NextThought Learning Platform

NextThought LMS

Collaborative education for the workplace.

Duration

2012–2021

Role

Chief Creative Officer, NextThought

Design Team

Michael McLaughlin, Samuel Chinchilla, Madison Kay, Leo Parker

Introduction

In April 2011 NextThought was formed to change the world of education. I connected with the team through the recommendation of a former professor at The University of Oklahoma. Initially, I was hesitant to leave Austin but I was hooked by the team and the mission—my family and I decided to take the leap, joining NextThought in Oklahoma in April of 2012.

Over the coming years, what started as a social eReader transformed into a full-featured collaborative learning platform. We developed a strong partnership with The University of Oklahoma to create the Janux initiative—building a platform and open content for dozens of courses and several online masters programs, all available to a strong international audience. While we got our foothold with Higher-ed and dabbled with Professional Associations over the next few years, it wasn't until we started targeting growth-stage businesses in 2019 (when I took over Product Management) that our platform really started to break out with strong traction and growth.

Platform Overview Video

Branded Login (Full white-label customization)

The login page imagery, colors, and text can be fully customized to match any brand.

Course Library

Access communities, courses, and books from the library.

Course Catalog

The catalog is available from within the platform and also externally for anonymous access or integration with marketing sites and landing pages.

Lessons, Content, and Authoring

Lesson Overview (above) and various content types and content authoring are below.

Calendar and Events

Communities

Every course has its own built-in community and communities are also available standalone (pictured above). Also, see course community discussion and community management controls.

Course Analytics and Grading

This was a planned extension of our Gradebook functionality to give instructors detailed insights and analytics on the performance of their courses.

@Mention Behavior States

This was used for internal reference with our dev team as we built an update to our social sharing model. The left card is the resulting post, and the right four cards are the post editor with various mentions: course community, individual enrolled in the course (Andrew), individual not enrolled (Chris).

@Mention's in the wild!

Here's the updated discussion editor in the wild after release.

User Segmentation

User Segmentation is a super powerful way to establish dynamic sets of users by defining criteria and attributes to match. Segments can be paired with actions to automate user administration of a site in many powerful ways. Sequence courses into learning paths, re-engage inactive users, push annual recertification reminders—endless possibilities.

White-label Branding Features