What Problems Does LMS Solve?

A learning management system (LMS) is an incredible online Learning tool for educational institutes and businesses to train students, customers, and employees.

An LMS offers many benefits along with the ability to make, host, and deliver engaging and effective online training and certification programs, whether delivered to students or customers, external partners, or internal staff.  The benefit and power of an LMS rely on your perspective and the type of LMS software you choose.  

Students use LMS for a great learning experience and practicing, knowing how they can access training material/ learning content in one place and for this to be chased and proof of their accomplishments recorded.

The perks to the institute providing the learning content through training are even more profound because of the skill to track learners' training and use these details.  A training center offering training to external learners might also go for selling this training, and this offers the ability to generate possible profit and revenue from their training programs. 

Eventually, an LMS is a digital learning tool and the and the effort to manage it efficiently represents a host of challenges.  This article will review the challenges it experiences and problems an LMS solves for users.

With every new piece of software, there are many implementation challenges, and LMS does have some disadvantages you should know about ahead of time so you can plan around them.

However, the LMS feature sets and benefits tend to outweigh the drawbacks assuming you've accounted for these things. And a learning and development system is no different.  Critical decisions, assignments, and a learning curve for classroom training.  Here are some common LMS implementation challenges that a training services provider experiences.

1.     Time Management

You don't know about the exact time for training, which means an incorrect estimation of the time it will take to implement and roll out your eLearning training.

Course creation can consume a lot of time, particularly if the courses are personalized to fit the demands particular to an institute and its departments, which is a key purpose of using LMS.  

And obviously, this doesn't end when the training is published as the training material will demand updating with time, such as creating new courses and removing the older ones.  This demands resources and management.

2.     User Onboarding

Getting students/ employees to start using any of the most commonly used LMS platforms is one of the biggest challenges in training.  It's a multi-faceted challenge, from managers to leaders who might not be the most tech enthusiasts to learners interested in engaging with a complex & blended learning approach of an eLearning course.  

Thus, it's crucial to account for the different requirements of each end-user.  Providing bonuses on course completion is another efficient method of motivating learners and can help promote eLearning to external training partners and students. 

3.     Role Delegation

For an effective performance of LMS, there are major roles that qualified people must fill.  There are administrative roles like registering students for the available online courses, granting access, and instructor duties such as course creation and organization. 

4.     Tracking and Reporting Progress

The only way to ensure an LMS is making an effect is to utilize the data it offers.  Besides incorporating modern learning approaches, LMS has built-in tracking and reporting process about users' activities while interfacing with the software.  From course completion to passing tests, there must be a lot of crucial information available to instructors, managers, activity developers, and administrators. 

5.     Data Privacy Compliance

As in 2018, businesses in Europe that process information has been asked to follow the GDPR (general data protection regulation) – a law that saves a person's sensitive data.  Such details may be gathered by using an LMS.  Institutes that use an LMS must take strict measures to accomplish and maintain GDPR compliance.  

To protect the privacy of each user, security precautions must be taken, and the institute must be educated on these precautions.  They can hire a data protection officer within the IT department or have a consultant from a cybersecurity agency is the perfect way to broadcast such information. 

Employee training is most essential for many companies.  But while employee training is vital for a company's success, it comes with its reasonable share of problems and complications.  

For instance, employee training prices can easily scale up, and many companies effectively train a dispersed workforce.  Luckily, most of the problems companies face regularly have been resolved through training programs, technology, and innovative strategies from other businesses.

These are the top problems LMS resolve:

1.     Expensive Off-Site or Live Training

Some of the biggest expenses linked with employee training are travel and in-person training.  In-person, live sessions pull employees back from their normal routine, take up important conference space, need catering, and involve instructor salaries.  These prices are blown up further when employees travel to a training session or conference. 

Employers must pay for transportation, meals, hotels, venue rentals and add extra salaries in such cases.  The time employees spend away from their office can also be a loss for enterprises. 

According to EdSurge, in Michigan, professional learning expenses reportedly account for between 2% and 3% of an average school district's budget, specifically, registration for training and bringing in a speaker.

Companies can reduce this cost by using online learning tools by decreasing travel and classes. 

2.     Lack of Time to Get Trained After Work Hours

Often it is difficult for employees to participate in all training sessions while at work.  Still, it is not always suitable for them to train after work hours.

LMS aids employees learn to perform tasks speedily and accurately, allowing them extra time for additional training at work and decreasing the entire training time.

Moreover, by offering incentivized online courses that can be helpful for progression in employees' careers with a certification or raise, you can help entice employees to participate in training after work hours. 

3.    A Scattered Workforce

As a company grows, its workforce becomes scattered.  Without the right resources and strategies, employee training can become a big challenge instead of relief, as it is difficult to ensure that all the employees are receiving training.  As a result, clients may have a different experience while interacting with different staff members, leading to a negative impression on the company.  

LMS helps solve the problem of training a scattered workforce by letting company leaders systematize training, helping offer consistent levels of services and coherent customer service training to a huge employee base.

4.     Learn Disengagement

Learner disengagement can be a big obstacle to successful employee training.

According to a Gallup survey, only 30% of the American workforce is engaged. The remaining 70%, not so much. 

One way to enhance employee engagement is to customize training. 

When training is the same for every employee, learners lose interest.  By customizing training, companies can increase engagement and get better training results.  Easy ways to customize online learning involve allowing employees to get trained at their own pace, helping them set their own learning goals, and authorizing them to learn on any device they choose through mobile learning.

Other methods to enhance employee engagement in learning are modern learning approaches, blended learning, interactive content, gamified learning, and video-based learner.  

You can also work with managers and departments to make personalized learning paths for different positions.  With LMS, you will see a great boost in employee engagement.

Many LMS projects are seemed to have failed because of the improper use of the platform.  While countless organizations have implemented LMS, user statistics point to some tough truths about performance and satisfaction. 

Training your students or employees sufficiently in all aspects of LMS will mean that the technology is being fully utilized and the most engaging educational courses are created.  If learning experiences are bad, the knock-on effect is that user adoption rates are reduced, and satisfaction with learning material provided drops off.  This sometimes happens because the training and support are not up-to-the-mark but not offered at the right time or in the proper format.

Although LMS implementation can be challenging, it can benefit students, employees, and administrators.  Even the most successful enterprises have employee training challenges.  LMS as a digital tool can fix several L&D problems that an organization faces by standardizing and localizing training when required, engaging learners on all levels, and freeing up time for employees to train.  

An organized and well-managed LMS drops off all the heavy-duty work of setting an LMS and keeping it in use for the LMS vendor (for instance, hosting, onboarding, and ongoing maintenance.)

It's also very important to choose the right LMS for your needs the first time around. Moodle is an LMS with a lot of customization options, but since there are many LMS offerings on the market, a side-by-side comparison of LMS features, pricing, and reviews is a worthwhile exercise.

For example, looking at Canvas vs. Google Classroom or Google Classroom vs. Schoology can help you understand the key distinctions between systems you may miss otherwise. There is some debate around whether Google Classroom is an LMS or not, but it's worth a comparison with traditional LMS.