Companies across the world are choosing to deliver their training online. according to the facts, the LMS market has seen a 900% growth since the start of the century. Learning Management System Software (LMS) is essential to deliver eLearning courses.
Let us understand what is LMS. LMS is a software that companies use to develop, deliver and track training for their employees, partners, and clients. By the word training, we picture a large classroom full of students and a teacher delivering lectures to train the students, or in a corporate scenario, training meant large conferences or a day-long workshop. This is the traditional way of training until recently. Online training has now gained popularity. Connecting online is now a lot easier than meeting in person. The eLearning market will keep growing as companies, instructors and learners see the benefits of LMS training or virtual training.
When LMS is used by companies to deliver training online, learners from anywhere in the world can connect with the trainers. Trainees get access to online training materials such as courses, guides, and videos for reference any time they want.
What is LMS?
LMS is a software application that helps in creating, managing and delivering eLearning courses. LMS stands for Learning Management System. Let’s dive into each of these terms to understand it better.
L for learning as we use to deliver training and learning courses.
M for management as it is used to manage these courses better.
S for system because you do everything online and keep everything in one place.
A Learning Management System consists of two parts:
- An admin interface- here the managers perform the back-office task to organize the company learning program. They create, manage and deliver courses here.
- A user that runs inside your browser. This is what the learners see when they are assigned to a course or enroll themselves in one.
What does an LMS help you with?
An LMS helps you in:
- Create: it helps in making online lessons or eLearning content as referred by the industry. Course materials can be made with the help of these individual lessons.
- Deliver: you can assign, offer or sell these courses to employees, partners, and a wider range of audiences.
- Monitor: you can manage the training audience. Tracking and assessing their performance can be done as well.
Who uses an LMS?
Anybody who is delivering an eLearning course is using LMS. Here are some examples:
- Businesses of all sizes from small and medium businesses to multinationals.
- Government organizations
- Non-government organizations and nonprofits
- Consulting firms
- Traditional educational institutions
- Online eLearning-based educational institution
- Independent trainers and coaches.
It is clear that LMS serves various training needs. For example, a company can use LMS to train their employees, a consulting agency can students on various topics, or an expert can use it to sell courses online.
What are the benefits of LMS?
- Organizes eLearning content in one location.
The training contents are stored in different drives and devices in organizations using outdated training systems. This increases the risk of losing data and content related to learning. By using LMS, it is easier to store data and training contents in one single location. This reduces the risk of losing data. Every member of the team can access the information if you are using a cloud-based Learning Management System.
- Provides unlimited access to eLearning materials.
In a classroom-based system, there is a need to learn at the same pace as your peers. But here there are no such constraints in the online system. Once you upload your eLearning material onto the LMS your audience has unlimited access to the material. Even when you are on the go you can easily download it on your phones or tablets and can access it anywhere anytime according to the learner’s comfort. The LMS participants do not need to wait for the next online session as well because all of it is uploaded in one go. - Easily tracks learner progress and performance.
An LMS allows the trainer or the instructor to keep track of and observe the learner’s progress. For instance, if a learner is falling behind and is not able to complete an eLearning scenario, supplementary courses can be offered to improve the performance. Alternatively, if someone is doing good and proceeding fast on the platform., trainers can ensure that some courses are made available to them. However, if you see you’re your learners are lagging behind in some specific area then you can think of modifying the area to make them better understand. - Reduces Learning and Development costs.
Previously organizations used to invest a lot of resources in training. This would include training location cost, instructor cost, and training material printing cost. All these can be managed and done away with if you use LMS. Your learners can learn online and you would not have to worry as a sizable amount can be saved online. For example, you need not worry about printing out manuals, or booking a place as the venue because all the information your learners need is on the LMS platform. the learners can simply log into the web portal and access the course whenever they want.
- Easy to customize and update.
With LMS in place, it becomes very easy to add new content and modify old content. This allows the contents to be fresh and updated. This would not have been so easy if it was the traditional method we were following. If you want to add or expand an eLearning course in order to update information based on new and scientific evidence you can simply log in to the Learning Management System and make necessary changes without doing the entire eLearning course from scratch.
- Gamification – every learner today is exposed to social media and online games. Most LMS today try to incorporate gamification to make it interesting and fun. Learners are allowed to win “virtual rewards” when they reach a certain stage on the learning platform. This kind of setup makes learning more engaging and effortless.
