I have been looking for a real "user-friendly" LMS for LEARNERS as well as elearning producers & instructional designers, for a long time.

I was useing WebCT and Moodle for a while and what I thought for both were...

WebCT:

From the management or elearning producers' viewpoint, the quality is not bad compared with others, but if you think of the cost (which is actually expensive) to pay to Blackboard, the ROI (Return-on-Investment) of WebCT is NO good.

Of course they offer you customer support since it's a commercial LMS, unlike Moodle. So WebCT could be used for corporate use because of it. But if you were one of the management members to decide matters from the "management" (ROI) viewpoint, not just from the instructional viewpoint, you would think it's too expensive and you might want to look for other option.

From the learners' viewpoint, their user interface doesn't look attractive. The current instructional design/learning design is supposed to be something which let learners think that learning itself is fun and interesting.

In that sense, WebCT could work if the target users are high school or university students who are (kind of) forced to learn to get credits and if those organizations don't care much about ROI.

Moodle:

Well, from the management or elearning producers' viewpoint, the fact that it's totallly open source and free of charge is GOOD. ROI(Return/Investment) is not bad because the amount of "initial investment" is minimum.

But suppose you think of return, their user interface is actually so boring as WebCT. And the user-support is limited. Basically you need to rely on the forum members or if you need a reliable customer support you might have to ask some moodle consultant or resellers for the support at the end of the day.

Just to clarify, I'm not trying to deny moodle and WebCT. It's just that, for me, Moodle ans WebCT seems largely limited to academic use. From my business experience I would say both are difficult to be widely used as corporate use.

For example assume you are planning to do some BtoC online learning business, I doubt you can attract your potential customers with those.

If you are trying to start BtoB or BtoC online learning and serious about ROI, then JoomlaLMS could be an real option. What is great is that their LMS design is much more attractive than others. You can even use Joomla templates, which makes the design more flexible and exciting. You will need to pay for the annual license fee, but it's pretty much reasonable considering the quality they offer.

If you are an instructional designer, you will find that JoomlaLMS can do almost all things which moodle and WebCT can do. Also one of the characteristics which I feel is great is JoomlaLMS has web-conferencing, which is necessary for those who want to design 100% online blended learning program.

Of course I've also found some bugs and I know it's not a perfect system. They have still many to to be improved. But as a one year old product, I'd like to give them 5 star. Lastly so far I'm very satisfied with developer's quick response.

If you are looking for a joomla LMS component, you'll find this one useful.
The product is good and even during the trial period, the support team will be with you day and night.
Don't take my word for it. Go and try it for a month and I promise that you'll buy it.
Excellent joomla component.

after going through an extensive test period with the 30 day demo of the product, my company decided to purchase the product based on the fact that this is clearly the best LMS available for Joomla.

We have tried others, including moodle, but by having a program designed for joomla, upgrades will not be an issue.

there are too many features to describe here that i like, but the teacher administration is top notch.

this is just one of many elearningforce components that i have bought and is by far the best!

Tom

If you are looking for a learning management system, especially one that is integrated with e-commerce, you should download and explore this component.

I have spent some time trying to find a suitable LMS that suits our needs, and the only ones that do apart from this component cost a great deal of money. I do not have experience of other LMSs used for real-world application, but there is a 30 day trial so you have nothing to lose by installing it except some time. I doubt that you will be disappointed.

The developers are very fast in responding to requests for assistance and deserve the support of Joomla users looking to integrate elearning with their sites.

This is the first version and there are of course some idiosyncrasies that others have pointed out. It has a wide range of features, and some streamlining would be beneficial. However even in the testing period some really useful features were added, and I am sure that the developers will continue to refine this product.

Highly recommended.

At last we finally have a real LMS within Joomla. This LMS really does import Scorm compatible material (1.2 for the moment but 2004 in development) made by any scorm compatible software, Articulate, Camtasia, Lectora etc and gives standard tracking for single scorm packages and page by page tracking for separate scos. The installation is dead easy, though you might need to install ioncube on your server first (easy installation too) and literally within seconds you are able to upload your first scorm.

When uploading scorms, you may need to change your php preferences first to allow uploading of large files but again nothing to difficult to manage.

The interface is easy to use and relatively intuitive. Apart from the standard scorm uploading and tracking, there are a host of other features including chat, web conference, mass mailing to students, and the ability to make your own course material using JoomaLMS. The web conference is pretty excellent and really does allow the teacher to give lessons online. (The quality of the video and sound is perfect and you can write info on the whiteboard or send web addresses or preload documents for the student to see during the lesson.)

The key asset is first that this LMS is integrated within Joolma so there is no need to send students to an external site with another logon etc .

The second asset is that you can charge students for courses if you like as there is an integrated payment method using Paypal for example (but there are others). So you can finally make money from your courses in a very simple way.

All in all, there are few drawbacks to JoomlaLMS. There are one or two minor issues that are being cleared up (which is normal given that it has just been launched). Indeed now is the time to give the trial a go and have your say as to how the component should be improved as the developers really do listen to users comments.

It is true it is not a free component, but I really believe it is a good bargain for those professionals who want to branch out into teaching on the net and who are looking for an effective and viable pay enabled LMS.

I've installed the LMS for my company without any problems and our group of engineers started to do some different courses. Here are the statements form the engineers:
Easy and fast course creation
Very advanced options possible if you want to use them
Learning Path really good for pushing the students
The prof looking quizzes with a lot interactivity and tracking are much appreciated

And here are mine being an administrator:

The Joomla LMS is a must have for companies doing customer e-learning or support online. It is very easy to learn the flow and it is very stable.
Love it!

P.S. To whom who bough Deluxe subscribtion: JoomlaLMS has it's own subscribtion system, so our company use it along with subscribtion Deluxe component previously bought from elearnigforce.

There are plenty of open source LMS platforms, there are plenty of commercial LMS platforms also (and believe me, they are expensive). What I was hoping for was a reliable, easy to use and yet complete LMS that could be integrated in Joomla and cover more extensive needs than Joomlearn (a nice little program).
Joomlalms is the answer and a well balanced compromise:
- It is a commercial solution - with excellent support and quick returns on questions and suggestions :-)
yet it offers a pricing that is acceptable to the open source community and a fair deal.
- It is a complex solution (including virtually everything you may know from Moodle)
yet it is easy to use and has a considerably lower learning curve
- It offers Flash Server video conferencing that actually works - yet you don't have to buy this service, if you don't want it (I do!)

- It's not 100% perfect (yet), yet has lightening fast developpers working on solutions, if there are any problems or further wishes

How I know? Well I had the privilege to be one of the testers. Having tried quite a few e-learning solutions before I really enjoyed this challenge and hope you'll like the free trial that is offered.