LMS As A Service

Articulate has created what looks like an online LMS in what they’re calling “Articulate Online” — they say you can track how employees, customers and prospects interact with your e-learning courses, assessments and presentations.

Their bullets are:

  • Don’t need an expensive or complicated LMS
  • Everyone can get results without the usual hassles
  • Affordable, all-inclusive plans starting at only $199/month

I’m watching a little three-minute demo from Alli Star, a Product Evangelist.  It’s a nice clean screen, the audio is clear, and even the animations are only a little bit jerky.

You can pull in PPT content in a couple of clicks — converting to SWF — and then you’re asked if you want to manage the content.  You can launch directly from the web, get reports, share it, set permissions, or email an invite.

At least in the demo, it seemed to work very cleanly.  (I’m guessing they weren’t doing the demo over a typical net connection, but I’d love to be proven wrong.)

The reports are very clean and readable, with percentages and some pretty colored bars.

Questions I’ve got:

  1. Where does this data live?
  2. Can I buy a server version, so I don’t have to go outside my firewall?
  3. How can I customize reports?
  4. What other formats can be imported?
  5. How does this system play with the more traditional LMS world?