This post will highlight nine essential features you need to look out for when you choose an LMS!
With the global workforce getting larger by the day, eLearning has been on the rise in the recent years due to the wide range of benefits it offers. Be it the ease of learning or how it helps boost engagement levels, eLearning has been embraced by most corporate organizations. However, eLearning would definitely not be effective enough without this particular tool: The Learning Management System (LMS).
What Is an LMS?
The needs of a workforce are changing at a very rapid rate and learning technologies have been coming up with various solutions to meet this challenge. The LMS is one of them. An LMS is a software platform that aids in the efficient delivery, administration, tracking, and documenting of learning materials. This particular software will be hosted in your organization’s server by which training and managing training programs will get a lot easier.
Considering the vast number of LMSs available in the market, how do you know which LMS is the right one for your organization? Let me make it easier for you. Listed below are a few features that you need to look for in an LMS before you choose one.
The Must-Haves in an LMS
1. Ease of Use
Would you want your courses to be deployed on a platform that is too hard for your learners to access? Definitely no! So always ensure you choose an LMS which has an interface that is intuitive as well as visually appealing. Be it your learners searching for the required courses or to administrators managing user registrations and profiles, the interface should be easily usable.
2. Reporting and Tracking
Reporting and tracking is a very important parameter in any learning environment. This feature in an LMS will allow you to track the various activities of your learners as they take up the courses. Do you want to know the time of login, how much time each learner spends on a course, or the percentage of completion of each course? Do you want to know the number of attempts taken to get a particular question right or the questions that were answered incorrectly? The reporting and tracking feature lets you do it all.
3. Responsive Design
Suppose your learners want to access courses on their way to work. Or maybe they want to refer to some particular information on field. How do you enable this? This will be possible if and only if the LMS has a responsive design. Having an LMS that supports multi-device access will allow your learners to take up the course in whichever device they are comfortable with and also whenever they want to, thus improving productivity.
4. Multilingual Support
What good is an LMS if it doesn’t let your global workforce access courses in their preferred languages? An LMS that has a multilingual interface will let your learners access the courses in which ever language they prefer. Also, developing different courses for different languages will be a thing of the past if you have a multilingual LMS. Just develop one single course and deliver it in various languages. It is that simple!
5. Gamified Elements
Think of the excitement and rush you feel when you play a game and see your name on the top of the leaderboard. And suppose your name didn’t make it to the top; you continue playing until you beat your fellow competitors to steal away the top place from them. Right? Do you want your learners to feel the same rush as they take up each course?
Choose an LMS that has gamified elements, and it’s done! Such LMSs have leaderboards and also rewards such as badges and trophies which will not only demonstrate their level of mastery but also create a competitive environment. Let your learners feel the rush!
6. Sequential Completion
Are your learners not following a particular order while taking up a course? Are they directly accessing the fifth module after the completion of the first? Well, you no more have to worry about that if you have an LMS which provides the feature that lets your learners take up courses only in a sequential order. No more jumping across various modules within the course!
7. Ability to Create Resources
Did you ever come across the need to test your learners periodically so that you can decide on the follow up measures? Or maybe you want to include additional links or assignments, which aren’t available in the course, for your learners to access?
Choose an LMS that provides the ability to create resources within the platform. You can easily create a quiz to test your learners, or include a glossary within the course. This will help in making your training comprehensive and more effective.
8. Local Training Management
Managing the learning content when it comes to training a large group of employees, by one single administrator is definitely a mammoth task. So, make sure you choose a learning management system that allows local training management by region-specific administrators.
As you disperse courses to your global workforce, administrators can be assigned in each of the regions. These Admins can easily manage the training for their region, thus taking the load off one single administrator.
9. Ability to Host on the Cloud Server
Looking for a way to store your training content safely without having your own infrastructure? Make sure you choose a course that enables Cloud hosting. Learning management systems with this feature give you a secure option to store your content and also enable faster deployment of your courses. Your employees can also easily log in to a site and access the course, rather than having to install the entire management software.
Be it making learning a great experience for your learners or reducing eLearning training costs for your organization, the benefits a learning management system offers are boundless. So what are you waiting for? Keep these features in mind and choose the right LMS, thus making it an exciting hangout for your learners!
