How to Choose the Right Learning Management System

Using a Learning Management System for online courses can provide both you and your learners a number of benefits, regardless of whether you are in the business or educational sector. It helps you easily provide content to your learners and you can document, monitor and assess their learning progress.

What’s more, you can communicate with your learners in real-time and easily collaborate with them in order to provide the best learning experience.

However, how do you choose a Learning Management System that is the right one for you and your students or employees? Here are some useful tips that can help you make the best decision.

Determine Your Goals and Objectives

The most important step you need to take in order to choose the right LMS is to determine what it is exactly that you want to achieve throughout your learning courses.

What are your ultimate goals? What are your learning objectives? What skills do you want your learners to acquire during their learning process? What are your needs and the needs of your learners?

You can answer all of these questions by conducting surveys and interviews with both your focus groups and the key members of your business organization or your school co-workers. You can also consult some experts in the field to get useful advice on what works best for your needs and requirements.

The key is to provide the best possible learning experience, so focusing on that will give you the right answer. You will then know exactly what to look for when you start looking at the LMS options available in the market.

Define What Features You Need

This step will help you narrow down the list of LMS solutions available and enable you to choose the best one for your and your learners. Since there are quite a lot of different features to choose from, given the fact that no two LMS solutions are the same, it can be a bit difficult to decide which LMS you should utilize.

That is why you need to focus on the features that you absolutely need. What will greatly help you achieve this is focusing on your target audience. For instance, if you want to train busy employees, you may want to find an LMS that is optimized for mobile devices and supports many mobile delivery features. That way, your learners can learn on-the-go and never again miss an important lesson.

On the other hand, if you think that an interactive learning strategy will help your learners acquire the necessary skills faster and easier, you should look for an LMS that offers great gamification features.

Gamification is very effective for both the educational and business sector. Therefore, focusing on your target audience and their needs, as well as on what will work best in your field of work, will help you define what features you need your LMS to provide.

Find out What Level of Support You Can Get from Various LMS Vendors

You may think that support services are not so important once you install your LMS and start your learning courses.

However, what if you encounter a technical issue and need to contact your vendor to help you out? What if you realize only after the purchase that you don’t even know how to set it up properly? Therefore, you need to find a vendor who can offer you the support you need.

Find out if a particular LMS vendor will be available to you 24/7 and whether they offer support services via phone or email, or even both. Some vendors offer support only through online forums or FAQs, so make sure you thoroughly research all the options and ask all the right questions upfront.

Ask Your LMS Vendor for a Test Drive

After you have taken into account all the previous steps, you will have a pretty good sense of which LMS might be the right one for you and your learners. However, what if it is great in the beginning but doesn’t quite offer the same functionality in the future?

It may seem impossible to figure that out, but you can actually get a good idea of how your chosen LMS will behave in the future if you simply take it for a test drive.

Asking a particular vendor for a trial period will help you get a clear picture of how successful your learning courses will be. You will see whether or not you can easily maintain and update your software, and whether or not you can integrate it with popular tools that can benefit both you and your learners.

With the help of a trial run, you will certainly avoid making a potential costly mistake. You will be able to see what features will definitely be beneficial, as well as check if the offered scalability corresponds to the expected enhancement of your learning courses.

Also, you will get an insight into the LMS’s customization and flexibility, so that you can know whether or not it can truly help you achieve all of your goals.

These simple tips will definitely help you choose the right Learning Management System for your needs.

One of the best ones you can choose from is the ProProfs Training Maker, as it is excellent online LMS software that is Tin Can and SCORM compliant. It can help you create online courses, online tests and quizzes, track your learners’ progress and get detailed reports and insightful analytics.  It can provide you with access anytime and anywhere, and it integrates seamlessly with various CMSs and email marketing software, which is extremely beneficial to businesses. Also, you receive excellent phone and chat support, as well as FAQs, videos and email support.

Guest article written by: Kamy Anderson is an ed-tech enthusiast with a passion for writing on emerging technologies in the areas of corporate training and education. He has 7+ years of experience working with ProProfs learning management system and other eLearning authoring tools, which has given him a hands-on experience of the latest course authoring software and an exclusive insight into the eLearning industry.