Whether you’re new to a learning management system or upgrading your current LMS tools, it’s important to choose a tool that has the capabilities to meet your organization’s unique needs. We’ve put together a list of 8 LMS features to help you find a better learning platform for your organization.
Before diving into the main features of LMS for organizations, let’s clarify what LMS is and what its purpose is. In short, LMS is a digital system that can store and manage all of your organization’s e-learning content and track its results. As a result, LMS can be used both as a central repository of company-wide learning content and as a tool to facilitate learning in the enterprise.
Beyond this basic definition, what you can do with an LMS depends on the specific features of your LMS and can vary significantly. That’s what we’re going to cover today. By the end of this article, you will have a clear understanding of the different options and LMS features that best suit your organization’s goals.
LMS features:
Whether you’re new to LMS or updating an existing solution, here’s a checklist of 8 major LMS features to keep in mind.
Content organization
By definition, an LMS is a tool that allows you to store and manage your training content. But choosing an LMS is more than just meeting this basic requirement. You should also find one that keeps your content organized and easy to find for both teachers and learners. For example, learners should be able to easily find content that best matches their profession without having to scroll through content from other groups the hard way. While LMSs traditionally lacked a search function to allow users to quickly find the content they need, more have started adding a function to keep up with the trend of on-demand learning these days. Finding an LMS that does this can help your organization better meet modern learning needs.
User-friendly interface
Along with keeping the content organized, it is equally important that your LMS be easy to interact with. The intuitive user interface not only speeds up the time it takes for learners to discover and locate the content they need but also provides an engaging and hassle-free learning experience.
Learning paths
Learning paths are some other functions LMSs are including to hold up with the fashion of on-call for mastering. These are strings of guides tied collectively for a learner to finish and obtain a much wider mastering objective. Because mastering goals can`t usually be executed via an unmarried course, mastering paths offer a guided course of guides and content. More importantly, mastering paths offer a greater customized experience. By understanding precisely which guides it takes to finish a selected mastering objective, beginners spend much less time exploring the database to decide and might dive properly into accomplishing their goals.
Assessment and grading
Learning is more than just creating content and delivering it to learners. Tracking learners’ progress, properly assessing their learning needs, and even sharing feedback to help them progress are also important. Assessment features like digital quizzes and tests can make a huge difference in understanding where your learners are and what additional guidance they may need. The grading features also allow you to respond to learners’ assessments by giving them an idea of their understanding of the topic.
Feedback System
Just as giving feedback helps learners improve, receiving feedback can contribute to an organization’s learning strategy. Having a dedicated space for your learners to share feedback on their learning experiences can shed light on the impact you are having and whether you are meeting the needs of your learners. You can use qualitative feedback to assess the quality of your learning content and adjust it as needed to reinforce your company’s learning strategy.
Learner tracking and reporting
Detailed learner monitoring capabilities are any other manner to benefit perception into how your content material may be improved. Most LMSs include data-pushed learner reports, permitting you to become aware of who`s finished your courses, whether or not they exceeded or failed, or maybe what number of tries they made at a question. These metrics can offer quantitative perception into your learners` progress, permitting you to become aware of styles or information gaps that will let you enhance your content material.
User management
There will likely be many people involved in your LMS with roles ranging from content creators to facilitators to learners. That’s why it’s important to have an intuitive user management tool that allows you to easily create new users and organize them by their roles and the specific permissions they have. For example, you can give more experienced training and development professionals the right to administer the system. You can also designate certain users as instructors, giving them more access to course management settings.
Certification and compliance
If your organization has compliance goals to meet, make sure your LMS has features that can easily facilitate company-wide compliance training. Additionally, you should also look for certification features, which allow the company to demonstrate its compliance. It should be noted that an LMS is particularly well-suited to facilitating top-down mandatory training such as compliance and security. With these types of topics, the content is generated by the company’s central learning department and distributed to the rest of the organization, making it a top-down learning method. We see the future of e-learning moving towards a bottom-up approach, which we’ll cover in more detail later.
