Everything about a Learning Management System

A Learning Management System is an innovative software application used by businesses and organizations to train their employees and ensure compliance with regulatory requirements. A cloud-based Training Management System gives you a full platform to manage all eLearning, Instructor-Led Training (ILT) – in Classrooms and Webinars, Assessments and Certifications in a scalable and cost-effective solution

A Learning Management system is no more a luxury but a necessity for a successful organization.

Here in this blog, you will find all the necessary information regarding the usages, features, benefits, implementation, and need of a Learning Management System.

How Do You Know That Your Organization Needs an LMS?

With an increasing need to train and develop employees, organizations are continuously looking for ways to deliver training efficiently. As a solution, the use of learning management systems has become a major trend that you too can take advantage of as a business owner.

Below mentioned are a few signs indicating the need to invest in an LMS:

• You are unable to analyze the effectiveness of training:
  If your current training method is not helping you evaluate training effectiveness, an LMS can help. It helps you analyze how well your employees are grasping the knowledge and determine productivity improvements.
• You have a huge burden of costs:
  Classroom training can be very expensive, due to venue costs, trainer fees, travel, and related expenditures. However, all of these costs can be minimized by using an LMS.
• You are revamping your product line:
  If you are planning to completely revamp your product line or even making smaller changes, you will need to re-educate your employees, and an LMS can help you manage the process.
• You wish to provide compliance training:
  An LMS helps you deliver effective compliance training to all your employees more efficiently than classroom training. A good LMS will also help you track your employee’s compliance.
• You wish to train employees in a remote location:
  Many organizations now have a diverse workforce working at different locations around the world. An LMS that is easy-to-log-in from potentially any remote location creates a central point from which to provide training no matter where your employees are.

The Benefits of a Learning Management System

1. An LMS Compliments the Learning Strategy
   LMS is not only for E-learning activities! When establishing an appropriate blended learning strategy and increasing departmental efficiency, the LMS should be the first place you look. Learning Management Systems have the unique ability to act as an actionable content repository, in which you can assign learning object status to a wide arrangement of file types, host Instructor-led Training (ILT) offerings, and quickly reference all the available learnings accessible to your organization. Aligning all of this functionality into one place an LMS is truly a powerful offering for any organization. Ultimately reducing time spent in content production by avoidance of unnecessary redundancy and through the accessibility of vastly approachable materials.
2. It Benefits the Accessibility
   A properly configured LMS can be reached from anywhere in the world, allowing for a large commitment to utilization. Modern-day LMS, also often fully support Mobile functionalities, allowing the user to select their preferred platform when accessing their learnings. The LMS has made it so that learning is no longer confined to computer labs within organizations. All that is required is a device, a browser, sign-in credentials, and a domain.
3. An LMS Offers Advanced Reporting Functionality
   A Learning Management System gives you the capability to monitor and evaluate all of the actions conducted within the system, who has undergone what training? Who needs additional learning? What learning plan can be assigned to close an overall gap within roles within particular organizations? These are all questions that can be answered, concisely, and immediately within an LMS platform.
4. An LMS Benefits the Personal Development
   An LMS is a virtual playground for learning and development personnel. A modern-day LMS needs to have the foresight to accommodate innovative new features such as gamification (in all of its potential forms), social learning, and file types as they become more and more regulated going forward.

How to Find the Right Learning Management System for Employee Training?

Employee training has always been one of the most important concerns of businesses around the world. But traditional training methods consume much time and costs in the process. This is why modern-day entrepreneurs are getting inclined towards the LMS or learning management system’ which is known to create a virtual learning environment for the perfect delivery of online training courses.

Below-mentioned is some tips to choose the right LMS for your employees’ training:

1. Look Towards Your Enterprise Goals
   Before you make the purchase, you should clearly define your goals, as to why you need to have an LMS. Such as for improving employee productivity, lowering the training costs, increase compliance, or for any other allied reason. You won’t be able to buy the right LMS if you don’t have an ultimate goal in your mind.
2. Determine Administration Needs for e-Learning
   To make sure that the online platform offers you the maximum out of it, you need to analyze your administrative needs, and keep a check on the following:
   • User Interface
   • Easy options to upload organization data and course materials
   • An online library where all the e-content (such as reference materials) can be stored
   • A reporting panel to show which employees have completed the lessons and what amount of time they spent in the module.
   • Analytics on your training program

3. Determine the Learning Needs of Enterprise
   To select the most effective platform for your employees, you must determine the size of the user base, i.e. the number of employees, who would be using the LMS for learning new skills. Not just this, you will need to make sure that the employees get access to a range of content types, such as video, written, and audio content.

What Feature to Look for While Buying an LMS?

Purchasing a new online learning platform? You must keep a check on the important features of an LMS and ignore all the unnecessary ones.

1. Responsive Design
   First of all, you must ensure that the LMS has a responsive design, so that the learning material is easily accessible on any device, for example, smartphones or tablets.
2. eLearning Assessment Tools
   The LMS must have inbuilt features that support a variety of eLearning assessment methods or tools, such as eLearning templates. Also, there must be an assessment tracking feature to determine the progress of learning among users.
3. Intuitive User Interface
   If the users aren’t able to navigate through the LMS platform or use the UI, there’s no point in investing in an LMS. Hence, always choose an LMS that has an intuitive user interface.
4. Reports and Analytics
   To make sure that your online training objectives are met, you must purchase an LMS that has both a ‘reporting and analytics’ feature.
5. Data Security
   Always invest in an LMS that has data security measures in place, for example, encryption protocols and protected servers.

How to Efficiently Choose and LMS?

Confused about which LMS to choose for your project or your organization? Choosing a Learning Management System is no easy task. To do so, one must identify the needs of their organization and which features are necessary.

1. Determine your objectives in advance
   Ask yourself this set of questions before choosing an LMS: What are your development objectives? What skill-sets are required? What sort of content are the learners expecting? Answering these questions will help you shape the correct direction for your organization to meet all of its learning and development needs. Most importantly keep the need of the audience in mind throughout the selection process.
2. Make a list of key features you need
   Identifying the features you need is the most important step in choosing an LMS, as it will allow you to shortlist the solutions that will create the most effective e-learning course for your audience.
3. Consider the technical limitations
   When you choose a new LMS you need to know how the new learning system will be integrated with your current software. When you choose a new LMS you need to know how the new learning system will be integrated with your current software.
4. Observe a demo
   In modern business, we are afforded the ability to check and double-check before selecting a product or service. Almost all LMS vendors will provide a demo or trial period for testing their products before your purchase. Do not hesitate to ask for a live demonstration or trial period that will allow you to see your potential LMS in action.

How to implement an LMS successfully?

The Implementation Process of an LMS does not have to be frustrating, and we here at Gyrus do all that we can to help our clients in any manner we can.

• Tune your Product, Process, and Content
  Set the interaction parameters within your environment, how do you want it to look with attention to branding and reports? Have you taken the steps to prepare your content for the impending migration?
• Define Organizational Roles and Permissions
  Take this time to identify system users and define their roles and permissions. In this step, you can identify key stakeholders required to test the system.
• Test Your System in a Secure Environment
  By setting up a test environment, users can identify issues from migrating data from a legacy system, which can be corrected and enhanced before the Organization’s Go-Live date.
• Perform Final Tune-up
  Correct any entry issues and utilize stakeholder feedback to determine any necessary changes before the product launch.
• Launch your LMS Platform
  After your system has been filled with organizational data, branded, tested, tested again, and the stakeholders have been trained. You are ready to Go-Live!

Do you already have an LMS but with an older version? Time to Replace it.

If you already own an LMS, but it has outdated with the time, it is important to replace it with the latest version. Below mentioned are the reasons to replace an outdated LMS.

• LMS Lacks Integration with Other Systems
• LMS’ User Interface Is Non-Intuitive
• LMS is Non-Compatible with Mobile
• LMS is Missing Valuable Reporting and Analytics

Wondering what is the future of an LMS?

The LMS market over the last 10 years has seen an incredible uptick in innovations. From how materials and content are written, all the way to how they are being hosted. A shift has occurred seemingly overnight in the way we learn on the job. The following are some of the reasons why coupled with exploratory prose as to where these endeavors could take the LMS industry in the very near future:

• Gamification
  Gamifying learnings is an incredibly unique approach that demands the attention of a user when executed appropriately, the learning output can be on par with just about any other manner of knowledge transfer in existence.
• Social Learning
  Companies are now starting to realize the interrelations of social media platforms and the ability to carry over some of the training and development to after hours, as well as using public badging as a reward, allowing for employees to proudly display some of their accomplishments externally.
• E-learnings
  E-learnings are here, and they have been here a while. It seems that even agency-based Marketing firms are jumping on the developmental platform, and that is a very good thing. E-learnings have transitioned quite well into our daily lives. E-learnings at this moment are one of the most exciting aspects of the Learning Industry. Some recent ideas that are currently exciting developers are the inclusion of Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality environments.
• Mobile Content
  Mobile eLearning content is possibly some of the most under-utilized in the field. M-Learning is here and getting better every day. For the business professional on the go, spending 100+ days on the road, there is now the ability to stay up to date on product changes and advancements that have never existed before. As smartphones and tablets constantly evolve, the abilities of the content can as well, causing a bright future of smarter on-the-go instructional design, and app creation which can make apps as quickly as the educational program at your organization requires.