“Round 1†in a look at the many free, richly featured CMS & LMS apps available in the cloud.
What options exist for teachers who want to try using a Course Management System, but don't have one available in their school? Fortunately, there are many free CMS/LMS tools available on the Internet. The heavy snows across the US this winter pushed the value of these tools to the forefront of my mind – courses hosted in a Learning Management System position students and teachers to keep course work moving forward when schools are closed due to inclement weather.
There are actually so many free and low cost CMS tools out there that learning about them turned out to be very time consuming. I spent many hours searching and reviewing web sites, and selected the most impressive looking tools to list below. I created two groupings of these applications – those that provide unlimited use for teachers for free or for nominal fees, and those that have useful free functionality but charge higher costs for full capabilities.
I should also mention that there are also plenty of free open source LMS/CMS platforms available, with Moodle and Sakai leading the way, but they require that you either install and maintain them locally, or pay for hosting. So while these powerful tools are free for licensing, they require equipment and technical talent and time to put in place and maintain. In this post, we're only looking at free hosted options.
Options Providing Unlimited Courses &Â Unlimited Users
These applications appear to have extensive functionality, and offer a full range of functionality to individual instructors for free or for nominal fees. I'm really looking forward to learning more about some of these tools when I take a closer look at selected apps next week.
The applications each have limited free versions, and charge a more substantial fee for full functionality. It was challenging at times to determine if some of these sites warranted listing in the above section, but if wasn't very clear that an individual teacher could use all the functionality they were likely to require, for an unlimited numbers of students, I listed them below rather than above.
Edu20.org: Up to 2000 students for free, which is certainly substantial, but there are a lot of functional limitations under the free plans. The functionality they offer is extensive, but you do have to upgrade to one of the 3 “Premier Plans” to take advantage of some of these functions. Click here to check out their demo page. Their inexpensive Bronze plan is quite affordable and functional for the individual instructor.
Next Week – A Deeper Dive
I want to focus more closely on the top set of apps above – the ones that provide for unlimited course and unlimited users. Next week I'm going to look more closely at these and select one to trial. I'm considering setting up a free course to introduce readers to some of today's most important education technologies. I hope you'll come back and join us!
In the meanwhile, if you have any suggestions or questions, please comment. I have no doubt that there are other CMS/LMS applications that provide some level of free, hosted capabilities, so feel free to mention any that I may have missed. Thanks.
Related Posts (if the above topic is of interest, you might want to check these out):
Moodle 2.0 versus Blackboard 9.1 – a Brief Comparison
Exploring the World of Free Teaching Productivity Resources on the Web
Learning about Moodle – a leading open source LMS
[…] The Best Free Hosted Course Management Systems On The Internet?” on EmergingEdTech.com [URL: http://www.emerging... “Round 1” in a look at the many free, richly featured CMS & LMS apps available in […]
I have been using Haiku this semester with lots of success. How does it rank with the other free LMS out there?
[…] https://www.emergingedtech.com/2011/02/what-are-the-best-free-hosted-course-management-systems-on-the… […]
Excellent approach. We are using the same things.
[…] What Are The Best Free Hosted Course Management Systems On The Internet? […]
[…] What Are The Best Free Hosted Course Management Systems On The Internet? […]
[…] In the even that you represent an institution and would like an online system for managing your classroom teaching/training, then what you need is a Course Management System that will allow you to post reading material, schedule sessions, manage group learning, evaluate and record learner performance etc.  Some of the popular ones are listed here. […]
[…] a classroom website for collaboration with student and parents. I located this tool on a website (https://www.emergingedtech.com/2011/02/what-are-the-best-free-hosted-course-management-systems-on-the… ). The tool has the functions to create, collect, and grade assignments for students. A teacher can […]
[…] a classroom website for collaboration with student and parents. I located this tool on a website (https://www.emergingedtech.com/2011/02/what-are-the-best-free-hosted-course-management-systems-on-the… ). The tool has the functions to create, collect, and grade assignments for students. A teacher can […]
Smily – Moodle is used to support thousands and even tens of thousands of students in institutions across the world every day – go for it!
Thanks , Excellent list. But please let me know if I can go with moodle with my 1000 users ?
The LatitudeLearning.com LMS allows you to set up non-SCORM self study courses that you can attached PDFs and PPTs to. To do this add the desired PDF, PPT or other files (i.e. MP3, WMV, etc.) to the Resource Library. Next create a course with the Deliver Method set to “Self-Study” and attached the desired resources to it.
You can signed up for a Forever Free LMS at http://www.LatitudeLearning.com/FreeLMS . You’ll get a free 100 user LMS in our standard configuration. You’ll be able to create as many courses and upload as many resource files as you want.
Hi, thanks for the research. I am new to CMS and this entry has been very helpful for me.
[…] Next Week – A Deeper Dive I want to focus more closely on the top set of apps above – the ones that provide for unlimited course and unlimited users. Next week I’m going to look more closely at these and select one to trial. I’m considering setting up a free course to introduce readers to some of today’s most important education technologies. I hope you’ll come back and join us! EctoLearning : This site is entirely free, with unlimited users and courses, but I was hesitant to include it in the top section for a few reasons. What Are The Best Free Hosted Course Management Systems On The Internet? | Emerging Education Techno… […]
hi there
is there any Free LMS/CMS which allows to upload courses in non scroom format too like
pdf, ppt
thanks
reply to : mail.eddfin@gmail.com
[…] topic is of interest, you might want to check these out): Facebook in the Classroom. Seriously. What Are The Best Free Hosted Course Management Systems On The Internet? 100 Ways to Teach With Twitter Print This […]
[…] Â Related Posts (if the above topic is of interest, you might want to check these out): What Are The Best Free Hosted Course Management Systems On The Internet? EctoLearning is a Solid Contender for Best Free Online CMS Comparing 12 Free Screencasting Tool 6 […]
[…] for educators. For example, while looking for the best free online Course Management Systems in this recent series of posts, there were sites I came across that marketed themselves as CMS tools, but the functionality they […]
[…] far in this series, we’ve looked at Rcampus and MyiCourse, and now it’s time to move on to the other two […]
[…] Readers! I had to take a weekend off, but I'll be back next week to continue our work with free online Course Management Systems. I'm putting together an example course using SchoolRack this time, so please be sure to stop back […]
[…] series of articles in which I look at online LMS/CMS applications that offer free capabilities. In my first post, I narrowed these down to four apps that seemed to have few limitations in their free or very low […]
[…] out): Someday students will carry a tablet computer instead of books (it’s just a matter of time) What Are The Best Free Hosted Course Management Systems On The Internet? 5 Examples of Improved Approaches to Assessment (from the 2010 NETP draft) Why You Should Consider […]
[…] Last week I started researching free, hosted Course and Learning Management Systems, in search of those that provide relatively unlimited use for little or nominal cost. My focus was to find apps that could be used by teachers who wish to work with a CMS/LMS and have none in their schools (and presumably have little or no budget for it). I selected four that seemed like they might fit the bill, with the intention of coming back this week to take a deeper dive. […]
[…] Last week I started researching free, hosted Course and Learning Management Systems, in search of those that provide relatively unlimited use for little or nominal cost. My focus was to find apps that could be used by teachers who wish to work with a CMS/LMS and have none in their schools (and presumably have little or no budget for it). I selected four that seemed like they might fit the bill, with the intention of coming back this week to take a deeper dive. […]
[…] What Are The Best Free Hosted Course Management Systems On The … […]
This is great information! As institutions continue to move toward online learning, I’m sure we’ll see more of these applications put to use.
I don’t think that I would have though to look for free CMS/LMS but this is really good information. Inclusion of either free CMS/LMS in a school can allow learning to continue rgardless of the weather. This could provide options for students to take classes on subjects that may not be taught in their district. Students and teachers can meet in the classroom at specified times for instruction and submit work fro review and feedback from peers before attending classes.
My new website offers ePortfolios for teachers, over 3000 lesson plan links, links to open source software and tools, curriculum standards, and multimedia. All of this is indexed in an easy to use database with no ads and will always be free.
RCampus was not bad, but too much freedom gives a MySpace look and you did not include Instructure that just went Open Source.
[…] this link: What Are The Best Free Hosted Course Management Systems On The … Posted in management Tags: apps-available, cloud, cms, for-teachers, lms, look-at-the, […]
[…] more: What Are The Best Free Hosted Course Management Systems On The … Comments […]
[…] What Are The Best Free Hosted Course Management Systems On The … […]
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Angel Sánchez, Daniel Taylor. Daniel Taylor said: What Are The Best Free Hosted Course Management Systems On The Internet? http://dlvr.it/GTSNp […]