Information Technology has revolutionized every aspect of life. The education field also had its benefit such that a Physics lecture of an MIT professor is available to a high school student who just started learning Physics from any corner of the world. Today there are lots of online learning platforms for completing any desired course that requires an electronic device like a mobile, laptop with a proper internet connection. E-learning satisfies modern learning with interactive content in the form of video, audio, text, etc. E-learning has taken further steps by implementing a Learning Management System. All LMSs can be considered as an E-learning platform but not vice-versa.
An LMS is a software application that allows administration, documentation, and tracking of educational courses. An E-learning platform that provides all these services can be called an LMS. An LMS along with the delivery, of course, checks the student’s progress, conducts assessment tests, and attains and analyses the feedback from students. So LMS allows better and easier evaluation of students. The LMS is like an online university. The LMS allows you to create a single source of online courses and training material which will eventually become unique information, so you can keep and increase the in-house expertise of your organization. Unlike normal E-learning platforms, LMS is not a heap of files, on the contrary, it is a well-organized system where you manage the training processes. The LMS is a software application that automates all tasks such as grading, processing statistics, and preparing reports.
Applications
LMS provides users with a better user experience and better administrative experience. The LMS is used by Organisations from different sectors such as education institutions, corporates, etc.
Educational
Institutions and Corporations
The Educational institutions LMS to provide students with deep knowledge of the subjects and strive to learn more. Here the objective is to allow students to gain more theoretical knowledge. The Corporates courses focus on learning related to practical applications. The LMS is used by Corporates to train their employees, to achieve a better interaction with their partners, and to allow customers to have a better understanding of their products. Incorporates the time limits are shorter, so a corporate LMS should be flexible to meet all the time frames and business needs. Companies can recognize employees based on the skills and knowledge achieved through the course and employ them with tasks based on those skills and knowledge. Many industries such as medicine, engineering, and finance services use LMS to
provide training for their member’s license. It allows entrepreneurs to provide various crash courses in accounting, marketing, writing, and other short-term skill-based courses. Online marketers and advertising professionals need to constantly be up to date with the fast-evolving global market. A learning management system tailored to their needs can help in imparting their skills even from the comfort of home.
Features
The common features of an LMS mentioned below:
User Management
A user can access all training courses by creating an account in LMS. LMS assigns roles to the
users such as learners, trainers, administrators Sometimes a user could assume more than one role for example a user could be a trainer and an administrator at the same time. The user is granted access to training material based on their roles and requirement.
Objectives
Objectives are set up for each course which is to be achieved after the completion of courses. The objective could be to pass a test or to complete a specific task. The courses for each user could be customized based on the objective that is assigned to a course.
User Interaction
The LMS allows interactive sessions between students and teachers. MS tries to provide an interactive training environment by introducing live chats, debates, discussions, etc. Thus, it allows users to interact with users with fellow students and teachers. It spares users from the physical environment of class and puts them in an on-demand learning environment.
Gamification
Recently game design elements are added to the courses to improve user engagement and enhance the user’s capability to comprehend digital content. The gamification of LMS is achieved by setting up leader boards to encourage users to surpass their peers, awarding points for achieving minor milestones during the course, etc.
Integrations
Integration applications(apps)make sharing data between LMS, CRM, payment services, and email automation services. Customizable integration apps automate the popular business process such as data loading and employee onboarding for LMS users.
Mobile Learning
LMS make use of smartphone technology and microlearning to deliver learning strategies that provide better results than desktop learning. Mobile learning must be compatible with Android as well as Apple mobile devices while remaining perfectly formatted within any web browser.
Social Learning
One of the key effects of social learning via an LMS is user-generated content. Everyone enjoys sharing their achievements and success with peers and colleagues especially on social platforms. Hence learners with remarkable positive experiences from using your LMS can share this experience with their friends. Besides, social learning also enables the use of learners’ testimonials and feedback as original content to further promote their success, training programs, and the overall business.
Notification
The LMS contains many notifications to inform learners, supervisors, and other learning contacts on learning events and opportunities, automatic process, and more. Most of these notifications can be customized. Notification emails are sent when:
- An automated process or background job is finished
- A user registers, requests, withdraw from or is added to a waiting list for a course
- A scheduled offering is rescheduled or canceled
- A competency assessment must be completed
- Inventory must be reordered
eCommerce
An eCommerce integrated LMS lets users carry out all their transactions starting from registration to making the payment through a Single Sign-On (SSO). As they do not have to switch between multiple platforms, they get a seamless browsing experience which in turn helps boost your sales. eCommerce integration increases the marketability of your site. The eCommerce platform is meant to organize and display products. An eCommerce integrated LMS will save considerable effort and time spent on routine administrative chores. You can make general rules and attributes to streamline the registration, account creation, course progress, and certificate generation after successful completion of the course. All the user activities are saved automatically in real-time without any human involvement.
Evaluation
Various forms of assessments such as an online quiz, a simulation, or a live demonstration of practical skills are conducted to check the progress of the user in the course. One of the main features of LMS is the ability to measure the effectiveness of learning in each course. No matter how a large number of learners attend the course whether it is 5 or 5000 people LMS can easily track the progress of each induvial in real-time. Each course is combined with a test that is suitable for achieving the objectives. The level of difficulty of each test is determined by expectations from the user and progress made by the user. The tests are made as interactive as possible to make it less stressful for the user. Test results can also be treated as feedback from users.
Advantages
The LMS is very profitable for organizations since it reduces training costs. LMS allows organizations to save time and money allowing easy administration of an unlimited amount of information. The online classes are cost-efficient when compared to normal classes were on many occasions’ employees needed to travel for training sessions and pay accommodation fees etc. It allows organizations, automation, and programming to check with the needs of the learners and employees. It allows organizations to efficiently manage registrations/signups and the creation of groups and courses. LMS can be considered as a powerful tool that allows easier and intuitive methods to create and manage the content of courses. Administrators can add new materials or update content for immediate access for a new specific category of learners. It can reduce training thanks to the fact that it gives online learners only the information they need in a direct and organized manner. Instead of attending the whole course, they learn to have the option to select required modules and attain intended goals in a fraction of time. We can connect the LMS to many tools such as google meet, Gmail, etc to provide a better experience.
LCMS
The LMS can be implemented as a SaaS(Software as a Service) where the LMS vendor takes care of server loads, backups, and storing training materials. Many organizations choose this way where they don’t have their own IT staff. In such cases, an organization only needs to provide the learning material. But storing information in a remote server could raise security concerns. Software companies set up their own LMS in their servers where the development and maintenance of the LMS are done by the company itself. LMS that has course creating capabilities is known as Learning Content Management System (LCMS). The LCMS can be used to develop collaborative content with design templates, reuse content nuggets across courses and learning departments, import content from other authoring tools, and publish content across multiple outputs and devices.
Artificial Intelligence in LMS
A machine learning LMS makes use of a specific set of algorithms to learn and make predictions on data. Machine Learning LMS can provide the best learning experience by providing them with what is relevant and challenging. AI-based LMS provides content recommendations for the most effective translation of information to employees. AI ensures personalized experiences for each of your learners by analysing their behavior, what courses they have interacted with most and their preferred format for learning. The more data the system processes, the more AI learns about individual learners’ needs turning the leading platform into a continuous improvement that grows alongside your learners.
Conclusion
Whatever learning demands, an LMS is there to deliver. Without it, the online world would be an enormous textbook filled with unorganized knowledge – there would be little order to our studying efforts, and even less methodology to learning would still be possible, of course, but not in an efficient, systematic manner that LMS provides.
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