5 Must Have Features you should look for in an LMS (Learning Management System)
What is an LMS?
If you are associated with the eLearning industry or even managing a corporate sector, the term LMS might not be new to you. Whether it is a small business or a large enterprise, it is extremely crucial to learn about LMS before you are transferring your traditional corporate trainings to online trainings.
LMS is the short form of learning management system. LMS can simply be described as a software that is used to control, track, report and deliver online trainings. Just like you use Gmail to send emails and a mobile phone to call people, individuals use a learning management system to create and deliver their eLearning courses.
L: Learning: Since the software is used to deliver training and learning courses to the users.
M: Management: It allows you to assign, track and also gather reports of the progress of every individual by managing the whole process efficiently.
S: System: A well-organized system that efficiently performs all the tasks from content creation to delivery of training.
Since the past 16 years, there is a massive growth in adaptation of learning management system in corporate training sectors with the percentage increasing to 98%.LMS is the only tool that has been used widely for training new employees and improving the skillsets of current employees by giving a better learning experience. With the increase of demand, number of global software companies to tiny cloud vendors have also risen to 700.With so many choices, it becomes exceptionally difficult to choose one LMS for your training programs.
For this reason, we have a gathered a list of features that you must look for and must not compromise on before choosing a learning management system.
Must-Have Features in an LMS
- User-Friendly interface:
If the user is spending more time trying to figure out using the learning management system rather than actually learning the training course, then the LMS is definitely not user-friendly and requires certain changes right away. This hinders in achieving the goal of the organization and can be a great risk to your investment. Specially in workforce, where we have employees as young as 21-year-old to senior executives in their 50s, the interface of the learning management system should be easy to use for everyone. When choosing a LMS, look out for a software that instead of allowing you to just upload plain boring text, but also different visuals such as images, videos and quizzes.
- Reports and Analytics
To help the tutor keep track of learner’s progress and weak points, a Learning management system should be able to provide regular reports such as Learner Progress and Completion Rates, their Participation and Engagement, Results of Online Assessment and Learner Satisfaction Ratings. Apart from monitoring the learner’s journey, this feature allows you to save your time from spending hours on tasks related to analytics and administration by the learning and development team.
- Built-in Authoring Tools
For the creation and assignment of tasks to the students, a built-in authoring tools is important for your LMS to have. An authoring tool is simply a software that helps you in creating and arranging the content of the course and keeps it organized. Learning management systems such as Moodle and canvas provides user with the ease of having everything in one place which saves the L&D team from exporting their data in more than one system.
- Offer Personalized Learning Paths
A workforce consists of a wide range of learners, each individual coming from a different background and with different skills sets and therefore requires a different level of training. Even if your learners are working in the same departments, they should be provided with personalized learning paths. This will not just increase the learner’s engagement but also help you to reduce the drop-out rate.
- Mobile support
Since most learners prefer to learn when travelling, commuting or when they are home through their mobile phones, having an LMS that supports mobile learning is not a luxury but a requirement. Most applications require internet to access the learning content. However, since eLearning industry is evolving every day, LMS with offline access to content are also becoming very popular. This is a bonus for organizations with global workforce and trainees facing connection issues.
Bottom Line:
Your ideal LMS should make learning and training activities efficient and operative. From usability factors’ viewpoint, an LMS should be spontaneous, easy to absorb and decrease uncertainty. In order to deliver value, an LMS should enable officers or managers to have easy access to reporting capabilities, have a low learning curve and offer functionality and features that can be used to engage learners in any educational setting. The role of LMS in workplaces is to ensure staff can be trained with the relevant knowledge, skills and behaviors expected within a workplace, with an aim to efficiently enable staff to complete job-related tasks.
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