eLearning is becoming popular day-by-day for people who don’t have time to go through all paperbacks of the concepts they want to learn about.
With a lot of course videos and training programs, eLearning websites gained a huge market demand all over the world.
Learning Management Systems help in simplifying eLearning. They create, manage, modify, assign and evaluate.
Who Uses Learning Management Systems?
There is a misconception that only educational organizations use learning management systems since they deal with education.
But many business corporations are also in necessity of eLearning to train their employees according to the company’s policies and objectives.
In fact, every other agency which needs to train its employees will need a Learning Management System.
Functions of an LMS
The primary function of a Learning Management System is to track online activities of the organization.
But generally, an LMS is developed to perform the following main functions:
- Developing Courses
- Managing User Accounts
- Monitoring Tasks
- Other Tasks like Video Conferencing etc.
Developing Courses
A Learning Management System must have data, in order to deliver it to the users.
You can enter the lessons or course programs from the start – writing all the lessons – or you could directly import the files from your device.
An LMS lets you add courses from various sources in various formats including videos.
The last step would be organizing the courses in an order you’d like your employees to learn and then deliver it.
Managing User Accounts
There are three types of users in a Learning Management System:
One is Administrators, who manage all the user accounts and deliver courses. Other is Instructors who take courses and conduct online assessments. Last category consists of students who take the courses to learn stuff they’re interested in.
In some cases, Instructors and Administrators, both could be the same person. They can manage accounts as well as teach them.
As for learners, they could be anyone: students of an educational institution or employees of an organization.
Now, Managing the users not only includes creating and deleting accounts but also involves registering the users, assigning courses to them, and interacting with them for further improvements.
Monitoring Learner Tasks
This is one of the most important tasks that LMS does. It tracks and monitors the student tasks in the system.
An LMS provides access to student activities, their grades, attendance and statistics, irrespective of the size of learners.
Real-time alerts and notifications are also sent to instructors to let them know if a students has completed the assessment or submitted their assignment.
A Learning Management System also reports the user data in the form of graphs and charts, allowing you to recognize trends and issues.
Other Advanced Tasks
- LMS allows students to video call each other through audio and video.
- Integrated payment service with the courses students take up.
- Platform independent systems – can be used with mobiles and computers as well.
- Allows students to study even when they’re offline.
- Allows students and instructors to change or create themes for your own client-side.
- Integrated with third-party systems and data exchanging through eLearning standards made available.
- Allows students and instructors to post their writings or works on a common platform.
Deployment
A Learning Management System can be hosted on various platforms:
Cloud-Based
The LMS vendor maintains the system and handles all the updates or updates on the system. It doesn’t involve any software but the learners and instructors are supposed to log in the application with a unique username and password.
The only loophole is these LMS are not customizable.
Self-Hosted
LMS vendor makes the software available through their official website for the users to download it. Or if you request for a physical disk, it may be available through it.
However, downloading from the official vendor site is more prominent these days.
Desktop Application
This Learning Management App is hosted on the desktop.
The LMS vendor directly installs the app on the user desktop. Sometimes, they are available on multiple devices from a single desktop.
Mobile Application
The Learning Management Systems are available irrespective of platforms. Users can access the LMS application through mobile devices as well.
Benefits of an LMS
1) The most important benefit of a Learning Management System is that it streamlines education process.
2) All the user activities are done on a single platform which includes making and submitting assignments, online assessments, and messages to each other.
3) A Learning Management System being a technological product has the ability to engage students into learning process.
4) An administrator can also track student’s activities about their login details, submitted works and also records all the data.
5) Learning Management Systems are platform-independent. That means, any user can access the system from anywhere on any device like mobile phones, tablets or computer systems.
6) Engages students or learners with many tasks at hand and if they have any queries regarding any concept, the instructors are always available through the messaging system in the LMS.
How to Choose an Ideal LMS for Your Company?
Finding a right Learning Management System for your company depends on the objective of your organization. Every LMS differs with the type of organization it needs to work for.
Understand all the features of the Learning Management System you are looking for and deploy it if it has everything you need.
Bottom Line
Learning Management Systems are deployed solely for the purpose of enhancing eLearning methods. They differ from organization to organization since they all have different policies and training methods.
