Closing Skill Gaps: How a Learning Experience Platform (LXP) Makes It Happen

What's the difference between a learning management system (LMS) and the emerging learning experience platform (LXP)?

The key distinction can be inferred from the names themselves: 

• An LMS is a management system, highly useful for admins and managers when it comes to organizing and tracking important courses, pushing content to learners, compliance checkboxes, and certifications, to ensure they are completed in order and on time.
• An LXP is an experience platform, focused more on the user and their needs. Typically these platforms pull content from numerous management systems and third-party providers while infusing data, AI, and community-based features for tailored learning paths and robust skill development insights. 

Many in the Learning & Development (L&D) space are familiar with the LMS and its value as a foundational tool for training programs, but LXPs are relatively new. Let's explore what differentiates these platforms, and why they are critical complements to your L&D tech stack.

What is an LXP?

A learning experience platform is user-centered software that aggregates a company’s learning resources in one place, providing personalized and intelligently curated content from a diverse range of sources. Social elements — such as the ability to interact directly with other learners, collaborate on initiatives, and build communities around learning — are also integral to the LXP’s value.

Think of it as going from standard broadcast TV, where you’re watching whatever is on, to Netflix, where you can watch whatever you want, whenever you want, and the library is constantly expanding. (And somehow the algorithm always seems to know what you’re going to want to watch next.)

This is not to say that previous models for learning are bad, but our fast-changing world requires enhanced tools and approaches. It’s not only that people’s expectations and preferences are being fundamentally altered by streaming apps like Netflix, but also the increasingly complex nature of the current professional environment. 

A Great Reshuffle is at hand, portending massive churn in the job market. Across many industries, roles are becoming more specialized, more technical, and more multifaceted. New skill gaps are constantly emerging as employees and their managers strive to keep pace.

As Spotify’s Johanna Bolin Tingvall said during the LinkedIn Learning Digital Summit: “We're getting older as human beings and the lifetime of companies is getting shorter, which puts a responsibility on all of us to upskill and reskill more often.” 

In this context, the advancements taking place right now in the LXP space are especially interesting.

Evolution of the LXP

“A true LXP is certainly more than an aggregator or directory of all available resources; in an information-rich world, it is in the separation of the good from the bad that we find value,” writes Ben Betts at the Association for Talent Development. “And different learning experiences are suited best to different individuals, at different times, in different contexts. In effect, while aggregation is the basic driving need for an LXP, personalization is the real reason you'd want one.”

Indeed, this speaks to a key source of growth and innovation for the LXP category: using data to make L&D smarter, more efficient, and more adaptive. In part, this is driven by user insight and analytics — through tracking and analyzing a learner’s interactions, the LXP can make tailored recommendations. This analytical prowess also makes it much easier to measure the impact of your initiatives across nuanced goals and KPIs.

Additionally, LXPs are constantly evolving, including their social and community-based features, which creates space for learners around the world to grow and develop skills together. 

There are bold new frontiers emerging for the powerful application of LXP data. For example, the new LinkedIn Learning Hub sits on top of LinkedIn’s Economic Graph, which generates the most comprehensive global skills taxonomy. Through this, L&D leaders can run their programs on a bedrock of rich information and context, more easily identifying gaps, prioritizing key skills, and benchmarking against peers. 

Key advantages of an LXP for professional development

Here are a few of the reasons L&D pros are gravitating toward learning experience platforms as central engines in their programs:

• User-friendly and intuitive interfaces.
• Self-directed experiences keep learners engaged, energized, and personally fulfilled.
• Larger and more diverse pools of learning content, with advanced search tools to easily navigate.
• Comprehensive aggregation of helpful resources from inside and outside an organization.
• Curated learning paths to help learners stay in alignment with business goals and outcomes.
• Skill development insights and frameworks can pinpoint gaps and guide personalized development plans.
• Powerful infusion of data, analytics, and reporting.

In short, the LXP is helping propel L&D programs into the new era of data-driven, skills-based, personalized learning. And we’re still only scratching the surface of what these platforms can do.