“Ron from Ohio just earned a new title called ‘Minister’. But he noticed that he is still at number 4 in the overall rankings, and a rank lower than Chris, his colleague from LA. No. Ron is not playing a game of online chess. He is a marketing professional in an organization and he earned his rank after completing a gamified quiz on ‘The Basis of Inbound Marketing’.”
Well, you can also create an interactive, engaging, score-based, gamified learning experience in your company. How? By deploying a comprehensive Learning Management System (LMS). So, what is an LMS? What are its types and perks? Our article will help you out in answering these questions.
Learning Management Systems: A Brief Introduction
A Learning Management System is a software that is used to design, deliver, and manage training content. You can use your company’s server to host an LMS as a stand-alone technology or take the services of a provider to host it as a cloud-based platform. LMS enhances the learning curve, ensures faster content distribution, reduces the cost of training delivery, and enables you to track learner progress.
An LMS arrives as an all-in-one platform where administrators can upload course materials, impart online training sessions to learners, share data, and embed notifications. Almost all basic LMS packages work on a web-browser and require a secured sign-on. The resultant benefits are two-way. While employees and instructors can access knowledge on the go, the company leadership can gauge the learner's progress to introduce improvements as and when necessary.
What Are the Major Types of Learning Management Systems?
You can opt for an LMS, depending on your end goals. And here is a brief outline of the common Learning Management Systems to give you a basic understanding of their features,
Enterprise Grade LMS: An enterprise-grade LMS is best-suited for large companies since it can be customized to meet the needs of 500 or more employees. It is easily scalable, contains multiple inbuilt features, and evolves alongside the organization’s growth.
Individual LMS: An individual LMS meets the needs of small organizations or start-ups since it comes with minimal functionalities.
Free LMS: Free, open-source learning management systems do offer multiple features and advanced levels. But they lack the professional support system.
Commercial LMS: A commercial learning management system is specifically designed to be deployed by corporate learning and educational institutions. It obviously arrives at a cost but ensures you of 24/7 support.
SaaS LMS: The service as a software (SaaS) model generally operates on a cloud-based platform. It might offer less customization features but you can scale it over time.
Licensed LMS: A licensed learning management system is the best bet when you require limitless customization. This is a more flexible option and can be deployed as per client specifications.
Cloud-based LMS: You can host a cloud-based LMS on a secure off-site server. You can then access the platform from anywhere, anytime -- on multiple devices or even without an internet connection.
On-premise LMS: This is more of a company-specific, stand-alone product that is deployed within the premises of the organization, using the company server.
Integrated LMS: Most contemporary learning management systems can be easily integrated with the company’s existing software and tools. Seamless blending delivers trouble-free installation and a smooth user experience.
What Are the Benefits of Using an LMS?
An LMS delivers a learning environment that can be customized as per the requirements of individual learners. It enables instructors to easily introduce tweaks and take notes. It also allows trainees and trainers to collaborate on a virtual platform. What’s more? LMS promotes microlearning -- breaking down content into chunks for easy consumption and retention. You can use an LMS to integrate tools like calendars, word processors, among others. The leadership can utilize learning management systems to create a personalized branding experience while gaining insights into learners’ progress via built-in too
The best LMS platforms are scalable and evolve according to the company’s growth. Embedded tools and resources enable developers to create course modules, activities, and assessments. Advanced learning management systems also contain tools that allow incorporating gamified quizzes, complete with rewards and scores.
To wrap it up, a full-fledged LMS makes corporate learning an engaging, efficient, and rewarding experience. It helps employees to actively contribute in their own development and that of their company. A simple, easy-to-use LMS encourages learners to participate and work toward continuous improvement. If you want an all-in-one platform that manages all your training needs, then an LMS should be an important part of your learning strategy.
In one of our earlier blogs, we have discussed the ‘9 Questions to Ask Your Vendor Before Selecting an LMS’.
If you have read it, you would know that one of the queries is enquiring if your vendor offers a demo or trial of their Learning Management System.
Irrespective of your business sector, company size, or training requirements, it is vital to ask these seven questions during an LMS demo — to understand if the platform is suitable for your organisation.1) What is the pricing structure?Your overall budget, which you have set aside for your training needs, determines the price that will be right for you.
Several LMS solutions like PlayAblo offer flexible pricing, driven by content requirements and the number of learners.
Finally, pick a learning solution that makes the most sense.2) What is the LMS implementation process?A shift to a new solution will be met by some resistance from your management and teams.
Therefore, it is essential first to gauge if your organisation is ready for a new LMS.
LMS: What is it?LMS stands for Learning Management System, a software and a well-known online hosting platform for delivering learning courses and other similar training programs.As the name suggests, a Learning Management System is an e-learning mobile app or software solution that helps you to create, organize, manage, and deliver distance learning programs.Focused highly on online learning, teaching, and training the platform is a virtually designed space where the students and mentors can get together and have all the required resources respectively.
The online learning platform acts as a management system because it helps the mentors and faculties to create, organize, change, classify, and assign their courses online to the students.In short, LMS software development consists of two parts:#1.
)LMS: Uses and FunctionalitiesIn simple words, anyone who is using an e-learning app or taking any online course is using a Learning Management System.A Learning Management System can be used for all kinds of learning and training activities and has already become a valuable tool for business, adopted by small and large organizations.Some of the very common use cases for LMS are:Knowledge RetentionAny knowledge retention program assures that the valuable techniques and skills retain with your organization when any of your employees leave the organization.
For this, it is suggested to use a Learning Management System, as you won’t prefer losing this valuable information by storing it in any document management system.By using an education app development solution or any LMS software solution for this, an organization can make sure that everyone has access at any point in time to train newly hired employees or people from other departments.Employee TrainingTraining the newly hired employees and interns or teaching new skills to everyone, is a constant need in many organizations.Using LMS software will help you to reduce costs and save time by allowing your employees to study the available materials online anywhere they wish to and at their own pace of learning.With LMS development companies enabling distance education and learning, organizations not only save a lot of time and costs compared to the face-to-face training sessions, but they also have sharp control and up-to-date information on the progress of their employees individually, thanks to the monitoring tools.EducationToday, when this pandemic is affecting almost every industry, opting for an education app or LMS software development solutions, is considered a good choice for general education and related offerings.LMS today can serve- a school by selling classes online, a company planning to educate its clients, or maybe an NGO that’s willing to educate the general population.For these and other similar cases, online teaching has come to exist and is on the way to be the future of education and learning.In general terms, LMS deals with the management and delivery of online courses and training programs.Discussed below is a more detailed description of all the common features that any LMS software development solution offers.Creating online courses - Before you make your educational app or course available to your target audience, you first need to add it to your LMS software development.
You can do this by creating your course either from scratch or by importing the existing materials that you already have with you.Organizing Courses - After creation, the next step is to organize the content that you have created.
need and structure of your business.A modern Learning Management System should be serving all the cases and should allow you to handle and manage an entire course with an unlimited number of students, and should be easy to integrate with the payment processors.Well-structured LMS software and educational apps should be responsive, user-friendly, and should offer intuitive navigation.Managing Users - There are three types of users to get your platform started - administrators (the admin panel of people setting up the platform), students, and instructors.
