Are your employees gaining the most from your Learning Management System (LMS)? Or are you perhaps considering implementing one but don’t know where to begin? LMS often fails despite its promise to provide a smarter, more streamlined and cost-effective method of training delivery. The Brandon Hall Group eLearning Market Trends of 2016 reveal that businesses continue to allocate larger budgets to LMS despite nearly half of their survey respondents indicating dissatisfaction with their current learning technology. It is clear that there is a great demand for better learning platforms and the good news is that LMS failure is avoidable.
Here are three of the typical LMS pain points and suggestions on how to evade them:
1. Some do not facilitate learning
The end-user is often neglected in the selection of an LMS. They are usually chosen for their reporting functionality (e.g. tracking trainee progress) rather than their usability. The best LMS platforms have a straightforward user interface to promote an uncomplicated user experience and to facilitate learning. According to industry leaders, businesses can avoid getting stuck with a platform that does not facilitate a good user experience by testing one out before committing to it. And bear in mind that a user-friendly LMS is also more likely to ensure employee buy-in.
2. Too difficult to implement and maintain
In line with LMS best practice, businesses should identify the outcomes they wish to achieve and then select or develop an LMS that will address them. They need to be easy to adopt in the current business infrastructure, cater to the needs of an expanding organization and ideally be maintained by the LMS service provider to save on any unplanned expenses.
One of the other barriers to implementation organizations are sometimes faced with is a lack in employee buy-in, as alluded to in the first point above. This has less to do with the LMS (although LMS UX factors into their willingness to engage on a online training platform) and more with the quality of content they can choose from. It is, therefore, important that the business’ LMS strategy includes a strong focus on loading content that will not only teach trainees the information they need to learn but also caters to the ways in which they prefer to learn (e.g. through short bursts of information versus long manuals, accompanied by rich visuals versus only text, etc.). Consequently, the LMS needs to be equipped to handle different kinds of learning materials such as documents, slide decks, videos and social elements such as discussion forums.
Hidden costs
Even if your LMS has upfront costs, it could be another story altogether when you get to the actual learning material. Remember to ask your service provider about curriculum pricing before purchasing the LMS of your choice because the last thing you want is to be stuck with a platform with no content. Coggno, as an example, offers complete transparency by providing free access to their LMS in the form of their Training University; platform users are then able to upload their own learning material at no cost to them and furthermore, can select the courses that they require for their trainees from the Coggno training library and only pay for them as and when they have to make use of them.
Don’t get left in the lurch by your LMS! Check out Coggno’s Training University and discover its potential for streamlining your organization’s compliance training.
