Every now and again a product comes along that solves a problem we didn’t actually think we had, and then it comes of age – one of these is Course Container – a unique solution to protect your elearning investment.
As more and more training organisations need to “go digital” they often find themselves in an invidious position of quite how to deliver digital learning in a way that protects their IP while allowing their customers to use the learning materials in their own learning platform.
Solving the learning standards problem as well
Course Container solves this problem very neatly. To put it simply, a training provider can supply their digital learning (in SCORM 1.2 or 2004 format,) through Course Container to a client organisation’s LMS while still keeping control of their content.
In fact, Course Container will allow “your content” to be distributed through to multiple different clients each with their own LMS. Course Container also allows for simple SCORM wrappers to be put in place to allow videos or presentations to be delivered securely.
Handles content versioning and updates with a single upload
Remember that piece of content you uploaded and made available to numerous clients each with their own users? The time has come to update the content and somehow get it out to all of those users.
This can be a huge headache, but not with Course Container. You simply add the content as a new version to the existing one and it will automatically push out to all clients and end users without the need for new packages to be sent out or your customers having to do anything.
Why is this so important and so useful? Well, it has benefits for both parties. A large organisation in Learning Light’s experience is most unlikely to allow its training providers to deliver courses via another LMS to its employees for both operational and technical reasons.
Course Container neatly sidesteps this problem as it allows the client organisation to keep using just the one LMS but your new courses can be added securely and simply to the corporate elearning library via Course Container.
A win – win
The traditional way of licensing content to a client was to provide the SCORM files to the client to upload into their LMS and use. To the client, all too often acquiring and uploading the SCORM files is difficult and time consuming – issues often abound when handling SCORM files.
SCORM files do not always work and general hassle and frustration could easily ensue. Course Container solves these issues as we shall go onto see.
Controlling IP
So, instead of waving bye to your IP and hoping for the best when selling your courses to clients to play through their own LMS, Course Container ensures that you can manage your IP effectively and transparently with your client user, allowing you to manage your learning materials, while making your client’s life easier when meeting their demands for your learning in their existing LMS.
Quality of service and GDPR compliant
Course Container, in fairness are not the first company to address this issue. They have however developed one of the best, taking advantage of several new technologies and have enjoyed considerable success in the US to date, with some impressive customers using Course Container.
Launching in 2018, they have taken advantage of Amazon Web Services (AWS) to build a highly scalable solution and allow for a fully GDPR compliant solution, with AWS distributing the content from specific server locations if required by regulatory regimes or client needs.
Course Container has also solved the other often tiresome issue of browsers and cross browser scripting often encountered in deploying digital learning content. Course Container have done this very well as the browser updates and browser management takes place on the Course Container infrastructure side, automatically ensuring browser interoperability and bypassing these legacy issues.
Course Container takes on the heavy lifting and as a learning provider, you can be confident that your content will play and report in your client’s LMS. That is just so important and this really is a breakthrough.
Easy to use
Course Container is exceptionally well thought through. For many training companies considering how to address the challenge of, or demand for, a digital learning offer – it really does offer a highly workable solution, and it operates as a ready to go SAAS platform that delivers a win–win deployment.
If you have already developed digital learning and are wondering how to distribute it into clients with closed tech stacks, this could very well be the optimum solution, as it is easy to use, keeps control of your IP and delivers real benefits to your customer.
Course Container is quite simple and easy to use. As a training provider you load up your content once and then you share your courses across your clients’ LMS. The file you send is actually tiny as it is a simple XML file for the LMS that invokes the Content Delivery Network (CDN) provided by Course Container to deliver the elearning: your content stays with you in your Course Container instance at all times.
This CDN architecture also means your client is not using up storage space on their LMS when adding more elearning on to their system. Another barrier removed.
The Course Container CDN can deliver bandwidth hungry video material with a high quality of service with no impact upon your client’s infrastructure. Another sales barrier removed.
OK, some of this is pretty dry stuff, (CDN, XML, Browser compatibility etc….), but it is serious stuff that Course Container solves, and consequently delivers a solution that works for both parties.
To the organisation with an existing LMS wanting to increase their digital training library, Course Container offers a solution that really works for their L&D department and their learners, quickly and easily. To a training provider, a once closed market is now open in a manner that protects their IP and allows for a high quality of service experience for clients.
We have written this Course Container review from the perspective of a training provider (existing or new), but there are a number of other use cases for Course Container. Membership associations are an obvious user. LMS vendors could well be interested in this product on behalf of their customers who are looking to provide an extended enterprise offer when multi-tenancy won’t work……….but Course Container will.
A new dawn for learning content as a service
As the LMS market evolves we are seeing more and more organisations using LMS and LXP, and while “all you can eat learning content libraries” have proliferated, the opportunity for all encompassing, secure Learning Content as a Service (LCAAS) has not emerged at the same pace.
Course Container changes that and opens the corporate LMS install base to a wide wide world of content and learning innovation. This is a technically smart solution that has the potential to open the digital learning landscape to innovation from small niche training providers and allow a quality of service provision that eliminates many of the frustrations too often found when delivering digital learning at scale.
A free demo is available from the Course Container website, as well as transparent pricing all backed up by excellent support and, as we have discussed, an impressive, up to date technical architecture.
