Online learning has become a major point nowadays. It is true that the rapid growth of internet and online activities introduced us to distance learning so long ago, but in the present situation, we can realize that online learning should be easier and more yieldable.
As online learning is extremely needed, there are some great tools integrated to help both students and teachers. These applications include some great features that allow class teachers to manage assignments, announcements, communication, and so on while taking classes online.
There are a lot of applications that come when we are going to talk about online classroom integrations. Among them, google classroom is one of the most popular ones. not for being a product of google but for the internal functions, easy to use interface, grading, and other aspects, google classroom is popular all over the world.
Whether you have already used google classroom or not, google classroom can be a good addition to any paperless work where the host and guest connect from a distance. But it has limitations in some aspects like grading multiple assignments at once, lack of direct video streaming option, etc.
However, no application system comes perfect in all aspects and when it is the question of online learning, there are so many things that you have to consider.
Therefore, in this article, we have come with some google classroom alternatives with a brief discussion of their features and prices. So, let’s jump into it,
Contents
10 best google classroom alternatives
Here is the list of the 10 best google classroom alternatives at present. The list has been created based on the personal experience of using those different LMS applications. We have tried to focus on the main aspects of these applications so that you can compare and have a perfect decision.
If you are really concerned in this regard and trying to find the best one to organize classes perfectly, it will definitely help you a lot.
Application name | Personal rating |
Talent LMS | 8.5 |
Edmodo LMS | 8 |
Articulate 360 | 9 |
Canvas | 8.5 |
Blackboard Learn | 9 |
Schoology | 8 |
Brightspace | 9 |
Moodle | 8 |
Sakai | 8 |
Tovuti LMS | 9 |
- Talent LMS
- Edmodo LMS
- Articulate 360
- Canvas
- Blackboard Learn
- Schoology
- Brightspace
- Moodle
- Sakai
- Tovuti LMS
Talent LMS
Talent LMS is the award-winning software for the best online learning management system 2020. This cloud based online learning system developed not only for eLearning but also as an effective business asset.
At present, there are 70K+ teams across 124 countries utilizing Talent LMS employees, partners, and consumers. It can also be used as an eLearning tool as it incorporates an excellent learning management system.
Talent LMS makes online learning and training easier and actionable. It integrates all the necessary options you need to organize class or training. Whether you are a teacher or you are a small growing business that needs to contribute all the time, it will help you stay organized every day.
You can easily create courses to engage employees or freshers in the institution, create tests and quizzes for students, host live sessions among them, and so on.
So, what makes talent LMS an award-winning software? To know that, we have to look at its features. Let’s have a look at some of the features of talent LMS.
- User friendly interface
- Customizable
- Mobile friendly
- Support video conference
- Available with the latest eLearning content standards, like SCORM, xAPI, and cmi5
- Accept variety of questions like multiple-choice, drag-and-drop matching, ordering, fill-in-the-blank, and open-ended questions to make online tests interesting
- Create survey
- Blended learning system allows connecting online training courses to classroom based sessions
- Learn and earn points, badges, levels, rewards system
- Private message and discussion forum for communication
- Certification
- Supports multiple languages
Edmodo LMS
Edmodo is another great learning management system that captures good ratings from the users. The platform is mainly designed to create a compatible learning environment with all necessary options required to manage learning from a distance.
With Edmodo, educational institutions can collaborate with students and parents when the institution is closed due to any specific reason. It has a good contribution of communication and collaboration tools, administrative tools, and analytics in the enterprise plans and so on.
Edmodo is listed in the top 20 trainee software list in 2020 with 100 million users all over the world. The interface of the software is similar to social media platforms as teachers, parents, and students can share opinions through posts and also can like comments in the post. Here are the top features of Edmodo LMS.
- Easy to use social media like interface
- Supports integration with Google and Microsoft applications
- Keep things highly organized
- Mobile compatibility
- Can easily create lessons and assignments
- Shared calendar
- Built in zoom integration
- Ease of communication
- Create polls
- Award and badge giving to students
- Personalization
- Good customer support
- Safe and secure platform
Articulate 360
Articulate 360 is another award winning e-learning software that provides all the things you need to cover online courses, training, and classes. It makes e-learning simpler, faster, and also reasonable to all with a lower subscription price.
Articulate 360 includes Storyline 360 and Rise 360. Storyline 360 is used to develop custom interactive courses that work on every device and through Rise 360, you are able to create fully responsive courses in a minute.
It also includes content library 360 which is a great addition to course assets. You will get 7+ million course assets including photos, templates, characters, videos, icons, and so on.
“Articulate 360 is overwhelmingly impressive! Having a suite of tools all in one place will save oodles of time for project development” – Kevin thorn, e-learning developer.
Here are the features of articulate to have close details about it.
- Very intuitive and user friendly interface
- Create high engaging online courses, presentations with storyline 360
- Can use 360 degree images
- Quiz question bank
- Provides huge templates to integrate with your online courses
- Video recording app
- A powerful review tool allows reviewing courses with multiple stakeholders
- Allows screen recording
- Self-streaming option
- Content library with 7+ million course assets
Canvas
As an e-learning management application, canvas is slightly getting popular because of its beautiful service. Many educational institutions are integrating this as the central hub for organizing assignments and tests, sharing, collaborating, and so on.
To keep organized students and teachers, it has a great overview page where all the materials are located schematically. So, you are getting all in one place.
Canvas comes with a complete learning management system (LMS) functionality that can be adopted in individual classrooms or university lectures. Its mobile application is robust and convenient, and integrates the same functionality as the desktop version.
It includes all the necessary options that are required in an online learning tool along with some extra options. In addition to all these features, Canvas is now one of the most reliable and adaptable learning platforms.
Here is a short overview of all features that come with this integration.
- Comfortable user interface
- Integrate popular third party educational apps
- Good for all institutions
- Calendar integration
- Interactive dashboard
- Web conferencing tool
- Personalized messaging tool to communicate individual students or group
- Customizable
- Supports audio and video message
- Excellent course management tool
- Auto grade
- Supports variety of question types
Blackboard Learn
Blackboard Learn is an all in one learning management system developed by the popular learning institution Blackboard. It is a great cloud based software as a service (SaaS) that can easily integrate into any learning, training, blended classroom activities.
It comes with a modern, intuitive, and fully responsive interface to engage learners and ease the burden on instructors. It includes all the necessary things to organize classrooms and to manage assignments and activities effectively.
Along with the key e-learning features, it also offers some more such as blackboard collaboration, blackboard intelligence, blackboard connects, and blackboard social media manager.
Create video lectures for your online class, make it competitive by setting points and badges for different learning goals. Here are the main features highlighted by Blackboard learn.
- User friendly interface
- Great device compatibility
- Great collaboration tools
- Analytics for tracking student’s retention and engagement
- Notification system
- Social media manager
- Easy to create courses, assignments, and grading
- Gamification
- Partners with many academic publishers
- Video conferencing
Schoology
With an interactive social media like interface, Schoology comes as one of the best user centric learning management system integration.
the overall system is so engaging, easy to use, and makes sense when you’re using it. It has a tremendous ability to be extended with integrations with Google, Microsoft, etc., and connects well with other learning platforms that are important in K-12 settings.
Schoology makes it easier to manage online classrooms with a lot of students through the robust features included in it.
Teachers can customize the platform for different classes, assign interactive classwork and collaborative tasks, evaluate and give feedback also.
Also, there is a help button located on every page to get support anytime you need it. and an extensive set of guides and advice in the Resources section about the site. Here are some of the features of Schoology.
- Freemium service, basic version is free but the enterprise version requires purchase
- SIS integration
- Flexible and collaborative learning tools
- Gamification
- Grade with rubrics
- Secure communication
- Spellcheck
- Reminders
- Audio/video recording
- Great support available
- Can host files, content, and websites in its cloud
Brightspace
Brightspace is one of the popular learning management systems developed by D2L. D2L (Desire2Learn) is a global software company that mainly works for educational specs.
Brightspace is D2L’s first learning management system which is now used by schools, colleges, universities, and businesses all over the world. To ensure the most comfortable online learning experience, brightspace incorporates tools, services and all time support for the clients.
Users can easily create interactive video content like training courses for employees, lesson videos for students, and any type of content using video, images, audio files, and other digital content.
It has the best user interactive mobile integration incorporated with Web Components and Google Polymer, HTML5, and responsive web design. So, it is compatible with any mobile devices and can easily adjust with the device functionalities.
Brightspace integrates all the necessary functions one should expect from such educational platforms. You can say it as a combination of three different platforms – learning environment, learning repository, and ePortfolio. There are some more functionalities in this integration.
For your convenience, here are the main features of brightspace,
- Content creation tools and materials provide by the publisher
- Integrate with google drive and Microsoft 365
- Quick and easy communication
- Send message to any students from the assignment page
- Ease to share any kinds of lesson materials
- Great mobile accessibility
- Learning repository for storing, managing, and sharing your learning resources
- Activity feed
- Portfolio tool
- Virtual classroom, video assignment
Moodle
Moodle is an open source learning management system developed by the Australian company Moodle HQ. The aim is to create a world class learning platform to enhance online learning experience. So, one can use it for blended learning, distance education, flipped classroom, and other e-learning activities.
Moodle code is open source which offers deep customization ability to users. That means, anyone can use its code for review, change, modify and also redistribution. It provides great flexibility in organizing classes, assignments, video learning lessons, etc.
If you are looking for a feature rich, extremely customizable learning management system to integrate with your students or employees, then Moodle is a good option for you.
When most of the learning management system is available only in paid version, if you are a google classroom user but you are looking for something more in your online classes. Then you should consider Moodle as it is almost a free LMS.
Here are the main features of Moodle.
- Modern easy to use interface
- Personalized dashboard
- Collaborative tools and activities
- All in one calendar
- Integrated with MS Onedrive, Dropbox, google drive
- Convenient file management
- Simple plugin management
- Customizable site design and layout
- Peer and self-assessment
- Integrated badges
- Outcomes and rubrics
Sakai
Another award winning online learning management system which gets huge positive users to feedback for all around excellence, good user experience, and features. It is a free, open source educational platform, ideally best for teaching, research and collaboration.
Sakai features robust communication options and group-aware tools that make keeping in touch and working together easier. Users can choose from a variety of synchronous and asynchronous tools for messaging, discussions, social connections, and collaborative work.
It features powerful system administration which lets users manage courses, students, and employees effectively and efficiently.
You will get all the necessary options and features you need to build engaging courses and lesson videos with Sakai. Besides, you will get community support when you face any difficulties with it. Here is an overview of the Sakai features and advantages.
- Simple and straightforward UI design
- Robust communication and collaboration tools
- State of the art grading and assessment
- Creating courses has been made easy
- Powerful course and system administration to stay organized
- Highly customizable
- Integration with external apps
Tovuti LMS
And there is one last LMS software suggestion on the list and it is Tovuti LMS. Because of its great addition of content, tools, and features, it has gained the best ease of use course authoring software, best value association management software, and best value course authoring software award 2020.
Tovuti offers an open API, single sign-on capabilities, and a zapier integration to make communication with other platforms easy.
You can get everything you need to organize an interacting online classroom and as it is white labeled, you can change logos, colors and even the URL of your Tovuti system to make a highly customized online platform.
Its built in cloud based course authoring system will help you to create captivating courses, also, you can assign learners, track and report, get customer support and many more with this feature-rich learning software. Here are the main features of this excellent LMS platform.
- Easy to use interface
- Cloud, SaaS, web based
- Easy to set up events and classes
- Built in course authoring tools
- SCORM compliance
- Integrated course content library
- Course tracking
- Rating and comments
- Mobile responsive
- Blended learning
- Gamification
- Amazing customer support
Lets recap
whether you are school, college, university teacher or you are a solo instructor who just wants to distribute knowledge among the dedicated followers. you need any of these learning management tools to organize things properly.
In the list above, there are both free and paid classroom integration. We have illustrated the features so that you can understand and consider the best one for your purpose.