What is Learning Management System ?
A learning management system (LMS) is a software application for the administration, documentation, tracking, reporting and delivery of electronic educational technology courses or training programs.
How to choose the best Learning Management System ?
Learning Management System(LMS) is the broad term used for managing online courses to train, educate, or set a group of learners. Actually, LMS does not involve creation of content. The product only focuses on providing training materials, it allows you to manage your student’s progress and watch out for their performance.
However,lots of vendors include collaborative functionalities in their LMS services making it possible for teachers and coaches in various locations to collaborate on expanding the course itself. It is one of the important distinctions to look for when subscribing to an LMS plan.
Here are a few more aspects to help you choose the best LMS software solution :
A good LMS solution should help you do the following basic processes
- Create Self-Registration – If you’re focusing on a large pool of learners, an automated self-registration feature is a must.
- Create a Portal for Course Materials – If you’re into LMS for a long time, having one location of past and current course materials makes it easier to retrieve data, reuse materials, or organize courses.
- Create a Knowledge Base or Self-Service Portal – Learners and Educators will need assistance to use the LMS, but you won’t have the time to answer all questions. A self-service section should address FAQs or collate best practices and case studies.
- Assemble Course Materials by Categories – You should be able to arrange the courses by topics, subjects, authors, or curriculum in order to help learners and educators sort through the materials
- Create Groups or Teams – This feature lets you conduct group classes which is useful for group orientations or team workshops
- Customize Course Delivery – The ability to customize the delivery of materials based on the student’s learning curve can increase completion and competency rates
- Create a Course Funnel – This feature lets you offer programs where learners can level up or down across curricularor courses
- Create Quizzes and Tests – This feature lets you assess the student’s performance or competency before, during, or after the course program
- Export/Import – You should be able to migrate, among others, course materials, reports, and registries to popular document files like PDF, TXT, JPEG, CVS, and DOC in case you need to use other business systems
- Custom Branding – This feature lets you dress up the user interface with your corporate logo and colors.
- Robust Calendar – This feature lets you create events, invite participants, perform self-registration, and track attendance in one module
- Robust Analytics – This feature allows you to get real-time view on training or generate team-based reports on top of basic reporting
- Mobile Platform – This feature allows learners to access your courses via their smart phone or tablet
- Video Library – This feature lets you create video courses
- Shopping Cart – Lets you sell your courses off the LMS infrastructure
- API – Lets you integrate the LMS to your other business solutions, such as Finance, CRM, Helpdesk, and E-commerce
- Surveys – To get feedback and insights from learners and educators.
Most Popular LMS Software Products
Here is the list of top 5 learning management system softwares. These LMS services help schools, businesses, and organizations develop, assign, and track online classes.
1. Moodle
Moodle is a free, online Learning Management system enabling educators to create their own private website filled with dynamic courses that extend learning, any time, anywhere. Whether you’re a teacher, student or administrator, Moodle can meet your needs.
Take a look at a highlight of Moodle’s key features below.
General Features :
- Modern, easy to use interface
- Personalised Dashboard
- Collaborative tools and activities
- All-in-one calendar
- Convenient file management
- Simple and intuitive text editor
- Notifications
- Track progress
Administrative Features :
- Customisable site design and layout
- Secure authentication and mass enrolment
- Multilingual capability
- Bulk course creation and easy backup
- Manage user roles and permissions
- Supports open standards
- High interoperability
- Simple plugin management
- Regular security updates
- Detailed reporting and logs
Course Development and Management Features :
- Direct learning paths
- Encourage collaboration
- Embed external resources
- Multimedia Integration
- Group management
- Marking workflow
- In-line marking
- Peer and self assessment
- Integrated Badges
- Outcomes and rubrics
- Security and privacy
2. Edmodo
Edmodo provides content sharing, real-time feedback, communication tools, classroom management for education industry. Edmodo is a global education network that helps connect all learners with the people and resources needed to reach their full potential.
Take a look at a highlight of Edmodo’s key features below.
- Online classroom discussions
- Create polls for students
- Award badges to individual students
- Network that connects students, administrators, parents.
- Measure student progress
- Personalize with apps
- Activate your free admin account
- Build a network of communities
- Accelerate learning goals
3. Docebo
Docebo is a powerful cloud Learning Management System (LMS) that allows you to incorporate formal, informal, social and experiential learning in a single platform. Docebo is more than LMS, they provide cutting-edge technology to power world-class learning programs.
Take a look at a highlight of Docebo’s key features below.
- APIs
- Advanced Reporting
- UI and User Experience
- E-Commerce
- Scalability
- Certifications and Retraining
- Gamification
- White-Labeling and Customization
- Languages and Localization
- Automated Admin Tasks
- ILT Classroom
- Extensions
- Mobility
- Notifications
- Import and Create Courses
- Audit Trail & 21 CFR Part 11
- Integrations
4. Litmos
Litmos LMS makes it easy for teachers / trainers to build courses, assign them to learners and accurately track the results. The best part of Litmos is that it is a hosted training system, which means you don’t need help from the IT department to set it up and get started. You can literally begin creating your courses in minutes.
Take a look at a highlight of Litmos’s key features below.
- Course Builder
- Assessment & Quizzes
- Survey & Feedback
- Checklists & Tasks
- Course Library
- Give learners a course library to browse, search and self-enroll
- Reports & Dashboards
- SCORM & TIN CAN
- Instructional Led Training (ILT)
- eCommerce
- Gamification, Leaderboards & CEU’s
- Messages & Notifications
- Certifications
- Corporate Compliance
- Learning Paths
5. Sakai
Sakai is a freely available, feature-rich technology solution for learning, teaching, research and collaboration. Sakai is an open source software suite developed by its diverse and global adopter community.
Take a look at a highlight of Sakai’s Key features below.
- Rich functionality, standard
- Expanded functionality, freely available
- Seamless integrations
- Responsive User Interface
- New Gradebook
- Lessons Tool Enhancements
- PA System
- Improved Assessments
- Intelligent Feedback
- Mathematical Notation
