12 of the best WordPress plug-ins for teachers

Educators have always had a lot on their plate — even before the pandemic. In addition to teaching students, they have to organize events and field trips, create lesson plans, grade assignments and exams, keep parents informed, assist colleagues, maintain records, and manage technology.

Fortunately, teachers get a bit of a break when it comes to creating powerful, responsive education websites — thanks to WordPress plug-ins. These plug-ins, or software additions, allow teachers to customize WordPress websites to fit their specific classroom needs and, ideally, make their work lives a bit easier.

Here are the 12 best WordPress plug-ins for teachers.

1. Tutor LMS

Tutor LMS, one of the best WordPress plug-ins for teachers, helps you manage an entire e-learning website — completely code-free. With this plug-in, you can create (and even sell) online courses, build quizzes and lesson plans, and generate actionable reports.

Additionally, if you’re looking for an education plug-in with strong customer support, add Tutor LMS to your shortlist. Many reviewers find their customer service to be helpful, responsive, and fast.

2. BadgeOS

With BadgeOS, you can gamify your WordPress site by rewarding students with digital badges or showing where their score on a quiz or assignment ranks with other students. Use BadgeOS to award or deduct points from your students, recognize top performers on a leaderboard, and administer badges for completing certain levels or tasks, encouraging students to complete their work.

3. Jotform Online Forms

If you’re looking to enhance your WordPress website, Jotform Online Forms lets you embed forms directly in your WordPress education website, making it one of the best WordPress plug-ins for teachers.

With online form builder Jotform, teachers can create customized education forms and apps from scratch or from premade templates. Make interactive quizzes and assignments as well as various teacher forms, like feedback and evaluation forms, and keep track of it all with powerful tables. It’s easy to use, fully customizable, and completely code-free. Jotform even offers a 50 percent discount to all educators.

4. WP Courseware

Looking to create interactive, engaging online courses? Then check out WP Courseware, one of the best WordPress plug-ins for teachers. This tool helps you build a fully automated, fully customizable learning management solution with the ability to create quizzes, upload lessons, show course progress, and administer course completion certificates.

5. LifterLMS

With the LifterLMS plug-in, you can create courses, multimedia lessons, and quizzes as well as use its gamification features to make learning fun and improve student engagement. You can even use it to sell your courses.

6. WPSchoolPress

WPSchoolPress is jam-packed with more than enough features to help you create a powerful learning management system. It includes attendance management tools and user-friendly dashboards for students, parents, and teachers to access. Plus, you can use it to create exam schedules and enter grades and notes on student performance.

WPSchoolPress is a comprehensive tool to help you optimize your existing day-to-day teaching and reporting system.

7. Webba Booking

Being a teacher involves more than just, well, teaching. Many educators are also coaches, lunch monitors, counselors, and behavioral specialists. To better manage all the hats you wear, use a plug-in like Webba Booking. This fully customizable scheduling system helps you stay organized and allows you to make time for students, parents, and yourself throughout the day.

8. Masteriyo LMS

Masteriyo LMS is a user-friendly, powerful, code-free plug-in for building and managing online courses. Use Masteriyo LMS to create and edit courses and add different sections to them, including interactive quizzes and YouTube videos. Your students will appreciate Masteriyo, too, thanks to its easy site navigation, dedicated space for questions and answers, and course progress bar.

9. Bookly

Another one of the best WordPress plug-ins for teachers is the scheduling tool Bookly. You can use Bookly to send emails or SMS notifications to parents to remind them about upcoming parent/teacher conferences as well as automatically approve or cancel appointments with fellow teachers or administrators. You even use Bookly to filter, sort, and view your calendar in a daily, weekly, or monthly format to ensure you never miss an appointment.

10. Educare

Managing grades can be a time-consuming aspect of being a teacher, which is why Educare is so popular. With this plug-in, you can easily add, edit, and delete records for students from your education website, including their specific class, year, and exam or quiz grades. You can even calculate GPAs. Then, once it’s time to meet with a student or their parents, simply use Educare to search for, view, and print their information quickly and efficiently.

11. BuddyPress

While you’re probably familiar with social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook, you may be unaware of BuddyPress, the social networking plug-in that lets you build a community with your fellow teachers. With this plug-in, you can create user profiles, have private conversations, share innovative ideas, and interact in online groups.

12. Video Conferencing with BigBlueButton (BBB)

Specifically designed for teachers, the Video Conferencing with BBB plug-in is a video conferencing tool that helps educators engage their students and encourage active virtual collaboration. Simply create your online room, add it to any of your WordPress site’s pages, and give your students the access code so they can join the virtual classroom session. BBB even lets teachers record their sessions so students can rewatch them later and take additional notes.

Being a teacher is important and rewarding, but it can also be incredibly draining. Thankfully, tech is designed to lighten your load, and these plug-ins can help. A user-friendly, customized website designed to meet your needs will enable you to focus more on what you love doing most — educating your students.