PressPrimer on LMScast: Better WordPress Assessments

We’re excited to share that Ryan Moore, PressPrimer founder, was recently a guest on LMScast, the podcast hosted by the team at LifterLMS. Chris Badgett of LifterLMS and Ryan took the opportunity to talk about something deeply important to both parties: making assessment better in WordPress. You can listen to the full episode below or from the LMScast website.

What is LifterLMS?

LifterLMS is one of the most established and powerful Learning Management System (LMS) plugins for WordPress. It lets you build online courses, coaching programs, and membership sites, all on your WordPress website. Chris Badgett, who hosted the episode, is the co-founder of LifterLMS.

LMScast, Lifter’s podcast, has been running since 2014 and has hundreds of episodes covering everything related to online education in WordPress. In fact, it was Ryan’s second appearance on the show; his first was back in 2019 to talk about Uncanny Automator.

How PressPrimer works with LifterLMS

Most PressPrimer customers use our Quiz and Assignment plugins on elearning sites, many of which also have LMS plugins active. From the beginning, PressPrimer has included native integrations with LifterLMS so that PressPrimer plugins can control user progress in a course. You can attach a PressPrimer quiz or assignment to any LifterLMS lesson, and it will automatically mark the lesson complete and advance the user when a passing grade is attached. The full integrations are in the free versions of PressPrimer Quiz and PressPrimer Assignment.

Why we did the podcast

LifterLMS and PressPrimer aren’t competitors; we solve different parts of the same problem. LifterLMS is the platform that delivers the learning, and PressPrimer offers advanced assessment tools and analytics for educators who need them. We’re both focused on improving the online education experience inside WordPress, and that makes for a natural collaboration. We also both value offering genuinely capable free versions where upgrades are earned for more advanced features, not by crippling the basics.

What we covered

The episode ran for about 45 minutes and touched on the following topics:

1. Why assessment gets overlooked. So much of the LMS conversation is about building courses, marketing them, and producing scores. Far less attention goes to questions that really matter, like did students actually learn, retain, and apply the material? That’s why PressPrimer exists.
2. The difference between course completion and actual learning. Marking a lesson complete tells you someone clicked through it, but it doesn’t tell you whether or not they understood it and could apply the lessons.
3. Spaced repetition. We explained the concept behind the feature: showing students questions they’re most likely to forget, at the moment they’re most likely to forget, so knowledge moves into long-term memory.
4. Analytics. Chris and Ryan talked about what analytics educators need and how the analytics in PressPrimer actually help educators improve course delivery, from knowing whether distractors are working and questions are too hard to seeing trends in subject area performance.

Check out the podcast

If anything here sounds relevant to what you’re building, we encourage you to listen to the full episode. And if you offer courses on WordPress and haven’t given LifterLMS a try, make sure to check them out. They’ve been a positive influence on the WordPress elearning community for a long time.

Thanks to Chris and the LifterLMS team for having us on. It was a great conversation, and we’re very appreciative of the invitation!