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Hosted Learning Management System

eLearning and Software as a Service (SaaS)

what others say

"They have small college prices with accessible services."
Dr. Rebecca Jones, Chancellor, West Suburban College of Nursing

"EdTek has met all of our expectations."
Dr. Sue O'Donnell, Program Director, U.S. Office of Personnel Management

"EdTek gave us the top technology and support we needed."
Ken Westray, President, NP Learning

Hosted Learning Management System

Clay Shirky's Optimism

The Horizon Report 2010 Edition

The Year Ahead in IT

Hosted Learning Management System

When is a Software Company More Than Just a Software Company?

Not all Learning Management System companies are alike. What makes them different? Some companies simply sell you their online course software, which you pay for upfront, and then leave you to manage the rest. Hosting and running this software means you have to buy server boxes and other hardware and hire staff so you can build a mini in-house data center. Then you need to baby-sit the data center 24 hours a day.

You also need instructional designers, course developers and multimedia developers to manage the course development process or show your instructors how to design and build pedagogically sound courses on their own. Then you have the cost of system maintenance, hardware replacement, annual upgrades and before you know it a year has passed and you are paying your renewal fee for the original software license.

Other online learning software companies, like EdTek and it's learning are application service providers (ASPs) and offer software-as-a-service (SaaS). These types of companies are full service shops that provide complete turnkey eLearning solutions.

What does this mean? It means that companies like EdTek provide the hardware (hosting), system monitoring and maintenance (IT staff), unlimited scalability (for growth), a custom online campus, the learning management system (eLearning software) and annual upgrades (free), faculty training, a 24/7 Help Desk for your students and instructors and a Client Service Consultant to help your administrators run their online program.

Why the difference? We realized very early on that smaller education providers would never have enough spare resources to build the kind of eLearning system and infrastructure you need to host and run a robust and scalable eLearning program.

Experience has shown us that the heavy upfront investment needed for staff and infrastructure, even before you attract one enrollment, makes is very hard for an eLearning program to be profitable. The lag time between when you decide to develop online learning programs and when you enroll your first student (ie. earn revenue) and the ongoing investment required to maintain your eLearning system year after year often means that the program never gets out of debt.

User Friendly Software

EdTek’s partnership with it's learning ensures that you will receive the best software available. In addition to offering cutting edge technology, the software programs are truly user friendly. Your faculty does not need to have advanced computer skills to operate our software. In fact, even faculty members with only basic word processing skills will be able to navigate and master our learning management system. To make sure your staff is given all the help they need, EdTek offers instructor training, 24/7 Technical Support Help Desk and iSupport - an instructional design Help Desk that your instructors can utilize as they design and build their online courses.

Help When You Need It

Your online school or course never closes. Therefore you may need tech support at anytime, day or night. To meet this need, we offer a 24-7-365 Technical Support Help Desk. Experienced staff members are ready to assist you and will not leave you without a solution to your problem. Whether by phone, e-mail or chat, your questions will never go unanswered.

Our Software’s Content Options are Limitless

By choosing the our hosted softwaresolution you are giving your staff and students the best eLearning tools available. In addition, you are allowing them total access to every content option. Your faculty will be able to integrate any type of content into their courses. From video to audio and images to flash player capabilities, the only limit you will face is your imagination.

A Full Line of Quality Hosting Services

EdTek, working with our partners, offers the best hosting services available. Our high quality hosting service is managed by an experienced staff that will go above and beyond the call of duty to give your school or business the best service possible. The datacenter that supports your courses and programs has the following:

Two full-scale data centers that include a primary center with a synchronized hot backup facility.
Multiple hardware load-balanced Web farms that provide reliability and scalability.
Stateless environment that includes a redundant network access with multiple Tier-One providers and a completely separate backup access point.
Multiple VLANs in a routed network architecture based on 10/100 and GB Switches.
Clustered high availability application servers based on Storage Area Network (SAN) and Network Attached Storage (NAS) technologies.
Distributable components.
Microsoft N-tier architecture with Windows DNA.
135 production level servers in the two data centers with an equal amount of additional servers in the QA and Dev supporting environments.
Top-of-the-line hardware, including the latest equipment from Hewlett-Packard, Network Appliance, Foundry, Dell and EMC.
Robust and consistent software environment that includes Active Directory, Exchange 2000, SQL Server 2000, IIS 5.0, BizTalk, Microsoft Operational Manager, ASP/VB 6.0, COM+ and MSMQ.
No single point of failure in the hosted environment.

Who is Minding the Store?

The ability to monitor system performance and to report any issues before they impact system users is as important as maintaining a scalable and secure hosting environment. EdTek and our partners utilize industry-leading reporting and system monitoring software applications, including Mercury Interactive, NetIQ WebTrends, Freshwater Software SiteScope, Microsoft Operational Manager, DeepMetrix IPMonitor and Dell IT Assistant. These software applications provide:

24x7x365 system health and performance monitoring.
System connectivity checking from multiple national and international locations.
Threshold monitoring on ASP and stored procedure.
User trend analysis.

Unlimited Scalability

One of the benefits of the above hardware and services is that EdTek can promise your institution unlimited scalability. This means that no matter how heavy the site load, no matter how technology changes and grows your site will grow with it - seamlessly. This robust and seamless growth capacity assures that your staff and students will enjoy consistent site availability.

The Best Hosting Services at a Price You Can Afford

Everyone always wants the best hosting available but they do not believe they can afford it. The cost of hiring staff to perform these services in-house would be a significant hit on your budget to begin with. Even if you could find an outsource solution for your hosting needs most hosting services do not offer comprehensive online education assistance at a reasonable price. At EdTek, we are trying to offer the best of both worlds. Our “fee per enrollment, pay as you go” pricing model enables small colleges and universities, small career colleges, small to medium size businesses, independant consultants, government and corporate depoartments and non-profits of every stripe access to eCollege’s premier software and hosting services.

EdTek’s turnkey eLearning package gives you access to the best hosting services on the market at a fraction of what it would cost you to build and maintain such a system in-house. By letting us care for your data center needs all of the work is done for you. That enables your faculty and staff to focus their efforts on great course development and great teaching.

If you want to know more about how you can make EdTek's hosted online learning software work for you call us Toll Free at (800) 827-1593 x 2 or fill out the form on this page.

Click HERE to Request Our Free Report:

"The 5 Biggest Mistakes That Almost All Small Schools Make

When Launching a Distance Education Program"

Blog for Hosted Learning Management System

eLearning and Software as a Service (SaaS)

Library for Hosted Learning Management System:

Clay Shirky's Optimism
Description: Every time a technology brings an increase in freedom to create or consume media the rules of communication shift and we have a period of apparent chaos and decline. Hence, the digital setting alarms people accustomed to the restrictions of the old system, convincing them that the new media will make young people stupid.
The Horizon Report 2010 Edition
Description: The annual Horizon Report describes the continuing work of the New Media Consortium’s Horizon Project, a qualitative research project established in 2002 that identifies and describes emerging technologies likely to have a large impact on teaching, learning, or creative inquiry on college and university campuses within the next five years.
The Year Ahead in IT
Description: The general fiscal crunch facing higher education has led most technology leaders to assert that double digit percentage cuts to IT budgets.
2009 Horizon Report
Description: Trends in higher education technology over the next 1-5 years.