let’s building the most engaging, results getting courses on the internet.
