5 Best Benefits of Learning Management Systems (LMS)

What is a learning management system (LMS)?

An LMS is a software that serves as an online platform to conduct eLearning programs (Cooke, 2017).  Over the past two decades, these systems have risen in popularity to meet the demand for more efficient and more accessible educational programs (Gurunath & Kumar, 2015).  Utilize an LMS to create online courses or exams, deliver programs to students or staff, issue certificates, and collect data regarding user engagement and learning outcomes.  There are benefits of an LMS for education, an LMS for training agencies, and an LMS for other types of companies.  Whether you belong to a small, medium, or large organization, most likely there is some form of training that must be administered to staff or students.  A cloud-based learning management system can be the platform with which you deliver these programs efficiently without the need to manage and maintain local servers.  Other learning management systems, such as open-source or proprietary LMSs, typically require local servers to host educational materials—and this can be costly.  Check out our list of the 5 best benefits that cloud-based LMSs bring to organizations.

An LMS Increases the Efficiency of Project Management

Benefits of LMS

1. Provides Flexibility

• A cloud-based LMS can be mobile-friendly. This means that students or staff can access trainings anytime, anywhere.  An LMS can be accessed via smartphone, tablet, or desktop at all hours of the day, as long as one has a connection to Wifi (Cooke, 2017).
• By providing trainings online, programs can be delivered more easily to a wider network of individuals in universities, training agencies, and other institutions (Kelly, 2018).
• Now, users do not have to take trainings in the office. Staff can take trainings at home, at their convenience.  Students who attend an online university that delivers courses to students via an LMS can take classes after working a full-time job.
• It is easy to revise training courses so that they are up-to-date with a cloud-based LMS. Delete outdated videos, visuals, and articles in seconds—and upload new content just as quickly.
• Advanced scoring features such as total point scoring, percentage scoring, and weighted scoring enable instructional designers flexibility when determining the rigor of the program.

2. Is Less Costly

• A cloud-based LMS is less costly than in-person trainings. Not only does a cloud-based LMS eliminate the costs of paying a trainer to come into the office, but it also eliminates the cost of lost productivity while employees take part in in-office training programs.  Conduct trainings online through a cloud-based LMS and create training programs that you can deliver from year-to-year for at-home completion.
• As previously mentioned, a cloud-based LMS is also less costly than other types of LMSs. Unlike other types of LMSs which require expensive maintenance due to local servers, a cloud-based LMS does not need a local server, as all materials uploaded to this type of LMS are hosted by the cloud.

3. Increases Organization

• A cloud-based LMS provides a platform for you to manage all of your large-scale trainings and courses produced by your organization (Gurunath & Kumar, 2015). In turn, it also provides a central place for your employees or students to access trainings or educational courses (Kelly, 2018)  One of the benefits of an LMS for a company is that it can easily store all of the company’s unique trainings for different departments.
• One of the benefits of an LMS in education is that all learning outcomes from students can be stored and assessed in one platform. This allows for instructional designers to learn where learning gaps may be occurring and better address those gaps with revisions to course content.

4. Enables Monitoring

• With a cloud-based learning management system it is easy to measure student and staff engagement with course or training program materials (Cooke, 2017). Monitor how long students or staff spend taking programs, monitor the percentage of videos being watched, and monitor learning outcomes.  This benefit of an LMS in education enables course creators to determine how engaging their materials are and if those materials are being properly utilized enough to justify course inclusion.
• The monitoring feature brings a benefit to companies of compliance-driven industries as well because it ensures that employees are engaged with mandatory trainings.

5. Strengthens Technical Skills

• In this digital era, it is vital to have comfort navigating new technology. Introducing an LMS to your institution helps your students and staff gain comfort utilizing new technology.  Technical skills learned navigating an LMS, and learned by being forced to utilize other online sources for proper LMS course completion, can help increase the efficiency of your staff’s operation of other online systems (Shin & Kang, 2015).
• A cloud-based LMS also enables easy export of learning outcome data via Excel. Additionally, a cloud-based LMS can present data in pie charts which can easily be transferred to PowerPoint for presentations. An LMS’s ability to integrate with all of these systems enables greater efficiency across online resources.

References

Cooke, A. (2017, October 18). Six benefits of using a learning management system (LMS) [Blog post]. Retrieved from http://blog.goodelearning.com/lms-training/benefits-of-having-a-learning-management-system/

Gurunath, R., & Kumar, K. R. A. (2015). SaaS explosion leading to a new phase of a learning management system. International Journal of Contemporary Research and Review, 7, 62–66. Retrieved from http://www.ijcrr.in/index.php/ijcrr

Kelly, D. (2018). Breaking down the benefits of learning management systems [Blog post]. Retrieved from http://www.educationandcareernews.com/career-development/breaking-down-the-benefits-of-learning-management-systems

Shin, W. S., & Kang, M. (2015). The use of mobile learning management system at an online university and its effect on learning satisfaction and achievement. International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 16, 110–130. Retrieved from http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl