The Masteryio LMS Plugin

Masteriyo is a plugin to create a learning platform (or Learning Management System LMS) based on the core of WordPress.

This video gives a short instruction on Masteriyo.

The plugin itself is described in the WordPress plugin repository.

In our analysis, we cared about the free (basic) version. Additionally, there exists a paid version with enhanced features. Nevertheless, almost all the necessary features are available in the free version. The project team analyzed the LMS from the point of view of a small Adult Education Organisation. Normally, these types of organisations neither do have the big budget to buy a commercial LMS nor have the technicians to implement and maintain such a system.

Installing the LMS

The plugin can be installed easily from the plugin interface of WordPress. The installed plugin offers a setup assistant, creating all necessary pages and the LMS’s structure.

Creating courses

Courses are created in a three-step process:

  1. Create the course
  2. You continue with the course builder. This tool supports drag & drop and enables to give the course a structure.
  3. In the third step, you enter the specific settings for the course.

Masteryio enables the creation of free courses, or also paid courses (supporting various payment methods). Each user of the webpage can enroll in a free course. For paid courses, users must register to enroll in the course.
Remark: The payment issues need some learning time and complex knowledge of the payment systems for the course provider

The interface is clear and offers a reasonable structure. Also, beginners may create a course easily and quickly.

Minus: The basic version does not support multiple course creators in one course. Another issue detected was the fact that (in our installation) Masteryio does not support Captchas.

The free version does not supply the course creation by more than one instructor. Nevertheless, with a pay module, this is possible.

masteriyo-Multiple-Instructors

Figure 1: Pay-Module for multiple instructors

Positive observations

The LMS offers easy course development. The course builder can be handled easily and is a valuable tool for beginners as well as for advanced course creators. The builder supports drag&drop to restructure courses quickly.

The course Builder

Figure 2: The course Builder – a well-developed tool inside the LMS

The course overview in the builder is well-done.

Images are kept in the media database of the WordPress installation.

Some weaknesses detected

Nevertheless, several 8partly crucial) issues have been detected.

  • The insert fields of questions (and answers) are too tiny.
  • Multimedia is not supported in questions. This is a major deficit since modern teaching and training uses intensively multimedia-based content.
  • There are only three question formats available in the free version (yes/no, single choice, and multiple choice).

A crucial weakness is missing support for short codes. WordPress enables extensions (for example by using plugins) for displaying content. These typical approaches to creating more appealing content are missing and therefore a real minus.

The issue mentioned above also prevents the implementation of H5P content. Especially WordPress offers a well-done integration of H5P with the option to create content inside the WordPress pages and to link them to content pages based on short keys. The advantage of this method is the fact that changes in the original H5P file are automatically available in the learning content of the LMS.

The only method to include external content are iFrames. Here, the problem of the miss-displaying of multimedia-based content occurs.

A specific feature of the WordPress Editor(s) is the possibility to edit the source (HTML) page content. Since Masteryio uses a different editor and the mentioned feature is not supported, the manual “correction” of content issues (based on the page source) is not possible.

Our Recommendations for Future Users

The team has developed several learning courses. Four courses are available in all 4 tested LMS. These are:

Some ideas to assist you in efficient course creation:

  • Since images are kept in the standard media concept, you should name the images significantly. For the “Flipped learning 3.0” course, all images may start with FL3.0 and further description.
    Example: FL3.0-flipped-class.jpg
    This makes it easy to find images using the search routines of WordPress.
  • Prepare the content for pages in Word. Here it is possible to use simple tables. Since the editor of Masteryio does not support tables, you may copy and paste the content and create tables anyway. The problem is that you cannot edit these tables again – they will stay unchanged as inserted.
  • You can categorize courses to keep a certain order and display related topics.

Further information

Here are links to additional material dealing with Masteryio.

  1. Description of the Plugin (WordPress Plugin Repository)
  2. Masteryio homepage
    https://masteriyo.com/wordpress-lms/
  3. Masteryio Documentation
    docs.masteriyo.com/

 

Summary

If you need a simple, easy-to-use LMS without further requirements like appealing formatting or many different question formats, you make select this LMS.
Be aware that there is a PRO version that will fill many of the mentioned gaps.

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