Process to develop an LMS

In a previous article, we have learned about the current Impact, Importance, and future of LMS. Now, this article will help to choose the right learning management system to achieve a goal.

We saw technical aspects (https://bit.ly/2JDy5Xa) for LMS, the eLearning industry is on a stable rise with around 9-10% of annual growth. It is no surprise that companies are eager to deploy online learning platforms either to make money or utilize them internally to train employees. Most of the companies currently using LMS solutions are quite dissatisfied with the services they get in terms of both functionality and the value that these systems deliver. As far as many are contemplating change making and integrating a custom and highly adaptive LMS seems to be a reasonable move.

Step # 1: Start with Creating an LMS Project Plan

This is the first and the most important step to validate your idea of building an LMS. In this step, you need to validate the fact that investing a good amount of money in LMS is worth a try.

Once the idea has been validated, we focus on the next step to create an LMS website, which is planning. From our experience, we can guarantee you that a well-sorted plan is a key to any kind of successful development, and LMS web development is not an exception.

You need to ask yourself:

·  Why do you need to create an LMS website?

·  What problems currently your organization is facing and how this LMS will solve it?

·  Who will build the LMS from scratch?

·  Who will take care of the LMS implementation?

·  How much are you ready to invest in the learning management system development?

After noting down the answer to these questions, you will have your LMS project plan in your hand.

Now, you have finally decided that you want to invest in an LMS. You already have a purpose, and you have already created a list of all must-to-have features. It is time to look for a service provider from where you will get an LMS. You need to hire the right LMS development partner that will turn your idea into a reality.

Let's discuss the second step on how to choose a service provider.

-        Communication

Make sure that the service provider you are choosing is providing you a transparent communication with the team. They should be available to you at the time you need them. Also, they should keep you updated at every step of development by establishing clear communication. They should provide you complete details on the tech stack and features your team is going to use.

-       Make The Right Tech Stack Choices

The tech stack has the power to make or break the project. It is also the determining factor in budgeting the LMS development cost. So keeping that in mind, we present to you the ideal development process and tech stack you can go for when developing an LMS platform.

The best thing about hiring an experienced development partner is the range of choices you get.

-       Experience

Always check the profile of the service provider before signing the contract. They should have prior experience and expertise in the field or domain.

-       Pricing

As mentioned and discussed earlier, a customer made LMS is a bit expensive as it incurs monthly costs of computing and support. You may also need to pay additional charges for extra features.

-       Support

After-sales support is very important. You need to sign a contract with a service provider who at least provides technical support for a year or so. If need be, they can train your staff to manage day-to-day backups and maintenance.

Step # 2: Choose Your Service Provider for LMS

Choosing the right service provider is very important. When you are trying to build an LMS from scratch, then you should know that to build a complex LMS with the features listed above, could take about 400 to 500 hours. The work includes a lot of communication about the architecture, design, and arrangement of features. After creating the codes and integrating features, testing them one-by-one is another headache.

Before finalizing the service provider, there are a few things that you must consider.

Step # 3: Build Your LMS Website

When you choose a platform, you can start creating content – courses. In this step, you can start by creating a new course where you will need to add a description, attach some files, and maybe add videos and images in the gallery. In this step, you can also add some jobs/questions/networks. When you are done with adding content for the course, you can invite students to join the course.

At the initial stage, you can also add a feature to check the knowledge and capability of your student/employee by assigning a quiz or test to them.

Step # 4: Testing Knowledge of a Learners

The best way to judge the capability of Learners is by assigning them a quiz/test/exam. With an LMS, you have the option to check the answers of any student while he/she is doing the test and assign him/her a note or give him some tips to improve. You can also chat with the learners about his approach. When he/she is done with the test, assign them grading based on their answers. In most LMS, you can immediately inform the learners about their result and in some cases, after every answer learners has been informed of his/her answer is correct, so they don't need to wait for the result.

Step # 5: Responsive App and UI/UX

Your LMS website should be responsive, so it looks correct on all sizes of the browser. The app should work fine on all mobiles, tablets, and desktops. It should be responsive to all OS, including Windows, Linux, Mac, Android, and iOS. It should support all browsers like Chrome, Firefox, etc. The app should provide every user an intuitive experience, may it be a teacher, student, or an admin.

Step # 6: Final Check

When you are done adding the courses and inviting users/students, now it is time for checking if everything is working as per your expectations. If there are no errors and everything is working fine, then you are done creating an LMS. Now, it is time to utilize it at its full potential to recover your investment.

# Must-Have Custom LMS Features

Features such as grading system, notifications alert, creating notes, and online libraries, creating and designing courses are some basic needs for any institute or an organization. Apart from these, custom features like live chat, announcement board, calendar for important events, tests and quizzes, file sharing, tracking the progress of the students are the main requirements from an LMS. If you are spending a good amount of money on building an LMS, you would want most of these features to be integrated into the LMS in the initial stage.

More advanced features can be added later in the LMS by using IT support.

# Here's a list of some basic features.

·  Course & Content Management

The main objective of an LMS is the teaching and training of the students and employees. This feature is a must-to-have in an LMS because it helps the teacher/trainer to design courses and create content for students/employees. May it be a course, quiz, assignment, or assessment test, you can create using this feature.

·  Skill Tracking

It is an essential feature for an LMS in any organization rather than in an institute. Accept that training an employee is way harder than teaching a student in a class. You can not fix the hours or timing for lectures. This is why this feature helps the employee to learn at their own pace. They can collect all the material and complete the course at their own pace.

·  Analytics, Achievements, Statistics, Surveys

An LMS is a platform where students can get everything from one place, but so does the teacher. Having a feature that can provide detailed analytical reports regarding the progress of a student/employee, their achievements report, and overall statistics of the entire class or at an individual level. Teachers and students can also conduct a survey using this feature.

·  Gamification

When you are modernizing the teaching ways by using an LMS rather than having a traditional classroom, then why not change the teaching methodology. Learning for the sake of learning is excellent, but at times it gets very dull. This is why the modern technique of teaching includes gaming. Yes, an LMS should have a gamification feature.

With gamification in long and dry subjects, you can get more engagement from the learner.

·  Social structure

Socializing between learners and teachers is very important. Having a community experience enhances the learning process. This feature helps students connect with teachers and other students.

·  Mobile Learning

An LMS should have intuitive mobile-friendly apps for learners. Having a mobile learning facility starts with the designing phase. It should be included in the architecture of the LMS from the very beginning. This feature is helpful when someone decides to take a course on an off-day. Also, it is useful for distributed teams.

Should you make a custom LMS?

As you can see, all of these e-learning platforms have their flaws and benefits. This leads to another popular solution, you may hire engineers to create an e-learning product from scratch (such as LMS we have developed) as it can solve a lot of issues. For example, you can include all the features you need, while avoiding paying for the functionality you will never use.

Thus said, if you want to know how to build a software platform from scratch, you should know what useful modules can be added to your online learning platform. Here is the list of the modules you can benefit from:

·  Micro courses contain concentrated knowledge on a certain specific problem and can be completed in less hours. This aids in the rapid training of employees with new business practices or solving the issue at hand without getting too much information, most of which is currently unnecessary now.

·  Online classrooms working as video conferences provide team collaboration and direct learning with a tutor.

·  Games and simulations contribute to experiential learning by imitating real-life problems. It also helps learners to stay engaged.

·  Utilizing xAPI will help to collect and analyze all bits of learning experiences across various sources not only within LMS but also in social media and videos.

·  Automatic proctoring systems help authors gather grading results and statistics, as well as analyzing students' performance and adjusting the course content if needed.

·  Integrating quizzes to the course content and providing mid-course grading allows for better tracking of students' progress.

Any module can be built to meet specific requirements, provided you choose the right team to handle development and further customization.

What should I know if I want a custom solution?

Prioritize. One of the core issues that companies usually stumble over is a complicated system having a broad range of unused features. They don't quite contribute to the learning experiences but rather set a higher adoption threshold. Before outlining a toolset try to prioritize the core learning goals you're planning to achieve.

Invest in cross-platform development. One of the leading reasons to use digital learning is the ability to access learning materials anytime from any device, especially mobile. Making desktop-only software will restrict learners from digital potential.

Leverage experiential learning. Most of the existing LMS simply replicate traditional educational techniques. Online classrooms, modules, tests, and case studies reduce costs compared to old-fashioned classroom learning but they fail to employ new technology available. Games and simulations can introduce truly new experiences that are close to real-life conditions.

Consider adaptively. Off-the-shelf systems in most cases are too rigid to embrace rapid changes. Modern LMS should provide means to redesign the entire learning frameworks to meet the needs of the actively changing environment.

Conclusion

Evaluating an LMS takes deep analysis of all the features and benefits each one provides. This is a difficult decision because it’s something that will require a long term commitment.

Look for an LMS that is built with the future in mind. This should be evident from reading through the description of the product, and learning more about the company and where it is headed. Gather information from client testimonials as well as awards that the company has received.

Find out what the leadership team’s background is and what they are passionate about in the learning industry.

All of the above information should help you make a case for selecting and investing in a reputable learning management system for your organization's needs