LMS FAQ

While each platform provider puts a unique twist on the software, they all share a common list of LMS features. 

Let’s go through the basic features and goals of an LMS.

The goals the LMS features need to achieve differ for the administrators and the learners.

1. Administrators need: the ability to create, publish, and assign content, as well as track each learner’s progress.
2. Learners need: the ability to interact with the content and each other, and the LMS must be engaging.

Gamification encourages a friendly spirit of competition to help people achieve more than before and even to compete against other learners, if they’re into that.

Applying gamification principles to learning has been shown to increase collaboration, foster greater learner independence, increase learner engagement, and promote healthy competition among employees. Some great features for boosting engagement in an LMS include:

• Points, Levels, Badges

Incentivize learners by awarding points and badges as they progress through training content. You can create milestones to foster a sense of accomplishment among learners.

• Competition Drives Engagement

Gamification can increase learner engagement by incentivizing achievement, but only if the achievements are public and valued in the learner’s community.

• Personal Motivation

Designers of recreational games have long known that gamification impacts an individual’s motivation to both challenge themselves and tackle obstacles. Rewards such as levels, leaderboards, badges, and recognition transform a big undertaking into bite-size, digestible pieces. By incorporating gaming methodology into online learning, you can improve a learner’s desire to complete the training.

• Personal & Community Growth

A crucial element to effective gamification within an LMS is the existence of a vibrant online learning community where achievement is public and celebrated. Much like in popular social media platforms, the social recognition associated with positive personal achievement is multiplied immensely when seen in the context of a learner’s professional peers.

We mentioned mobile optimization earlier. It certainly sounds important, but let’s dig into what is mobile responsive design. It refers to the way a website’s layout and content rearranges to fit the screen of whatever device a user chooses. It’s like water—the site changes its shape to fit whatever vessel it’s in.

Why do I need mobile optimization?

When users log in from a tablet or smartphone, the site changes to fit the screen. All the pieces of the site—columns, pictures, feeds—rearrange automatically so the learner can scroll through the site without having to pinch and zoom to figure out what’s what.

The Advantages of Mobile Optimization

There are two main advantages to mobile-optimizing your LMS:

1. A mobile responsive site is easier to manage.
2. A mobile responsive site is more SEO friendly. 

Since there’s only one site, there’s no duplication of efforts. If you want to redesign or re-brand the site, you do it once and the site is re-crafted for both desktop and mobile users. When there’s new learning material to push out, all you need to do is create it once and it’s available right away. Plus, it’s faster to implement because there’s only one site to build. Beyond that, having two versions of a site can affect page ranking because duplicate content tends to confuse search engine algorithms.

When you talk with an LMS provider, be sure to ask these questions:

1. Does the LMS retain full functionality on mobile?
   Can learners access the different functions without manually resizing the page or panning around?
2. Does the product roadmap include expanded mobile functions?
   And, just for fun, check out this page on both your desktop and your tablet or phone. You’ll see how our site is optimized for mobile responsive design.

What is computer-based training? 

Computer-based training is any sort of training delivered through a computer. 

You’re right, it is kind of self-explanatory. But also not. Computer-based training has been around since the dawn of the computer age. Thus, you can do a lot with computer-based training. Let’s wade through the benefits of it.

Computer-based training makes it easier to ensure a standard of training. It gives every learner the information in the same way. And it lets you provide the same quality of training to everyone as the business scales up, especially when paired with a modern LMS.

Why do I need computer-based training?

• Without a cloud-based LMS, the learning strategy you worked so hard to implement will only be accessible in a handful of specific places: wherever the software was installed. That was a great plan for the 1990s, but smartphones and tablets are now ubiquitous. 
• Your learning material needs to be available on any device at any time. Putting your training online and making it accessible through devices—whether a smartphone or a tablet or a laptop—that can access the internet streamlines training and spreads knowledge.
• Never use paper again. Paper is unreliable, difficult to deal with, and easily destroyed. Post COVID-19 this only becomes more important as operational checklists become more essential.
• Create continuity across locations. Without a consistent computer-based training ecosystem it’s all too easy to lose cohesiveness across locations. This can become particularly important when looking for employee compliance training solutions.
• When learners are able to find the information they need when they need it, they’re more productive at work and they’re more engaged with the learning system you created.
• Be consistent across languages and cultures. Multilingual training is challenging enough without considering training across borders and the world. Computer-based training ensures consistency.

How do I measure learning on an LMS?

Of course, one concern that’s raised from time to time is whether you can be sure a learner has actually learned the material.

Computer-based training is typically done through an LMS, which gives you the ability to track learners’ progress through the required material. But you can also use blended learning to mix the consistency and scalability of computer-based training with the practicality of real-world, in-person training. The most important part of training is the ability to put it to use, right?

Developing computer-based training can be costly. Not all LMSs have built-in eLearning authoring tools that let you create online courses. So sometimes you have to seek out a third-party system to build out the course content needed.

Now that we’re deep in the weeds, let’s answer the age-old question: what are LMS reporting and analytics? 

In a nutshell, reporting and analytics tell you who’s using your learning platform and how they’re using it.

A good modern LMS has reporting that administrators can run, and some that learners can see. They tend to fall across three levels:

1. The individual
2. The course
3. System-wide

The Individual

You can look at an individual learner’s transcript. The transcript shows you what material the learner’s worked through so far and, if the LMS is gamified, how many points or badges they’ve earned. The learner can check this out, too. It’s helpful for the learner to look back and see what material they’ve finished before deciding what to work on next.

What is Course Reporting?

A course report shows you how many people have completed the material, and how much more those who haven’t finished it have left to do. If there’s a test, you can take a look at how learners are doing and tweak the test or the course if you don’t like what you see.

What is system wide reporting?

The system-wide view gives you a sense of how engaged learners are with the system. It’ll show you how many people have logged in over a given timeframe and how they’ve interacted with the system. You know, how much content they’ve finished and how active the learners are on the social side of things. It sounds a bit fluffy, but those are some of the most important analytics in an LMS—if people aren’t engaged they aren’t going to learn!

Reports and analytics give you a cut-and-dry sense of the system. But if you know what you’re looking for, those figures can tell a deeper story.

If you keep an eye on those system-wide numbers and how they change as new material goes out, for instance, you can get a sense of what resonates the most with your learners. It teaches you how to get more out of your system.

Microlearning is a buzzword you’ll see often in the LMS world. In general, microlearning describes short, quick learning material that is easily absorbed by the learner. Think of a microlearning piece as a bullet point on a PowerPoint presentation–easy to remember and incredibly engaging.

Most pieces of microlearning are videos, and most are 90 seconds or less.

People are savvy consumers of information. If a post on your Facebook feed doesn’t immediately catch your eye, you just scroll to the next one. Learners scroll through training courses in the same way. They’ll sniff out off-the-shelf, inauthentic content and won’t engage with the material.

All that might sound intimidating. But you don’t necessarily have to hire a production company for these quick-hitting training pieces. It’s simple enough to make one with just your smartphone and a little creativity.

Why do I need microlearning?

Organizations turn to microlearning for many reasons. It’s effective, it’s efficient, and it’s pretty cheap.

Learners digest and remember information better in a tightly-focused piece. A simple minute or two is enough time to explain what they’re learning and why. And that’s really all you need. If the content is available on a mobile device, learners can put that knowledge to use right away.

Research from Bersin by Deloitte, a research group focused on learning strategies, shows that learners only have 1% of their week to complete training and development. They’re more likely to get through a course if key points are condensed to 90-second chunks rather than one 90-minute webinar.

The same research showed that more than 70% of employees use a search engine to find the information they need on the job. A library of microlearning content gives those same learners a better place to go and ensures that they’re learning the right material.

How do I create microlearning?

You can make the content yourself with just a smartphone and a laptop. It’s easier than you think. Creating your own content lends a natural air of authenticity, which goes a long way for engaging learners.

And once you find a rhythm, you can update the library of content as often as needed.

eLearning is another somewhat self-explanatory term. Like most “e” things, the “e” in eLearning stands for “electronic learning.” It’s the broad umbrella that covers any learning material that’s delivered online.

Why should I use eLearning?

eLearning offers a more efficient and cheaper way to learn and train than traditional classroom-based learning. Courses are typically delivered through an LMS, which tracks various metrics.

• eLearning is time and cost-effective for businesses. Trainers don’t have to travel to each specific location to train employees in person. Learners can stay on the job. And when employees miss less work for training it cuts down costs two ways: cutting travel and lodging costs, and keeping productivity high.
• eLearning also allows for greater consistency in training. As you can imagine, it’s just about logistically impossible to have hands-on, one-to-one training as an organization scales up. With eLearning, every learner is presented information the same way.
• Being able to find the information you need when you need it makes for more productive work and more effective learning. Learners have an easier time digesting and remembering information if they’re able to consume it quickly and apply it right away.
• It might seem tough to ensure that learners complete the necessary content. Especially if they’re doing the work on their own. But the delivery system, an LMS or a SCORM course, tracks when a learner opens the material. It also tracks the learner’s progress and if they pass at the end.

Of course, all these benefits come with an important caveat: the content must be good. Really good.

Because the learner is self-directed, if the eLearning isn’t engaging, the learner isn’t going to work through it in a timely manner. And the information won’t stick with them beyond the time it takes to pass the quiz at the end.

For as many different learning objectives and challenges as there are, someone has built a digital learning platform to address them. 

What are the different types of LMS systems?

To name the most prominent LMS platform types:

• Content management systems (CMS)
• Learning content management systems (LCMS)
• Virtual learning environments (VLE)
• Learning record stores (LRS)
• Learning experience platforms (LXP)
• Training management systems (TMS)

Which LMS is right for me?

All that is well and good, but let’s get down to brass tacks. The short answer to which software is best for you is: it depends on what you want to do. Which is about as unsatisfying an answer as “you’ll understand when you’re older.” We’ll go through and define what each one is and figure out a more satisfying answer. (We also have a helpful guide for choosing a corporate LMS.)

LMS vs CMS: What is the difference?

While a content management system (CMS) allows you to build and store content, an LMS offers you those same course authoring tools in addition to a variety of reporting, interactivity, engagement, mobile usability, and gamification features. In short, every LMS is kind of like a CMS, but a CMS doesn’t have any of the elearning benefits of a proper LMS. The biggest difference between the two systems is the user’s experience. With a CMS, the user is passive. You can push out content, but all the user can do is look at it. There’s very little interaction going on.

An LMS is great for training or teaching. They’re used most often by businesses and educational organizations to deliver educational material online. You can create or upload content into an LMS. You can stack those pieces of content together to form a learning path or a curriculum. And with an LMS, you can assign that path to specific groups of learners (and to individual learners) and track their progress through the material.

A CMS is great for building content. You control who has editing access to the piece of media and whether it’s available publicly or privately. It’s great for managing a workflow, and an easy way to store and edit website content.

With an LMS, the user takes an active role in the system. They’re able to go through and choose which content they want to check out. They can talk back and forth amongst themselves.

If what you’re looking to do is create and publish content, you want a CMS. But if you want to pass along knowledge or teach something, you want an LMS.

LMS vs LCMS: What is the difference?

An LCMS is for digital learning only, itt can’t facilitate blended learning or instructor-led training like an LMS can. This software does allow you to create content within it, but has limited communication features compared to an LMS.

All that means that an LCMS is right for you if your organization creates all its training content itself and doesn’t have a need for robust communication or in-person training.

LRS vs LMS: What is the difference?

The LRS vs LMS comparison is more drastic. Where an LMS is a dynamic system that allows you to create and assign content, communicate and analyze, an LRS is simply a storehouse for, well, learning records.

An LRS complements an organization’s L&D strategy by providing analytics tools to discover insights into how the strategy plays out. You might want an LRS if your organization has already built its own internal learning platform, but lacks nuanced and powerful reporting and analytics capabilities.

LMS vs VLE: What is the difference?

The LMS vs VLE debate is relatively straightforward. It’s a difference of private business and traditional education. Most colleges and universities these days have a VLE used to complement classroom time. It’s an online environment for collaboration and extending discussions. There’s less in the way of reporting and analytics, but plenty of opportunity for two-way communication and document sharing.

TMS vs LMS:  What is the difference?

Now the TMS vs LMS comparison is a little trickier. A TMS is intended for business use. It’s a more specialized piece of software, however. The main point of a TMS is to help your L&D team run its in-person, instructor-led training.

A TMS is primarily a back-end software. It’s intention isn’t to provide the end user with a quality experience. Rather, the main goal is to help your team coordinate logistics, financials, and reporting for business intelligence.

So, where an LMS is for creating employee content, engaging users, and streamlining communication and training, a TMS is more just for you, the administrator. All the bells and whistles are in place to help you improve back-end coordination for in-person trainings.

LMS vs LXP: What is the difference?

A learning experience platform might sound like a newfangled version of an LMS. An LXP vs LMS comparison shows otherwise. To be clear, an LXP is somewhat newfangled. But it’s meant to complement an LMS rather than replace one.

An LXP is an open platform for creating and aggregating learning content—a sort of business-oriented YouTube, if you like. What this means is anyone can add any content and it becomes available to all users immediately. Admins have less control over how content is displayed to specific user groups, and have less robust reporting and analytics at their fingertips. Because an LXP is complementary to an LMS.

What is social learning LMS?

The above are the main types of different learning software. Plenty of variation exists within each category, so it’s important to check out vendors after settling on a software type.

One such variation is the social learning LMS. This refers to a learning platform that has strong social features. Typically, that includes unique user profiles, ability to like or comment on content, forums or discussion boards, and the ability for users to upload content.

eLearning vs LMS: Is There A Difference?

The difference between eLearning and an LMS is subtle, but key.

The term eLearning is a broad concept—electronic learning—that describes learning material delivered online.  Of course, when you’re running L&D for a business it doesn’t make much sense just to put learning material online and tell employees to get after it. You need a way to create the content itself, send it out to learners, track completions, and build a community around the content. This is where an LMS comes in.

eLearning is a time and cost-effective way for organizations to keep learners up-to-date on new techniques and important information. Training consistency is easier to handle when the training content is delivered online. And housing the learning material online makes it easy for learners to access it when and where they need it.

Any educational material consumed online—from K-12 courses on Lynda.com or the Khan Academy, to higher education, like edX, or YouTube tutorials—is eLearning. Most people have used eLearning informally at some point in their lives, even if they didn’t realize it was eLearning at the time.