Picking a learning management system for employee onboarding and training can be a stressful affair. There are more than 180 sophisticated learning management systems in the market today and each one of them offer unique features and tools to make elearning fun, engaging and productive. But not all features may be required for your specific organization needs.
In this article, we will take a look at five specific must-have features that your LMS should offer.
Mobile Support
Smartphone are ubiquitous in the modern workplace. Yet, several legacy LMS applications do not offer comprehensive support for learning over mobile devices.
Mobile learning is important for two reasons. Firstly, it allows your workers to learn on-the-move. This increases productivity and efficiency of the learning process. More importantly, offline mobile learning modules make it possible for remote workers who do not have access to desktops or the internet to be able to onboard and train with minimal infrastructure.
You can take a look at the popular LMS tools with mobile support here.
Live Video
It is pretty uncommon to find a business today that does not rely on outsourcing agencies, freelancers, contract workers or telecommuting employees for work. Training these workers would require an application that can be launched from anywhere in the world without the need to install any software or scripts. More importantly, if you rely on real-time training methods, it is absolutely important to use an LMS application that can bring these workers from across the world into one classroom.
Pick a learning management system that offers interactive video based virtual classroom facility to cater to these learners. You can find a list of LMS apps with live video feature here.
Assignments Management
No learning is complete without a mechanism to assess and evaluate the learners. This is especially important for corporate training where employees are awarded certificates on the successful completion of courses pertaining to their industry.
Basic assignment engines allow educators to upload assignments and conduct tests online for evaluation. More advanced assessment engines allow the educators to upload a questions database from which an assessment test can be automatically built.
To view a list of LMS software tools with an in-built assessment engine, click here.
Licensing System
Corporate training is a continuous process and the fee you pay an LMS service provider can work out to be expensive over the long term. An LMS software that offers perpetual license on their products may incur huge upfront costs, but this is often distributed over several years and this can turn out to be cheaper than subscription based LMS tools.
There is no one-size-fits-all solution to this. Pick an LMS tool that offers licensing if it makes sense for your business requirements. You can find a list of such tools here.
Reports
From a business’ perspective, an LMS tool provides a hands-off approach towards training and assessment. But this is only possible with tools that can help with detailed assessment of the learners.
A number of modern LMS tools offer visual reports on the learners’ progress. This is useful because the trainers can now know how the learners perform in each of the courses, subjects that they have trouble with, and also know how engaged they are during the learning process. You can find a list of LMS tools with the reporting feature here.
Conclusion
While these are extremely vital features for your LMS tool, they are by no means exhaustive. There are a number of free resources online that should help you assess your unique business needs. This will help you identify the other features that you must seek in your learning management tool.
