Essential Features to Have in a Learning Management System
Essential Features to Have in a Learning Management System
The ability to simplify the delivery of student learning is an essential component of successful educational institutions. In this blog, we will take a closer look at what an LMS is and how the solutions can assist educational institutions to keep a superior track of a substantial amount of important information about every critical facet.
As more students begin to have a quantifiable grasp of eLearning’s value, it’s crucial to know how organizations can benefit from an efficient Learning Management System (LMS). For starters, let’s understand what an LMS is:
What is a Learning Management System?
It is a software application to track, document, manage, report, automate, and deliver educational courses, training programs, or learning and development programs. LMS is the structure that provides and oversees instructional content, recognizes and evaluates institutional and individual learning goals, traces the development towards meeting those goals and gathers and presents data for examining the learning procedure of the educational institution.
For educational institutions trying to accomplish academic excellence, learning management systems are built to identify learning gaps. Also, it is an online system that enables you to trace, examine, and evaluate course delivery, student, and teacher progress.
Learning Management System is meant to make the user’s life easier by consolidating data and implementing online training resources. However, this requires identifying an LMS that meets all your requirements and falls within your budget. Towards this, ACL Digital leverages technical, functional, business, and industry know-how to assist educational institutions with a superior platform.
Here's a Top List of the Quintessential LMS Characteristics
Do you know what you require from your next LMS, or have you dropped some essential features off your list? Take a look below at some of the overlooked elements of the LMS.
1. Personalization and Customization
It is a broad classification with numerous aspects and components. Your LMS should pave the way to customize specific features of the user interface and online training. From learner engagement to completion rates, most LMS platforms comes with pre-built reports that cover a range of metrics. For example, social or confidential learning actions that improve online training capability or compliance online training courses that are critical during an audit. Also, it should consist of reports and analytics such as performance tracking and learner progress.
2. Data Migration
You might have a substantial amount of Big Data stored on your hard drive or existing LMS. But are you able to move all that pivotal information to your new Learning Management System? An efficient LMS should support a wide range of formats. Additionally, it should make the whole data migration process as straightforward as possible without any hassles.
3. Social Media Support
An efficient LMS should give the power to incorporate social media learning tools into your online training approach. Online training courses missing that critical social media element are doing a great injustice to their students. For example, tracking tools used by educational institutions help you monitor learner engagement and involvement. Most LMS have the ability that makes the learning environment readily available at any time and any place.
4. Functionality
Functionality is another essential characteristic to keep in mind while examining an LMS platform. You should always check to see if the system is accessible to any student and from any place. One of the advantages of a cloud-based learning management system is its ease of use. This flexibility is necessary for institutions seeking to hire remote teachers. The ability to have 24/7/365 access to courses allows multi-location enterprises to streamline courses.
5. Security and Privacy
Your online learning systems will host personal information, including emails, phone numbers, home addresses, and other vital information. As such, your students’ eLearning privacy and security is a critical element to LMS you cannot overlook. You should ascertain that your learning management platform has password-protected logins, privacy controls, server locations, and an automated backup system.
6. Assessment Tools
Apart from day-to-day analytics and LMS reports, one of the most straightforward ways to track learner engagement and performance is to conduct online training evaluations. This can differ from branching situations and written exams to online training models. The aim is to measure their understanding so that you can offer individualized recommendations. The LMS should support a wide range of online assessment techniques and permit you to deliver instant feedback.
7. Online Collaboration Tools
Most built-in online collaboration tools include community calendars and video conferencing software that allows you to generate engaging and interactive training experiences that eliminate geographical constraints. Also, consider keeping your students in the loop regarding synchronous learning events, online training courses, such as live webinars where they can ask questions and share feedback.
8. Feedback System and Support Services
The ideal way to collect feedback and opinions about your online training course is to ask students directly. Thus, one of the LMS characteristics that you require is a built-in feedback system to gather and compile user data/information. E.g., coordinate all the survey data and then generate a companion graph. Also, it should have polling or survey tools that help you keep a check from time to time.
Meanwhile, regarding the support services, it is essential to know if your LMS vendor provides email or phone support in case you encounter issues or if there is a strange emergency. If you have any doubts or questions that are limited to FAQs, you should consider asking your vendor directly about the assistance in any situation.
Conclusion:
Learning management systems are highly efficient and can easily replace conventional methods of filing examination papers, storing documents, and whiteboard learning. Teachers can educate students more effectively with student-centric solutions, secure access, and centralized storage capacities. Similarly, students can better engage with and retain information when they have adaptive learning tools. If you are confused by the many options available in the LMS market, you may want to talk to our experts. Contact ACL Digital for more information or if you want to invest in a learning management system.