6 Essential Learner Management System Features
A learner management system plays a pivotal role in the productivity of a company. Providing a platform for employees to access training on a semi-autonomous basis can massively improve company productivity, employee retention, company culture and even innovation. There are of course businesses that offer training as their product or service, for this article we are referring specifically to company’s that use an LMS to train their employees. Understanding the most essential features for a learner management system will allow the company to take full advantage of their training potential. Let us break down some of the most essential LMS features:
Learner Management System Reporting
A comprehensive reporting system is absolutely essential. One of the greatest advantages of a centralised, web-based system is that every interaction with the system can be tracked. From individual student behaviour to course performance. Every little insight is an opportunity for improvement, which is why you need to make sure your reporting system is taking full advantage of this.
System Integrity Features
System integrity features include any feature or functionality that ensures the systems integrity. This may include anti-cheat systems, course download protection, account manipulation and even system audit features. For example: With a system audit feature, you can track every student’s interaction on every page of the system. If a student makes a claim about the system, the audit trail can easily confirm their potential allegations. This is ideal for dealing with dishonesty, potential infrastructure issues, or even potential environment challenges.
LMS User Roles
A learner management system at its peak is an organically growing system that is steered in a direction of continuous growth and improvement. The ability to steer the system is directly related to the management of the system, which should be a dynamic process with solid governance in place. Now provided you have proper governance in place, the ability to manage the system should be tied to clear user roles. These user roles allow access to different members to manage the system and help maintain the integrity of the system and the management thereof.
Learner Management System Document Management
Any learner management system will leverage a variety of different documents, some for download and others for limited access. Being able to manage documents and add them independently to course items allows the system to enhance the learner’s experience with complementary and supplementary documentation. A proper document management system is also essential if your system handles student portfolio’s as it allows students to upload documents as well.
Blended Learning Module
With the arrival of eLearning and distance-based education, a whole new world of skills development has been unlocked for all. The only issue is, not all training is best suited for distance learning. In fact for most subjects there comes a point where the only way to demonstrate further topical proficiency is by producing or developing an output in person. This is where blended learning comes in. With blended learning you can combine all the benefits of elearning, like advanced accessbility with a blended learning approach. This involves the learner management system providing a module that facilitates blended learning sessions. A blended learning module would typically include the following: A venue and class creation portal, which the training can set up to book a venue and facilitate the booking of students for the training session. The module would typically have a form of class register, along with combining complementary elearning and additional training documentation as a part of the module. The blended learning module should be enhancing the trainer’s capabilities throughout each training session.
Gamification
Gamification is one of those eLearning buzzwords that gets through around constantly, but never fully explained. Gamification is focused on human behaviour, with an emphasis on motivation and feedback. There are many different personality types when it comes to motivation. Some students are highly competitive while other students are only concerned with their own progress. Understanding the different ways students are motivated is the first step in settting up your gamification environments. People often use themselves as reference when setting up systems of motivation, but there are many other motivators. Map out the most common personalities and project their corresponding feedback to the system. For example: Besides the competitive and progress based personalities, there are also collectors, affiliation types and even combinations of these. Once you have your base motivators sorted, the next step is to provide the according systems of feedback for each and the means to track them. For example: A leaderboard for students to compete with each other, which also tracks the group and provides collective progress. Within this leaderboard a student can click on their own ranking to get a run down of their personal progress with a personalised development plan. This leaderboard not only satisfies the competitive personalities but also the affiliation types and the personal development junkies. This is, of course, just one example. There are many others that can be applied. The big focus here is proper student feedback one what was done and a clear path forward on where to go.
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