Your LMS Works, but is it Working for You? – Part 1
It’s really easy to live with something on a daily basis and never look at it closely: our homes, food, neighborhoods, and our software. How often do we really examine these things? We think we know them, but often what we know about them is surprisingly shallow.
For example, there was once a man who did not realise he was sharing his house with a brown bear and her three cubs for nearly half a year. Also, did you know that there’s a small hole in the wall right above your kitchen table? How long has that been there?
Sometimes it really pays to take a closer look at the software you’re using to see if it’s really working for you as well as it should. I think this is especially true for learning management systems (LMSs).
By examining how you use your LMS and how it meets your needs, you can find out a lot about what works and what doesn’t. You might find out that your existing LMS has some features you never knew about, or maybe it’s time to see what else is out there.
As an added bonus, you might finally figure out what’s been leaving all of those fish skeletons around the house.
About once a year is a great time to take a really good look at your LMS. A year is long enough for new features to have emerged (if your LMS is hosted or managed or SaaS) or for a new version of your LMS to be available from your vendor. It’s also possible that existing features have been changed or depreciated or reorganised in your LMS. Or perhaps your organisation’s LMS needs have changed. Maybe now is a good time to see if your LMS still fits your requirements.
This article will help guide you through the process of listing your absolute LMS requirements, brainstorming features you’d like to have and then examining your current LMS to see if it’s providing everything you require. We’ll also broach the possibility that your LMS is providing much more (and if you’re paying for much more) functionality than you actually need.
So put on a pair goggles, pull up those acid-resistant boots and let’s prepare to go wading deep into LMS territory. If this will be a solo trek, please leave a note next to your keyboard with information about where you are planning to go so that a rescue team can easily locate you.
Step One: Figure out your requirements
Our first step sounds ludicrously simple on its face: write down what your organisation needs your LMS to do. Some single-sentence answers come readily to mind. But what we’re looking for here is to really think deeply about the specific tasks you and your organisation perform with your LMS. To help you do this, I’ll be asking a variety of questions from two different points of view: an LMS administrator and a typical LMS learner.
Before we get to those, I have another, more basic question to ask: Are you actually using your LMS to train people with courses and report on the results of their training? Again, this may sound like a silly thing to ask, but seriously, are you using your LMS as an actual Learning Management System or as a glorified document repository?
An LMS is a complex piece of software (sometimes ridiculously complex) built to serve a specific purpose (often many different but related specific purposes). If you’re not taking advantage of the ability to track the results of training with your LMS, you might very well be paying for something you don’t really need. There are other systems much better suited to managing documents over a network.
Assuming you answered ‘yes’ to the question and tracking the results of training is one of your requirements, let’s use a simple technique to compile your list: living “a day in the life of” an administrator (a classification which presumably includes yourself) and a learner (a person who uses the LMS strictly as an end-user and doesn’t deal with the LMS in any sort of administrative capacity).
If you need help establishing if your LMS is working for you then visit my website and lets have an informal chat or InMail me.
Article originally posted by Capterra.