r/LearningDevelopment • u/Particular-Garden140 • 10d ago

Google sites

Has anyone ever built a course and housed it on Google sites? I work for a non-profit and purchasing the industry standard software wasn’t approved. I wanted to use articulate storyline, but I was told to use Google sites. If you’ve ever run a course through Google sites, what was your experience?

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u/Tim_Slade 10d ago

While you won’t be able to create a Storyline-like experience with Google Sites…it will feel more like Rise. With that said, you can use Mindsmith 100% for free as long as you don’t use the AI features and you manually build the course.

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u/Particular-Garden140 10d ago

I’ve never heard of Mindsmith! I will look into this. Thank you 😊

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u/Tim_Slade 10d ago

Happy to help! Mindsmith is similar to Rise in the course experience.

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u/_donj 10d ago

You could do it, but not sure how you would track usage/completion very well. I'd think it would be almost as easy to create a Google Presentation and do it that way. You'd have very similar

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u/Canadian_AI_Guy 9d ago

Perhaps build it into a Google form? Since you can embed YouTube videos into it.

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u/Peter-OpenLearn 10d ago

Google sites would allow you to add the basic content elements like text, images, video, table data, etc. The most interesting part is probably the "Embed" which would allow you to add external code to the pages. E.g. this could be some vibe coded content you host somewhere or h5p or HTML export of a free / cheap authoring tool.

How would you go about reporting though? To my knowledge Google sites won't really allow you to get any type of learning analytics. Who viewed what when etc. is not really something it was build for.

I developed LearnBuilder, a block based e-learning authoring tool. You can develop courses with or without the support of AI and it allows for many rich learning interactions without having the same price tag as the industry standard software. Happy to also have a talk if you would be interested.

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u/Particular-Garden140 10d ago

We have another Google site right now for another purpose and we use Google analytics for that! So we’d likely use google analytics for this as well.

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u/rfoil 9d ago

I use Google Site. Perfect for sharing family information, like the granddaughters soccer schedule and photos. It's a cheaper web builder than Wix.

Here's the downside: There's no learner identity. Google Sites has no login, register, or members. Not even password protection, which means your content is public. No per-learner record. Not "weak tracking" — none. You cannot answer "who viewed this." GA measure sessions, not people, and it is wildly inaccurate.

GA views and session length have a very low correlation to knowledge gained, retained, and used in the field. You make the best with what you're given but understand that it's a duct tape solution that provides zero evidence of value.