In this recent Mashable post about The Future of Teaching, Josh mentions that online learning environments have been shown to be more effective than face to face teaching. I’ve been talking about this for years – it is not in the future, it is now. I and many others are already doing this.

A simple way to start teaching online is to post a video of yourself on YouTube or create a blog with educational blog posts, or post to your Facebook page, etc. Or you can start using video chats like Skype or MSN Live Messenger to teach students via webcam. But the most exciting approach is to create your own online learning environment.

An online learning environment is typically a members-only area that not only contains content in a variety of formats (such as video, audio, text, diagrams), but often creates an online community with fosters collaboration. For example, this could be a discussion forum where students can discuss the course content, or where you accept submissions of assignments via a student section. It’s a great place to put all your content, and organize your thoughts and overall systematic approach to your content. You charge a monthly fee for access, and continually add more content and refine existing content.

To actually implement this, you could use open source virtual learning environment software such as Moodle (free). You can often get this software installed easily via your web host, such as GoDaddy or Hostgator. There are many free applications that these hosts provide with easy one click installations so that you don’t have to set up databases or ftp a ton of files to the server.

After trying Moodle for a while, I decided to go with Wordpress (free) which I am very familiar with for all my websites. You can structure a series of web pages in a hierarchy – so I have 7 courses with several lessons within each course. These are known as subpages. Moodle didn’t have a very good integration with any payments systems which became a problem and had lots of extra things I didn’t need. So I am now using Wordpress with the Wishlist Member plugin to protect my pages, send emails to members, take payments (via Paypal) and integrate with my email autoresponder (GetResponse).

If you have InfusionSoft then you will be interested to know that Wishlist Member Plugin now integrates with Infusion CRM software. So you can now have your own membership site which is a protected area of your website. Membership site are hot because they allow you to take advantage of recurring payments rather than just making one time sales.

You might already be using InfusionSoft to sell your products and services but with Wordpress and Wishlist Member Plugin you can earn recurring revenues from your ‘members only’ content.

How I use wishlist member plugin with wordpress to create my membership site also known as a continuity program. I show you some of the features of the plugin and my actual membership site for online guitar lessons. How to use teaser content, protect your pages, integrate with an autoresponder (I use getresponse). More of a demo of the plugin and a real membership site than how to’s. The wishlist website has tons of great video tutorials.