Learning Management technologies for remote education has been around for the last 40 years at least. Strangely enough, anybody and everybody who was involved in education knew about these technologies, but Learning Management became a common word only this year. When everybody finally realized that you cannot physically go to the class and/or training, any class at all, people remembered that there are e-learning tools available and they were actually available for a while.
To start from the beginning, CorePartners has been doing software consulting and software development since 2003. Big part of it was its work for nonprofit organizations. About five years we have identified learning management technology as one of our priorities and built a solution specifically for the nonprofit market, certification, accreditation as one of the most promising areas for us.
My personal opinion, Remote Learning will not be able to completely replace traditional school or college education in the near future, but rather add and improve it. It will find a proper place in educational space. Good example of that add-on capability would be if a student is sick, he/she could do pretty much the same thing on-line like participate in class remotely for a few days or few weeks or take tests on-line. The other example would be certification and accreditation. This is almost a “perfect application” for learning management technologies since these days nobody has time or desire to go through certification/accreditation process in person any more, especially with COVID-19.
At that time when we started CoreAchieve development, we had done a few custom projects in the education/accreditation/certification space. We have used our expertise in technology and education to build the product in the next 12 months.
CoreAchieve today is fully featured SaaS LMS software for small to large size associations, companies or government organizations.
Q: Can you please share with us a brief history and overview of your company? When was CorePartners established and what are your goals today?
A: CorePartners was founded in 2003 to provide software development and consulting service for nonprofit, commercial and government clients in the US and Europe. Now we have HQ in Frederick MD and three development offices in eastern Europe where we have over 100 developers, testers and system analysts.
Our goal today is to become a leading LMS provider in the US. While we still do a lot of software development, we focus most of our time on the LMS market.
CorePartners will provide standard out of the box LMS CoreAchieve solution as well as custom LMS solution that for organizations who do not fit in the standard LMS features and functionality. We have learned that a lot of our customers have a business process. It could be a simple custom report or entire new piece of functionality. We use our software development resources to provide customizations.
Q: What exactly is a Learning Management System and how does it work? What makes it important for modern enterprises?
A: LMS today shall engage technology that can and will improve quality of learning, make it accessible, cost-effective, easily adaptable and what is even more important – traceable. Your most basic LMS provides a platform that enables instructors/course administrators to upload learning content (learning objects), build courses, assessments/quizzes, surveys, deliver lessons to students, and track learning progress.
Modern LMS operates through browser-based User Interface (UI) on your computer, tablet/iPad or other mobile devices with secure sign-on/single sign-on process. This gives all learners easy access to courses from any location while instructors and managers can monitor learning progress. LMS applications today include business intelligence to boost productivity, and promote continuous learning.
Q: What industries do you serve and who are your current customers?
A: As I said before for a long time, we have focused our effort on the nonprofit market. We know this market and feel comfortable on it, but this year we also added some commercial components to this as well. We have added some clients in the K-12 education segment as well.
Q: What are some of the most desirable LMS Features today? And how is CorePartners addressing these?
A: Here is a short list of the features that we see most frequently today:
- Painless Implementation that will enable any organization to launch training courses quickly
- Quick and easy deployment in cloud-based SaaS or PaaS models
- Customizable reporting that will support information access for all learners, administrators, and course authors
- Learner Profile which gives access to full history of purchases, courses, credits and certificates
- xAPI (Tin Can API)/SCORM compliant content management system (CMS) import features for learning objects and adding elements.
- LMS system that involves course management capabilities that direct learners through a specific learning path.
- Certificates and achievements that learners can share in social media.
- Automated and semi-automated assessment scoring
- Instructor Led Training (ILT) in person or virtual capabilities
- Technical and course development support, including built-in tutorials.
- Transition from User Interface (UI) to User Experience (UX)
- Analytical model and Business Intelligence tools.
CoreAchieve complies with all the features above and much more.
Q: According to your web site you provide CoreAchieve as Software as a Service and Platform as a Service, what is the difference?
A: We understand that it could be confusing for some people, this is why we are trying to simplify it. Here is an easiest way to differentiate these two.
Software as a Service (SaaS)
SaaS solutions including LMS are usually a multitenant application, meaning all our SaaS clients share one LMS instance. Features and functionality available are exactly the same for all users and based on their access right/permissions only. All administrators, instructors and learners are separated by the company they are registered under and have access rights to learning objects based/courses on their username and password. Companies can usually do branding by using their own logo and color scheme. There is nothing to install on your computer in this model. Modern LMS solutions are usually hosted in cloud such as Microsoft Azure or AWS. Support, maintenance and upgrades or updates are included in the price. This is a good option for any organizations who want to implement training as soon as possible with minimum expense. The downside of a single shared instance is that very little customization is allowed and they cannot share learning objects among several companies. This is why there are other options available.
Platform as a Service (PaaS)
PaaS solution is also hosted on the clouds, but it gives much more flexibility than SaaS. There is nothing to download here either. The biggest difference here is every customer has its own instance of LMS. That is why it could be much more flexible with branding, customization, integration, content sharing etc. We still will provide support, maintenance, updates and upgrades for your instance of LMS. This is also explaining why PaaS is more expensive than SaaS. In SaaS everybody shares expenses for hosting, support and maintenance where in PaaS it cannot be shared (it is your instance after all). On the other hand, it is still a cloud based LMS application that makes it a subject to free updates, upgrades, etc.
Q: Can you provide us with sample use cases for CoreAchieve?
A: As mentioned above, CoreAchieve provides a Learning Management solution for any commercial, government or nonprofit organization who needs on-line training. It could be instructor led training or asynchronous training where students could go through the course at their own pace. With the focus of this article on 2020-2021 LMS trends, a perfect example is organizations who are providing certification. As a member of a professional organization, you want to use the time you are sitting home to achieve a few more certifications/accreditations. Great idea, you would sign up for on-line training and certification and will become an LMS user in the process, hopefully CoreAchieve user. On the other hand, by implementing CoreAchieve into their organization, it provides this option to all the members without going to traditional classes, without travel, in their homes, without risks being exposed to COVID for teachers and students.
Q: What file you allow to upload in CoreAchieve to create a training?
A: Capable of uploading nearly any content type including video, audio, HTMP, PDF, MS Power Point, MS Word, etc. seamlessly and quickly. Built in viewers for video, pdf and audio player will give instant access to learning materials. Other types of documents can be included into catalogs for search and trackable downloads. Add links to external information sources to have them appear as though they are internal to the system. CoreAchieve is truly setting the standard for access to your materials and training needs.
Q: If you had an old LMS can you import an old content to CoreAchieve instead of creating it from scratch?
A: CoreAchieve supports SCORM which stands for Shareable Content Object Reference Model, is a set of technical standards for eLearning software products and content. CoreAchieve imports content from SCORM 1.2 and SCORM 2004 packages, it can combine multiple SCORM packages in one course, supports all SCORM communications and bookmarking and stores interaction details.
About CorePartners
CorePartners is the industry leader in Learning Management Systems. Headquartered in Frederick MD, CorePartners implements LMS solutions across the US. Being Microsoft Gold Partner, CorePartners specializes in out of the box or custom LMS solutions hosted in Azure.
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