What is a Learning Management System? And, Do I Need One?

    Dr. Anne-Marie Fiore | Jun 26, 2020

     

    Most colleges and universities use a Learning Management System to deliver courses. You may have heard of some of the more well-known ones, such as Canvas by Instructure, Blackboard, or Moodle. You may have even taken a course in one of these popular LMS. If you are wondering what an LMS can do for your organization, let's look at what an LMS does and why you may need one.

    For corporate use, an LMS is an online application where you can house, deliver, and track your workforce development or training content. In addition to delivering content, an LMS can handle items such as onboarding for new employees and compliance training.  With the current skills gap impacting so many industries, your need for continuous educational opportunities and leadership training is ongoing.

    An LMS for your business can result in improved productivity, lower training costs, and better compliance. In addition, employees are more invested when you are invested in them. Your goal with continued professional or workforce development is to enable and support employees to realize their full potential. An LMS can help with that! 

    If you’re still undecided, let's look at some other considerations. 

    Cost savings: Training and teaching via an LMS reduces employee travel, optimizes training expenditure and usage, and minimizes facilities and instructors to pay. From the cost savings aspect, an LMS is a no-brainer.  

    Consistency of training: Training and course delivery via an LMS is consistent since it is centralized. It delivers a consistent training and learning quality to all employees by supplying a single source for content, course materials, and instructions.  Plus, your employees won't have to learn and re-learn different systems to access their workforce development. 

    Easily tracks learner progress and performance: LMSs allow the company to easily generate training reports on an overall or user/student level basis. By utilizing an LMS for eLearning courses and/or online training, trainers can easily track goal progress, knowledge gains, ROI and more.  

    Meet regulatory compliance: Many industries may be required to train, assess, and report for compliance purposes. Just a few of these industries are oil and gas, health care, pharmaceuticals, communications, and building and construction. An LMS can help you satisfy these legal and regulatory requirements.  Plus, an LMS provides you with a rolling record of who was certified when and options to automatically contact employees when additional compliance training is required. 

    Still undecided? Let's chat. We can provide your answers to all of your LMS questions. 

     

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    About The Author

    Curriculum specialist with a background in technology leadership, instructional design, and digital learning experiences.

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