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In part 1 of this series, we discussed how important it is to review your LMS annually to ensure it meets your needs. If you need to catch up you can find part 1 here.

In part 2 we are going to study \”a day in the life\” of an administrator and a learner to really ascertain if our current system really meets our needs.

LMS Administrator Point of View

Let’s start with an LMS admin’s point of view by imagining a day in which you have been commanded to perform every possible LMS task you have ever needed to do. Write down any requirements you might think of while you’re reading through these questions:

• Have you ever had to add a person to your LMS? How was the process?
• Does your LMS sync with some sort of human resource system? This is often an extremely important requirement and this feature may need to be at the top of your list.
• How do you import courses and content into your LMS? And perhaps more importantly, what kinds of courses and content are you importing? Are they SCORM modules or AICC compliant? Do you have anything which communicates via the Tin Can standard?  Though SCORM support is probably about as ubiquitous as it gets, legacy AICC support might be a big requirement if you have a lot of training which uses this standard.

If you’re not sure, or the answer is ‘none of the above,’ take a closer look at the types of results your LMS is currently tracking for your courses. If you’re just recording a bunch of “Viewed/Not Viewed” results, maybe there is no actual communication between your course content and the LMS. But if you’re recording scores and other specific information, try asking around to see if anyone knows what form of communication is being used. It might be an important requirement!

Reports! There is much to say about reports, but sometimes it is wise to simply see the beauty of the forest rather than inspect the trunk of every tree. Simply put:

• What kinds of LMS reports do you run on a day like today?
• Are there other types of reports you have to produce on an infrequent basis such as monthly, quarterly, or even yearly?

It should go without saying that some sort of reporting should already be a requirement. But some organisation’s reporting needs are so specific and so vital to their use of an LMS that those reporting capabilities must also be included in the list.

Of course, a humble spreadsheet program can transform exported raw LMS report data into extremely custom results (how many failed courses occurred on a day with a full moon?), so it’s important to think about how the ability to export data from your LMS affects your current reporting needs. By the way, if your LMS doesn’t currently export such data so that you can manipulate it with external tools (naughty!), imagine what you might be able to do if it could. Do I smell a new requirement being added to the list?

Another requirement which is oft overlooked because it is not typically part of the software itself is the support system:

• Do you know where to go when you need help with your LMS?
• Have you ever used the support before and did you like it?
• Do you need to have a specific kind of support system available that is a requirement of your organisation?

Lastly, do you have a specific need as an administrator that I’ve not mentioned above?

Do you need your LMS to send email notifications upon certain events such as a course coming due or when new courses have been assigned? Do you use some form of e-commerce capability included with or used in conjunction with your LMS? Do you need to manually enter course records for learners from events such as live in-classroom training?

These and countless other specialised needs may be very important to the way you currently use your LMS. Try to list every other feature you or any other administrator needs to use, no matter how infrequently that need may arise.

Learner Point of View

Now let’s switch to the point of view of that noblest creature, the everyday learner. These are the people who log in every once in a while to take some training, see how they did, and log off. Let’s see what they encounter and perhaps add a few more requirements to your list.

First, have you ever logged in as a learner, or does your LMS allow you to see a learner’s point of view while logged in as an administrator? If not, you might want to take the opportunity to try it. It may reveal insights about the way the LMS is used in your organisation.

• What does your login process look like if you’re a learner?
• What do learners first see when they log into the LMS?
• Is any of this specific to your organisation and is there anything important enough about this process that it is an actual requirement for your LMS?

And as we did when looking at your administrative point of view, let’s also look at the support system for your learners. Does your organisation provide this to them, or is your LMS vendor or some other entity responsible for helping them out? If it’s the LMS vendor, this is also an important part of your LMS requirements list.

Bringing it Together

Between the administrator and learner points of view, you should have a nice list of requirements in front of you. A longer list means you’re probably going to be a little more limited in the number of LMSs which can accommodate your needs and could simply mean that you’re stuck with the one you’ve got unless you’ve got the funds to pay for feature development with a different vendor. A shorter list could mean lots of freedom in choosing a different LMS if you should like to look at the choices available.

In Parts III and IV of this article, we’ll take a look at Steps 2-5 wherein we’ll compile a list of nice-to-haves, document the features in your LMS you’re not using, see if your LMS is keeping up with the times, and consider the heady mix of pain and pleasure that comes with switching LMSs.

If you need help establishing if your LMS is working for you then visit my website and let\’s have an informal chat or InMail me.

Article originally posted by Capterra.