Show HN: eLearning for teachers, not CIOs

by shimms • 14 years ago

8 13 14 years ago

Looks really nice. I'm a high school teacher. We use Moodle at my school. If I were to pitch this to my school how would I describe the benefits of this over Moodle? One of the highlights for us is a local install and AD integration. Does your product allow on-site installation?

shimms6• 14 years ago

Thanks :)

Lexim is only available in the cloud, sorry. Active Directory (and other authentication methods) are coming soon, so you'll be able to integrate it with your school's systems, and not duplicate your account management functions.

Regarding Moodle, Lexim has been built with a focus on usability and enjoyment. Our tools are consistent across the application, and generally we've found teachers and students feel more at home in Lexim without any training or documentation.

We've also strived to make important information available quickly - no more than two clicks away. Submitting an assignment is a prime example, something which students complain about in Moodle all the time.

Let me know if you'd like more details, or a more one-on-one chat about the options available.

Cheers!

keithpeter5• 14 years ago

The access control feature is marked as 'coming soon'. What is the design of that?

Can I upload a spreadsheet with names and create student role accounts easily?

Are there any peer-peer interaction tools (forums, comments on resources &c)? Can I limit those to my students?

What will the AUP look like for a teacher and for a student? I'm in Europe/UK and we have laws...

shimms6• 14 years ago

Hi,

Apologies for the confusion - the 'Coming Soon' specifically refers to the Library which allows learning objects to be shared between courses in your institution.

Access Control is current available and allows you to restrict the availability of content, quizzes and assignments by date range, as well as an overall visibility setting.

You can enrol multiple students via a spreadsheet yes (as well as teachers and teaching assistants).

Lexim has quite a powerful forums tool - the posts students make in it are visible only to students and teachers enrolled in the space with them.

You can create multiple spaces (ie: one per course/section).

Our current terms of service and privacy policy are available on the website, and outline our obligation and commitment to privacy/acceptable use etc.

Let me know if I haven't adequately addressed your questions :)

Cheers,

Michael

keithpeter5• 14 years ago

Thanks for responding, I'll create a trial account and have a play. Best of luck.

lucajona• 14 years ago

This looks like it has all the right ingredients to spark a David vs Goliath battle. I'm not sure about elsewhere, but in Australia the Blackboard product seems to completely dominate this market, and as far as I've heard it's nearly universally disliked by students and staff for being hard to use.

No doubt blackboard has a much longer feature checklist, so it'd be great to see Lexim come along and score a win for usability and putting the needs of students and staff first.

And Lexim even has a pricing page! Incredible. Blackboard is way too 'enterprise level' to reveal how much they're going to charge you.

shimms6• 14 years ago

Thanks - glad you appreciate what we're doing.

You've summed up our motivation really well, and we completely agree with you about the current state of the industry.

Teacher's deserve better, and hopefully Lexim will help them create an awesome learning experience for them and their students.

Show HN: eLearning for teachers, not CIOs

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