Is LearnWorlds Open Source? [What You Need To Know]

When you are looking for a platform on which to build and market to sell courses, it is important to understand how the platform works and what sort of software it uses. 

The type of software that is used can have an effect on how the platform is used or how easy it is to run and maintain. 

This is especially important when you are trying to provide a paid-for service to people and require positive feedback and reviews from users to help promote your platform and the products that are being offered on it.  

 When you build an online course to help other people learn about your field of expertise, you want the experience to be a good one. 

While there will always be hiccups when you first offer a course, you want to be able to fix any bugs and issues that arise as soon as possible. 

This is a lot easier when you understand the software that you are using and how it can benefit you.  In this article, we will look at whether is LearnWorlds open source and what that means for your course. 

What Is LearnWorlds?

LearnWorlds is a mobile learning management system, otherwise known as an LMS.  It provides creators with a platform on which they can build their courses and website. 

All the necessary tools for training courses that are built are provided through LearnWorlds.  This is a much easier and simpler way of offering a course in an online school than trying to make one from scratch.  

LearnWorlds is not free to use beyond a standard 30-day free trial.  There are different tiers of payment plans available for creators. 

Each tier offers access to more tools and features that can improve your course.  LearnWorlds also offers plenty of support to its creators to help courses run as smoothly as possible. 

What Does Open Source Mean?

Open source essentially refers to software or source code that has been made freely available to anyone. 

This means that it can be accessed, modified, and redistributed by anyone who has access to it. 

Open-source products include permission for the user to use the source code, the design documents, or even the content of the product itself.  

The idea for open-source materials stems from the early days of computers when programmers and engineers were collaboratively developing new types of technologies. 

In order to share these new developments in the technology community, they needed to make sure that it was accessible to others. 

Open source is often the pinnacle of source code. 

Sharing a program with anyone who downloads it requires the developer to hone their skills to write cleaner code that is more easily maintained and to communicate better while working as a team. 

Is LearnWorlds Open Source?

LearnWorlds is an online learning management system (LMS)that is cloud-based.  It has been designed to help creators build, market, and selling online courses. 

However, just because it is a cloud-based system does not mean that it is not open source.  These two things are not mutually exclusive.  

Because the software for LearnWorlds is downloaded, accessed, and altered by users to help them build their own courses and sell online courses website makes it easy, it is technically an open-source program. 

This is defined as a program that can be edited and altered by users around the world because the source code is made available. 

This can be done through cloud-based software such as the software used for LearnWorlds.

Cloud-based software is best suited for programs such as LearnWorlds when compared to traditional open-source software. 

This is because it is often easier to provide larger amounts of code with a cloud-based system than an open-source program that needs to be downloaded. 

Because of this larger allowance of space in a cloud system, LearnWorlds can offer intricate and extensive tools and features to creators.  

This allows for more flexibility and creativity to create online courses which can be particularly appealing to creators and businesses that have their own clearly defined brands. 

Using the LearnWorlds cloud-based system helps to avoid all LearnWorlds courses and websites looking the same. 

There is much more room for personalization with this system than with a traditional open-source program. 

Difference Between Open Source And Cloud

If you are unfamiliar with code and how programs and sources are shared online training, it can be confusing to understand how open source and cloud software are different. 

Truthfully, both of these types of programming are extremely similar, however, there are a few main differences that allow them to work differently.  

Open-source software and the cloud are referred to as being practically married in the tech world. 

These two types of software hosting are used so similarly and even in tandem that they are practically one and the same. 

Open-source software was essentially the precursor to cloud computing technologies.  

Because open-source software is older, it is a much more common and likely much more familiar way of working for many people who use tech. 

There are many computer engineers and developers who swear by open source and are reluctant to try alternatives such as cloud computing. 

However, despite the loyalty that many in the tech community feel toward open-source software, it isn’t the only way.  In fact, more and more software is being geared toward cloud computing.  

Ultimately, cloud management software is the future of technology at the moment and there has been a significant shift in preference for the freedom and flexibility that cloud computing offers. 

Thankfully, because major shifts in technology usage are rare, current cloud software shares plenty of software options with open-source software.  

This makes the transition easier if you are used to open-source software.  It also allows for programs that were created for open-source capabilities to be used with cloud management and learning management systems. 

This is what makes it a great option for platforms such as LearnWorlds.  Users of LearnWorlds are likely to be familiar with open-source software such as Microsoft products. 

Knowledge of this software gives users a basic understanding of how the LearnWorlds platform allows them to create courses and websites.

One of the main benefits of using a cloud-based platform over a traditional open-source one is the ability to manage the space required. 

With a cloud-based platform, extra virtual space can be allocated to a creator when they are running out.  This can be done automatically as soon as a certain threshold is reached. 

With a more traditional, downloaded open-source product, extra space would need to be purchased and downloaded manually which is time-consuming and can affect the performance of the course or program.  

Frequently Asked Questions

Is A Cloud-Based Platform As Safe As Open Source?

Since the inception of cloud-based software, there have been a few high-profile security breaches.  Understandably, this can make people wary of cloud-based software and whether they should use it or not.  

Despite some security breaches being high profile, they actually rarely happen. 

Cloud computing has been around for much longer than you would imagine. 

Because of this extensive history, software developers and engineers have come up with plenty of security features that help to protect your work and your business from online threats. 

As with any software that is accessible to multiple people, there is a risk that documents or programs will be breached at some point.  However, these occurrences are rare. 

There are also plenty of assurances that help to protect programs such as LearnWorlds.  

These days, you are just as likely to suffer a security breach with traditional open-source products as you are with cloud-based products. 

There are also steps that users can take to increase their protection such as regularly changing passwords to accounts and ensuring that passwords are high-quality and difficult to guess. 

Can LearnWorlds Be Used Offline?

LearnWorlds cannot currently be used offline for creators or students. 

Because the platform is cloud-based, any changes that a creator wants to make to their course need to be done with an internet connection. 

Without the connection, updates will not be uploaded to the course and students will not be able to benefit from changes that have been made.  

From the perspective of a student enrolled in a course facilitated by LearnWorlds, it is a little more complicated. 

With the highest pricing tier, creators can create an app through which their students can access course materials.  The materials on the app, such as videos, can be physically accessed without an internet connection. 

However, if a student watches a video through the app without an internet connection, it will not be able to sync with the course progress even when a connection is established later.  

This means that a student could spend time on a commute watching and absorbing the information from a video or series of videos on the app but the course won’t recognize it. 

This can be incredibly frustrating as the videos will have to be played in full again when an internet connection has been established which is time-consuming. 

This is something that should be addressed by LearnWorlds to improve the app functionality for students.  

Is Open Source The Future Of IT?

Open source is actually an IT format that you will already have been using for a while.  Programs such as Microsoft have utilized open-source programming for decades. 

This firmly makes open-source programming the current status quo of IT rather than the future.  Instead, we should be looking at cloud-based computing as the near future of IT products.  

There are so many benefits to using cloud-based computing including increased storage capacity and the ability to automate the training process in educational institutions that have to be done manually with the open-source product. 

Although users and businesses can be wary of the security risks that are commonly associated with cloud computing, these have largely been addressed in recent years making cloud computing and storage a fairly secure option for programming.  

You are likely to see a lot more cloud-based computing programs in the near future before a more efficient way to share source codes is created. 

Thankfully, current cloud computing practices are very similar to open-source software so it is easy to transfer from a traditional open-source system to a modernized cloud-based system.  

Final Thoughts

LearnWorlds is an open-source program but in a very modern way. 

Because there are so many tools and features offered through the platform, a modern, cloud-based system is much more appropriate. 

This allows for a much more user-friendly experience for both creators and users. 

It also allows for systems and applications to be streamlined and automated for ultimate convenience and an overall great experience.