Deciding between course delivery options

If you’re not sure which option best suits your needs, this information is offered to help you decide.

For background, elearning is traditionally administered with the help of a Learning Management System (LMS), software designed to help Learning & Development or HR administrators track, assign, and distribute content to their audiences. If you are unfamiliar with LMSes, this article will fill you in.

If your company has more than 500 employees, we recommend considering an LMS. (OpenSesame courses work in any standards-compliant LMS.) While the features they offer vary, they are generally designed to address an L&D admin’s needs—such as assigning due dates, sending automated reminders, building specialized learning paths, or allowing easy year-over-year recertification for learners who are repeating required courses.

When using an LMS, you would select the “Download SCORM or AICC packages for your LMS” delivery option. This can be done from a List or from an individual course page in our catalog. (Some LMS platforms also offer direct integrations with OpenSesame.)

If you do not have a Learning Management System, and your company has fewer than 500 employees, OpenSesame's CourseCloud Legacy is a lightweight solution that allows you to invite learners to take courses on OpenSesame. We’ve found that CourseCloud Legacy generally works best for smaller organizations. While it provides basic administration, tracking, and reporting, it does not offer as many features as an LMS and is not designed for recertification. 

Note: If your learners will need to take the exact same course year over year, and you are still interested in using CourseCloud Legacy, please reach out to our Support team at support@opensesame.com.

Please keep in mind that each of your learners would need their own email address as well as access to a device with a web browser. Their email service would also need to allow messages from our system (info@opensesame.com) and Support team (support@opensesame.com).

When opting for CourseCloud Legacy, you would select the “No LMS? Invite learners via email” delivery method. This can be done from a List or from an individual course page in our catalog.

What if you already have access to an LMS? We would recommend that you continue to take advantage of it!

This is especially true if you have used OpenSesame content before, as switching from one delivery method to another can double an existing learner’s seat usage. This is because the new way to assign courses to a learner—their email address—is usually different from the one used by the LMS—a “student ID,” which is often a random number.

If you have further questions, our Support team is here to help via email at support@opensesame.com or via live chat and phone. Feel free to reach us at (503) 808-1268, ext. 2, or at +44 203 744 5541 in Europe.