When Kamloops acupuncture instructor Gillian Marsollier showed us how she was running courses on a rigid, expensive platform separate from her website, we knew we could make something better. A charismatic and effective teacher, Gillian’s material has helped thousands of students prepare for acupuncture and TCM certification exams. However, she was frustrated by the limitations and costs associated with running her courses on an external Learning Management System (LMS). The way she saw it, she was renting online services when she should be owning her own online school.
Gillian wanted full control of the learning experience on her website. She wanted a website where she could collect more of the profits from the courses she sold. She needed a system that would be easy to maintain and update. She wanted to be able to vet and manage additional instructors and run discussion forums for every course. Sign-ups had to be easy. Transactions had to be seamless. And the student experience had to be a joy.
It was a tall order, but one that Kyosei was happy to deliver to.
Kyosei Creative’s solution
The new website includes custom branding and hosts integrated eCommerce and a highly customized LMS. The eCommerce component uses geolocation to display prices in appropriate currencies (depending on the country a student is from) and allows LIFT to take payments through PayPal. As new students pay, they’re assigned an account based on their email. This allows them to log in to access courses and track their progress. The LMS also tracks and pays out instructor commissions based on courses sold. As for the courses, they can be sold with limited-time subscriptions or unlimited access. Each course is made up of units, which can include video, downloads, quizzes or any embeddable content Gillian and her team could possibly need. After purchasing access to a course, students can work their way through the lectures and exercises. If they have questions — or just want to chill and chat — they can visit the forums attached to each course, participating in an active social experience analogous to FaceBook. Finally, after everything is completed, they can receive a certificate of completion to print out or put up on their social media.
If you build it, they will come (and boy, did they ever)
Now that LIFT Education has a dedicated LMS rather than an external service, they have complete control over the user experience, and in fact their own businesses destiny (insert uproarious applause here). As students and instructors make requests, we’re able to shift the system to meet common needs. Gillian, her instructors and (most importantly) the students love the new site. Best of all, interest from would-be acupuncturists and current practitioners are also pouring in. We’re proud to have built a system able to scale up to handle everyone who could benefit from Gillian’s training.
