5 Things Every LMS Must Have

A Learning Management System (LMS) should be at the core of every corporate training strategy.  Why?  Because a good LMS is capable of storing, delivering, tracking, reporting and analyzing all training activities within an organization. However, I often meet Learning and Development (L&D) leaders whose experience with LMS technology has been a nightmare.  This is often due to poor implementation and platforms that are not capable of satisfying the needs of ever changing business environments.  This post discusses five basic functions every LMS should provide to truly support a centralized and globalized learning needs solution for corporate training environments.

1.APIs

Application Program Interfaces or APIs are essential for data integration between the various software applications we use on a daily basis.  Today's LMS solutions must be capable of establishing APIs with your Human Resources Information System (HRIS).  Why? Simple, automated user registrations flowing directly from your HRIS to your LMS.  For example, when a new employee is created in your HRIS i.e. Workday, PeopleSoft, etc. the employee would then be automatically registered in the LMS.  This reduces time and errors by eliminating manual inputs directly into the LMS.

2.Blended Learning

Today's LMS must be capable of recording all training activities regardless of delivery mode.   Once again, to simplify this concept, if you deliver training face-to-face, e-learning, online synchronous\asynchronous or a combined curriculum of these modalities (blended learning); there should be a place in your LMS for it.

3.HTML5 Authoring

HyperText Markup Language or HTML version 5 open the access to mobile device web browsers.  Every LMS should have a basic capability to create HTML5 web content enabling trainers to quickly put together training content with rich multimedia i.e. videos, images, quizzes, illustrations, etc.  Just remember, many trainers do not go beyond creating PowerPoint slides and this feature is a great way to quickly deliver e-learning without additional authoring software.

4.SCORM2004 and xAPI Capable

The Shareable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM) is now over 10 years old if we just account for its latest version: SCORM2004.  An LMS without SCORM2004 is useless because this is the protocol by which e-learning objects communicate progress status, test scores with question-level and other details to the LMS.  The next generation in this type of integration is the Experience Application Program Interface (xAPI) which can capture a learner's behavior at the interaction level.  For example; tracking if a learner read an e-book.

5. Learning Analytics

Reporting has traditionally been the weak spot of the dozen of LMSs I have experienced.  Most systems give you some kind of reporting utility which then requires you to export the data to Excel so you can create your own analysis.  If we refer back to feature #3, LMS vendors should have no excuse to provide you with a graphic representation of learning outcomes similar to the Google's Web Analytics screenshot below.  Now, imagine this dashboard as a dynamic graphic display changing as learners take courses in the LMS.  We won't need any manual reports, just beautiful, succint data.

Conclusion

In closing, a LMS is essential to centralize and track all organizational training strategies.  LMSs must support APIs to automate registrations and other functions with other systems in your organization.  They must support blended learning and web content authoring.  They must be capable of tracking progress through SCORM2004 and xAPI as well as offer learning analytics.  Finally, next time you consider investing on a LMS think about these five functions and don't get sold on superfluous features.