Top-10 Obligatory
LMS Features That Provide Value For Your Learners
LMS Features That Provide Value For Your Learners
The most frequently asked question in the eLearning industry is: which LMS should I use? Businesses and organizations big and small feel the need to digitize their corporate training, and not all of them make the best choice from the get-go. Thus, you might want to invest in a developing brand new LMS or replace the solution currently in use with an eLearning platform better suited for your educational needs. In any case, you need to do your homework and select the best fit based on the costs and the range of features provided.
According to Capterra's research, LMS implementation costs exceed the expected budget for 59% of organizations. Why so? Because different LMS platforms use different deployment and billing models, require different sizes of implementation investments, etc.
You should also keep in mind the costs of creating and maintaining content for your LMS, as any platform is useless unless it provides learners with access to great content. Your organization's learning culture will dictate the way the learners will discover the needed content and interact with it. Thus, once you know the learning culture demands of your learners, and what content they need to consume to ensure the training provides value to the organization — you can select the tools able to meet those requirements.
To do this you need to take a look at the features and technology offered by various platforms.
To do this you need to take a look at the features and technology offered by various platforms.
1. Supporting Multiple Content Formats
Things to consider:
- Is the pricing model unlimited or is there multi-tiered pricing?
- What content formats and file types are accepted by the system?
- Do you need to create custom content for company-specific topics? Does the LMS platform of your choice provide such capabilities, or should such content be created elsewhere and imported into the LMS?
A modern eLearning course should include a wide variety of content formats: texts, downloadable PDF files, videos, interactive animations, webinars, etc. Thus, the LMS of your choice must be able to handle all of these content types, including the basic eLearning course content formats — (AICC, xAPI, SCORM). In addition, the LMS platform must provide the means for learner progress evaluation — quizzes, training exercises, practical tests, external exams, etc.
2. Supporting Microlearning, Blended Learning and Accessibility
Things to consider:
- Does the LMS require a webcam?
- Is learner self-enrollment supported for the classroom, virtual, or instructor-led courses your admins will create?
- Is there off-the-shelf content in blended learning or microlearning formats?
Blended learning, microlearning and flipped classroom models are not merely buzzwords — these are proven methods of increasing eLearning and corporate training efficiency.
Another important aspect to keep an eye on is choosing the right approach to content accessibility.
- Blended learning — a combination of online and offline instructor-led or self-paced training sessions that provides your learners with opportunities to study at their own pace, recap the material when they need it and discuss it with their peers and educators.
- Flipped classroom — an approach to blended learning, when the classroom time is spent on peer to peer discussions and reinforcing the training outcomes, while the students explore the course at their own pace outside of the classroom, online or offline.
- Microlearning — also known as bite-sized learning is an approach to structuring the course content in 5-8 minute-long chunks that can be consumed during a coffee break while commuting or literally everywhere and anytime. Most importantly, microlearning nuggets provide just enough content to help the learner solve a specific challenge or achieve a goal at hand. Splitting big and long lectures into a series of microlearning lessons, every one of which is dedicated to a separate concept or aspect of the topic, helps improve eLearning outcomes by at least 17%, according to the Journal of Applied Psychology research.
Another important aspect to keep an eye on is choosing the right approach to content accessibility.
Things to consider:
- Is the content adapted to mobile learning and are all the course features accessible on any mobile device?
- Does your LMS enable 24/7 ad-hoc learning?
- Does it provide synchronous and asynchronous learning?
Traditional classroom-based education is an example of synchronous learning. All the learners and educators have to be present in some place at the same time in order to transfer and consume knowledge at some pace. New technologies allow us to replace physical presence in the classroom with online video-conferences and webinars, yet the principle of working at the same time remains unchanged. This provides the ability to interact with learners and educators live but limits the ability to educate large groups of people.
On the other hand, asynchronous learning doesn't require the learners and eLearning course instructors to be present at the event at the same time. The content is pre-recorded once and can be used for a lifetime with easy recaps. Adding various quizzes and surveys helps educators evaluate the efficiency of the content, the knowledge gaps in their learners, and devise ways to adjust the content. Though this form of feedback cannot be applied live, it helps keep the content relevant to the needs of a much wider learner audience and improve it when necessary.
On the other hand, asynchronous learning doesn't require the learners and eLearning course instructors to be present at the event at the same time. The content is pre-recorded once and can be used for a lifetime with easy recaps. Adding various quizzes and surveys helps educators evaluate the efficiency of the content, the knowledge gaps in their learners, and devise ways to adjust the content. Though this form of feedback cannot be applied live, it helps keep the content relevant to the needs of a much wider learner audience and improve it when necessary.
3. Social interaction tools
Things to consider:
- Does your LMS provide social interaction channels and features?
- Are social learning features important for your organization's learning culture?
A good LMS should provide a wide variety of social interaction tools:
- Chat Rooms and discussion boards for every course.
- Video chats or APIs for integrating with popular messengers and video-conferencing tools.
- Social media logins from Facebook, LinkedIn, Google, etc.
- Ability to share your eLearning achievements and awards with your social media audience.
- Ability to share, like, and comment on various items in your LMS content catalog.
- Integration with existing enterprise social networking tools (forums, intranets, etc).
- Widgets for instant access to communication channels.
4. User management, Assessment and Survey handling
Things to consider:
- Does the LMS enable simple grouping of users based on certain attributes like position, seniority level, department, etc — and easy assignment of courses fitted to their needs?
- Does the LMS provide survey functionality?
- Does the LMS come with exams and follow-up quiz management wizard?
- Does the LMS support push notifications and reminders?
L&D initiatives are among the hardest ones to measure the outcome and efficiency. Proving the value, positive impact, and resource-efficiency of an eLearning course is quite hard. Thus, a good LMS should provide a range of metrics and features to enable the eLearning outcome assessment, like:
The ability to track learner's activity is among the most important aspects of eLearning course development. Timely data collection and analysis enable the eLearning professionals to assess the trends and ensure the learning course delivers the most value to their learners.
Interactions between the course admins and the learners are essential to keep the course flow smooth. Custom Push Notifications are a great way to keep your audience updated on the latest events via instant messages, both personal and group ones. This also increases their engagement in the course, allowing the admins to chase up laggards and inform the learners of the new possible achievements and prizes. The overall learner engagement grows and training progress increases greatly as a result.
The best evaluators of your eLearning course efficiency are the learners themselves. Instructional designers receive invaluable input from learner feedback. allowing them to identify the gaps in content and improve course efficiency. Unifying the course data and adjusting it to meet the needs of your learners helps personalize and improve their learning journeys.
- Student activity & progress,
- Identification of low- and high-performers,
- Clustering learners' activity and characteristics, etc.
The ability to track learner's activity is among the most important aspects of eLearning course development. Timely data collection and analysis enable the eLearning professionals to assess the trends and ensure the learning course delivers the most value to their learners.
Interactions between the course admins and the learners are essential to keep the course flow smooth. Custom Push Notifications are a great way to keep your audience updated on the latest events via instant messages, both personal and group ones. This also increases their engagement in the course, allowing the admins to chase up laggards and inform the learners of the new possible achievements and prizes. The overall learner engagement grows and training progress increases greatly as a result.
The best evaluators of your eLearning course efficiency are the learners themselves. Instructional designers receive invaluable input from learner feedback. allowing them to identify the gaps in content and improve course efficiency. Unifying the course data and adjusting it to meet the needs of your learners helps personalize and improve their learning journeys.
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5. Analytics and reporting
Things to consider:
- Do your employees accomplish their assigned training?
- Are the learning initiatives progressing according to the roadmap and strategy?
- Which eLearning content provides the best completion rates?
- Does your training help the underperformers to increase their productivity?
- Do you need customizable report templates?
A good LMS should provide in-detail analytics and reporting capabilities to bring insights into the training program efficiency. Such information should be based on various real-time reports and historical data on learner activity, competencies and progress. eLearning analytics is also very useful for showcasing and comparing the efficiency of different methods and eLEarning approaches for various learner groups. In addition. your organization might need to customize the reports to meet its unique operational and educational modus operandi and current business objectives. Real-time reports on learner dashboards keep the learners aware of their progress and performance.
6. Automated Reporting
Things to consider:
- Can you configure and schedule reports easily?
- Can you email reports automatically?
- Are there standardized reports?
Automated LMS reporting helps transform the disparate training results of individual learners into unified data. This helps show the overall course efficiency, which can be transformed into the KPIs familiar to the business executives. An ability to create custom ad-hoc reports covering various areas of online courses is also an important part of LMS analytics.
When you want to receive the same reports at some intervals, you should set up scheduled reporting to stop wasting time and effort on manual reporting.
When you want to receive the same reports at some intervals, you should set up scheduled reporting to stop wasting time and effort on manual reporting.
7. Ease of Integration
Things to consider:
- Did your sales generate more business after finishing the training? How many percent more?
- What content categories will your training requirements? is it available off-the-shelf or will you have to create it?
- Will your course have videos, podcasts, webinars — or merely text and images?
LMS will become the heart of your business, as the training is directly tied to business outcomes. Thus, integrating the LMS with a CRM will help evaluate the training efficiency in terms of sales and other business impacts.
LMS can also be integrated with an HRM (Human Resource Management) system, to ease onboarding, provide ad-hoc training for promotions, reassignments or monitor employee turnover
If your courses include webinars, integration with webinar management tools is a wise choice to reduce toil and automate repetitive tasks like session scheduling or attendee registration.
Integration with Single Sign-On or SSO tools allows your employees to access a wide variety of business resources with a single set of credentials. Such features are provided by Azure, Google Cloud, and other tools, greatly reducing password recovery fatigue and IT expenses.
Finally, if you decide to integrate your LMS with an eCommerce system and payment gateways, you will be able to monetize your training content and sell it to an audience outside the organization through simple and secure shopping carts.
LMS can also be integrated with an HRM (Human Resource Management) system, to ease onboarding, provide ad-hoc training for promotions, reassignments or monitor employee turnover
If your courses include webinars, integration with webinar management tools is a wise choice to reduce toil and automate repetitive tasks like session scheduling or attendee registration.
Integration with Single Sign-On or SSO tools allows your employees to access a wide variety of business resources with a single set of credentials. Such features are provided by Azure, Google Cloud, and other tools, greatly reducing password recovery fatigue and IT expenses.
Finally, if you decide to integrate your LMS with an eCommerce system and payment gateways, you will be able to monetize your training content and sell it to an audience outside the organization through simple and secure shopping carts.
8.Gamification
Things to consider:
- Do you want to employ gamification in your training content?
- How can it help your course?
- How to avoid over-gamification?
Gamification is one of the eLearning best practices: providing training in an engaging and entertaining way to improve knowledge transfer. Imbuing you learning content with quizzes and interactive tests, issuing badges and rewards for achievements, structuring the content in a form of game levels, and allowing the learners to proceed at their own pace once they gain enough points — all of these are gamification methods.
This leads to edutainment — combining education with entertainment. As research from BBC Horizon proves, this approach increases training retention by at least 30%. Besides, a study from the National Academy of Science proved that the knowledge gained in the form of active games instead of passive audio consumption is memorized much better.
This leads to edutainment — combining education with entertainment. As research from BBC Horizon proves, this approach increases training retention by at least 30%. Besides, a study from the National Academy of Science proved that the knowledge gained in the form of active games instead of passive audio consumption is memorized much better.
9. eCommerce
Things to consider:
- Do you plan to sell your online courses?
- What eCommerce features are the most relevant for your business goals?
- Do you plan to provide and handle discounts, live events, and tickets?
- Will the prices change often?
As we mentioned above, LMS integration with an eCommerce platform provides a secure and simple shopping experience for users that want to purchase your eLearning content. From SSO to using PayPal, Stripe and other payment processors, you can simplify and efficiently manage the customer's journey. All in all, increasing your revenue is one of the goals of LMS implementation, along with improving business performance — and eCommerce helps achieve this objective. From discounts and cross-selling to integrated analytics — an LMS and eCommerce duo can be very profitable for your business.
10. Security
Things to consider:
- Do you transfer all sensitive data over an HTTPS connection?
- What data is recorded and how is it encrypted?
- Where is the sensitive data stored and how is it protected?
- Are your sign-on points secure?
- Is your LMS cloud-based or does it run on-prem?
- How is the user authorization performed?
Secure data collection, handling, and storage within your LMS are one of the paramount concerns. This applies to user's credentials and banking details, as well as for managing your eLearning content that often has commercial value. Thus, ensuring the data security by design is equally important to monitor the admin activity. Unfortunately, when the users lack legitimate ways to achieve their goals, they will find workarounds, and password sharing is one of them. This nullifies the credibility of admin actions, as many people can use the same login to perform some actions in the system. Therefore, having unlimited admin accounts and executing in-depth monitoring of their actions is better, when compared to having limited admin accounts that were compromised.
Creating, adjusting, and deleting content or user records should be traceable and logged. This ensures visibility into the data security management process.
Creating, adjusting, and deleting content or user records should be traceable and logged. This ensures visibility into the data security management process.
Conclusion
Learning Management Systems can be the beating heart of your organization, as well as the goldmine of actionable business knowledge and expertise. However, the LMS works as intended only if the features it provides meet the needs of your organization.
The 10 features listed above can be just a tip of the iceberg and might be replaced or complemented with the must-have features for your business. However, while instating, configuring, and maintaining the eLearning initiative using an LMS will definitely require time, money, and effort, it must not require too much of any of these. If this happens — you have to admit that mistakes were made while choosing an LMS, in the first place.
To avoid such outcomes, explore all the variants of LMS deployment — from using the most popular or niche platforms to developing your own LMS tools. The latter might be the best solution when you need to customize the system to meet your operational DNA and provide a UX your users are familiar with. This also ensures you take care of security and integration needs from the start.
Order a checklist of the main LMS features to select the ones your organization requires the most and make the right choice!
Learning Management Systems can be the beating heart of your organization, as well as the goldmine of actionable business knowledge and expertise. However, the LMS works as intended only if the features it provides meet the needs of your organization.
The 10 features listed above can be just a tip of the iceberg and might be replaced or complemented with the must-have features for your business. However, while instating, configuring, and maintaining the eLearning initiative using an LMS will definitely require time, money, and effort, it must not require too much of any of these. If this happens — you have to admit that mistakes were made while choosing an LMS, in the first place.
To avoid such outcomes, explore all the variants of LMS deployment — from using the most popular or niche platforms to developing your own LMS tools. The latter might be the best solution when you need to customize the system to meet your operational DNA and provide a UX your users are familiar with. This also ensures you take care of security and integration needs from the start.
Order a checklist of the main LMS features to select the ones your organization requires the most and make the right choice!
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Europe Headquarters - Ukraine, Kharkiv
UA +38 050 298-1847
info@globalluxsoft.com
