Learn More About Learning Management Systems
What is a Learning Management System (LMS)?
A learning management system (LMS) helps instructors deliver and manage online learning by creating a streamlined communication channel between instructors and students. These software applications manage all types of content, including video, courses, and documents, and allow students to access all course content from any device. Instructors can use an LMS to manage rubrics, student discussion boards, and course syllabi, and they provide key features for reporting, progress tracking, and assignments and assessments.
LMS is the software backbone for many educational institutions, particularly for those that primarily offer online courses. These solutions are designed for academic use and give schools a valuable tool that allows students to access course material from anywhere. As eLearning has grown in prominence at all levels of education, an LMS has become an even more central part of an institution’s digital instruction efforts. Instructors rely on these tools for content management, diversifying their learning activities, and giving students more control over the learning process.
What Types of Learning Management System (LMS) Exist?
Proprietary LMS
A proprietary LMS is a closed-source platform sold and maintained by a vendor. These LMS products are often more expensive than closed source due to the licensing fee that must be paid per user, in addition to annual and ongoing fees related to the subscription. Proprietary LMS is hosted by vendors on their own server, and they are responsible for managing and maintaining the platform. They also offer the benefit of strong external support in terms of tech support if anything goes wrong with the product, though this comes at an additional cost. The downside to a proprietary LMS is the limited integrations and customization, and that security and stability rests in the vendor’s hands.
Open-source LMS
An open-source LMS is freely distributed, does not require a licensing fee, and can be maintained and customized by the user. Compared to proprietary products, these open-source solutions allow for a greater level of accessibility and control. Users can personalize the platform to suits their specific needs, with plugins and new functionalities able to be added immediately and for free. The caveat is that organizations must have the infrastructure in place to run and support their open-source solution, as well as an IT team that is familiar with the platform. Managed service providers do exist for open-source LMS, though. While there are no hard costs with an open-source LMS, organizations may still find themselves spending just as much, if not more, as a proprietary LMS to implement and manage an open-source platform.
What are the Common Features of Learning Management System (LMS)?
Course creation and management: Instructors can create and manage structured learning content and set user permissions to control how students access content. With an LMS, instructors can add a variety of media to enhance their syllabus, including text, images, videos, links, interactive tests, slideshows, and more. Teachers can upload entire courses and modules, enroll students or enable self-enrollment, and see individual reports on each student. These learning materials can be uploaded all at once, allowing students to follow along with content for the course's length synchronously or asynchronously.
Course calendars: Instructors can set all upcoming course activities on a calendar for student access. This allows students to stay on top of all assignments and upcoming tests, and to see real-time updates when due dates change.
Online assessment: Instructors can create and customize tests for students to access and submit online. Most platforms will support a variety of question types, such as multiple choice, drag and drop, essay, true or false, and agreement scale. From there, instructors can grade assignments and post scores online for students to access. Additionally, in-person assessments can also be uploaded and graded on the LMS.
Attendance management: Some LMS products allow instructors to track student attendance for classes and events, whether the student was late or absent. These attendance reports can then be viewed online by students to see where they stand in the class.
Discussion boards: Instructors and students can create discussion topics for the purpose of completing specific assignments, continuing in-class discussions, or soliciting end-of-semester feedback. Students can respond to individual threads and edit their comments. Instructors can also set time limits on discussion access, which motivates students to respond within the given timeframe. Typically, all discussions will also be timestamped. Discussion boards give teachers one more tool to assess overall student competency in a particular subject.
Gamification: Certain LMSs contain gaming elements, which may include badges and leaderboards. The gamified environment is designed to create a more engaging learning experience for students and promote social learning. In addition to tracking their grades, students are encouraged to work toward acquiring various pieces of digital approval directly in the system.
Teacher communications: Instructors can send messages to students directly within the LMS or via email, which usually integrates with the LMS. This allows teachers and students to have 1:1 discussions related to student performance or further discussion of class topics. Teachers can also set reminders and notifications to alert students of upcoming deadlines whenever they access the LMS.
Dashboards: Dashboards allow instructors to organize all relevant information and keep it clean for viewing and tracking specific data. These interfaces can be customized to suit user needs and could include data such as average class grade, student attendance, assignment submission statistics, and student access time.
Reporting: All LMS products contain some type of reporting feature. These reports are either prebuilt (in which case the user has only a limited number of offerings that are already in existence) or customizable. These may include reports on participation, learner progress, access time, quizzes, course activity, and more.
Student profiles: Students can create and manage their own user profile within the LMS, which helps build social relationships with classmates during discussions and helps instructors to recognize their students more easily. These profiles can also contain contact information if teachers or classmates need to reach out to them.
Other Features of Learning Management Systems: Cloud, Higher education, On-premises,
What are the Benefits of Learning Management System (LMS)?
An LMS provides a centralized repository for digital content, allowing students and instructors to access and manage all required course materials in one place, from any device. These tools allow for automation of the assessment process and tracking of student progress while facilitating collaboration and communication among students, teachers, and parents.
Consolidate digital content: The primary reason to use an LMS is that it is a living repository for all digital learning content that the organization offers. It enables teachers to upload documents, create presentations, and share all course material directly through the application.
Assess student progress: Instructors can track student progress by uploading grades and assignment scores. The LMS gives them a single place where they may create, distribute, and grade assessments and assignments for their courses. Most platforms include automatic grading functions that allow instructors to mark student work and input the scores directly into a gradebook.
Distribute content: Instructors can create new content or upload existing content as needed within the application. This lets students immediately see exactly what they need to study, without having to wait until the next class session.
Facilitate communication: Typically, LMS platforms come with standard communication features that allow instructors to send messages to students or parents and vice versa. Instructors communicate information about upcoming assignments to an entire class, or they message an individual student about their progress or any concerns. Mass notification features allow instructors to get in touch with many members of the school community with one click.
Encourage collaboration: An LMS helps create a digital community that fosters meaningful collaboration among peers, both for teachers and students. Instructors use an LMS to share lesson plans and materials, tell colleagues about an instructional strategy they are trying out, or ask a question to the community. Students use discussion forums built into LMS platforms to participate in online discussions, work together on group projects, or seek help with an assignment. Learning is a social process, so encouraging collaboration can lead to a richer learning experience for students and improve retention rates.
Who Uses Learning Management System (LMS)?
Teachers: Teachers use LMS software to upload and house digital course content. Those who teach online courses often use only an LMS for all of their teaching-related needs. In an LMS, teachers can upload and collect assignments and assessments, update student grades, track student progress, and more.
Students: Students use LMS tools to access course material, take online assessments, submit assignments, and track their progress throughout the duration of a course. The LMS, particularly for an online student, acts as the hub for all school-related activities.
Administrators: School administrators use the data gathered by LMS software to track student progress and report on key metrics. Often, administrators may integrate existing student information systems (SIS) with the LMS to facilitate a seamless transition of data from one system to another. In this way, they use an LMS to maintain a holistic view of student performance throughout their tenure at the educational institution.
What are the Alternatives to Learning Management System (LMS)?
Online learning platform: Online learning platforms provide an architecture to create online courses and other educational products, and are often sold as an integration within LMS products. These products allow instructors to create customizable study materials and streamline tasks, freeing up educators to focus on providing engaging, high-quality lessons. For smaller institutions, an online learning platform might be a cheaper option to provide engaging online learning experiences for students.
Software Related to Learning Management System (LMS)
Student information systems (SIS): SIS stores and tracks all student information, including grades, attendance records, and more. The software functions as a digital dropbox for school-related information. An LMS offers some of the same features as SIS, but while SIS is focused on tracking and storing information, an LMS is entirely focused on the creation and consumption of online content. Most LMS products allow for SIS data migration.
Virtual classroom: Virtual classroom software is used by educational institutions to host classes remotely while maintaining the functionality available in a traditional classroom environment. Through the virtual classroom environment, teachers can interact with students, and students can engage with lesson materials, view presentations and videos, and take tests, all in real time. Virtual classrooms may come as an integrated part of an LMS or integrate with one.
Online proctoring: Online proctoring software allows instructors to monitor test takers remotely during online exams. Many proctoring products integrate with LMSs to streamline the delivery of exams to test takers.
Challenges with Learning Management System (LMS)
Compared to an open-source LMS, a proprietary LMS comes with several challenges:
Integrations: LMS products often have integrations with a variety of other education software, which allow for improved communication and sharing of data. Particularly when using a proprietary LMS, users may find a frustrating lack of supported integrations with their other tools. Taking stock of all products in the existing tech stack prior to purchase can help identify LMS products that would allow for integration with all other tools. Vendors may also charge for additional integrations.
Data migration: It is significantly harder to move from a proprietary LMS to another LMS product, due to the exclusivity of the vendor’s hosted platform. Users may face difficulty in migrating their data successfully to and from a proprietary LMS.
Security and stability: Proprietary LMS vendors take full ownership of the security and stable hosting of their product. Users are therefore at the mercy of vendors to keep the servers operational, and to ensure data breaches do not occur. If a proprietary LMS platform suddenly shutters, users would have little recourse to retrieve all their data safely and efficiently.
Scalability: Proprietary LMS products charge per user, and having to add users as time goes on will incur additional registration and maintenance fees. Open-source LMS products, on the other hand, are often free and allow for smooth scaling up to tens of thousands of users.
Which Companies Should Buy Learning Management System (LMS)?
Any educational institution that needs to manage coursework content online and improve online learning delivery should consider using an LMS. These platforms automate the administrative tasks that can detract educators from focusing more time on improving their syllabi and class engagement.
Corporate organizations seeking a similar platform to manage their training content can find relevant products in the Corporate Learning Management Systems category. As opposed to an academic LMS, corporate LMS products are designed to support a business's onboarding, employee training, and compliance training programs.
How to Buy Learning Management System (LMS)
Requirements Gathering (RFI/RFP) for Learning Management System (LMS)
Open-source LMS products are developed through developer collaboration and the source code is made publicly available for download. If schools are seeking an open-source LMS, they can either download and host the platform on their own on-premise servers or have a third-party vendor manage that process for them. That process will look different than a traditional buying process for proprietary LMS products, which is detailed below.
Since an LMS is often the most expensive software in a school’s tech ecosystem, the buying process can feel stressful and complicated. Schools in the process of purchasing a new proprietary LMS should consider factors such as hard costs and recurring costs, required versus nice-to-have features, and ease of use. Interoperability is also an important consideration; will the school’s existing tools and course content be able to integrate and transfer over to the new LMS? Furthermore, the platform should support an institution’s model for tracking and assessing student performance.
An intuitive platform is also critical, as both teachers and students must be able to navigate the platform with relatively minimal training, or else LMS adoption is likely to fail. Some LMS products are more optimized to suit the needs of smaller schools or vice versa. It’s important for teachers to be included in the conversation about what features an LMS should have to be useful for them, as their user experience will be the deciding factor of success or failure.
Schools should also consider both current and future goals with using an LMS. If a school is looking to massively grow its student base over a given span of time, certain LMS products may only be useful to them in the interim. A school may also desire to grow its virtual classroom capabilities and shift more substantially towards fully-online course models, in which case it would be even more important to have a platform that supports online collaboration and communication.
Once a school has considered these factors and developed their list of requirements, the next step is to develop long lists and short lists for potential vendors.
Compare Learning Management System (LMS) Products
Create a long list
Long lists are created by eliminating the options that do not provide critical functionality. For example, a K-12 school looking for an LMS shouldn’t bother with platforms intended for higher education, as they likely will offer far more features than needed and come with higher costs. They may need an LMS with built-in course authoring tools, which is not a present feature in every LMS. A typical long list should not include more than 10 products unless there are many options that are very similar. In this case, additional details like the geographical presence of the company or its reputation can be used to eliminate vendors.
What to ask vendors of learning management system (LMS)?
When narrowing down the list of vendors, buyers should consider questions such as:
- How does the pricing model for this product work? Are there capital and recurring costs? What are the annual licensing and maintenance costs? Can the vendor offer a SaaS model?
- How well known is the vendor? Do they have a sizable amount of clientele in the given education market?
- If the LMS is open source, is there a reliable community of active developers that still maintain it and can respond to questions? How active is the user community for this LMS?
- Is the LMS customizable? How much do additional modules or plug-ins cost? Can certain features be turned off or modified?
- Can specific user restrictions be assigned depending on user type (student, teacher, administrator)?
- What type of eLearning content does the LMS support? What languages does it support for content? Are there course templates available?
- How well does the LMS work on mobile devices?
- How easily can the LMS be grown to support a larger number of users and content?
- How does the LMS handle assessment?
- Is the LMS compliant with the school's and nation's security and privacy protocols around eLearning courses, such as SCORM, AICC, and xAPI? Is there a disaster recovery plan? Where are the servers hosted?
Create a short list
Short lists are created by reviewing the RFI information received from vendors. It is possible that some vendors decline to participate and don’t respond to RFIs. These vendors are usually eliminated from the selection process. From there, this short list steers the buying decision closer to completion, leaving only a couple of vendors to choose between based on small, key factors that fulfill all the requirements and considerations a school has for implementing an LMS.
Conduct demos
Demos are a great opportunity for buyers to see how the LMS works. Only the shortlisted vendors are invited to demonstrate their solutions. Demos should be performed live, using the system, and not through slide decks and screenshots. All vendors should follow a predetermined scenario that simulates the business processes of the buyer. For schools, they should specifically request a walkthrough of a student versus teacher experience of using the platform.
Selection of Learning Management System (LMS)
Choose a selection team
To choose a selection team, decision makers need to involve subject matter experts from all teams that will use the system. This will likely involve the principal or dean, as well as a select number of teachers who represent the larger faculty's needs. The IT department may also be present, especially if going with an open-source LMS.
Negotiation
Negotiation happens between the buyer and the short list of vendors. In some cases, there are only two vendors that make it to this stage, which means that they offer similar products. At this point, the dealbreaker is the price of the product, which can vary based on the discounts offered by each vendor. Buyers should consider upfront costs, price per user costs, and any associated content hosting costs with the LMS.
The final decision should be based on all the information gathered previously.
Learning Management System (LMS) Trends
Mobile compatibility: One of the primary trends in the LMS software market today is the inclusion of mobile apps and the increase in multimedia content types supported by these applications. Mobile learning is on the rise and LMS vendors are recognizing this trend by creating mobile versions of their software for users. This will enable students and teachers to access the platforms on the go from their mobile devices.
Blended learning: The increased ability of teachers to distribute digital content through an LMS has helped develop their adoption of blended learning, which is an education model where some of the student’s learning is done online and away from a traditional classroom setting. An LMS helps promote this new learning environment by allowing for increased flexibility in the kinds of content teachers can put in front of their students and for how students interact with the material, creating a more personalized experience for each student that can improve learning outcomes.
Depending on their learners’ needs, teachers use modern LMS platforms to deliver video lectures, audio recordings, photos, documents, spreadsheets, and more. One emerging content type is interactive video, in which learners engage with the content by answering questions. A teacher may assign students with interactive video lessons, exposing them to a new topic before class hours. This flipped classroom model ensures that both parties can spend their time in class on a more in-depth discussion of the issue rather than an overview lecture. LMS discussion forums or social media integrations allow the learning to continue outside of class. Blended learning will likely continue to grow in popularity, fueled by LMS software features that help streamline that content delivery.
Learning data analytics: With many educators aiming to deliver more personalized learning experiences for students, teachers are looking for new ways to gather and analyze data on their students’ activities and performance. Built-in assessment tools allow teachers to deliver formative assessments to gauge how effectively their students have mastered the material and identify which students need additional support. A growing number of LMS platforms are including more advanced analytics tools, allowing the instructor to analyze how students are interacting with the content and their mastery of it. Instructors can see how often students are logging in, how they are interacting with the content and participating in discussions, who have submitted assignments on time, and how students performed on assessments. That data is then analyzed by dashboards built into the LMS. Besides analyzing learning data, the institution’s leaders may analyze how faculty are using the LMS in their courses and determine whether instructors are taking full advantage of the software or if administrators should organize further training.
