Ead platform: What is it and how does it work?
Ead platform or LMS, Learning Management System is a tool developed to structure and store online courses.
For you to understand better, it works like a classroom, where the teacher/instructor plans his classes with multimedia resources such as video lessons, pdf's and many other resources that can be used to compose his online class.
For this, it must be complete in terms of resources both for the development of training or online courses and for the complete management of its students.
Why use an EaD Platform?
It emerged to facilitate and bring closer relations between teachers and students.
This is because it has more individualised student performance tracking features.
Moreover, an EaD platform should have a complete communication centre, such as chats, forums, sending e-mails and even social learning integrated to the courses.
In fact, social learning is one of the most important features present in an Ead platform. This is because it promotes greater engagement between students and greater absorption of content.
But for you to better understand how a complete Ead platform works and this teaching modality, this is a very enlightening and didactic article.
So, continue your reading that will help you understand and make the best choice of an EaD platform for your online project.
What does the EaD Platform mean?
A distance learning platform is a technology tool, developed to structure online courses in a simple and dynamic way so that the contents can be organised in modules and classes and presented to your students in the same way they are presented in person.
This is the main function of an EaD platform.
However, it is necessary that it has complete resources so that your class/course is well presented to your students and that you can, in the same way as in face-to-face classes, monitor the performance of your students and give them close assistance so that they feel assisted even if in online mode.
For this to happen, an ead platform has important features in its resources.
Main features of an EaD platform
As its main function is to transport the face-to-face environment to online, some features are essential in an EaD platform.
So that you understand better, we will divide the resource functions into Management, Course authorship, Security, Hosting and Support.
This way, you will have complete information about the resources that an EaD platform should have to best serve you in your training, online courses and in elementary, middle, technical and language schools.
See below:
Complete Management of your Online School
A platform for distance learning should have tools that allow you to do a complete management of your University/School online.
This involves everything from structuring your courses to creating your online portal.
Therefore, it is important that you have resources such as:
Online Course Authoring Tool
A tool for building courses, modules and classes using various educational objects (media) such as texts, videos, audios, images, external links (URLs), files and others.
Course Categories
This feature allows courses to be created and organised into categories.
Managing Multiple Virtual Environments
Management of multiple training environments/courses from a single account.
You do not need a subscription or a monthly plan for each school you create. Through a single account, you can create as many environments as you want or need.
Visual Customisation of each Environment/Project
Allow virtual customization of each online environment, according to the visual identity of each project, using your brand, logo.
Exclusive Page Builder
Feature that enables the creation of pages within each online environment that will be part of the navigation menu of the environment's website.
Personalised Domain per Environment/Project
Feature that enables the configuration and use of a personalised domain for access to each online/project environment by students and tutors.
It also gives you the possibility of using your existing domain. This way, you will be able to publicise your brand more and attract more students to your courses.
Classes
Creation of classes within each training, with start and end date of each class, limit of students per class and other features.
Scheduled Class Release
Feature that allows you to schedule the release dates of each class within the course.
Compulsory Modules
Feature that allows a student access to the next module only if the previous module has been fully accessed.
Student Handbook Registration
Allow manual enrolment of students in each course.
Importing and Exporting Students
Feature that allows batch importation and enrolment of students for specific courses and classes as well as exporting all student data.
Student Communication Centre
In order to have greater interaction and exchange of information between teachers and students, it is important that the distance learning platform has a complete communication centre with the student.
This communication involves the resources of:
- Discussion forums: where the student or teacher can interact by raising questions and information relevant to the content presented in a specific area.
- Chat: schedule specific times for the teacher to answer students' questions.
- Social learning: exchange of instant messages between students and teachers, promoting networking and greater engagement of participants
- Sending e-mails: to inform of certain actions, class start dates.
Complete student management
Detailed report that displays student progress, grades and completion of activities within the course.
In addition, generating certificates is important so that the student has documentation to prove the completion of a course and, of course, this is of great value to them.
Environment and student experience
Having a Virtual Learning Environment, also known by the acronym VLE, means providing the student with a user-friendly course environment.
Therefore, some facilities are important, such as the possibility of creating a visually pleasant environment and having a place for notes made during classes, which can be reviewed by the student at the time he wants or needs.
Course Authoring
Learning management systems, should have full functionalities for development and complete structuring for the creation of online courses.
Some of these resources are:
Unlimited Course Creation and Hosting of unlimited courses and content
Allow you to create, manage and publish unlimited courses so that you can develop adequate and complete content for your free courses, distance learning degree courses, courses for your online educational institution.
Video publication
Insert videos into your lessons by storing them directly on the distance education platform or embedding public videos from YouTube or Vimeo.
Modules and Lessons Creation
Having an authoring tool that allows lessons to be organised in modules, making it easier for students to navigate and learn.
Multi-format content
Ability to add text, video, audio, images, text, links, HTML code and files to your lessons.
Evaluations
Resource that allows the creation of multiple-choice assessments with automatic correction by the platform with start and end date of release, number of attempts allowed, approval score and time limit.
Polls/Surveys
Feature that allows you to create polls to assess students' retention of the content or simply get feedback from students about the course.
Security, Hosting and Support
Secure cloud hosting and daily backup
Have your platform always available and your contents protected with daily backups.
Support via Videoconference, Telephone, E-mail
Specialised support provided by professionals with experience in distance education projects.
Live Classes / Webinar
In addition to all the features described above, having a full live class tool integrated into the platform is interesting for those who need to serve their students in real time via video.
To make it a complete class, having real-time chat features, whiteboard, turning microphones and cameras on and off is also one of the features needed for an excellent live class.
Complete Financial Management
For those who want to work with sales of online courses, a complete management of their sales is necessary. For this, the platform must integrate with payment gateways and have a Dashboard with complete information about its sales, i.e., an administrative panel that displays data and graphics such as the number of students in the environment, number of courses, notifications and revenue generated in the period (if applied).
This has been a comprehensive article for you to clear your doubts about the features and how an EaD platform will help you in your online course business or online corporate training.
However, if you want to know more closely, you can test the Hotscool platform with all its features available for your analysis.
To do this, simply click on the Free Start button at https://hotscool.com/!
