Continued learning is a must for professionals and with online training being one of the preferred ways to learn, something that is key to aid this is a good Learning Management System (LMS).
There are a whole host of LMS out there but if it isn’t a user friendly one it will soon become more frustrating than helpful. When logging in you need to instantly be able to navigate to the resources you need, be that a video course, white paper or even a blog. If you can’t, you’ll likely log off and think twice about logging back in.
We have our own LMS here at Mpirical, the LearningZone, which provides a wealth of training to the telecoms industry and we constantly look for ways to improve the user experience. Since applying several new features in recent years, from personalisation to gamification (in the form of badge earning) we have seen an increase in usage and engagement.
Here are just 5 things we think help make a great LMS:
Personalisation & Customisation – If a user feels like the platform is theirs, they will be much more willing to utilise it for their learning. Being able to add a profile image and choose how your name appears helps to personalise an LMS. Another aspect of this is customisation. Allowing a user to edit pages like the dashboard, by allowing the closing of tabs they aren’t interested in or moving them into an order they want, makes the user experience much better. We have utilised this feature on our dashboard and in ‘My Courses’.
Gamification – Gamification is a great way to engage users in their learning. In our LearningZone we have added gamification in the form of ‘Badges’. These provide an incentive to keep learning and give users the feel-good factor when they earn one. Also, if they are part of a team undertaking the same training, the badges can create a bit of friendly competition!
Resume function – Let’s be realistic, it is unlikely that a user will be able to fully complete a training course in one sitting, so providing an easy way to jump back in where a they left off is essential. Through the LearningZone we have provided a couple of ways to easily do this. We have a big ‘Resume Training’ button in the top right of the dashboard, click this and the user is taken right back to where they left a course. Alternatively, users can find their latest course activity in their profile box on the dashboard. Here they can see the last three courses they have undertaken, what percentage they are through them and can click the course to jump back in.
Clear End Goals with Instant Feedback – Having clear end goals for a learner is always a must. It’s great that they can watch hours of video content, but it’s meaningless if there isn’t an end goal. A quiz or a test of understanding following a course can not only solidify learning but also provides the end goal of earning a certificate of achievement. Instant feedback is important to go alongside this. Through our LearningZone, once a test of understanding has been completed, the learner will get an instant grade and be shown what they got right and what they got wrong. Completing a course will result in the awarding of a certificate, which can be shared on social media and also downloaded as a PDF.
Extra Resources – It’s not enough to provide a learner with just video courses (excellent as they are); there needs to be more to help aid their learning. Extra resources are a perfect way to give a user a better experience while learning, as well as a reason to keep coming back. In our LearningZone we offer a glossary of telecoms terminology (perfect to help users with the many acronyms of the telecoms world), a technology blog for further reading and best off all, access to our unique tool for network visualization, NetX.There you have it, 5 things we think help to make a great LMS that can really benefit learning. Of course, there is plenty more that we offer that can contribute to this but maybe we will discuss those at a later date.
If you want to find out more about what our LMS has to offer, click through to our dedicated page here. Or watch this video for a sneak peek inside the LearningZone: